3 ms·
The internet, which largely runs on IP and extended by NAT, appears to have been constructed poorly in terms of privacy. There are protocols like ICE/STUN/TURN
by jaekwon 13y ago
The internet, which largely runs on IP and extended by NAT, appears to have been constructed poorly in terms of privacy. There are protocols like ICE/STUN/TURN (which is what WebRTC is built on) that supposedly try to bridge the gap to enable true P2P connectivity, but I believe even ICE appears limited in that it doesn't actually solve the hairpin problem, where two peers are behind multiple levels of NAT routers. I'm still investigating this issue, so correct me if I'm wrong.
What we need are better routing systems. Take a look at CJDNS which has a novel routing protocol. I don't know what the scaling limitations there are, there doesn't appear to be documentation on empirical or theoretical performance guarantees; but it's a start, and there's a growing community behind it.
With ever-cheaper devices, it should become possible to create a new family of router hardware that connects devices in a mesh fashion, scalable to the world at large. It's not going to be easy to design, and it sure as hell won't be easy to get physical adoption for (considering that the current internet is "good enough" for most), but it's possible.
P.S. I've created a subreddit at /r/fourthtech if anybody wants to get into deep technical discussions about various topics on better internet/communication protocols.
- woah 13y agoIs this mesh stuff really the answer? Sure, it can stop collection at a central point, but doesn't it still leave open the possibility for any data to be collected from spying nodes throughout the network?
- jaekwon 13y agoThe CJDNS whitepaper has a good writeup: https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/blob/master/rfcs/Whitepaper.md https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/blob/master/rfcs/Whitepap... Node to node encryption would make packet inspection rather difficult, for one. BTW, I don't think CJDNS is necessarily going to win. See: http://www.mail-archive.com/liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu/msg05979.html http://www.mail-archive.com/liberationtech@lists.stanford.ed... But soon, somebody will to come up with a mesh protocol that is simple and scalable.
- wslh 13y agoBut the problem doesn't end on encypting endpoints because the NSA can infer information from the flow routes. You need something bigger, like honeypots and many other tools of confusion.
- kazagistar 13y agoIsn't the NAT issue the IP6 issue? In other words, once we solve the fact that IP4 is running out of addresses, then we will not have to deal with NAT penetration anymore.
- tripzilch 13y agoAs far as I've understood, it's impossible to scale a flat mesh network, because of the amount of routing information required is quadratic in the number of nodes. To solve this, you need a hierarchical network (like the Internet has), however now it's no longer flat, and certain nodes will have more power/influence than others. On a global scale this will undoubtedly lead to similar political problems with control and privacy. Someone correct me if I'm wrong on the details here, but this is a network theoretical problem that needs to be solved before you start designing all the other bits and only realize much later that the network will be congested beyond usability for meshes larger than some trivial size.