Topic: Project Meshnet: Hardware for cjdns to enable new, censorship free Internet (Read 11750 times)

Project Meshnet was mentioned, but there are a bunch of technologies that are being developed in the whole decentralization movement. I've been following this site: http://redecentralize.org/

They keep a pretty comprehensive list of all the projects here: https://github.com/redecentralize/alternative-internet

A lot of interesting stuff to read. Enjoy!

There is a HUGE difference between having no privacy and having no ability to speak.

Encryption fights the former, meshnet fights the latter.

Perhaps I am not yet on the same fear-level as you but I think we share the motivation of wanting to decentralize things as a way of reclaiming power back from the government and large corporations.

At any rate, meshnets are not a complete solution. In order to stay safe on a meshnet, with all its NSA spies, you will still need the same crypto tools to securely communicate, publish and store your data.

These are the tools that we need right now and require significantly less investment than a global meshnet designed to survive the apocalypse

But hey I agree that the meshnet project is more fun.

It does seem unlikely at first thought, but your mistake is in assuming that the status quo will be preserved. It will not.

The level of unsustainability that the USG has chosen to take across many different fronts is beyond improbable... It is now approaching sheer ludicrousness. If it were not for Nixon's Petrodollar nonsense, there would be no possible way for the US to exist now at all; and it has already shown many signs of starting to crumble.

Every government in history that is no longer with us went through violent, turbulent times just before their downfall, imposing capital controls and outright theft of their own citizen's wealth on the way down. Billions dead, the rest impovershed, unless they escaped in time. This is why so many of us are attracted to bitcoin; govs can't steal it. Control of the information flow is what allows governments to steal from their citizenry so easily.

The internet has become the primary information flow now. As they get more desperate, their options will run out. Make no mistake, the internet and P2P tech like bitcoin are the direct, existential threat to the state's power that they will most definitely try to destroy in their last-ditch effort to retain it.

The fall of the USA will be unlike any other empire or civilization before it, because the size of the debt is so much larger than any before it. Nuclear war may be kinder to us all.


That's exactly what they hope too... Because you could never mount a decent defense if you aren't even communicating with other people. So NOW is the time to be concerned about this; not when things start really going to pot.


Those ARE problems that would stop the average joe from seeking a freedom-minded internet connection... Hence, Meshnet. They won't even have to think about swapping out connectivity layers... They'll just buy the router that gives them a free connection to the internet and happens to be secure, too. You're arguing my point for me.


So you're more afraid of Zuckerberg than you are of obomba? Seems legit...


Ah, your real motive revealed. Good, at least from this we have less reason to suspect that you are a USAF sockpuppet bot.

Please forgive the rest of us that want to survive an all-out assault from our governments if we think this might be more important than the progress of Java-in-the-cloud. It's just our silly human nature to fear death and things like FEMA camps, you know.

Then again, if we're all dead and imprisoned, or even if the web is just turned off, who'll progress your precious javascript then?

Plasma antennas let you archive essentially the same thing. But good luck getting a permit for legal use in that fashion.

Sounds like an opportunity for designed stratification of physical deployment redundancy.... although if detection of these fractal antennas is difficult, maybe it may not be so necessary.

Software radios with fractal antennas can cover a wide band of frequencies. Just use frequencies not currently in use. By swarming, spread spectrum, and constantly changing frequencies they can avoid detection. Also, someone would have to be motivated to locate them. It they avoid competing with existing use, no one would have reason to try to track down a transmitter's location. Lower frequencies can travel much longer distances, but have less bandwidth.

This. The amount of mainstream sites I use now is lessening almost by the day: they look brighter and shinier and are more functional than ever, but the quality of the information is becoming ever more dire. Turns out you can judge a book by it's cover; the more convincing the cover, the less convincing the contents.

There are some strange interlopers in this thread, as you'd expect on bitcointalk (are you sure it's worth what your reward is for doing this? Really?). It should be pretty obvious to all who've soaked up enough of the Bitcoin ethos by now: decentralised systems give power back to you. No more "that's just how things are", no more "if you want to change things, change them from within", no more "you can't do that, it is forbidden by a man who says it's impossible anyway".

Decentralised communications infrastructure is perhaps the most base level of taking back control from these psychopathic self-deified animals that presume to define and enforce the rules that govern our actions. Like BTCLuke says, you don't need encryption and onion routing dark webs on a network that has no effective censorship mechanisms. We don't need permission to act responsibly, we need self-directed education. The artificial barriers have got to go.

It will be expensive, no doubt.  But cubesats are really small.  Cost will ultimately depend on whether they can piggyback aboard another launch:


http://www.satmagazine.com/story.php?number=602922274

I've tried qmp.cat

See map.qmp.cat for a map of existing nodes .

The larger the mesh becomes the less it has to rely on the existing architecture. Second there is not just one point where the mesh could connect to the rest of the Internet. Any node can function as a gateway if necessary.

I do not believe that many governments would commit economic and political suicide and risk popular revolution by cutting off the internet. If it ever got to that stage I would probably be more worried about not getting blown up in the street than about my internet connection.

I agree about the benefits of using Meshnets for niche applications - especially in areas where ISPs are too expensive/unreliable/unavailable or where people are genuinely afraid of government cutting their connections. So I would love to see cheap and easy Meshnet kits that would serve this demand.

But for the majority, just swapping out the connectivity layer isn't going to magically bring them freedom as in liberty on the internet. I can achieve this today over my existing connection. I can connect to a P2P darknet, emulating a 'meshnet', and no ISP or government can monitor or censor what I publish and access online.

The problem is that the current tools are clunky and only used by a tiny tiny minority.

One of the first things we need is an efficient distributed datastore, with anonymity guarantees and censorship resistance. Thanks to Bitcoin, (freenet/I2P/Tor)-like protocols can now be augmented with market-based incentives to encourage adoption. (something like Bytemaster's tornet - https://github.com/bytemaster/tornet)

Even with a simple anonymous datastore primitive, many things can be achieved.

• Decentralized email. Secure. Wire-tap proof
• Alternative to Twitter
• Discovery services & marketplaces (ebay/silkroad/...) could work over this. Open source app with dumb cloud back-end
• Youtube replacement
• etc etc

It is my opinion that one can achieve freedom on the internets not by trying to replace the ISPs but by gradually taking the power away from the large centralized services and making the internet decentralized once again.

There are already positive signs as we see that more and more processing happens on the client-side. Javascript based apps that interface with some API in the cloud are becoming the norm. I would like to see this trend continue, a dumbing-down of the cloud with richer clients.

What you're missing is that eventually, the mesh would BE the internet, and the existing internet would go away.

Meanwhile, if only one person in 100 or so on the mesh volunteered to connect their mesh router to an internet connection, they'd be able to share their connection to the existing web with all of us... And looking around in this particular community, I think the number of volunteers would be very plentiful indeed.

Unless I'm missing/misunderstanding something, the local mesh has to connect to the internet at some point, through someone's ISP, which would render these 2 points void.

You're clearly not seeing the other benefits to us anarchists. We'd pay 10x our current ISP fees for the freedom a true mesh would give us... It's the sheeple, people used to receiving government handouts, that will only want the free option.


Geosynchronous? You do know that's going to take a bit more money to launch it that high, right?

That'll take some serious moulah. In todays' dollars, a million bucks worth of payload delivery to LEO would be several Billion dollars in price to deliver the same payload to a Geo orbit... Very few rockets on earth right now can even get up there!

No it isn't.  Just maintain multiple links.  Periodically drop and replace the most expensive / least reliable one.


I agree, but for none of the reasons you stated.  They aren't achievable because too many "anarchists" will only settle for free internet and not "internet at cost."

Within the next few years, geosynchronous cubesats will open the door to internet access anywhere on Earth.  Either a Bitcoin-based meshnet will be ready to take advantage of them, or they will be snuffed out by commercial interests.  That will probably be the closest that humanity ever gets to truly "free" internet.

4 things:

1. Free internet. (As in zero-cost) There are tens of thousands of people using their mesh networks in Europe and elsewhere today as their only way to get online; and all they paid for was the hardward costs... No ongoing fees of any kind.

2. Free internet. (As in liberty) Don't like how you ISP is stopping you from downloading torrents or porn or something else they feel is wrong? Sorry, obomba told them to do it. So why should you have to go through the trouble of encrypting things like torrents when you could just do away with ISPs totally?

3. Small interruption avoidance. If a truck or lightning bolt hits into the wrong telephone pole up the road from you, you'll be without internet for hours or days. Not so with a meshed web.

4. Large interruption avoidance.  As little as you personally think this is a threat, the FACT is that one day governments are going to start USING their "internet off switches." -It's the only way they'll be able to stop the information flow (and bitcoin flow) between people conspiring against them... They will not be able to shut down a mesh web, only take out key links that will regionalize it for a while.


#4 is why I'm excited about mesh. P2P software is the most important tool in the world for preserving freedoms, and governments are going to have to face it head-on soon. That means cutting off the web.

Currently it only makes sense for the Geeks as existing mesh networks are often organized as a non-profit association which requires some effort and an admittance fee to pay for outside connectivity and stuff.
Although it doesn't necessarily has to be that way. If the trend holds sooner or later there would be commercial kits anybody could use with some state of the art protocol for network discovery. Pretty much the way satellite vs. cable television works now. Main motivation would be reliability, independence and cost.

However I don't think that existing technologies would be the right candidate for mesh networks, although the majority uses it now. It's prone to several difficulties because wifi wasn't made to be used with high gain antennas in a grid architecture. I would prefer free space optical communications for reliability and performance.
I think if somebody were to commercialize it for the consumer sector this could go a long way. These things could be available for about $200 end market price and would fly off the shelves if there were a protocol which is both easy to use and efficient enough.

Whilst I find the idea of Meshnets fascinating and I wholeheartedly agree that they are well suited to some niche applications but for everyone else what will it offer?

I mean what is the importance of the connectivity layer? If we ignore the 'cool factor' what benefit would I get from connecting through a meshnet than say using my existing commercial provider?

For subversive applications I can use cryptography, VPNs / Tor / I2P etc. I can also completely emulate the meshnet by creating a P2P overlay over my untrusted connection provided by EvilISPCorp.

For a censorship-free internet I think the focus on DIY-internets is a little misplaced. We should look more into developing better tools that work over our existing infrastructure, that keep us anonymous and free through the mathematics of cryptography, not by putting routers on our rooftops.