I know freenet was designed to use transport methods other then tcp/ip but I'm not aware of anything existing at this time. I would like to get your comments on this idea I had of augmenting the existing freenet transport method with sneakernet. For those who are not familiar with sneakernet, it is the networking method that existed before the internet was big - you actualy take physical media around with you and hand it from person to person.
Allowing freenet to use sneakernet would be wonderfull for a variety of reasons.... The act of allowing freenet nodes to communicate with each other off the internet is highly deseriable. At this time, assuming freenet encryption could be broken and trafic analysis became possible, freenet activity could be tracked and people could be located. Analysis of sneakernet would be impossible unless people were stoped with the media. Of course that is a paranoid example, but freenet is a paranoid system ;) Sneakernet offers other advantages also related to communication off the internet. Sneakernet currently has a bandwith cap well beyond anything possible on the internet. It might also be possible to run a freenet node with out any connection to the internet at all - this would make freenet extremly stealthy. Sneakernet raises it's own concerns that would have to be addressed and currently I am not sure on all of them. Mainly, how to protect the person carrying the physical media. Encryption is obviously needed but I am not sure of exactly how to implement it. Am I correct in assuming that each key in the datastore requires a public key to decrypt and that public key is not available in the data store? Does that mean that the standard datastore keys would be protected enough to burn dirrectly onto cd and import elsewhere? Aside from these issues which I hope we can work out I have thought up the following sample implementation of sneaker net (which is of course also up to comment and improvement). Sneakernet could be implemented by burning keys onto cdrom, in this case mini-cdr would be a good choice. They hold up to 180 megs and they are quite small. If your not familiar wity mini-cd open up your cdrom and check that dip in the middle, that is how big they are. The small size is great because it could be used in a "crack pass" fashion of clandistine trading and it holds a good deal of information. The issue of finding people to trade can be dealt with simply as well. Assuming that the fact that you are running a freenet node is not hidden each person willing to participate in sneakernet simply wears an easy to spot article of clothing or sticker. Say a freenet hat or a freenet pin or shirt, anything easily identifiable. When you notice someone else who is participating in sneakernet just trade mini-cds with them, go home, insert it into your machine, and tell fred to import it. Hopefully the same kind of interface could be adopted for the reverse - a 2 or 3 click interface to burning a new sneakernet cd. Using cdroms in this fashion has another great benefit - automatic garbage collection. Over time, the cdrom would get scratched and otherwise degrade from (mis)use. People would probably also throw them out, play frisbee with them and have a general lack of respect for it considering it is free and all =) What do you think of my concept? Please provide feedback positive or negative, I am interested in hearing it =) -- FLOG
