This may sound obvious, but sometimes it's important to review the basics.
There are two major issues in network connectivity: accessing and addressing. Both have to be taken care of if one is looking to build an infestation-free network. First, access, as in path between two nodes. As long as this is under centralised control (read chokable) little can be done. Current schemes seem to rely on last decade's capabilities of ISPs, NSPs and people that control the Switch. Using odd ports, stego (going via 80) will not help asymmetric bandwidth. Bear in mind that bona fide consumers do not need more than 10 kbit/sec upload speeds (CC number and product ID). It will also not foil the new generation of routers that will do full content-based switching on the fly. Clandestine content would have to be REGEX and MUST (mauhrer's universal stat test, very fast in HW) indistinguishable from legitimate traffic. The only way around this is disintermediation of routing - no ISPs, no NSPs. Self-discovering wireless (hello, Jonathan) is the first step in that direction. I don't know what will be the next one, but fucking with "Internet" is a waste of time. Addressing - as in translation from a piece of known information to the working pointer to the rest. What I use today come from three sources that I can do something about and the fourth that I cannot do anything about. 1. My bookmarks - text strings to host names or IP numbers. About 90% of lookups go through these. 2. Search engines - again, text strings to URLs, but not under my control. I could run my own spider engine and build my own database, were I not too lazy (and Google so good.) 3. DNS - name to IP. I could easily do away with this one by running my own host tables with occasional nuisance of having to update them, but considering the number of sites I visit and the rate of IP change (yes, I do keep host tables for visited hosts just in case) this is not a big deal. 4. Routing tables - since demise of forward routing, I have no control of whatever ISP/NSP chooses to do. Like sending all suspect requests via certain host in Maryland. This is basically an access issue. The issue here is not how to just REPLACE the current hierarchical addressing schemes. The issue is how to construct a new addressing mechanism which will prevent some future internic or ICANN from ever coming into existence. A choke-point free addressing (CPFA). The first requirement is counter-intuitive: the addressing must not be fully automatic. The user will HAVE to burn a number of brain cycles for each addressing operation. This is because any automated process can be subverted and eventually will lead to ICANN. Compare this with going to restaurant and ordering "meat" or "vegetables" without ever being presented with the menu. The second requirement is that authority must be completely distributed, in effect non-existent in the traditional sense. I think that the only workable solution is the one that maps on informal social structures - friends and relatives providing address pointers and routes to each other (no, this does not work for shopping at amazon - that is the whole point.) Or using principles of some other existing informal schemes - like hobos and homeless do in urban areas. If you walk close to bridges and places that they use for shelters, you will often see elaborate markings with chalk and sometimes even paint. Someone wrote a paper on this, there is a whole signalling language used to inform about many important issues - like places good to overnight at and places never to be found at. If a relatively unsophisticated population of travelling vagabonds can develop universally understood signalling that does not rely on anyone else to work, I am sure that engineers can do it as well. ===== end (of original message) Y-a*h*o-o (yes, they scan for this) spam follows: Yahoo! Greetings - send holiday greetings for Easter, Passover http://greetings.yahoo.com/
