So I was thinking about what if we could make a network that the only thing you needed to connect to it is to directly connect ( through wires or directed wireless antennas ) to at least 1 computer that takes part in it, with no centralized node of any kind. For that we would need a whole new protocol and address system. THIS IS JUST A THING IN MY MIND TO TALK ABOUT. I AM NOT ADVANCED IN THIS DOMAIN.
At first I thought at making groups of 256 nodes so that every node inside of that group knows every other node. A node will know nodes’s group address that until now are just 2 hexadecimal digits like “D8” and the location address. A location address means what path to take to connect to any node, a location address for 98 would be “connect to 63, ask 63 to redirect message to A9, ask A9 to redirect message to CF, ask CF to redirect message to 98”. Messages between a groups nodes would be all encrypted and all steps of the location address would be encrypted for each node in part.
Now every node in a group can send encrypted messages to anyone else in that group.
Now lets say that another node wants to connect to that network, but the group is already 256 nodes: That node will create another group. The first node of a group picks a random 2 digit hexadecimal address for that group. A node knows at least 1 computer’s location address from every group. Untill now addresses are like “D8.01” D8 is a computer’s address in a group and 01 is that group’s address. 256 groups will create a kilogroup, each node knows at least 1 computer’s location address from every kilogroup. Untill now addresses are like “D8.01.8F” , 8F being the kilogroup’s address.
This thing can scale ever more, creating megagroups, gigagroups etc…
If I wanna connect to D8.01.8F then I first connect to a node that I know is in the 8F kilogroup, that node will connect to a node it knows in the 01 group, and that node knows D8 directly so it will connect to him and give him message, this kinda works like a DHT, wich me sending the message to the closer node I know to the destination node
Now this is very very far from perfect or usable, what happens if 2 networks grow independent and when they connect they have the same addresses? What if someone wants to sabotage this with a fake node? The location is also not very private.
Can this get better or even usable? Do you have any ideas or just want to discuss this?
Well, I’m not sure what you make of crypto (or what I make of it) but there was a crypto project that was intended to be a decentralized wireless network. Participants were (are?) incentivized to maintain a wireless repeater of some sort. But the premise sounded semi-plausible to me at the time. I won’t name the p[project since I don’t know how people feel about crypto, but it’s easy enough to search for if you are interested.
These are also available without crypto. For example look at the freifunk project from Germany. Granted, these are all volunteers that donate their energy and/or bandwidth to the project.