net2o — reinventing the Internet

net2o is the attempt to reinvent the Internet. It's free software available under the AGPLv3.

Authors

Principal author of net2o is

• Bernd Paysan [email protected]

Get it and try it

net2o is currently under early alpha test. Get it and try it. There are lots of things to do.

What's broken?

• The internet bases on assumptions 20-30 years old
• These assumptions are wrong today
• Much of it followed the “good enough” principle
• There's a huge pile of accumulated cruft
• Fixing this mess one-by-one is the wrong attempt

What for?

I've a dream: A peer-to-peer network, where services like search engines or social networks aren't offered by big companies, who in turn need to make money by selling the privacy of their users. Where all data is encrypted, so that access is only possible for people who have the key and really are authorized. Which layman can use without cryptic user interfaces. Where the browser is a platform for running useful applications without the mess of Flash and JavaScript. Without the lag of “buffer bloat” and without the speed problems of a protocol not designed to be assisted by hardware.

Richard Stallman on how to fix the surveillance systems

Cory Doctorow on how to destroy surveillance capitalism

What needs to be fixed?

• IP: Use switch-based simple routing, don't route every packet
• TCP: Most data just needs to be obtained reliable, the order doesn't matter. And TCP's flow control is broken (delay minimized is the way to go).
• Encryption everywhere: This is no longer an expensive operation (and for symmetric encryption, fast hardware implementation is feasible)
• P2P instead of client-server
• A new API (render layer, markup language, scripting) — the browser is there for serious applications now.

Rendering is done with OpenGL ES, GUI layer is MINOΣ 2.

net2o has been inspired by Open Network Forth from Heinz Schnitter.

What third party technology do we use

• ed25519 from Dan Bernstein (in the donna version from floodyberry)
• Keccak (original reference implementation)
• Threefish as block cipher in ECB mode and in Threefish AEAD mode as backup for Keccak.
• (wurstkessel from myself — now replaced by Keccak)

Documentation

The documentation is work in progress. The seven layers of net2o are not equal to the ISO-OSI layers, but this layering provides a familiar starting point:

Videos & Presentations

• EuroForth

• Chaos Communication Congress

  • 31c3 presentation (protocol stack)
  • 32c3 presentation (application layer considerations)
  • 33c3 presentation (progress report + onion routing plan)
  • 34c3 presentation ($quid cyptocurrency) (alternative source: Chaos West's capture)
  • 35c3 presentation (Social network in net2o — the plan) (only Chaos West capture this time, as they did a very professional job).
  • 36c3 presentation (Social network in net2o — the progress) (Open Infrastructure Orbit capture)

Discussions

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