Topic: [NXT] NXTInfrastructure committee - page 4. (Read 6344 times)

Why? Do NXTmixer and NXTcash not work trustless?

If infrastructure committee pays for half, I will authorized NXTcommunityfund to pay for the other half of the SSL cost. Maybe it is more of  marketing thing, but I think there is also technical merit to avoid plaintext transmissions, especially for NXTmixer and NXTcash usage.

James

P.S. If infrastructure committee doesnt want to pay anything, I will authorize NXTcommunityfund to pay for all of it. Just make sure that we are getting the right type of certificate. Ideally we can use this certificate for all the public nodes we are paying for?

Hi Nxt community,

I am going to step out on a limb here a little. Let's say you have a safe in your house (Curve 25519 encryption algorithm) and do not have a lock on the front door to your house (HTTP). Even though you have a really awesome safe, you still don't really want everyone who wants to just wandering around your house.

All modern high security online facilities use a double lock security mechanism. The first lock is the HTTPS secured by a CA. The second lock(s) are the user passwords (names/passwords). Banks, schools, governments, etc. all use SSL connections. In the case of the need to remain anonymous, some nodes can be their own CA and issue their own certificates.

At the end of the day, when the rubber hits the road and the crypto becomes fiat; trusted (known) Nxt gateways that are in AML/KYC compliance will have HTTPS (SSL issued by a root CA). Would you enter your credit card number into a browser window requesting payment details that is NOT displaying the "Lock" icon? If your answer is YES to this question, then some serious study into network security is in order. All information transmitted over HTTP is the equivalent of talking on what used to be known as "the party line" to our grandparents. At least over HTTPS, only the NSA and GCHQ can peer into RSA; everyone else stays out of your house; for now.

Please be your own CA for now if that is what it takes for Nxt to "lock the front door". If anyone thinks I have my interpretation of network security all wrong, let me know. Otherwise, I think the competent and trusted network VPS operators need to take the steps required to make this a reality. Will the network run slower? Yes. Will there be more coding work required to the Nxt core? Yes. Will it cost money? Yes. Is it worth it? I think it is and so do at least a couple other Nxt community members.

Sincerely,
Brian Snyder

Added a brainstorm issue for SSL on public api nodes:
https://bitbucket.org/nxtinfrastructure/committee/issue/30/public-api-nodes-could-support-ssl-for

I think this is an interesting topic separate from opticalcarrier's request for funding.

+1. Thanks!

If the usage is purely for encryption and not trust, why not use a self-signed cert? It would be nice if all public API nodes supported it, but yet all of them can't/won't buy wildcard SSL certs.

opticalcarrier, thank you for carrying the torch on the SSL issue.

As Marcus03 pointed out, "Technically, there is nothing that needs to be protected. The transaction data that is sent from clients to nodes, is the same data that is exchanged between nodes, which themselves do not uses SSL.
Or in other words, the beauty of the implementation lies in the fact that no trust is needed. It can't get any better. Putting SSL on top of it, for me just hides the beauty."

However, in the case of an NXT client operating from behind the firewall of a crypto (freedom) unfriendly nationstate, the mere fact that transactions are transmitted "in the clear" provides easy detection ability that a cryptocurrency transaction occurred. I know that if the primary goal was profit at the core operation level of the Nxt network, SSL would not be considered. The socio-political definitions of what is acceptable to particular jurisdictions is likely to change often in the coming years, and I think that providing maximum security and the ability to maintain plausible deniability to end users is a strategic advantage to Nxt.

The transaction may be secure by design and will succeed, but what good is that if the originator of the transaction runs afoul of misguided local crypto regulations? I don't know if this helps or not: https://www.cacert.org/

All issues posted by the committee are publicly viewable for those that want to see the initial brainstorming: https://bitbucket.org/nxtinfrastructure/committee/issues?status=new&status=open.

The nxtbase discussion is here: https://bitbucket.org/nxtinfrastructure/committee/issue/27/nxtbase-node-sponsorship-expires-3-31.

If anyone has ideas/suggestion, please post to this thread and we'll add them to the list of brainstorming issues.

-Ferment

Opticalcarrier/SSL certificates.

This discussion is slightly over my pay scale...guess I'd better get used to it.

After some research:
The SSL certification seems to really only give us an extra layer of cosmetic security on some nodes, but certainly not network-wide.This could maybe give rise to confusion as to whether a particular node is secure if it lacks SSL certification, when in fact the use of https adds no extra security for NXT transactions/balances.
J-L (and I assume CfB/BCNext) seem to have no use for https, so the SSL cert seems unnecessary.

I'd like to hear chanc3r and J-L's opinions on this, but I'm 80% against SSL certification right now.


Ferment/VPS

Just going to post a quick summary here of Ferments request:
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marcus03

How much do you need per node/VPS per months and for what is it spent? VPS hosting costs only or something else? Where do you host? Number of nodes=number of VPS?

   
ferment

marcus03 - Payment is for hosting, bandwidth, and personal time (gotta pay the bills). Servers are at Amazon, Rackspace, and Linode for both geographic and provider diversity. A node is run as a single virtual server.

   
marcus03

Thanks. Can you make a small list of planned expenses for a month for one node?

Hosting: ... NXT per month per NRS node Bandwidth: ... NXT per month per NRS node Personal time: ... NXT per month per NRS node Anything else...

 

ferment

1-2gb node with normal bandwidth charges is $25-35USD per month depending on location.

You can get much cheaper VPS options but you won't have the nice features like image cloning, international data centers, etc.

It's probably easier if I put together a proposal and submit it. I'll run the numbers and think how I could improve things and incorporate some of these brainstorming issues.

 
ChuckOne

ferment Sounds good for the start.

I would like to add that we definitely need long-term strategy for self-sustaining service providers. Any ideas on that?

   
ferment

ChuckOne One idea that I had was if you could integrate some kind of profitable PoW (distributed computing problem) then one could use the mostly idle nature of nodes to do other stuff.

For example, you could have a node do image conversions from one format to another and the node owner would get paid in NXT per unit of work completed. The work execution framework would run as an extension to NRS.

Building CPU mining pools on top of nxt nodes would be another example.

   


EvilDave wrote:

    I think it's an obvious decision, we need to have those nodes up and running, IMHO The only controversial part is whether Ferment gets a bounty for his own work on this. F; Have u recieved funding/bounty for your own workng time up til now? Do u want or expect payment for your worked hours on the VPSes?

ferment
Yes, I received sponsorships to pay for the nodes through the end of march. I've received bounties from BCNext/CFB as well for various contributions.

I'd happily run a few to support the community, but running 100+ across 10 data centers requires both time and financial commitment.

I think there are 3 approaches that could be applied to me or anyone else:

    Salary Bounty + Costs = Qualified individual gets paid on some kind of time frame to manage up to a certain amount of nodes. Committee pays hosting costs for these nodes directly. This is my least favorite, but it is what is implied when people ask about costs and time. It's highly centralized and requires trust.

    Bounties are paid per node per period of time directly to maintainer. How much time/expense is not the concern of the funding committee. The committee is only interested in the end result - a fast and resilient network. Nodes should receive bounties if they meet a clearly specified SLA regarding uptime, performance, updates, etc. This is the most common approach (sponsorships, peer explorer). In the absence of #3 below, I prefer this model, but it rewards investment in massive automation and the ability to grow on demand.

    Decentralized service providers are built on top of the nxt network. Nodes are rewarded through some kind of PoW that supports the business of the service provider. This is a long-term sustainable strategy until foraging become viable. Work processing code is distributed as "plugins" to NRS and run on nodes. Think Seti@home or CPU mining.

I'm sure there are other interesting models.

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The above is from the INF-COM PMs and bitbucket convo, any one else want to weigh in, feel free....

Regarding point 1, having a group of high available servers with public access to the HTTP API is something we need and in my opinion something that should be funded if we find out, we don't have enough of these. There is however no connection that I see to have these groups of server use SSL and thus to your funding request.

It is high because it is from a vendor that allows anonymity for certs AND the cert is a wildcard cert that will work with all hosts on a domain (remember we have 12 VPSs here).  At least I believe it allows anonymity, I am still waiting on verification from ITITCH.  If I cannot maintain anonymity or if they wont let me use some kind of alias then I wont pursue this at all.  But I am not opposed on a product from any much less expensive provider if they offer anonymity.