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We could lay our own wires/fibers.

Well, we'd like crypto for the masses and I don't think that the masses are yet ready to put out the bucks for spread spectrum boards and infrared laser communications gear... It'd be really nice to have such a decentralized network, though.

Sure, the masses wouldn't do it, but how many are needed? How many users are thereb on the net, compared to how many sites? All it would take is a dozen or so people in each city, and itt could be done. Don't know about intercity stuff, though. A friend of mine is putting together some ideas regarding what he calls 'punknet', using a bundle of small, solar-powered relays, maybe microwave links, or infra-red, or short-distance packet radio, whcih could be manufactured in bulk and stuck all over a city, disguised as bits of construction, ettc, so tthey would be hard to see, acting as switching devices so that we could have a completely open and untraceable network within a city.

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We could set up a mesh network of infrared lasers through the air. Last time I looked, there were no laws against shining lights out your window as long as they didn't bother anyone. An infrared laser could hardly bother anyone.

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very low range radio, .... Each card would connect to three or more neighbors and become part of the global mesh. Adaptive routing with no global map would suffice for the card and would keep the whole system peer-to-peer with no need for central control and no chance for central tapping.

Serves me right for not reading through the message first. Yes, this is what my friend was thinking of.

This would be the perfect network in which to deploy DC nets.... (dining cryptographers).

dining? Dwayne. (Dwayne Jones-Evans IRC: ddraig ) ( SCA: Cynon Yscolan ap Myrddin, Stormhold, Lochac, West) PGP public key available. finger me. be gentle. internet---> hiscdcj@lux.latrobe.edu.au