(http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/images/internet-distractions.png)
So let's say they succeed at making the internet suck. Let's pretend the government figures out how to regulate it, de-neutralize it, restrict p2p file transfer, essentially moderate many emerging forms of communication. Let's pretend that those commercials you have to sit through before all youtube videos become ubiquitous on the net; you've gotta watch a commercial before clicking on a PD thread, ads everywhere, total corporate saturation. Everything you do gets scraped by a bot and filed into a personality profile which assists both marketers and the CIA. You have one ID which you use for e-mail, posting on all forums, surfing for porn, whatever. Anonyminity is decimated. The government is watching everything.
What's to stop people from launching a second, parallel internet? It's not like this stuff is very high tech. Couldn't someone code a means of communication which is very similar to the internet, but works differently enough that it evades internet legislation?
They say we will think of these days as the wild west of the internet.
Is there an open-source solution to keep it that way?
I've wondered about this.
I think the main problem would be getting the physical infrastructure in place. You'd either need to work with existing telecoms, or found your own.
Wasn't there supposed to be a "Black Market" Internet, or something?
And Cain is right, the physical network is the main problem.
I think any kind of evasion would be temporary anyway. Commercialism is a bitch, and a very persistent one at that. And eventually the Government would find it, and eventually regulate it. It's happened to pretty much every form of communication. Hell, I bet the horses in the Pony Express were branded with ads for Wild Bill's Saloon.
It can be done, and has been. You can bypass physical networking with RF and such, if necessary -- the wires are not a major issue in the worst-case scenario layed out here. If The Man has the ability to make the internet less fun universally, you have far bigger problems than youtube commercials.
Some early extensions of the arpanet (specifically thinking of the alohanet here) were based on coupling modems with ham radio tech. We've also got the technology to broadcast wifi over absurd distances, for whatever that's worth. AM transmitters generally are designed to bounce off the ionosphere, which is nice for range and (if my *very poor* understanding of waves is accurate) you could set that up to skip over anywhere where interception is expected, and use a different frequency for the return. Not particularly decentralized, but long-range. You could use that kind of tech to link together some tightly knit groups of nodes that are far away from each other.
I did wonder about WiFi but I didn't know enough about it to say anything.
WiFi is doable over long distances, but not practical. However, an ad-hoc network is probably pretty practical for small groups of nodes, with a couple machines dedicated to communication with other groups.
Quote from: Cramulus on October 19, 2009, 03:29:03 PM
(http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/images/internet-distractions.png)
So let's say they succeed at making the internet suck. Let's pretend the government figures out how to regulate it, de-neutralize it, restrict p2p file transfer, essentially moderate many emerging forms of communication. Let's pretend that those commercials you have to sit through before all youtube videos become ubiquitous on the net; you've gotta watch a commercial before clicking on a PD thread, ads everywhere, total corporate saturation. Everything you do gets scraped by a bot and filed into a personality profile which assists both marketers and the CIA. You have one ID which you use for e-mail, posting on all forums, surfing for porn, whatever. Anonyminity is decimated. The government is watching everything.
What's to stop people from launching a second, parallel internet? It's not like this stuff is very high tech. Couldn't someone code a means of communication which is very similar to the internet, but works differently enough that it evades internet legislation?
They say we will think of these days as the wild west of the internet.
Is there an open-source solution to keep it that way?
Aaactually, what you're talking about has kind of already happened, but kind of in reverse.
They made a new internet for the research papers and whatnot. Basically it's scientist internet from what I understand.
Let me see if I can find a link.
...nope, too much effort.
Quote from: LMNO on October 19, 2009, 03:37:12 PM
Wasn't there supposed to be a "Black Market" Internet, or something?
And Cain is right, the physical network is the main problem.
There are "darknets" out there (gooooogle it) but AFAIK most of the black market is on the regular internet in IRC channels trading stolen info and whatnot.
http://www.internet2.edu/
Don't confuse The Internet with the World Wide Web... commercialism may overtake the web, but the infrastructure is already in place to support a different protocol with different features and different functions.
I don't get why people freak out over YouTube commercials... Is free video some kind of right or something we're owed? I mean how is YouTube/Google supposed to pay for all of that bandwidth, storage and the regular development updates... most coders don't work for free... they require Mtn Dew and Taco Bell.
And if we build another network, someone will have to pay for all the hardware and the bandwidth... Hell even back in the days of the BBS's I remember sponser ads on some of the bigger hosts... and that was generally a one guy owns it and pays for it all kind of game.
A Black Market Internet would likely be a much worse sort of place than the public alternative... useful for some things (just like the real black market is useful for some things)... but it couldn't replace the actual net.
One possibility which William Gibson discusses is a near future situation where abandoned hosts and servers are still up and active and mostly ignored.... these support a sort of Squatter/Hacker concept where someone pwns the box, sets up their site and runs it until the old system dies... then they move elsewhere.
You can buy a 16gb usb stick for around $15. To put this in perspective, a download containing everything on wikipedia is under 10gb. Or, given that there are 526764 posts in the PD database, if we estimate an average of 1k per message then this entire site is ~0.5gb -- even if that handwaving estimation is off by an order of magnitude it still means that motivated groups could easily remain in contact without even touching the internet. It'd need to be combined with a distributed revision control system, but just about any hacker could come up with a workable technology to do this.
That is in pretty much the worst-case martial law scenario, and it's only likely to occur within a society which has already tasted free and open communication. I don't think any such crackdown on the internet is likely though as it would require a sudden, premeditated and widely held conspiracy to pull it off.
Quote from: fictionpuss on October 19, 2009, 06:39:26 PM
You can buy a 16gb usb stick for around $15. To put this in perspective, a download containing everything on wikipedia is under 10gb. Or, given that there are 526764 posts in the PD database, if we estimate an average of 1k per message then this entire site is ~0.5gb -- even if that handwaving estimation is off by an order of magnitude it still means that motivated groups could easily remain in contact without even touching the internet. It'd need to be combined with a distributed revision control system, but just about any hacker could come up with a workable technology to do this.
That is in pretty much the worst-case martial law scenario, and it's only likely to occur within a society which has already tasted free and open communication. I don't think any such crackdown on the internet is likely though as it would require a sudden, premeditated and widely held conspiracy to pull it off.
Agreed.
Storage isn't really the big cost anymore... a network for bandwidth would be much more expensive to put in place. I remember the days of twisted pair copper bandwidth, I have no desire to return to that! ;-)
Quote from: Doctor Rat Bastard on October 19, 2009, 06:09:09 PM
I don't get why people freak out over YouTube commercials... Is free video some kind of right or something we're owed? I mean how is YouTube/Google supposed to pay for all of that bandwidth, storage and the regular development updates... most coders don't work for free... they require Mtn Dew and Taco Bell.
I just take it as an indicator that the internet is changing.
Information Wants to be Free, and all that. & The expectation of commercials is the harbinger of more commercials.
Right now, for every 30 minutes of TV you watch, I'm guessing you consume 8-12 minutes of commercials? The internet doesn't have to be like that. But it probably will be. First it's a 15 second commercial before certain videos. In a few years it could be a two minute commercial before visiting a unique URL. When that finally happens, I hope there is a competing resource which is relatively unsaturated.
Quote from: Cramulus on October 19, 2009, 07:16:36 PM
Quote from: Doctor Rat Bastard on October 19, 2009, 06:09:09 PM
I don't get why people freak out over YouTube commercials... Is free video some kind of right or something we're owed? I mean how is YouTube/Google supposed to pay for all of that bandwidth, storage and the regular development updates... most coders don't work for free... they require Mtn Dew and Taco Bell.
I just take it as an indicator that the internet is changing.
Information Wants to be Free, and all that. & The expectation of commercials is the harbinger of more commercials.
Right now, for every 30 minutes of TV you watch, I'm guessing you consume 8-12 minutes of commercials? The internet doesn't have to be like that. But it probably will be. First it's a 15 second commercial before certain videos. In a few years it could be a two minute commercial before visiting a unique URL. When that finally happens, I hope there is a competing resource which is relatively unsaturated.
Ok, I'm gonna rant a bit... but not at you Cram, just at the topic ;-)
INFORMATION DOESN'T WANT FUCKING ANYTHING.
That's right you hippie bastards, this old school Internet geek is telling you right here, right now... Information has no consciousness and wants nothing. The meme "Information Wants to Be Free" was originally intended to point out that information that is for sale, leaks over time and can eventually be found freely, if you know where to look. It sure as hell doesn't mean that all Information Should Be Free.
Considering where we are in the evolution of the net right now, IT IS Changing and I for one am damned pleased.
You know where I went to after the World Wide Web got started? The online Smithsonian. It had some pictures. That was pretty much the whole fucking web. Then came Homepages... you could spend hours going from one /~mysite to another... and people would have terrible colors matched with terrible fonts and terrible pictures.
Now... now I can watch a movie online, on-demand whenever I like for $8 a fucking month, that's cheaper than renting two VHS videos from the Italian guy down the street when I was a kid (4.50 a movie!). It used to take an hour to download a single goddess damned song. Now I can watch College Humor for 15 minutes while communing with Eris, then I can set the bong down and get to work on some crazy online project, or play a video game with my friends (and not that bastard 3d Tank Sim that we thought was awesome in '94) or chat online with my philosophical playmates.
The Web has changed, its improved by leaps and bounds. Its still recognizing the potential that lots of us saw back in 1990, and exceeding it faster than any of us thought. The Internet has provided a medium where the free exchange of information is possible. Hell, its a medium where the free exchange of information is so easy that people seem to expect it from everyone, everywhere, all the time.
But, that's simply not reality.
It isn't cheap to run a website even though YouTube is built from the ground up and peered with some great content caching to make things cheaper. We're talking about millions a year... are they just supposed to spend millions on a free service out of the goodness of their heart?
YouTube serves a billion videos a day... A FUCKING BILLION VIDEOS STREAMING ON DEMAND ALL OVER THE WORLD. Holy Fucking Christ, I would have said in 1990*, you are crazy... streaming video? that's silly... a billion streams of videos? You're insane! A Billion Streaming Videos that you don't have to pay for, that you can upload your own videos to (for the world to see) and that can provide independent movie creators a HD quality medium to push their own stories! I would have called bullshit. (Now, in 1994 when I read a tech article about working bandwidth splits on cable... I might have felt a little differently).
Commercials will exist in any medium where there are people and a need to make money. If YouTube doesn't make money... then it doesn't get to serve up a billion videos for long. Instead it will just get to serve up Chapter Seven Bankruptcy Papers. I suppose YouTube could just put out a tip jar, or pull an NPR and come one for a week every few months, interrupting your video to ask for donations... but, really, do you think that would work? Enough to pay expenses, PLUS pay for new toy development?
If we ever make it to some post-capital based society, where bandwidth, disk space, processors, power, rack space, engineers and developers are all free.... then I'd be pissed that YouTube made me watch ads. Right now, how the hell else is this stuff supposed to remain in existence? Lots of people love to rip on television ads, but how else to they suppose the lights, camera and action would be paid for?!
* Not really cause I was a Christian and didn't say Fuck...
Quote from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8280557.stm
Online spending grew 4.6% to £1.752bn in the first half of 2009, while TV spending shrank 16.1% to £1.639bn.
I think we'll see online advertising become less obnoxious than TV advertising, as it becomes the biggest source of advertisement spending.
Why TV will never change:
- To be popular and maximise revenue shows have to start on the hour, less popular shows start on the half-hour
- The shows are all made around the ~40 minutes of content an hour model -- one network cannot arbitrarily decide that they'll just cut down the amount of adverts for a show they're syndicating, as there is no additional content to put on.
- The advertising model/Neilson ratings scheme is broken, overvalued, but maintained by the same people who benefit from it
- The networks are stupid and cling to old business models. Case in point "remote-free tv (http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/fox-scraps-remote-free-tv/)" - 40% premium on advertising rates, with half the number of adverts in a show - experiment scrapped because it didn't break even with traditional models. Well no shit, to break even you'd need to double advertising rates, a 100% premium.
But the web can deliver targeted adverts to me, Google knows enough to not try to sell me tampax, and in this way advertisers get value they never could before. I don't mind giving away some data if it means I get less adverts, or if the adverts I do get I might actually be interested by.
And at the end of the day, if you give a choice between a 15 second advert at the start of a youtube show, or 5 minutes dispersed throughout a show on microsoft video.. advertisers are going to notice that they get better results with the targeted campaigns.
There's no reason why it can't be win/win, with the current TV model there's basically no way they can survive without being the way they are though.
Quote from: Cain on October 19, 2009, 03:46:48 PM
I did wonder about WiFi but I didn't know enough about it to say anything.
I wrote up this post which goes a bit about wifi, and then my internet connection got lost before I could post it, the irony :)
fortunately it was in my copy/paste buffer:
I think the biggest problem would be to get enough people on this Internet-2 to make it really interesting again. However, looking at a forum like this (or in general), it doesn't seem to take that many people to have a good time and do interesting stuff.
Past that, it's just a simple case of finding a suitable side-channel present on the Internet One, writing a proxy for it, probably with some encryption thrown in. Given the fact that we got bandwidth gushing all over the fucking place, nobody is going to notice that, for example, what appears to be just a funky ever-changing signature image actually contains an encrypted bitstream that is part of the backbone of Internet-2.
Sure, a solution like this would probably take the form of text-only newsgroup style messaging, and no it most probably wouldn't be available at work (lest you risk your job--although maybe your iPhone or Android could do it), but Usenet was huge back in the days, and before that, FidoNet. To be fair, it will probably be a bit more shiny than that.
Also, if everybody would start using Opera Unite (when they finally release it out of beta) and make it real popular for proper purposes and such, they can't really take it away anymore. It was pretty much designed for this sort of thing.
So that would be kind of like "stealing" the infrastructure, or rather, piggybacking on it. Might be best as a last resort when it comes to that.
For our own infrastructure, I just realize, currently, you got a shitload of wifi routers everywhere. I've been driving around town, having NetStumbler log all the (mostly encrypted) wifi networks everywhere. Just for fun, I'm gonna see if I can plot them on a sort of map. But I digress.
As long as these routers can "see" eachother, I suppose their firmware can be reprogrammed* so they would function as a Router+Repeater, routing the network packets among themselves and create a Wide Area Network, it would be City-wide, independent from the Internet One.
Start thinking up a snazzy name for it :)
*there's already Linux builds out there for most popular routers, this can be done and requires no screws or messing around with the hardware, you just upload the new firmware via the local network or via a USB port if the router has one.
Additionally, one could have some widget in a place that can see a lot of those open nodes, routing in a randomized way if big brother ever gets really tough. Kind of like a physical TOR, I guess. If you were really paranoid, you could encrypt stuff and make it transfer via a random open network you were in range of.
Jusat like the network in Little Brother :)
Damn it! Cory Doctorow keeps stealing my ideas before I think of them!
GOD DAMN YOU, TIME TRAVELING CORY DOCTOROW! :argh!:
All I want is an underground Twitter.
I'll call it "dark twitter."
I'll randomly hook up to other people's computers, and we'll send 140-character messages to each other. Future versions will allow multiple people to join a "hash tag."
And just so it's all anonymous and dark-net-y, we won't store any of it on a server. No records! No transcripts! No prosecution! Mwahahaha!
-toa,
what? not every joke can be funny...
Quote from: Doctor Rat Bastard on October 19, 2009, 06:09:09 PM
Don't confuse The Internet with the World Wide Web...
That's not what I was talking about. I mean it's physically separate from the internet most people use. It's supposed to be mostly fiber and IIRC they started it in Norway or Denmark or something. Wish I could find the article on it... I know what the Internet is and what the web is.
Quote from: Triple Zero on October 19, 2009, 09:15:57 PM
Quote from: Cain on October 19, 2009, 03:46:48 PM
I did wonder about WiFi but I didn't know enough about it to say anything.
.
For our own infrastructure, I just realize, currently, you got a shitload of wifi routers everywhere. I've been driving around town, having NetStumbler log all the (mostly encrypted) wifi networks everywhere. Just for fun, I'm gonna see if I can plot them on a sort of map. But I digress.
As long as these routers can "see" eachother, I suppose their firmware can be reprogrammed* so they would function as a Router+Repeater, routing the network packets among themselves and create a Wide Area Network, it would be City-wide, independent from the Internet One.
Start thinking up a snazzy name for it :)
*there's already Linux builds out there for most popular routers, this can be done and requires no screws or messing around with the hardware, you just upload the new firmware via the local network or via a USB port if the router has one.
Tomato and DDWRT can do this with a lot of the Linksys WRT54G routers and you can do it through the browser menu you get when you want to configure your router. The firmware enables all sorts of cool shit.
Quote from: Slanket the Destroyer on October 20, 2009, 04:27:00 PM
Tomato and DDWRT can do this with a lot of the Linksys WRT54G routers and you can do it through the browser menu you get when you want to configure your router. The firmware enables all sorts of cool shit.
I ran DDWRT with my WRT54G, after I got past the smugness stage I noticed that the performance sucked. It was the difference between ~14mbps with DDWRT and ~80mbps with the original firmware.
Maybe I was doing something wrong, I didn't bother reading the proper installation instructions and I managed to kill the two gb ethernet ports on my mainboard before I figured out the default settings were to blame.
DD-WRT has shitty default settings if you ever start a p2p program. Also somewrt54Gs (the newer ones) don't work right with it.
Developing a second internet would be a trillion dollar project, especialy the last mile shit since it wouldn't piggyback on the phone/cable infrastructure like the first one did.
Quote from: fictionpuss on October 19, 2009, 08:43:03 PM
But the web can deliver targeted adverts to me, Google knows enough to not try to sell me tampax, and in this way advertisers get value they never could before. I don't mind giving away some data if it means I get less adverts, or if the adverts I do get I might actually be interested by.
And at the end of the day, if you give a choice between a 15 second advert at the start of a youtube show, or 5 minutes dispersed throughout a show on microsoft video.. advertisers are going to notice that they get better results with the targeted campaigns.
There's no reason why it can't be win/win, with the current TV model there's basically no way they can survive without being the way they are though.
In my experience targeted advertising has little if anything to do with anything I might click on.
Quote from: Requia ☣ on October 20, 2009, 08:26:48 PM
Developing a second internet would be a trillion dollar project, especialy the last mile shit since it wouldn't piggyback on the phone/cable infrastructure like the first one did.
what about the current wifi infrastructure as discussed upthread?
I'm sure it would be tough to develop a new internet if you were aiming at recreating what we have now
if such a thing emerges, I would guess it will start as a small network, maybe something that links a few colleges
and then grows organically from there as people find out about it.
Why would you want to physically separate it from internet 1? I don't know all the ins and outs, but with VPNs and tunneling we could have a completely independent internet 2 that you could do whatever you want with. This would take advantage of the existing infrastructure, but may require the purchase/development of some hardware and software (a cross between a physical encryption device, one of those nifty key fobs with an access code, as well as Enki's physical TOR thing comes to mind...I need to read Little Brother.).
If you encrypt it you can have it be extremely secure, it can be mixed with all the other data on the internet, but largely unnoticed. I have worked on nodes on these types of networks before, but people with far more knowledge than me developed it, I merely got it up and running and maintained it. I could do some research on it, but I am pretty sure it would be fairly expensive, but less expensive than going and creating a second physical network, but having a much larger area (anywhere that currently has internet connectivity) covered. It actually seems, when I think about it, like it would be a little closer to what we had before the web was developed. You would either need to have a decent amount of technical knowledge to get it going, and it could cost you a bit.
Also, just like internet 1, you could have VOIP, however if this is something that was shared for free (outside of the cost of the additional equipment needed to get you on the network) you could also have global voice communication. You could use wifi technology to create wireless access points to it, however I question the usefulness of running it wholly off of wifi, as it would then be geographically isolated. For that you have meatspace.
Problems that would need to be worked out early would be getting routers and equipment all using the same protocol, working out ip schemes, etc., and getting everyone on board. I am sure if a group of people started doing this and either advertised it a little or somehow spread the word it would grow, but the problem is if you put too much information out there, the large corporations with the money would quickly jump on it and pollute it. It then comes down to how much do you talk about the existence of such a network and how much information about accessing it do you share. This would be a good idea if you are trying to limit it to a group of known individuals. So I am pretty sure it is essentially just a darknet in the traditional sense, and what I am thinking might just make it more secure and more accessible.
I suppose I should do some homework on darknets, as that may be a cheaper or easier way to go. Maybe extranets also?
As for accessing it on a node that is not intended to be on that network (000@work), it may work via a software or hardware solution but the network would likely need to be in place or very well into the planning stage before it can be implemented. (I guess I should also look into Opera Unite...Opera is my browser of choice, so I should look into it anyway)
Actually, the more I think about it, the wifi idea, as well as packet radio and what not, trying to have it physically isolated from internet-1 would prevent you from having to pay for the connectivity, however you are stuck to the geographical area, and would still need to have access to that network, either by stealing, borrowing or buying access via your own equipment. Then perhaps to link those geographically isolated areas, someone could connect them to the big network through more traditional means.
I guess I need to be more active here. Lots of stuff I wish I had known about before. Would anyone actually have any interest in really working on this stuff? I know there are many in the world who would love to do this, I just wonder why they haven't started working on it, or if they have, who and where and what they have so far...
In a worst case scenario any encrypted network traffic, which the government software installed at every ISP cannot decipher, is automatically flagged as suspicious. Any attempt to hide the content in images or teXt mUnGIng will be similarly detectable. In other words - in a worst case scenario you can't piggyback on the existing infrastructure unless it's a really low-bandwidth message such as a predefined trigger.
Hey, welcome back rygD!
Quote from: rygD on October 22, 2009, 01:40:31 PM
Problems that would need to be worked out early would be getting routers and equipment all using the same protocol, working out ip schemes, etc., and getting everyone on board. I am sure if a group of people started doing this and either advertised it a little or somehow spread the word it would grow, but the problem is if you put too much information out there, the large corporations with the money would quickly jump on it and pollute it. It then comes down to how much do you talk about the existence of such a network and how much information about accessing it do you share. This would be a good idea if you are trying to limit it to a group of known individuals. So I am pretty sure it is essentially just a darknet in the traditional sense, and what I am thinking might just make it more secure and more accessible.
Woah, great thoughts here.
the big corps will want to cash in on it after it's popular with cool kids. That's inevitable, it's just the natural cycle of things. But by then, all the cool kids will be on the internet 3.
QuoteI guess I need to be more active here. Lots of stuff I wish I had known about before. Would anyone actually have any interest in really working on this stuff? I know there are many in the world who would love to do this, I just wonder why they haven't started working on it, or if they have, who and where and what they have so far...
I don't have enough technical knowledge to effectively help, but I'll use the fuck out of whatever you make. :p
Quote from: fictionpuss on October 23, 2009, 02:57:03 AM
In a worst case scenario any encrypted network traffic, which the government software installed at every ISP cannot decipher, is automatically flagged as suspicious. Any attempt to hide the content in images or teXt mUnGIng will be similarly detectable. In other words - in a worst case scenario you can't piggyback on the existing infrastructure unless it's a really low-bandwidth message such as a predefined trigger.
I've been trying to get people into the idea that they should encrypt everything they can, just to throw up chaff for things that actually should be encrypted.
Quote from: Requia ☣ on October 23, 2009, 04:35:24 AM
Quote from: fictionpuss on October 23, 2009, 02:57:03 AM
In a worst case scenario any encrypted network traffic, which the government software installed at every ISP cannot decipher, is automatically flagged as suspicious. Any attempt to hide the content in images or teXt mUnGIng will be similarly detectable. In other words - in a worst case scenario you can't piggyback on the existing infrastructure unless it's a really low-bandwidth message such as a predefined trigger.
I've been trying to get people into the idea that they should encrypt everything they can, just to throw up chaff for things that actually should be encrypted.
yeah, exactly. we started a thread for this purpose over here:
http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=21479.0
it would be great if people would just start encrypting their emails like they wrap envelopes around their paper letters.
but even apart from that, there already exist large streams of "familiar" encrypted network traffic even right now. and you can't really distinguish one stream of encrypted data from another (at least you can distinguish any stream of data to perfectly look like a "familiar" one). any connection you make to a https website, the Skype protocol and SSH are just a few examples that come to mind. you could already currently piggyback on those with some medium-low bandwidth streams without suspicion.
Thanks, 000...I needed another toy to play with, instead of catching up on work and school...and you don't even use it. I have never been able to get others to regularly use GPG/PGP. I mess around with it from time to time. However that could add yet another layer of protection if it is required on internet 2.
The problems I can't get my head around would be where to look for secure but cheap equipment and how to use it. I suppose we would be able to get cheap routers, and go that route, but I am far from being knowledgeable enough to plan a network of that size from the ground up. Hell, I don't know how to work with the local area sized wireless shit you guys were talking about...
We could use some of the software that is out there to add voice to it, have a vlan for that. Another for data. Another that the average user wouldn't have to worry about so the rest of us could keep an eye on everything to make sure there are no issues, and fix anything. Does anyone know what we would need to do for the basic shit? Say you are my neighbor and we are trying to create this network, and we want to go through the currently existing internet. I deal more with routers and switches than computers, so I do not know if you could get away with not having a router or something at each node. A little software could be used to get us talking back and forth on the network and making it secure.
It needs to use this to access it, just because it is cool (blame Entropia Universe): http://www.basiccard.com/index.html?news.htm
If you use it to spit out a one time code thing to gain access to the network (so now we need servers). You could just use the smart card, but that isn't as fun. If it uses the cards that are combination contact and contectless it would provide more options, but I am not a fan of RFID for anything more than keeping track of my pets right now, so it would need to be stored in something to shield it until it is used.
Perhaps having everything stored on a thumb drive will also work. I like the itty bitty ones from Kingmax because they are small, people don't know what they are when they see them sometimes, and while I feel they are fairly durable, if I needed to physically destroy it I doubt I would have trouble, either by burning it, smashing it, or if things get really desperate, chewing it up and possibly swallowing it. It would seem they are a more sensible solution so that you don't have to work all the issues of trying to distribute the physical devices.
Still so much more reading to do.
RygD, I would like to suggest you first learn how the current Internet works, then. It's not gone yet, there's still time, and you can learn a lot.
- first off, routers are already cheap. you buy em at the eletronica store for .. i dunno, $40? (I have no idea TBH) but lots of people have some spare lying around from some old Internet subscription. also, it helps if you realize that a router and a computer are both basically the same thing. they both have a network card and some network cables and a processor. the difference is that a router usually has more cables and a much less powerful processor (just to route the packets around), but I would guess they are still about as powerful as a desktop computer 8 years ago or something. So a router can be programmed to act as a (weak) computer or webserver, and a computer can be programmed to function (among other things) as a router. Routers also have the advantage that in general they're always on.
- I wouldnt recommending creating separate streams for voice and data because all data is data. the separate stream for maintenance that "regular people" wouldnt need to worry about sounds like an extremely bad idea if you wanna keep the thing entirely open. at least it kind of smells to me like the "secret admin boards" approach we loathe so much on PD.
- About thumbdrives, I know for a fact that SD cards are nearly indestructible. You can drive over them with a car, and another 2GB one survived the fire in my house last year (dunno how hot it got though, it was in a camera). Your average USB stick is still better than oldskool floppys or CDROMs, but not as good as an SD card. Wait rereading that, you were looking for one that is easy to destroy. I'd go for smashing first and then possibly burning.
MicroSD cards, you can flush em, eat em, etc if you need to get rid of em in a hurry. No evidence of destruction of evidence so to speak. If you want USB you can get USB adapters for microSD that are smaller than most thumb drives. If you need indestructible instead, microSD in an SD adapter is recommended for that footage of the cops boot coming down on your camera (haven't really tried this myself).
There are always programs that will overwrite with 0s and then reformat, making the thumb drive/memory card look brand new.
an SD card will prolly survive a cop's boot, yeah. if you flush a MicroSD it will probably survive that as well. And if you eat it without chewing, you can probably get it back some 36 hours later as well :-)
Thanks for the advice, 000. I am looking to learn more, and I'm currently taking classes. As for the routers, as I said, I am pretty sure you can get them cheap. I did a quick check of the prices on what I have next to me right now (Cisco 2651s), and they can be had for under $100. I know others are much less, and as you stated, other equipment could accomplish the same goals, maybe for much less. Could you have the computer you are using to access the network handle everything?
I work mostly with cisco equipment, and it seems they may try to sell people on using seperate VLANs. The 3rd VLAN was for management. I don't see why the end user would need access, and if they did they could do stuff remotely. I do understand what you are saying though, however if someone pisses someone off, how would it be helpful allowing them to cripple the network. Others would have to go back and clean up the mess, then they could do it again. But you can't really trust the people running the network.
Pricing micro sd, they are very affordable in hc, and due to size they do seem to be a decent way to go if they can be destroyed easily enough. Do you think it is feasible to use a micro sd card or something similar and just use software so that you could take that with you and avoid messing with hardware other than computers and your current internet connection, like what I asked in the first paragraph, or would it slow down computers too much, and take out entire sections of the network when someone disconnects (this shouldn't be hard to overcome)? What I mean is perhaps running some simple virtual machines or programs to set up the network, use encryption to secure it, then run all traffic through tor or something(or would tor slow it down and be counterproductive). I see the possibility of frequently not being able to acces data or some services when a node leaves the network. With this we could remove most of the cost, though you might have an issue with computers that don't meet the requirements to run some of the software. It would need to be able to run cross platform without needing superuser access. I still think you need something that would restrict access to the network or identify you (one time code, etc). This could allow nodes to cut off those who act maliciously, or prevent them from being able to access the network at all for a limited period. I still like the idea of using hardware so I can use an Apple IIe to connect and get cheap voip hardware.
Wow, I must sound like even more of a loser to all of you than I do to myself.
I had an Apple ][e. It's not that cheap, now that they are antiques ;-)
Enki, I have 8 of them. I bought them all together for $2 about a year or so ago. It was great when I opened the box and found out that they all had cards in them. One was a platinum. They originally came from a school. They didn't have power cables, but those are easy to get. I have ideas for 3 or 4 and want to fix up the rest as best I can (some missing keys, might have to replace power adapters, as 1 or 2 are bad) and sell them. I was looking at getting an Uther card or 2 since he has some ready to order. Also looking at a bunch of the options out there so that I don't have to rely on getting disks that are $1 a piece. I Have one green mono monitor that is in rough shape. Looking to repair or replace that and get an amber one as well, just need to find some for a good price. Looking at getting a c64, as well as others for some other ideas. I also collect old video game systems. What I was talking about getting cheap was stuff to use for VOIP while using the Apple for data (although it will have limited usefulness, but that isn't the point).
I love all sorts of old tech. Would like to learn to use an abacus because of how bad I suck at basic math.
BUMP
(http://www.kurzweilai.net/images/meshnetwork.jpg)
Bypass the Internet
by Amara D. Angelica
from Ray Kurzweil's blog
http://www.kurzweilai.net/bypass-the-internet
I'm sick of hearing about how we need to cave in (http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/29/twitter-democracy-and-internet-freedom/) to repressive governments and throttle back Google, Twitter, Facebook, and other information services and accept Web censorship and limits on free expression. Get the hell off my cloud.
"If a full-surveillance world prevents us from speaking, then we need to make another platform where freedom of speech and freedom of thought can be maintained (http://timeguide.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/web-censorship-will-force-next-generation-nets/)," as futurist Ian Pearson puts it.
"I've written a number of times about jewelery nets and sponge nets (http://timeguide.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/sponge-nets-a-new-web-and-a-new-age/). These could do the trick. With very short-range communication directly between tiny devices that each of us wears just like jewellery, a sponge network can be built that provides zillions of paths from A to B, hopping from device to device till it gets there.
No ISPs needed
"Each device is autonomous. Each shares data with its immediate neighbors, and route dynamically according to a range of algorithms available to them. They can route data from A to B so that every packet goes by a different route of need be. Even without any encryption, only A and B can see the full message.
"The capability to make these kinds of devices is almost here. If some government officials don't like it, well, so what? Right now, I don't have a lot of respect for government."
Right on. Anybody out there developing these nets? Let's hear from you!
This is the internet I've been waiting for!
Quote from: Cramulus on January 31, 2012, 08:15:45 PM
BUMP
(http://www.kurzweilai.net/images/meshnetwork.jpg)
Bypass the Internet
by Amara D. Angelica
from Ray Kurzweil's blog
http://www.kurzweilai.net/bypass-the-internet
I'm sick of hearing about how we need to cave in (http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/29/twitter-democracy-and-internet-freedom/) to repressive governments and throttle back Google, Twitter, Facebook, and other information services and accept Web censorship and limits on free expression. Get the hell off my cloud.
"If a full-surveillance world prevents us from speaking, then we need to make another platform where freedom of speech and freedom of thought can be maintained (http://timeguide.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/web-censorship-will-force-next-generation-nets/)," as futurist Ian Pearson puts it.
"I've written a number of times about jewelery nets and sponge nets (http://timeguide.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/sponge-nets-a-new-web-and-a-new-age/). These could do the trick. With very short-range communication directly between tiny devices that each of us wears just like jewellery, a sponge network can be built that provides zillions of paths from A to B, hopping from device to device till it gets there.
No ISPs needed
"Each device is autonomous. Each shares data with its immediate neighbors, and route dynamically according to a range of algorithms available to them. They can route data from A to B so that every packet goes by a different route of need be. Even without any encryption, only A and B can see the full message.
"The capability to make these kinds of devices is almost here. If some government officials don't like it, well, so what? Right now, I don't have a lot of respect for government."
Right on. Anybody out there developing these nets? Let's hear from you!
How would this be developed without being commercialized?
Oh that's not the biggest problem. I bet most smartphones could do it, today.
However, you can safely dismiss any such Darknet proposal that handwaves the routing problems between ad-hoc networks made of short-range communications devices.
As soon as you try to make a network span a small city in this way, network congestion is going to make your bandwidth go all to shit.
The problem is that the total bandwidth available in the whole network increases linearly with the amount of devices: even if you're surrounded by tens of short-range network neighbours, you can't communicate more data than what the max up/down speed of your device allows.
Of course, if that was only the data you're interested in yourself, everything would be fine (that's how the current hierarchical top-down Internet works, kind of).
But in a "sponge net" (I like that word, though. SpongeNet BitPants!!), you're also expected to be routing all the packets whose A-to-B path you happen to be on.
This causes the amount of bandwidth needed to route all the packets to grow quadratically with the amount of devices: PROBLEM!
The reason why the Internet works is because it has a hierarchical structure, from your local street-hub, to the city's ISP, to even bigger communication networks, and they all have access to increasingly bigger amounts of bandwidth, while on the other hand, routing mostly just happens up and down the network, devices on the same "level" in the hierarchy aren't expected to be (physically) routing data between eachother, instead send it upwards on the chain until it reaches the first common "ancestor" and then send it back down.
The reason why this works in biology, is because
either the "data" that travels the path from A to B is useful anywhere along the way, not just at the endpoints, which makes up for the extra bandwidth costs,
or communication lines are laid out in a similar hierarchical structure as is the case with our nervous system.
The problem here, is that a network graph of purely locally communicating devices is nearly planar.
You heard about scale-free networks, or small-world networks? Scale-free means it looks similar at every scale, like a fractal. This means, if you got a network and you want it bigger, just slap a scale on top of the largest scale, and you got a new network, with the same throughput properties, except it's bigger.
Well, planar graphs are just not scale-free, and they won't be no matter how clever you are.
There's some serious bandwidth efficiency problems in such a system. You
need a hierarchy of higher-bandwidth long-range connections or you'll run into some fundamental limits.
Biology does it too, it uses the myelin-sheathed axons for longer-range higher-bandwidth information transfer. Without it you get MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS.
You don't want your Internets to have MS do you? Nooooo you dont!
Additionally, this is just contradictory:
Quote"Each device is autonomous. Each shares data with its immediate neighbors, and route dynamically according to a range of algorithms available to them. They can route data from A to B so that every packet goes by a different route of need be. Even without any encryption, only A and B can see the full message.
IF the packet is not encrypted
AND it travels along a multiple neighbours route A-x-y-z-B
THEN x,y, and z can see the package
HOWEVER there isn't much reason not to use encryption in these situations so that's okay.
It's just odd to say "you don't even need encryption! clap your hands!" (wait sorry, you're a sponge with multiple sclerosis YOU CANT CLAP YOUR HANDS HAHAHAHAHA)
:lulz:
Thanks Trip, I was thinking that there may be some problems along those lines, but I don't have a lot of knowledge about network construction, so that was very helpful.
So I wandered across this subreddit recently: reddit.com/r/darknet.
They seem to be opting to turn their own computers into nodes for a new internet. It's not as futuristically cool as doing it with jewellery, but probably more immediately practical? They're proposing to use something called cjdns to do this, but I don't know anything about its security or practicality.
Thanks for that, trip, very very informative.
Quote from: Igor on February 01, 2012, 01:06:45 PM
So I wandered across this subreddit recently: reddit.com/r/darknet.
They seem to be opting to turn their own computers into nodes for a new internet. It's not as futuristically cool as doing it with jewellery, but probably more immediately practical? They're proposing to use something called cjdns to do this, but I don't know anything about its security or practicality.
No they're just talking about it a lot, hoping someone will make it. Unfortunately, the part where it helps if a large crowd of people all do their little bit to make it better (the crowd-sourcing stuff Reddit is good at), doesn't happen before a bunch of really smart people solve the routing problems.
Although, I haven't seen them simply try and fail yet either. Then again, that might be for the best because it won't do the public opinion of such a project much good when they finally get all their friends to install some app or whatever to get a sizeable "municipal area network" going, and then it turns out network congestion kills all the performance.
Trip, what do you think of BATMAN and the other protocols attacking this problem?
Anybody ever tried something like WASTE? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASTE
When I lived in the university dorms we used to have WASTE set up for sharing files on the network. I seem to remember it being pretty decent at giving decent connection speeds.
Is it a practical solution to where this thread is going?
Well, it worked well on a small scale (~250 computers), but I don't know if it will scale up. Perhaps someone with more knowledge on network systems can help?
Quote from: Phosphatidylserine on February 15, 2012, 06:42:16 PM
Trip, what do you think of BATMAN and the other protocols attacking this problem?
Never heard of it, link?
Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B.A.T.M.A.N.)
FAQ (http://www.open-mesh.org/wiki/open-mesh/FAQ)