From: IN%"sjb@universe.digex.net" "Scott Brickner" 6-MAY-1996 14:23:50.08

The problem is that it requires the cooperation of both of your ISPs. You'll never receive packets to route from either of them unless you have some sort of contract in place. In the scenario I outlined, the "common carrier" status of the ISPs is contingent on their following the censorship protocol, so their contract will require that you, too, follow it.

How difficult would it be to set up a router protocol to automatically select any from a series of other routers that announced itself willing (for a certain amount of ecash, perhaps)? I had thought that this was pretty close to the case in any event, for small networks anyway - and connections between small networks can interconnect into one large network.

Even in the face of a "digital silk road", this isn't likely to change. The cost of operating a router is proportional to the number of connections it has. The vast majority of traffic doesn't have stringent enough delay requirements that it'll be willing to pay the additional cost of going through a very highly connected router. Therefore the hierarchical star configuration is near-optimal for normal traffic (and pretty much all of the stuff that they claim they want to censor).

Directly proportional? I'd think there would have to be somewhat of a fixed cost involved. The question is whether the fixed cost (including the cost of a router to handle the ever-increasing bandwidth) is dropping faster than the cost of the number of connections. And your "normal traffic" doesn't seem to be including Internet Phone, which I can see being a major source of bandwidth in the future. -Allen