July 2018 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: [Freedombox-discuss] Freedombox Mesh Network Simulator
by Rick C. Hodgin 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Rick, These are mine: The mesh network should be able to route packets from any geographic location to another, merely by knowing where it (itself) is, where the packet came from and where it's going. There are certain aspects of forward-transmissions for packets each FBX would have to maintain for a period time in case one or more of the FBXs fell off the mesh and are no longer available, which would require re-routing through a less-than-optimal route, although given the circumstances of the FBX "holes" that now exist in the living, dynamic mesh, perhaps may NOW actually be THE optimal route. I think getting away from IP addresses (except as mechanical means to coordinate with FBX devices that indicate they're "over there in the direction I want to send stuff"), and going entirely with geographic addresses will solve everything. There is still the issue of geographic identity for a roaming target, but I think a lifetime relative to the nature of the roaming speed for nearby FBXs would solve that as well. We'll see. I could be wrong. Probably am. My hard-headedness and stubbornness will mandate that I prove it to myself though, which I may well do this weekend. Ever see a 42-yr old man eat crow on a mailing list? Stay tuned... I might just do that come Sunday evening! :-) LOL! Best regards, Rick C. Hodgin On 06/20/2012 02:21 PM, Rick wrote: > > Would it be useful to discuss requirements from scratch? > > On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 2:13 PM, John Gilmore <gnu(a)toad.com > <mailto:gnu@toad.com>> wrote: > > > My wife and I are walking in mall with at least one other person > every > > 40 feet or so. We decide to separate and go shopping. I walk > this way, > > she walks that way. Before long we're out of direct WiFi > communication > > range to each other. Now, if enough people there in the mall had > > WiFi-enabled devices running some mesh software, I'd like to be > able to > > stay in contact with my wife as she moves about in her random > way, and > > as they all move about in their random ways. > > The One Laptop per Child project also wanted to satisfy this goal. > They wanted kids all over a village to be able to reach each other and > to reach the Internet via a gateway at their school. They had the > advantage of designing and building both the hardware and software. > But they failed, partly due to system integration issues. > > They were using a buggy implementation of 802.11 meshing that preceded > 802.11s. But they also used higher level user interface software, > which used multicast packets to find and communicate with other nearby > laptops. The mesh software worked poorly with multicast. Not only > did it send multicasts at the slowest speed (1 megabit), which took up > a lot of airtime, but the various nodes would repeat the multicasts to > make sure that every node had heard them. This limited the size of > the network that they could scale to. They did not discover this > unfortunate interaction until very late in the > hardware/software/firmware integration process (when the > multicast-based application sharing software started working). > > Another major problem was that a mesh network is very hard to > reproduce. If it does something unexpected or suboptimal, the > developers can't just teleport themselves to the part of the world > where that particular physical configuration of radio nodes, physical > antennas, software versions, and firmware versions exists. In many > cases they can't even reach into the nodes of that network over the > Internet while the problem is happening, to debug it. Many, many OLPC > mesh problems occurred in the field which could not be replicated in > the lab, which made them 10x or 100x harder to fix. This meant that > buggy mesh network firmware and software didn't improve at the usual > rate (of the rest of their software). > > The result was that despite a lot of work addressing bugs and > performance in the mesh firmware, they never got their automatic mesh > network working with more than a handful of XO laptops. If you put 30 > laptops in a classroom, they would burn up 100% of the radio bandwidth > (and chew up their batteries) merely with overhead packets ("Hi, i'm > here." "Hi you, I'm me; have you heard about Joe and Alice over > there?" "In case you want to send a message to Joe, send it via me to > Alice; I can hear Alice just fine."). There was no bandwidth left for > the users to actually communicate; connections would time out, nodes > would appear and disappear from the mesh, etc. So OLPC stopped using > the mesh and recommended that each classroom install one or more > 802.11 access points. Which has worked ok. They also switched to > support ad-hoc 802.11 without meshing, for automatically networking "a > few students sitting around under a tree", which also works ok. > > There ARE some mesh networks that I hear are working on a larger > scale, such as B.A.T.M.A.N. I suspect that the large scale meshes are > in largely static networks that are tuned by humans to work well (just > as the broader Internet's routing system is tuned by humans to work; > it's not automatic). I do not know if other meshes support multicast > (or other portable ways for high level software to find what nodes are > on the network), nor whether they work in a network of mobile nodes > with limited battery life. All I can report on is the one project I > was involved in (OLPC), in which their mesh implementation failed to > accomplish its goals, and was dropped from the next generation > hardware and software. > > This is part of why I recommend using wired connections wherever > possible. For FreedomBox to succeed, it needs to succeed at scale. A > FreedomBox network that can't route packets for more than 500 nodes > worldwide wouldn't be worth building. (Clue: this is why the Internet > exists today: it scaled up and kept working, while the proprietary > networks that preceded it didn't scale up to worldwide scale.) In a > substantial network, your mesh and dynamic routing protocol could > require a few megabits of traffic at all times on each node, just > keeping track of everything. Over a 100-megabit Ethernet that's just > 2 or 3% of the bandwidth. But over 802.11, that burns up most of the > available bandwidth. Every connection you move off wireless onto a > wire makes more radio bandwidth available for the folks who truly > can't run a wire. > > I have some ideas about how FreedomBox nodes could provide censorship > resistant networking via running an overlay IPv6 network using > geographically based addressing to simplify the routing problem. I'll > dig those up and repost them in the next few days. It isn't an > automatic mesh, though; it has explicit connections made by humans > among friendly nodes. The part that's automatic is how the packets > flow after the humans make those connections. > > John > > PS: If you think a mesh protocol shouldn't use even a megabit/second > of continuous overhead, please design and build one that doesn't, > and that scales up and keeps working. It's harder than it looks. > > _______________________________________________ > Freedombox-discuss mailing list > Freedombox-discuss(a)lists.alioth.debian.org > <mailto:Freedombox-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org> > http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss > > > > > -- > /Ramen./ _______________________________________________ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss(a)lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

1 0

[liberationtech] CPJ blog building on EFF, Citizen Lab -- BlackShades Skype Trojan
by frank＠journalistsecurity.net 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

I am grateful to Eff and Morgan, Eva, and Citizen Lab and Seth Hardy for allowing us to build on their fine work and help spread the message. If anyone knows whether any of this information has yet appeared online in Arabic please let us know. Thank you. FS [1]http://cpj.org/security/2012/06/skype-trojan-targets-syrian-citizen- journalists-ac.php Skype Trojan targets Syrian citizen journalists, activists By [2]Frank Smyth/Senior Adviser for Journalist Security The Russian manufacturer promises results. The software can be used to control your own or, say, a customer's computer by making it a remote software client. Or it could be used for spying on others. "BlackShades Remote Controller also provides an [3]efficient way of turning your machine into a surveillance/spy-device or to spy on a specific system," reads one line of the online product description. The software [4]sells online for $40 (an additional $12.60 brings premium support) through the Canadian E-Commerce reseller [5]paypro, and it can surreptitiously record keystrokes and screen views while giving the intruder clandestine remote access to the target computer. The [6]terms of service include several disclaimers. Purchasers must be "of legal age to use our services and are not a person barred from receiving services under the laws of Russia or other applicable jurisdiction." Purchasers must further agree to not use BlackShades to "harm people in any way," or "upload, post or otherwise make available any Content that you do not have a right to make available," or "provide material support or resources...to any organization(s) designated by the Russian government as a foreign terrorist organization." The spyware has been embedded into what looks like just one of many .pif video files being circulated by Syrian activists on Skype to help document attacks and human rights abuses by Syrian government and pro-government forces, according to a report [7]posted yesterday by the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab. North American-based forensic experts dissected the Trojan spyware embedded in the video file circulating on Skype, which ends with the extension "new_new.pif." The digital workings of the latest Skype Trojan are similar to those of a prior YouTube video Trojan that also targeted Syrian activists, according to a [8]report yesterday by the San Francisco-based nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF report includes screen shots to help Syrian activists and other users identify the specific harmful files. Yet merely deleting the files or using anti-virus software "does not guarantee that your computer will be safe or secure," added EFF. The remote control access that BlackShades provides could allow intruders to install other spyware on one's computer. What's the safest bet? EFF suggests re-installing the computer's Operating System and changing all passwords to any accounts that one has logged into since the infection. [userpic-26-100x100.png] Frank Smyth is CPJ's senior adviser for journalist security. He has reported on armed conflicts, organized crime, and human rights from nations including El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Cuba, Rwanda, Uganda, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Jordan, and Iraq. Follow him on Twitter [9]@JournoSecurity. Tags: * [10]Cyberattack, * [11]Internet, * [12]Skype June 20, 2012 3:25 PM ET Frank Smyth Executive Director Global Journalist Security [13]frank(a)journalistsecurity.net T. + 1 202 244 0717 C. + 1 202 352 1736 Twitter: @JournoSecurity Website: [14]www.journalistsecurity.net Please consider our Earth before printing this email. Confidentiality Notice: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential. If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender and delete this message and any copies. If you are not the intended recipient, you are notified that disclosing, copying, distributing or taking any action in reliance on the contents of this information is strictly prohibited. References 1. http://cpj.org/security/2012/06/skype-trojan-targets-syrian-citizen-journal… 2. file://localhost/blog/author/frank-smyth 3. http://bshades.eu/bsscmds.php 4. https://secure.payproglobal.com/orderpage.aspx?products=57625 5. http://www.payproglobal.com/aboutus.html 6. http://bshades.eu/legal.php 7. https://citizenlab.org/2012/06/syrian-activists-targeted-with-blackshades-s… 8. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/06/darkshades-rat-and-syrian-malware 9. https://twitter.com/#!/JournoSecurity 10. file://localhost/tags/cyberattack 11. file://localhost/tags/internet 12. file://localhost/tags/skype 13. mailto:frank@journalistsecurity.net 14. http://www.journalistsecurity.net/ _______________________________________________ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. You may ask for a reminder here: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

1 0

Re: Tromboning: Internet Traffic Begins to Bypass the U.S.
by Steven M. Bellovin 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:32:15 -0400 "R.A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> wrote: > Evidently not just anyone can stick two links together using one box > and three ethernet cards, or whatever, or the Internet Gets Broken. Not quite, but see below. > > Geeze, to paraphrase Grace Slick, I wish I knew BGP. > > (Though, like Grace was at the time, I'm too burned-out a dog these > days to learn those new tricks. Easier to doze off on the veranda > watching the weather go by.) > BGP is indeed complex -- not the theory, but the practice: how it's actually used. Fundamentally, BGP is a way to implement routing *policy*: ISPs (actually, ASs -- Autonomous Systems) use BGP so that traffic they're carrying goes the way it's supposed to, more or less. The metric, of course is money -- what do they get paid for certain traffic over certain paths, compared to others? Among the many criteria that are considered are traffic engineering, load-balancing among different links, reducing latency for certain kinds of traffic, balancing bytes and packets sent and received to certain BGP neighbors, minimizing the number of prefixes you have to carry around in your routers (currently about 240K for the so-called "default-free zone"), AUP restrictions, customer satisfaction, redundancy, regulation, and more. You can't just connect a couple of random Ethernets and have things JFW (Just Work), the way you can with LANs in a building. For one thing, the Internet is too big; OSPF won't handle nearly that many prefixes. For another, no one will (or rather, no one should) let you blindly claim to carry traffic for random prefixes. (The reality of that is quite different and much more crypto-relevant...) RAH: I'm quite certain this won't get to the other lists you've posted to, but feel free to forward this. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

1 0

Out of Office AutoReply: Crypto questions
by Trei, Peter 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

I'm out until Jan 2. Jeff Hamell, Bill Duane, and John Worral have contact info

1 0

Logan to start express security program this summer /
by Monty Solomon 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Participants register and pay yearly fee Logan to start express security program this summer Participants register and pay yearly fee By Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff | January 20, 2006 Logan International Airport will implement a ''registered traveler" program this summer that allows passengers who pass a screening check and pay a yearly fee to use special express security lines. Passengers will also have to submit fingerprints and eye scans to qualify. Other key details of the program, including how much it will cost and when it will start, are still being worked out. To boost interest in the program, participants will probably get benefits such as discounts on parking and dining at the airport, according to Thomas J. Kinton Jr., director of aviation for the Massachusetts Port Authority, which runs Logan. Logan was one of five US airports that conducted small-scale registered-traveler program trials that ended in September. At Logan, the program involved about 1,800 American Airlines frequent fliers. Registered travelers show their boarding passes and get their identities confirmed by a machine that checks either their iris or index finger tip. They still have to go through metal detectors and put their bags through X-ray scanners but often save several minutes by avoiding security lines used by the general public that can get crowded. And unless registered travelers set off a metal detector or have a banned item in their carry-on luggage, they are also exempted from so-called secondary screening patdowns by airport security officials that involve a randomly selected percentage of all travelers in general security lines. Currently, among US airports only Orlando International Airport offers a special registered traveler check-in, which has enrolled 13,000 people since June who pay $80 a year. Airports in Indianapolis, Sacramento, Calif., and San Jose also plan to offer the programs this summer. People who get registered traveler cards from Massport will be able to use them at all US airports that decide to offer the service, Kinton said yesterday. ... http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/01/20/logan_to… tart_express_security_program_this_summer/ ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen(a)leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]

1 0

[IP] Logan to start express security program this summer /
by David Farber 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Participants register and pay yearly fee X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.746.2) Reply-To: dave(a)farber.net Begin forwarded message:

1 0

Re: Tromboning: Internet Traffic Begins to Bypass the U.S.
by Steven M. Bellovin 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:32:15 -0400 "R.A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> wrote: > Evidently not just anyone can stick two links together using one box > and three ethernet cards, or whatever, or the Internet Gets Broken. Not quite, but see below. > > Geeze, to paraphrase Grace Slick, I wish I knew BGP. > > (Though, like Grace was at the time, I'm too burned-out a dog these > days to learn those new tricks. Easier to doze off on the veranda > watching the weather go by.) > BGP is indeed complex -- not the theory, but the practice: how it's actually used. Fundamentally, BGP is a way to implement routing *policy*: ISPs (actually, ASs -- Autonomous Systems) use BGP so that traffic they're carrying goes the way it's supposed to, more or less. The metric, of course is money -- what do they get paid for certain traffic over certain paths, compared to others? Among the many criteria that are considered are traffic engineering, load-balancing among different links, reducing latency for certain kinds of traffic, balancing bytes and packets sent and received to certain BGP neighbors, minimizing the number of prefixes you have to carry around in your routers (currently about 240K for the so-called "default-free zone"), AUP restrictions, customer satisfaction, redundancy, regulation, and more. You can't just connect a couple of random Ethernets and have things JFW (Just Work), the way you can with LANs in a building. For one thing, the Internet is too big; OSPF won't handle nearly that many prefixes. For another, no one will (or rather, no one should) let you blindly claim to carry traffic for random prefixes. (The reality of that is quite different and much more crypto-relevant...) RAH: I'm quite certain this won't get to the other lists you've posted to, but feel free to forward this. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

1 0

[tahoe-dev] Boulder Hack Fest!
by Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Folks: Let's have a Hack Fest in Boulder, Colorado, and on the Internet on the weekend of March 30! David-Sarah will be in town, visiting LAE World Headquarters. Marlowe and possibly other members of the Marlowe family will drive over from Kansas City. If anybody else wants to physically attend the Hack Fest, please let me know so I can make sure to get access to a big enough conference room, and map out crash space on our floor. I know Jean Lorchat wants to be linked in over the Internet. If anybody else wants that, let me know. Regards, Zooko _______________________________________________ tahoe-dev mailing list tahoe-dev(a)tahoe-lafs.org http://tahoe-lafs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-dev ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

1 0

[liberationtech] CPJ blog building on EFF, Citizen Lab -- BlackShades Skype Trojan
by frank＠journalistsecurity.net 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

I am grateful to Eff and Morgan, Eva, and Citizen Lab and Seth Hardy for allowing us to build on their fine work and help spread the message. If anyone knows whether any of this information has yet appeared online in Arabic please let us know. Thank you. FS [1]http://cpj.org/security/2012/06/skype-trojan-targets-syrian-citizen- journalists-ac.php Skype Trojan targets Syrian citizen journalists, activists By [2]Frank Smyth/Senior Adviser for Journalist Security The Russian manufacturer promises results. The software can be used to control your own or, say, a customer's computer by making it a remote software client. Or it could be used for spying on others. "BlackShades Remote Controller also provides an [3]efficient way of turning your machine into a surveillance/spy-device or to spy on a specific system," reads one line of the online product description. The software [4]sells online for $40 (an additional $12.60 brings premium support) through the Canadian E-Commerce reseller [5]paypro, and it can surreptitiously record keystrokes and screen views while giving the intruder clandestine remote access to the target computer. The [6]terms of service include several disclaimers. Purchasers must be "of legal age to use our services and are not a person barred from receiving services under the laws of Russia or other applicable jurisdiction." Purchasers must further agree to not use BlackShades to "harm people in any way," or "upload, post or otherwise make available any Content that you do not have a right to make available," or "provide material support or resources...to any organization(s) designated by the Russian government as a foreign terrorist organization." The spyware has been embedded into what looks like just one of many .pif video files being circulated by Syrian activists on Skype to help document attacks and human rights abuses by Syrian government and pro-government forces, according to a report [7]posted yesterday by the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab. North American-based forensic experts dissected the Trojan spyware embedded in the video file circulating on Skype, which ends with the extension "new_new.pif." The digital workings of the latest Skype Trojan are similar to those of a prior YouTube video Trojan that also targeted Syrian activists, according to a [8]report yesterday by the San Francisco-based nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF report includes screen shots to help Syrian activists and other users identify the specific harmful files. Yet merely deleting the files or using anti-virus software "does not guarantee that your computer will be safe or secure," added EFF. The remote control access that BlackShades provides could allow intruders to install other spyware on one's computer. What's the safest bet? EFF suggests re-installing the computer's Operating System and changing all passwords to any accounts that one has logged into since the infection. [userpic-26-100x100.png] Frank Smyth is CPJ's senior adviser for journalist security. He has reported on armed conflicts, organized crime, and human rights from nations including El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Cuba, Rwanda, Uganda, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Jordan, and Iraq. Follow him on Twitter [9]@JournoSecurity. Tags: * [10]Cyberattack, * [11]Internet, * [12]Skype June 20, 2012 3:25 PM ET Frank Smyth Executive Director Global Journalist Security [13]frank(a)journalistsecurity.net T. + 1 202 244 0717 C. + 1 202 352 1736 Twitter: @JournoSecurity Website: [14]www.journalistsecurity.net Please consider our Earth before printing this email. Confidentiality Notice: This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential. If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender and delete this message and any copies. If you are not the intended recipient, you are notified that disclosing, copying, distributing or taking any action in reliance on the contents of this information is strictly prohibited. References 1. http://cpj.org/security/2012/06/skype-trojan-targets-syrian-citizen-journal… 2. file://localhost/blog/author/frank-smyth 3. http://bshades.eu/bsscmds.php 4. https://secure.payproglobal.com/orderpage.aspx?products=57625 5. http://www.payproglobal.com/aboutus.html 6. http://bshades.eu/legal.php 7. https://citizenlab.org/2012/06/syrian-activists-targeted-with-blackshades-s… 8. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/06/darkshades-rat-and-syrian-malware 9. https://twitter.com/#!/JournoSecurity 10. file://localhost/tags/cyberattack 11. file://localhost/tags/internet 12. file://localhost/tags/skype 13. mailto:frank@journalistsecurity.net 14. http://www.journalistsecurity.net/ _______________________________________________ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. You may ask for a reminder here: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

1 0

Re: [Freedombox-discuss] Freedombox Mesh Network Simulator
by Rick C. Hodgin 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Rick, These are mine: The mesh network should be able to route packets from any geographic location to another, merely by knowing where it (itself) is, where the packet came from and where it's going. There are certain aspects of forward-transmissions for packets each FBX would have to maintain for a period time in case one or more of the FBXs fell off the mesh and are no longer available, which would require re-routing through a less-than-optimal route, although given the circumstances of the FBX "holes" that now exist in the living, dynamic mesh, perhaps may NOW actually be THE optimal route. I think getting away from IP addresses (except as mechanical means to coordinate with FBX devices that indicate they're "over there in the direction I want to send stuff"), and going entirely with geographic addresses will solve everything. There is still the issue of geographic identity for a roaming target, but I think a lifetime relative to the nature of the roaming speed for nearby FBXs would solve that as well. We'll see. I could be wrong. Probably am. My hard-headedness and stubbornness will mandate that I prove it to myself though, which I may well do this weekend. Ever see a 42-yr old man eat crow on a mailing list? Stay tuned... I might just do that come Sunday evening! :-) LOL! Best regards, Rick C. Hodgin On 06/20/2012 02:21 PM, Rick wrote: > > Would it be useful to discuss requirements from scratch? > > On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 2:13 PM, John Gilmore <gnu(a)toad.com > <mailto:gnu@toad.com>> wrote: > > > My wife and I are walking in mall with at least one other person > every > > 40 feet or so. We decide to separate and go shopping. I walk > this way, > > she walks that way. Before long we're out of direct WiFi > communication > > range to each other. Now, if enough people there in the mall had > > WiFi-enabled devices running some mesh software, I'd like to be > able to > > stay in contact with my wife as she moves about in her random > way, and > > as they all move about in their random ways. > > The One Laptop per Child project also wanted to satisfy this goal. > They wanted kids all over a village to be able to reach each other and > to reach the Internet via a gateway at their school. They had the > advantage of designing and building both the hardware and software. > But they failed, partly due to system integration issues. > > They were using a buggy implementation of 802.11 meshing that preceded > 802.11s. But they also used higher level user interface software, > which used multicast packets to find and communicate with other nearby > laptops. The mesh software worked poorly with multicast. Not only > did it send multicasts at the slowest speed (1 megabit), which took up > a lot of airtime, but the various nodes would repeat the multicasts to > make sure that every node had heard them. This limited the size of > the network that they could scale to. They did not discover this > unfortunate interaction until very late in the > hardware/software/firmware integration process (when the > multicast-based application sharing software started working). > > Another major problem was that a mesh network is very hard to > reproduce. If it does something unexpected or suboptimal, the > developers can't just teleport themselves to the part of the world > where that particular physical configuration of radio nodes, physical > antennas, software versions, and firmware versions exists. In many > cases they can't even reach into the nodes of that network over the > Internet while the problem is happening, to debug it. Many, many OLPC > mesh problems occurred in the field which could not be replicated in > the lab, which made them 10x or 100x harder to fix. This meant that > buggy mesh network firmware and software didn't improve at the usual > rate (of the rest of their software). > > The result was that despite a lot of work addressing bugs and > performance in the mesh firmware, they never got their automatic mesh > network working with more than a handful of XO laptops. If you put 30 > laptops in a classroom, they would burn up 100% of the radio bandwidth > (and chew up their batteries) merely with overhead packets ("Hi, i'm > here." "Hi you, I'm me; have you heard about Joe and Alice over > there?" "In case you want to send a message to Joe, send it via me to > Alice; I can hear Alice just fine."). There was no bandwidth left for > the users to actually communicate; connections would time out, nodes > would appear and disappear from the mesh, etc. So OLPC stopped using > the mesh and recommended that each classroom install one or more > 802.11 access points. Which has worked ok. They also switched to > support ad-hoc 802.11 without meshing, for automatically networking "a > few students sitting around under a tree", which also works ok. > > There ARE some mesh networks that I hear are working on a larger > scale, such as B.A.T.M.A.N. I suspect that the large scale meshes are > in largely static networks that are tuned by humans to work well (just > as the broader Internet's routing system is tuned by humans to work; > it's not automatic). I do not know if other meshes support multicast > (or other portable ways for high level software to find what nodes are > on the network), nor whether they work in a network of mobile nodes > with limited battery life. All I can report on is the one project I > was involved in (OLPC), in which their mesh implementation failed to > accomplish its goals, and was dropped from the next generation > hardware and software. > > This is part of why I recommend using wired connections wherever > possible. For FreedomBox to succeed, it needs to succeed at scale. A > FreedomBox network that can't route packets for more than 500 nodes > worldwide wouldn't be worth building. (Clue: this is why the Internet > exists today: it scaled up and kept working, while the proprietary > networks that preceded it didn't scale up to worldwide scale.) In a > substantial network, your mesh and dynamic routing protocol could > require a few megabits of traffic at all times on each node, just > keeping track of everything. Over a 100-megabit Ethernet that's just > 2 or 3% of the bandwidth. But over 802.11, that burns up most of the > available bandwidth. Every connection you move off wireless onto a > wire makes more radio bandwidth available for the folks who truly > can't run a wire. > > I have some ideas about how FreedomBox nodes could provide censorship > resistant networking via running an overlay IPv6 network using > geographically based addressing to simplify the routing problem. I'll > dig those up and repost them in the next few days. It isn't an > automatic mesh, though; it has explicit connections made by humans > among friendly nodes. The part that's automatic is how the packets > flow after the humans make those connections. > > John > > PS: If you think a mesh protocol shouldn't use even a megabit/second > of continuous overhead, please design and build one that doesn't, > and that scales up and keeps working. It's harder than it looks. > > _______________________________________________ > Freedombox-discuss mailing list > Freedombox-discuss(a)lists.alioth.debian.org > <mailto:Freedombox-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org> > http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss > > > > > -- > /Ramen./ _______________________________________________ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss(a)lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

1 0