---------- Forwarded Message ---------- Subject: Re: [Tech] Freenet on routers Date: Friday 04 Sep 2009 To: Matthew Toseland <t...@amphibian.dyndns.org>
Hello Matthew, over the last year, I ran freenet on a simple self-made IP-cop based firewall with an Alix board (http://www.alix-board.de is the german distributor). It cost only around 100euro, I added a 8GB flash card and chose the board with 256 MB RAM. It´s based on AMD geode. This article (language is in german) describes setting it up, and also contains some images of the board and the ipcop UI: http://www.tomshardware.com/de/Router-Geode-Eigenbau,testberichte-240046-3.html The nice thing was that I still have all the IPcop firewall functionality, but with freenet on top. ip-cop has a nice frontend and allows you to do all kinds of things. I think running on routers is a great chance for freenet. my alix box is up 24/7. I do not know what the performance of inserts is, as I only requested some data from time to time. I adapted the setting in the config files in a way so that could use my windows box from within the firewalled net to connect to freenet on the router. If I downloaded files, I connected via winSCP to the alix box and copied them. There are pre-built ip-cop flash images for the alix boards, and it worked quite well. IPcop is -as far as I know- based on linux from scratch; I just added the java runtime vm and patched the script so I could run it as root, to simplify things. I asked myself if we couldn´t set up some "freenet box", a pre-configured router, and what the *lowest* price would be for a reasonable configuration. The alix box is around 100€ plus CF card plus power supply, so maybe people could "sponsor" a freenet router for around 120 EUR. And somebody could sell it as something which gives a real add-on benefit, which is the nice and relatively user friendly and well documented IPcop firewall. It should be easy to set-up, so maybe somebody who is a journalist can plug it in and get it up and running, say, within a day. It should work transparently as a firewall router and simply reserve some bandwidth for freenet. maybewe could put the "downloads" directory into a crypto container, which sits on a USB stick. so downloaded files on the one hand, remain encrypted, if the stick is removed, but on the other hand, can be simply be accessed by sticking it back to the user´s PC and mounting the container. So maybe something like a truecrypt container might be easy to manage. When the freenet box is seized it should offer the required protection. besides that, the config files or part of them might also be placed on the USB stick. using ssh/ scp might be too complex for people like journalists, who manage to do basic windows administration tasks, but do not know anything about unix shells. so switching on your freenet box simply should require putting in a USB stick, which was prepared before, and which tells freenet from where it should allow FCP access from the internal net, how much bandwith to dedicate to freenet, and so on. all other tasks could be managed from within the internal net via the FCP client. Maybe, this would allow a uniform and single CF image with no user-specific config data on it. I strongly believe that giving freenet a piece of hardware helps to promote it, especially in our 24/7 scenario. > Some discussion on #freenet about freenet on routers. This would > solve the 24x7 problem (people tend to turn their PCs off!). > Right now Freenet can run in 80MB if you limit it to 10 peers and > don't use the client layer. But really with a big store and bloom > filter sharing and a load of downloads you (will) need something > approaching 512MB. So current routers won't cut it. Reprogrammed > consoles and PVRs might be an option. The PS3 would be enough prior > to bloom filter sharing (256MB, tons of processing power), but it is > way too power hungry for 24x7. The wii doesn't have enough memory at > 64MB. Ideally a future router with support for storage and more > memory. Router makers are unlikely to bundle filesharing, but they > could provide a package format and let users do one-click installs; > it is unlikely anyone would be able to clobber them legally for making a > generic platform! > Specs would need to be in the range of: > - A storage port. IMHO this is likely in the medium term as > routers, home servers and possibly PVRs converge. It could be used > for transparent proxy for a start, and media storage, both obvious > out-of-the-box applications, but with third party apps it really becomes > interesting. > - At least 512MB of RAM. This is probably a cost issue at the moment but not > for much longer. > - A reasonable CPU, say 700MHz. > - The ability to install third party apps, ideally out of the box. > Cracks and flashes are okay, but for wide adoption you need > something *easy*, where they can just click install, first on the > stuff on the official app list, and then on stuff they've googled.
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