2013-09-23 00:16:26.427296+00 by Dan Lyke 6 comments
So Mars had a call for building decentralized services that I think is a good idea, and I think Johannes Ernst already has a good portion of the infrastructure to do such a thing going on from his Cloud Store project.
He's working on the Indie Box Project, looking at ways to provide open admin services for hardware you own.
[ related topics: Astronomy Work, productivity and environment LID (Lightweight IDentity) ]
comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):
#Comment Re: made: 2013-09-23 11:26:18.616645+00 by: meuon
Nice article by Mars, well stated. Done well, it would be a combination of mesh wireless network http://www.open-mesh.org and some vpn's on existing infrastructure. Managing (unique) addresses and routes might need some new tricks, but I think if it sticks to ipV6/6lowpan more than do-able. Would it be open to join, or would you have to be "vetted" by some current members, or have multiple levels of access?
My useful thought is this is the equivalent of HAM radio use for personal stuff, until an emergency happens and then this becomes the only thing that works. It could work on PogoPlugs, Raspberry Pi's, Re-flashable commodity routers, old laptops...
I see "BBS's" style store and forward technologies and message boards coming back in style.
#Comment Re: made: 2013-09-23 13:35:32.692771+00 by: Jack William Bell
Meuon: I still say you don't need to get fancy with it. UUCP and NNTP gives you an easy way to set up a decentralized darknet that transfers data around between nodes and doesn't require always-on connections. There's your store and forward.
Encrypt everything and put the decryption and data processing logic in the leaf nodes. All the transfer nodes have to know is who to transfer to, and even that could be data-driven, especially when some leaf nodes are actually non-leaf transfer nodes for other parts of the darknet.
#Comment Re: made: 2013-09-24 00:45:34.145269+00 by: meuon
UUCP.. Yeah, I remember creating custom UUCP e-mail gateways for TBBS, Fidonet, cc:Mail and other proprietary email systems. It works, and could move around encrypted (and open) files very well. It's just so arcane. Of course, that might be a strength as well.
#Comment Re: made: 2013-09-24 03:19:46.172303+00 by: Larry Burton
Okay, when do we start prototyping this network?
#Comment Re: made: 2013-09-24 03:55:05.04765+00 by: Jack William Bell
Well, I'll admit maybe the admin isn't as easy as I'm making it out to be. But no need to prototype; they already did that a generation or more ago.
If only the Indie Box project included an easy-to-use admin interface for NNTP and UUCP. :-)
#Comment Re: made: 2013-09-24 11:22:32.374826+00 by: meuon
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/griffey/librarybox-20
aka the LibraryBox by Jason Griffey http://librarybox.us/
It's a variation of: PirateBox http://wiki.daviddarts.com/PirateBox_DIY
Nate Smith of the Library tried to get me involved early in this project, the problem was and still is available time.