It occurs to me that you could probably do most of this, today, using Bluetooth. Indeed, does anybody know anything about the various Bluetooth mesh networks / scatternets I see on Google?
-david On 01/17/2011 10:57 PM, David Barrett wrote: > On 01/17/2011 10:06 PM, Michael Blizek wrote: >>>> Something like the above *will* happen. It's inevitable. It's not even >>>> that creative. And it'll probably happen sooner than we expect. Sound >>>> unlikely? Remember those researchers that cracked GSM at the CCC 2 >>>> weeks ago? They did it with "Universal Software Radio Peripheral" >>> >>> Sounds funny... just where did you get *that* idea from? >> >> Thee are other projects doing this as well: >> gnunet.org is building a transport as it can act as a mesh >> netsukuku.freaknet.org is building a file sharing mesh network, but I >> doubt it >> will scale very well > > I think the key question, as has always been the question when it comes > to P2P network, is usability. Skype "just worked" so well that it took > off like mad. Same for the major pirate networks (though even those are > surprisingly unwieldy). A wireless mesh will only take off if it's > absolutely dead simple. In fact... I could see it leveraging some of > SocialVPN and the P2P social network concepts. Imagine: > > 1) You buy this USB device from WalMart, and plug it in for the first time. > > 2) An app launches, whether you're on Mac, Windows, Linux, iPad, whatever. > > 3) It asks "Welcome to the Mesh! Do you have an account, or do you want > to create a new one?" You choose "Create a new one, named Quinthar"; it > generates a huge public key. > > 4) It asks "There are 23 nodes in range named Alice, Bob, Cathy, etc. > Which are your friends?" You choose "Alice". > > 5) It shows you Alice's public profile, which is available to anyone. > It's up to Alice to decide how much to show. It asks "What password > would you like to use to friend Alice?" You say "Wonderland" > > 6) On Alice's computer it says "Quinthar would like to be friends, what > is the password?" She asks you, then types it in "Wonderland". It says > "Great, now you and Alice are friends, and will stay connected so long > as you are directly in range, share an intermediate mesh node, or are > both connected to the internet." [Eg, it works just like SocialVPN and > if it can't directly connect, establishes a NAT-penetrated connection > over the internet. After the initial setup, you never need to think > about it again.] > > 6) Once connected, you can see Alice's "Friend" profile, which is shown > to anybody who is friends Alice. It might have additional information, > such as online status, more photos and such, as she chooses. She sees > the same for you. > > 7) It says "Now that you're friends with Alice, what do you want to do?" > You say "Share these songs, photos, and videos, but not these other > ones." [Perhaps by folder.] When she looks at your profile, she sees all > these items. She can set offline preferences to optionally sync your > data to her computer for access if you get separated. You might have a > variety of access levels that you choose to share or not with different > people. > > 8) It says "Great, it's shared with Alice. Do you want to share with any > of Alice's friends -- including those you don't know?" You directly set > how many levels of indirection you'll allow, perhaps just defaulting to > 3 (Alice, Alice's friends, Alice's friends friends.) > > ... fast forward until you have many connections, some of which are > physically in range, others are connected via a VPN over the internet, > others are offline ... > > 9) You have a vast interface to browse the photos, videos, songs, > updates, profile information, and basically a lot of stuff about > everybody around you. The USB dongle is used to install on a new > computer, and connect directly without the internet, but even without > the dongle an installed computer can continue to participate in the mesh > via the internet. > > 10) If any particular computer gets lost or compromised, you can > unfriend them (or remove just that device) immediately. Furthermore, > your node is configured to monitor unfriending to automatically > "quarantine" any node that has become suspect. (For example, one of my > friends lost his iPhone; he'd remove that device from his profile and my > devices would stop talking with it, without any involvement from me.) > > 11) And because your USB dongle is owned by you, it can store data such > as your private key so you can easily move it between computers -- or > even quickly access your mesh using someone else's computer, without > leaving any trace on the computer itself. > > > Anyway, ultimately I think mesh technology will be far less important > than mesh *usability*. It needs to be packaged up with really simple, > excellent software that enables the most basic peer activities -- > especially file transfer -- to be done in a totally seamless way > > -david _______________________________________________ p2p-hackers mailing list [email protected] http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers
