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Creating a Backboneless Internet?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the tricky-part-is-finding-the-right-medium dept.

Peter Trepan asks: "The Internet is the best thing to happen to the free exchange of ideas since... well... maybe ever. But it can also be used as a tool for media control and universal surveillance, perhaps turning that benefit into a liability. Imagine, for instance, if Senator McCarthy had been able to steam open every letter in the United States. In the age of ubiquitous e-mail and filtering software, budding McCarthys are able and willing to do so. I Am Not A Network Professional, but it seems like all this potential for abuse depends upon bottlenecks at the level of ISPs and backbone providers. Is it possible to create an internet that relies instead on peer-to-peer connectivity? How would the hardware work? How would the information be passed? What would be the incentive for average people to buy into it if it meant they'd have to host someone else's packets on their hard drive? In short, what would have to be done to ensure that at least one internet remains completely free, anonymous, and democratized?"

4 of 370 comments (clear)

  1. You're on it baby.. by brokenin2 · · Score: 5, Informative
    It would look an awful lot like the internet we have now.

    You're describing the original design of the internet, which we're still running with essentially.

    In practice though, it would be insane to let everyone with a DSL line to two different locations update routing table through the entire internet. The mechanisms to allow this exist (bgp, ospf) but major ISPs that don't want their network to fall apart prevent it because their service would quickly turn to crap. ISPs with missing filters have actually caused internet wide splits, when the entire internet tried to route through someone's T1's connected to two different ISP. BGP with a little better cost system could help that, but anyone could still cause a split anytime they liked. Think of an entire internet that acts more like IRC.

    The core of the internet is still just a bunch of peers, but if you want things to stay up, they've got to be a select group that really know what they're doing. You're still free to peer directly with anyone you want, just don't expect everyone else to use your internet connection to get there too. Most people don't want to have to buy two internet connections for marginal gains anyway.

    Perhaps a software solution like TOR or Freenet could help you sleep better at night?

    1. Re:You're on it baby.. by ZagNuts · · Score: 5, Informative

      Perhaps a software solution like TOR or Freenet could help you sleep better at night?

      Don't know much about TOR but I just thought I'd clarify about Freenet. It is indeed a software solution to what you are asking about in which the sites are accessed in an entirely peer to peer manner. Instead of having static routing tables located at specific points each computer in the network maintains its own routing information. If a computer doesn't know how to get to a certain site it guesses by asking a neighbor if it has the desired data. Data is cached throughout the network so that sites are stored as distributed files, meaning at any one time if your computer is a part of Freenet it could have information related to a number of sites.

      The good thing about Freenet is that site accesses are entirely anonymous. There is no way to be traced AFAIK. One of the bad things is that it takes a computer a long time to build up enough routing information to access any websites at all. You have to run the Freenet program for a few days before you are able to access anything and even though its painfully slow. The other problem that people have is that you have to store any content that goes through your computer. Freenet is plagued with child porn sites because the anonyminity that it provides. This means that if you are running the freenet program you are likely to have child pornography data stored on your computer even if you have never visited those sites. While the legality of this is questionable, the ethical issues are obvious.

      Still it is a very interesting concept and definitely has its applications (China anyone?).

  2. Not exactly practical by georgewilliamherbert · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you need something like a terabit of bandwidth between the US east and west coasts, consider how many peer to peer link chains across the country will be saturated carrying it.

    One of the major problems right now in the commercial ISP backbone environment is what happens if there's an outage; what's called route flapping, where routes dissapear and reappear, and all the routers affected have to recalculate how to get to various endpoints, can already saturate the router CPU logic for big, industrial grade room-full-of-racksize-router backbone facilities. Going to a more diffuse network at high bandwidth requirements exponentially makes this worse.

    P2P across a city? Not ridiculous.

    P2P across the world? Baaad idea.

  3. All mail was read in WWII by Derling+Whirvish · · Score: 5, Informative
    Imagine, for instance, if Senator McCarthy had been able to steam open every letter in the United States.

    Before and during WWII all mail crossing an international border in or out of the US was steamed open and read. This included all mail, all packages, all telegrams, and all telephone calls. In addition to all mail being steamed open and read, it was censored if the Army deemed it to be necessary to support the goals of the Army. Letters would arrive with portions cut out by scissors. They also censored all international media -- radio, newspapers, and magazines both incoming and outgoing.

    It's quite easy to imagine as it's already been done.