Interpeer Project

On (De-)Centralized Communications: Part 4

Fri, 14 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

#Layer 8

Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 were technical in nature, examining communications networks. However, we also have to consider the so-called “layer 8”, the human part, which (to be more specific) spans three additional layers atop the standard ISO/OSI model, the layers 8 to 10.

Figure: 10-layer OSI illustration is made available by Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Digital Commons and F(L)OSS

Thu, 20 Feb 2025 07:00:00 +0000

There are enough updates to last year’s “In Search of Foundational FLOSS Freedom(s)” to make a blog category of its own, or almost so. But instead of keeping a year-old post on life support, I’d like to extend a few thoughts from this year on much the same topic.

Figure: “Along the old familiar track that slips through the woods” by “sagesolar” is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Interpeer joins the Datacom Industry Association

Fri, 17 Jan 2025 08:00:00 +0000

2024 was a relatively quiet year for the Interpeer Project, so it’s only right to go out with a bang: Interpeer gUG joined the Datacom Industry Association as a founding member in December!

DIA aims to be the voice for the European Datacom Industry & Research Community, with its focus on secure, innovative, and collaborative digital communication solutions. We’re incredibly proud to be a part of this group!

On (De-)Centralized Communications: Part 3

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 08:00:00 +0000

#Recap

Part 1 focused on Baran’s terminology on this topic. Part 2 then briefly explored how graph theory treats network centralization, noting that multiple definitions exist, some of which align better with Baran’s terminology than others. Each definition of centrality has its own rationale; for that reason, analysis frameworks often include several of them.

For the most part, “betweenness” seems to be a measure that matches Baran’s thoughts rather well. In short, it measures how often a node sits on the shortest path between other nodes, thus becoming a likely centralization point the more often that is the case.

On (De-)Centralized Communications: Part 2

Thu, 02 Jan 2025 08:00:00 +0000

On (De-)Centralized Communications: Part 1 discussed Baran’s terminology of “centralized”, “decentralized” and “distributed” networks and how it relates to how the Internet and the networks that it’s composed of are typically arranged.

The post concluded that both “decentralized” and “distributed” are valid descriptions, depending on whether you do or don’t take end nodes into account.

#Introduction

There’s reason I ended up colouring the diagram as I did, and it has to do with maths.

On (De-)Centralized Communications: Part 1

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 12:00:00 +0000

#Introduction

At IETF121 in Dublin earlier this year, I was surprised to see my name appear on a number of slides, starting with the Discussion of Next Steps presentation Dirk and Lixia gave. I’d been commenting on the list on terminology related to the problem of Internet centralization.

The topic is fairly widely discussed these days. Other than DINRG, which of course has been formed to collect research on the issue, recent years also saw the publication of Mark Nottingham’s RFC on Centralization, Decentralization, and Internet Standards[^cite-1] on the topic. I remember making a few comments on it before it was finalized.

Time-keeping Woes

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 18:00:00 +0000

Yes, we’re still talking about how Vessel + Wyrd implement something kind of like a Merkle Clock, and yet also arguably better. I wrote that the last post was supposed to be the final one in the series.

And for a general overview, that is true – this article fills in some necessary background and design detail. Call it a bonus, if you’d like.

#Recap

We compared Merkle DAGs to Vessel’s DAG.
The next article then described Vessel’s DAG as no worse than a Merkle DAG.
We then explored Wyrd’s usage of the Vessel DAG, with the conclusion that the DAG provides too coarse-grained an ordering.
Finally, we had an outline for how to provide finer grained time stamps based on monotonic clocks.

Figure: “Hexadecimal clock” by adactio is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Extending Vessel's DAG with a Per-Event Clock

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 18:00:00 +0000

#Recap

We compared Merkle DAGs to Vessel’s DAG, to find that although they are constructed very differently, they offer very much the same guarantees: both provide logical ordering, and this ordering is deterministic across replicas.
The next article then explored the needs of CRDTs for logical clocks, and concluded that the clock provided by Vessel’s DAG is no worse than the clock of a Merkle DAG. The main problem both have is that while ordering is deterministic, it does not take into account the effects of applying one CRDT operation before vs after another.
We then explored Wyrd’s usage of the Vessel DAG with the conclusion that the DAG provides too coarse-grained an ordering.

This final entry in the mini-series now focuses on how to address that issue.

Exploring Wyrd as a Merkle-like CRDT

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 18:00:00 +0000

It turns out that this article has been sitting mostly finished in my drafts for months now. The idea was to finish exploring how Wyrd benefits from Vessel’s DAG, and what it still needs to do.

#Recap

After this long a wait, here’s a quick recap:

We compared Merkle DAGs to Vessel’s DAG, to find that although they are constructed very differently, they offer very much the same guarantees: both provide logical ordering, and this ordering is deterministic across replicas.
The next article then explored the needs of CRDTs for logical clocks, and concluded that the clock provided by Vessel’s DAG is no worse than the clock of a Merkle DAG. The main problem both have is that while ordering is deterministic, it does not take into account the effects of applying one CRDT operation before vs after another.

These were relatively theoretical discussions. This article focuses more on the interplay between Wyrd and Vessel in practice, and also offers an effective solution to that last problem.

Interview With Jens Finkhaeuser - Founder and CEO at the Interpeer Project

Sun, 20 Oct 2024 09:00:00 +0000

There’s a new interview up on Safety Detectives where I get to discuss the origins, motivation and direction of the Interpeer Project as a whole. It’s been a great conversation, and I think one of the better summaries of the project from the beginnings to where we are now.

I also get to make some predictions for the Internet that make me rather sad, but help illustrate why the project is taking the architectural approach that it does:

The European Union must keep funding free software

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 00:30:00 +0000

Open letter initially published in French by the petites singularités association, translation by OW2 – with French original version below.

To sign it: please publish it on your web site (French, English or both), then add yourself in this table.

#Open Letter to the European Commission

Since 2020, Next Generation Internet (NGI) programmes, part of European Commission’s Horizon programme, fund free software in Europe using a cascade funding mechanism (see for example NLNet's calls). This year, according to the Horizon Europe working draft detailing funding programmes for 2025, we notice that Next Generation Internet is not mentioned any more as part of Cluster 4.

In Search of Foundational FLOSS Freedom(s)

Thu, 11 Apr 2024 09:00:00 +0000

A few days ago, a vulnerability in xz-utils named CVE-2024-3094 was discovered, and since then the open source community as well as security pundits fall over themselves and each other to provide the best analysis of this incident.

Don’t worry, this post isn’t another one of those.

Because while all the speculation about what motivates such a long-term attack is fun, the underlying issue is way, way simpler.

Vessel + Wyrd - a DAG-based CRDT

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Yesterday, we explored the differences between a Merkle DAG and vessel’s DAG. Today’s topic revolves around how combining wyrd’s conflict-free, replicated data type (CRDT)[^cite-1] with vessel makes a specific kind of CRDT, namely a DAG-based one.

Figure: “Fractal Structures” by SolomonVipe is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

#Conflict-Free, Replicated Data Types

A quick recap on CRDTs first.

They’re data types, largely fairly simple ones, such as counters or sets. And they’re conflict-free, meaning that multiple parties can modify them concurrently, and when their respective modifications get synchronized, each party with the full set of modifications will reconstruct the same state.

Comparing Vessel to a Merkle DAG

Wed, 24 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

One of the recurring conversations I’m having is on whether vessel is a Merkle DAG or Merkle Tree/Trie, and every time I have to start over with explaining that it is not. And this is a deliberate choice.

In this post, I’d like to explore the differences – and this post will also kick off a mini series on how vessel and it’s sibling project wyrd together form a DAG-based conflict-free, replicated data type (CRDT)[^cite-1] akin to a Merkle CRDT[^cite-2].

2023 Retrospective

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

With 2023 over, and some time between now and the last update, it’s perhaps a good moment to reflect on what happened in 2023 and where the project is right now.

#Achievements

Last year saw the closing of our grant from The Internet Society Foundation[^cite-1], who have been excellent partners for the past two years! I don’t think I can overstate how important this grant has been for our work.

EmpoderaLIVE'23: Privacy and Data Protection as Fundamental HUman Rights

Wed, 27 Sep 2023 21:00:00 +0000

I was thrilled to be on stage with the Tor Project[^cite-1] for the 2023 edition of EmpoderaLIVE. Giorgio and I followed a strong segment from Joyce Dogniez of the The Internet Society Foundation[^cite-2] which delved into the intersection of human rights issues and the Internet already.

After Giorgio explained how the Tor project saves lives right now, my part was relatively simple – I mostly said that I want to make Tor project obsolete.

Information-Centric Networking Rethought

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 08:30:16 +0000

The recent issues with Google’s WEI proposal have provided for a few more views of this blog and website, which makes it worth diving into our work a little again.

The previous post on resource access is quite old at this stage, after all.

#Quick Recap

Under different grants, we’ve been working on a bunch of loosely related technologies. The highlights are:

Channeler – a protocol that has can switch between UDP-like lossy and TCP-like lossless modes of connection, as well as novel modes suitable for live broadcast. Channeler can run on top of UDP, on top of IP, or conceivably on top of Ethernet (though this would require some additional routing protocol).
Vessel – a container file format that has (limited) self-ordering properties for use in eventually consistent transfers, multi- authorship features, can multiplex different content, and is optionally end-to-end encrypted.
Wyrd – a CRDT implementation that integrates with Vessel.
CAProck – a cryptographic capability framework for distributed authorization.

Each of these are building blocks for a complete information-centric networking (ICN) stack we’re constructing.

Tools: Valgrind with Callgrind

Tue, 25 Jul 2023 08:30:16 +0000

Previously, I wrote about how to use Valgrind for debugging memory issues – and today, I’d like to go into how to use the tool for profiling.

As I wrote before, Valgrind is an instrumentation framework that provides a collection of tools. For profiling, we’ll look at the Callgrind tool together a GUI application called KCachegrind. As a quick historical note, the predecessor to Callgrind is called Cachegrind, and was mostly for examining CPU cache usage – but Callgrind was developed out of that. KCachegrind, on the other hand, kept the old name.

Google vs. the Open Web

Fri, 21 Jul 2023 07:38:27 +0000

A few days ago, I made a social media post about Google vs. the Open Web. It received some responses, so I’ll reproduce it below with some additional comments.

Figure: “Open Web - Gnomedex 2008” by Randy Stewart is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

#Google is trying to kill the Open Web.

Using the proposed “Web Environment Integrity” means websites can select on which devices (browsers) they wish to be displayed, and can refuse service to other devices. It binds client side software to a website, creating a silo’d app.

Tools: Valgrind with Memcheck

Thu, 20 Jul 2023 08:30:16 +0000

A recent thread on social media reminded me that some of the development tools I take for granted are not widely known. Veteran game developer Martin Linklater (@[email protected]) asked about profiling on Linux, which prompted me to mention my favourite Valgrind, which prompted a question about its use. I offered to write up a quick tutorial on it.

But thinking about it a little more, quick, introductory tutorials to the tools we use makes for a useful addition to this section of the blog.

Stem the Tide

Thu, 06 Apr 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Figure: “Bucket & spade” by Dale Gillard is licensed under CC BY 2.0

The other day, I was asked by a friend what it is I’m doing with this project. He’s very much into following technological trends, but not a deeply technical person himself. That drove home yet again how hard it is to provide an “elevator pitch” summary of our work.

CLT'23: Distributed Authorization with CAProck

Sun, 12 Mar 2023 17:30:00 +0100

This year, we were presenting at the Linux Days in Chemnitz. The talk was about how to achieve full distribution with authorization in networked systems – of course using CAProck. The slides are in English, but the presentation itself was held in German.

Impressions from the OHCHR consultation on human rights and technical standard-setting processes for new and emerging digital technologies

Mon, 27 Feb 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Just over a week ago, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights hosted a consultation on human rights in technical standard-setting processes, which I managed to attend the first half of. I live blogged some impressions, that deserve a summary here.

Speaking were human rights researches, security standards contributors, and representatives of standards organizations.

Musings on the Data Rights Protocol

Tue, 14 Feb 2023 10:00:00 +0000

A few days ago, I found myself attending a pitch by the Consumer Reports Digital Lab for their Data Rights Protocol[^cite-1]. At first glance, it’s a great idea! Give organizations a standardized interface for exercising your data rights, which means you can use a simple app to request what data is collected about you, have it deleted, etc. What’s not to love?

Turns out, there are some immediate concerns, and some longer-term, more vague issues that need addressing.

FOSDEM'23 and OFFDEM O3 Recap

Tue, 07 Feb 2023 15:00:00 +0000

Unfortunately, in 2023 there were no Interpeer related talks at FOSDEM – after a few years of virtual conference, FOSDEM had a large number of talk submissions to deal with, and ours did not make the cut.

However, FOSDEM is not just about talks – it’s often more about the meetings in the hallways and gathering spots. And so Interpeer was still present at the conference.

It won’t be useful to summarize all the different conversations at the conference. I do want to highlight one I’ve had in the unoffical fringe of FOSDEM, however, at OFFDEM.

Impressions from the EU Open Source Policy Summit 2023

Sat, 04 Feb 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Yesterday, I found myself accidentally live-blogging some thoughts on the EU Open Source Policy Summit 2023 event organized by OpenForum Europe. I say “accidental”, because I didn’t plan on doing so, but the first post got enough interest that I continued. It’s only fair to summarize my impressions today, after the fact.

I’m leaving the conference with some mixed feelings. It’s been very clear that decades of FOSS advocacy have only recently gained traction, and there is still a lot of work to be done to bridge the gap between politics and FOSS.

New Year, New Website

Thu, 26 Jan 2023 08:30:00 +0000

#Happy New Year 2023!

Is a new website a good reason for a blog post? Maybe on a slow news day. But we have not been updating you here for a while, so let’s use the change of year for a recap and update.

#2022 Recap

2022 has been a very busy year for us. Our R&D focus has shifted from lower level transport protocols to information-centric networking concerns. This rounds out the overall vision of a human-centric ICN stack.

IETF115: Vessel Container Format and Web Centralization

Tue, 08 Nov 2022 18:30:00 +0000

IETF115 in London was our first change to present some of Interpeer’s work to the IETF community – or, more precisely, to it’s sister organization, the Internet Research Task Force.

On the 7th, I was invited to the Decentralized Internet Infrastructure Research Group (DINRG) to recap FOSDEM’s talk on web centralization.

This was followed on the 8th in the Information-Centric Networking Research Group (ICNRG), where I spoke about the vessel container format.

Non-Profit Paperwork Signed

Wed, 01 Jun 2022 14:30:00 +0000

Today, at 14:00, I went to the notary to sign the paperwork for incorporating a non-profit organization for the Interpeer Project.

If you’ve gone through this process before, you know that after the notary witnessing the signing of the company articles, you then have to create an account in the entity’s name, put the initial money there, prove to the notary that you’ve done so, and only then will they register the entity properly. It’ll take some time to be operational.

Human Rights on the Internet

Wed, 16 Mar 2022 19:00:00 +0000

There is an ongoing discussion on human rights on the Internet on the IRTF HRPC mailing list that I want to express an opinion on.

I would also like to stress that this is not an official position of the Interpeer Project. Although we are yet small, there exists already a variety of positions amongst contributors on all kinds of topics. No, this is a purely personal opinion.

Peering Through The Fog

Mon, 28 Feb 2022 15:35:18 +0000

I was recently reminded of the fact that people use the term “peer-to-peer” to mean a variety of different things. That can make conversations on the topic difficult, as with any situation where you assume you have common ground, only to discover that is not the case.

In this interlude, I want to – really quite quickly – disambiguate some things, as a kind of reference for future conversations. You don’t need to agree with me. Though if that’s the case, I’d be interested to hear about it!

FOSDEM'22: On the Far Side of REST

Sat, 05 Feb 2022 18:30:00 +0000

February is FOSDEM month. This year, I was able to give a talk on how REST contributes to centralizing the web, and what could be done about that.

Resource Access

Tue, 01 Feb 2022 15:40:20 +0000

Previously, I’ve been writing about how to perform task delegation with a distributed authorization scheme. While that article managed to outline the principle well enough, it left a few things not yet covered. The summary was that if we find a generic scheme for treating a resource as a series of changes, then we can encrypt and authenticate each change separately, leading to a kind of distributed authorship of resources – which is what we really want in a distributed system.

Distributed Authorization in Task Delegation

Thu, 27 Jan 2022 08:36:35 +0000

In my previous post, I was discussing how distributed authorization might be facilitated. Today, I want to discuss what effects such authorization tokens can have if we relay them, effectively achieving delegation.

Figure: “The first runner in a relay - kindergarten Sports Festival.” by MIKI Yoshihito. (#mikiyoshihito) is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Distributed Authorization

Mon, 10 Jan 2022 11:28:45 +0000

Whenever I don’t write much here, I feel like I’m not producing anything of value. Just to make myself feel better, I want to start with a quick update on what’s been happening.

I was awarded a grant by the Internet Society Foundation[^cite-1] for research into next generation Internet technologies. This, for me, has a few major effects.
First, it means I could hire some help in doing this R&D work with me. Adrian, my first freelance collaborator, is going to focus on conflict-free replicated data types. How precisely that fits into the Interpeer Project, I will write about later.
Second, it’s a step forward into doing this full-time, which I wanted to do when I set out to do it. Not immediately, but over the course of this year.
Third, it’s the push I needed to invest a bit of money into forming a non-profit organization to manage the project. This in turn will permit access to more funds, some tax breaks, and overall help in forming and running a small research team. I am very much looking forward to doing that, and Adrian is the first step here!
Lastly, it means my attention is pulled into more directions. That’s not good. It means my work on getting the channel protocol fully implemented had a few more stumbling stones, but… well, it looks like this may be resolved with time.

Yeah, that doesn’t look so bad any longer. With that out of the way, I want to focus on one area of R&D I’m tackling at the moment, distributed authorization.

Towards Communal Licensing

Wed, 08 Sep 2021 10:48:27 +0000

There’s something rotten in the state of FOSS, and it’s not the software. It’s the community – or more precisely, the communal spirit.

This post deviates a little from the regular topics. I do not intend to write a lot on this topic here, unless you, dear reader, provide me with feedback that it fits your interest. Consider it an experiment while work continues on implementing the protocol suite as usually discussed here, and there are fewer technical updates to write.

Purposeful Channel Creation

Fri, 16 Jul 2021 14:32:18 +0000

In previous posts, I spent some time describing a protocol design for negotiating independent channels over a shared connection of sorts. That’s all well and good, but it does beg the question what purpose channels serve.

In the abstract, it is just what I just wrote, a mechanism for conducting multiple parts of a larger communication in parallel, and independent of each other. But while that description is apt enough, it also leaves a lot of questions open.

Mini-Roadmap

Tue, 11 May 2021 14:00:00 +0000

Since I occasionally find people focused on the same kind of problem that I’m trying to tackle with this project, and I have a terrible tendency to share my thoughts informally, I figured it would be a good idea to post a kind of roadmap for the project.

This isn’t going to be fixed in stone forever. But its general outline should remain more or less intact.

The overall goal is to “fix” the problems of the World Wide Web by addressing the privacy and security needs of the users and by embracing that most users will use a multitude of devices, some of which are shared. Finally, it’s important to understand that real-time usages and eventually consistent usages of the web are both required, and that there are good uses for both the “document” and the “application” web, as some people call it.

First Channeler Milestone

Wed, 07 Apr 2021 18:30:00 +0000

A few days ago, I managed to complete another milestone for the NGI0 grant agreement. It’s released as channeler on the Interpeer code page.

In a sense, this is more of an interim update. The grant agreement covers many more milestones in this repository, and as it stands, the code is highly work in progress.

But it demonstrates the basic channel establishment functionality – and while that doesn’t have any bells and whistles yet, it’s a good starting point for further iteration and refinement.

An Architecture for a Better Internet

Thu, 25 Mar 2021 14:00:04 +0000

In my last post, I wrote about how REST architectural principles feed into the problem with surveillance capitalism that the world faces today. Today, I want to explore how we might approach an architecture for a better, more human centric Internet.

Figure: “architecture 2” by fontplaydotcom is licensed under CC BY 2.0

#Internet or Web?

First, some quick disambiguation. The Interpeer Project’s aim is to provide infrastructure for a next generation human centric Internet – so why focus on REST, when that is specific to the web?

FOSSASIA'21: Designing a Human Centric Next Generation Internet

Thu, 18 Mar 2021 21:00:00 +0000

Just as my previous FOSDEM talk, my presentation at FOSSASIA was titled “Designing a Human Centric Next Generation Internet”.

Trying to learn from the previous presentation – and having less time, and adding the pressure of a live event – I tried to focus more on a future Internet architecture.

The benefit of that approach is that it can be done as an analysis of the web’s more-or-less-achieved REST architecture and it’s successes and failures. Reading Roy Fielding’s REST Dissertation[^cite-1] is certainly highly recommended!

Let's Talk About REST

Thu, 18 Mar 2021 15:00:44 +0000

Remember the early 90’s and Salt-n-Pepa? No? Well, it’s about breaking taboos around talking about important topics. In a vaguely comparable way, we software engineers have a kind of taboo on talking about REST[^cite-1]. Let’s break that.

Figure: “Rest here” by oliverkendal is licensed under CC BY 2.0

See, most of you will know what REST means, right? And the majority of my readers will be able to tell me that it stands for REpresentational State Transfer. And yet, my experience is that just about everyone misclassifies things as RESTful that are not. Worse, when I bring that up the often-heard response is that “well modern REST means something else” as if two decades of misusing a term somehow invalidates the original idea.

Channel Capabilities

Tue, 09 Feb 2021 11:26:00 +0000

OK, so in the last post, I was getting into some channel capability flags, and how they impact handling of lost packets. The main conclusion for the purposes of that post was that we need some kind of sequence numbering in every packet, unless we just so happen to switch all reliability flags off.

Saving bits is a noble goal to be sure, especially when you have WiFi induced low MTU on the path. But I’m not sure that the extra branch you have to take for one of currently nine cases is worth saving them. You know what, let’s leave this decision for later. Personally, I am leaning to always sending sequence numbers, which can sometimes be ignored.

FOSDEM'21: Designing a Human Centric Next Generation Internet

Sat, 06 Feb 2021 18:30:00 +0000

In February, I was able to give a talk at FOSDEM, Europe’s premier conference on free and open source software. Entitled “Designing a Human Centric Next Generation Internet”, I tried to lay out the requirements such an Internet might have, derived from the failures of the current web.

I suspect the talk was a little too unfocused, but the response was great nonetheless! It certainly helped me understand better how I need to present the Interpeer Project in future.

Handshakes

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 15:58:23 +0000

It seems as if I start every piece here with an apology for taking so long to continue writing. That’s the nature of my life right now, it seems. I’m sorry.

So let’s dive right in. Last time, I was writing about how different channels interact with each other, and what that means about messaging in fairly abstract terms. I also wrote before how I’m not a big fan of negotiating protocol features, and prefer to instead iterate to a new and improved protocol faster. I’ll touch on that in this post again. Also, I wrote that packet headers will have to include some reserved bits, which I will also refer to here.

Conferences & Papers

Sat, 02 Jan 2021 12:34:19 +0000

As is usual these days, I don’t write here half as much as I would like to. In recent weeks, this is because I have been very busy preparing for a number of conferences and writing papers. Since they all relate in one way or another to the protocol work I have been writing about, I figure people might find them interesting.

I have mentioned before that I am working part time at AnyWi Technologies B.V.. The two jobs are fairly complementary; at Interpeer, protocol design is for peer-to-peer networks, while in the latter, it is for autonomous vehicles, in particular for drones. Really, the Venn diagram between the two, if you would draw it, would probably have about 90% overlap or so. So the appearances and publications relate to both.

Message in a Bottle

Thu, 22 Oct 2020 12:52:08 +0000

Since I took such a long break before my last post, I figured I should forge ahead and write them while I can. Previously, I outlined the packet envelope information we’re going to send over the wire. Today’s topic is the basic messaging framework, handshakes and some considerations on channel establishment.

To recap, every packet belongs to a channel, and may contain one or more messages. In the absence of any other established channel, packets will belong to a default channel. This default channel shall be used for initiating connections.

Any Port in a Storm

Thu, 15 Oct 2020 13:16:43 +0000

After a short hiatus imposed by a broken elbow, it’s high time for an update again. This time around, I want to focus on some basic design considerations that are derived from the requirements I explored in previous posts. The aim is to clarify some concepts, and as a result get a decent idea of the information we need to transmit in packet headers.

In the previous post, I wanted to start with UDP as the base on which to build. That idea remains, but I would like to expand on this a little. The reason I gave is that for UDP (IP, really) there already exists routing equipment all over the Internet, which means that any protocol built on it should be routable almost everywhere. Also, it can be implemented as an application-level protocol, which means there will be fewer hurdles for widespread deployment.

Communication Breakdown

Fri, 11 Sep 2020 10:05:41 +0000

Following my last post in which I worked through various definitions of reliability in networking, it’s time in this post to look at the main protocol contenders, and examine how they measure up to those definitions.

Let’s recap quickly with a list. Reliability can mean…

Soft delivery guarantees.
Hard delivery guarantees.
Hard delivery guarantees along the entire path. (This wasn’t mentioned last time, but we’ll get to it.)
Strict ordering of packets. (This was mentioned implicitly as stream- vs datagram oriented approaches.)
A preference for local decision making. This one is very much on a gradient, rather than an exclusive either/or feature.
Time-sensitivity. (Here, too, we can distinguish between harder and softer criteria. This is also something we’ll get to.)
Tamper-proofing
Privacy preservation
Non-Interference of independent communication links
Failover & Bonding, or multi-pathing.

#Ethernet, etc.

Let’s get this out of the way first: we’re not really concerned with protocols that just link two machines together, whether that’s Ethernet, a wireless protocol, or a wired peripheral connection like USB.

Designing for Reliability

Fri, 28 Aug 2020 15:30:16 +0000

In the past months, I have not written much. I pushed forward with work for the Interpeer Project. But more recently, I also started as a researcher at AnyWi Technologies, joining friends from a past job. There, we participate in public/private research projects into next generation commercial drone platforms.

While both domains have a multitude of differences between them, one strong overlap exists in the need for reliable and performant networking connections over the public Internet.

Distributed Consensus 2020

Mon, 09 Mar 2020 10:37:26 +0000

#It’s not what you think it is.

A few weeks ago, I led my connections to a single-question survey, asking what the currently most utilized distributed consensus algorithms is. This isn’t the largest group in the world, but it’s also a fairly mixed bunch: a majority is in the tech industry, but almost as many are not. Some or old guard, some entered the field only a while ago. Some are more research inclined, some more practically oriented.

The New Cathedral and Bazaar

Wed, 19 Feb 2020 15:11:49 +0000

Figure: “Bazaar, Cairo, Oct-2011” by maltman23 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

#Or how Blockchain gets consensus wrong.

Over twenty years ago, Eric S. Raymond wrote an essay that changed the software development world. Titled The Cathedral and the Bazaar, it outlined his experience in trying to understand and emulate the success of the Linux operating system kernel. The essay set down some observations in rules that other projects should follow for similar success.

Bitcoin is a Capitalist Nightmare

Tue, 03 Jul 2018 16:25:27 +0000

#A nightmare of capitalism, that is, not a nightmare for capitalism.

Let me explain.

Throughout its history, Bitcoin has been lauded as a currency that can set us free. It seems as if every other week, someone discovers bitcoin’s decentralized nature, and concludes that this makes it the most democratic currency possible. Here's one very recent such story.

CAProck

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

#Introduction

CAProck provides an implementation of a distributed authorization scheme with cryptographic guarantees. It is essentially a distributed Object-capability model[^cite-1] using a cryptographic variant of a Power of Attorney model for ensuring it can be used in a fully distributed manner.

#Operation

Centralized authorization schemes query a centralized service whether an authenticated entity (a subject) currently holds a privilege or permission (a predicate) for a given object¹.

Distributing this information means serializing it into a distributable form. However, to verify that it has not been tampered with, one needs to additionally add a cryptographic signature. In order to verify the signature, an issuer identifier is also helpful.

channeler

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

#Introduction

Channeler is a multi-channel protocol with per-channel capabilities. It’s something of a parallel development to QUIC[^cite-1], but with distinct features.

The design for channeler was originally inspired by experience with video streaming over peer-to-peer networks in 2006-2009. In order to safely traverse NATs, a UDP[^cite-2]-based implementation is required. Using that, however, means losing reliability criteria of TCP[^cite-3].

From an application perspective, however, it’s not always clear which is preferred. More precisely, it’s usually the case that for some messages, reliability is a good idea – while for others, it adds unnecessary overhead.

Data Sovereignty

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Data Sovereignty is a part of Digital Sovereignty, and means having full and unrestricted control over the data one owns, and implies control over personally identifiable information (PII).

#Definition

Definitions are often restricted to merely being able to access and move data at will.

However, there are distinct concerns that also affect this ability, which bear keeping in mind:

Data Transparency refers to the transparency that is provided in storing personal data and for fine-grained access control when sharing it.
Data Compatibility & Interoperability considers that data may need to be provided in standardized formats when switching processing from one service provider to another, and may need to be transformed in order to make this switch.
Data Security & Privacy concerns both data stored at rest, as well as when transmitted. In either case, it must be ensured that only the parties with access are privy to the information.
Service Portability refers to the generalized concept of being able to switch service providers for data processing.

#Interpeer Project

It can be argued that if any of the above is not ensured, there is no full Data Sovereignty in place, either. If access is only granted in principle, but not in practice, there is no access after all.

Deceptive Pattern

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A deceptive pattern is a way of presenting choices to people that are manipulative, tricking them into making choices that are not in their best interest.

The term is often applied in the field of user experience design, and cookie banners are a perfect example of deceptive patterns.

Not only are cookie banners themselves often superfluous – purely functional cookies usually do not require them, only advertising/tracking cookies do.

But more often than not, the “accept all cookies” choice is presented larger, or in green, giving it all the trappings of the obvious choice to make, when users should likely prefer the choice that minimized the data being collected about them.

Delay-Tolerant Networking

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Delay-tolerent networking refers to techniques for networking systems where delays and intermittency are orders of magnitutes larger than on the Internet, such as in e.g. deep space communications.

In the Internet Engineering Task Force, there exists a DTN working group that standardizes the Bundle Protocol, which is an implementation of the DTN architecture.

In doing so, it co-operates with the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS), which is a multi-national forum for the development of communications & data systems standards for spaceflight.

Digital Commons

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Digital Commons encompasses the entirety of digital artifacts, from code to training data for large language models, that is available to the public. Much like land-based commons, it’s value is intrinsically linked to being an equitably accessible resource.

The commons is the cultural and natural resources accessible to all members of a society, including natural materials such as air, water, and a habitable Earth. These resources are held in common even when owned privately or publicly. Commons can also be understood as natural resources that groups of people (communities, user groups) manage for individual and collective benefit. Characteristically, this involves a variety of informal norms and values (social practice) employed for a governance mechanism. Commons can also be defined as a social practice of governing a resource not by state or market but by a community of users that self-governs the resource through institutions that it creates.

Digital Sovereignty

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A comprehensive definition inspired by the Digitale Souveränität als Strategische Autonomie (German; “Digital Sovereignty as Strategic Autonomy”) breaks this down as:

Digital Sovereignty = Data Sovereignty + Technical Sovereignty

This usage takes a holistic approach considering both the digital data we deal with as well as the systems by which we access them, and how those systems can be maintained and further developed.

#Usage in Politics

The term is used in the political context to mean that governments should not depend on a single vendor for any of the services they use or offer to their citizens. In particular, dependence on overseas vendors can be problematic, as different legislation could mean that foreign governments can mandate a vendor located in their legislation to grant access to another government’s data.

Donate Today!

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Donate Today!

The Internet under Threat

The Internet promised to be this amazing network that could bring people around the world together! But whether it is surveillance capitalism that collects data about you, or political troll farms that spew disinformation, that liberating and unifying Internet is increasingly under threat.

FOSSWashing

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

FOSSWashing refers to practices that follow the letter of free and open source software (FOSS) development, but not the spirit.

The term #OpenWashing is related, but unnecessarily restricted to just “open source”, ignoring free and libre software.

Both share their origins in the greenwashing term.

Funding

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

GObject SDK

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

#Introduction

The GObject SDK provides a convenient mapping from wyrd properties to GObject properties and vice versa. GObject is an object abstraction for use with GTK applications.

In the GObject model, it is possible to listen for and emit signals. Properties are named object members that emit a signal when modified. When a user interface element modifies an internal object variable, it is possible to listen for this, and immediately trigger an application state change.

Human-Centric Internet

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The term “Human-Centric Internet” describes an Internet for humans. It highlights individual human concerns, in contrast to e.g. the Internet of Things (IoT), which is focused on connectivity for smart devices.

The European Commission’s The Next Generation Internet (NGI) Initiative[^cite-1] aims for a human-centric Internet.

#Context

Human concerns are plentiful, and since the current Internet is build by humans, what precisely is it that makes a human-centric Internet different from what we see today?

Imprint

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

#Contact

Interpeer gUG (haftungsbeschränkt)
Feldgereuth 8
86926 Greifenberg
DE - GERMANY

[email protected]">[email protected]

#Legal/Tax Information

Registration	Number
Amtsgericht Augsburg	HRB 37686
VAT/USt-IdNr.	DE355996098

#Legal Disclaimer

The contents of our pages have been created with the utmost care. However, we cannot guarantee the contents’ accuracy, completeness or topicality. According to statutory provisions, we are furthermore responsible for our own content on these web pages. In this context, please note that we are accordingly not obliged to monitor merely the transmitted or saved information of third parties, or investigate circumstances pointing to illegal activity. Our obligations to remove or block the use of information under generally applicable laws remain unaffected by this as per §§ 8 to 10 of the Telemedia Act (TMG).

Information-Centric Networking

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Information-centric networking is an evolution of peer-to-peer (p2p) concepts. To illustrate this, let’s quickly review how the world wide web works.

#URLs

You all know URLs, the addresses you may enter into or see in a browser bar. The term URL stands for “Universal Resource Locator” – the key part being the last word. A URL tells the browser where something is located.

There is a related concept of URIs (Universal Resource Identifiers). To make matters more complicated, all URLs are also URIs, but not all URIs are URLs. The difference is that a URI identifies a resource, while a URL locates it – and therefore also works as an identifier of sorts.

Informed Consent

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Informed consent is given when someone consents to something after having been adequately informed of the consequences. Consent without sufficient information is not informed consent.

The distinction matters when people enter into agreements they may later regret. Sufficient up-front information both helps them avoid such agreements in the first place – but it also helps avoid liability when sufficient information was provided.

Internet Decolonisation

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A large part of the Internet is effectively owned by former colonial powers. This applies both to the physical infrastructure of the Internet, as well as the content that is available for perusal.

The Robert Bosch Academy defines decolonisation as a strategy that connects a lot of different movements that question these power structures and attempt to challenge them.

It is our view that a human-centric networking architecture contributes to decolonisation by moving control over content away from centralized machines owned by digital colonialists, towards the individuals and communities that share such content.

Internet of Behaviours

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

In 2012, Professor Gote Nyman coined the term Internet of Behaviours (IoB) to describe a network in which behavioural patterns would have an IoB address in the same way that each device has an IP address in the Internet of Things (IoT).

However, the term IoB is most often used to describe an extension of the Internet of Things (IoT): a network of interconnected physical and digital objects that collect and exchange information over the Internet, linking this data to specific human measured or inferred behaviours.

liberate

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

#Introduction

Liberate is a platform abstraction library, written in C++. It serves all other projects.

Providing a good platform abstraction in C++ is difficult. The standard library covers only so much ground. Larger library collections such as boost provide great resources, but at the expense of large binary sizes and, in some cases, custom build tools. These make it difficult to maintain cross-platform builds.

Given that the needs of Interpeer’s sub-projects are relatively narrow, it was an easier choice to provide an own platform abstraction library. However, users should be aware that the goal is not to replace or compete with other projects here. This library is predominantly for internal use.

Mission Statement of the the Interpeer Project

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

#Mission Statement

The law in Germany regarding non-profit entities like Interpeer gUG mandate that a specific set of laws is referred to in a mission statement that is part of the legal entity’s by-laws. This has to be included in German. Below is the German original, as well as a version translated into English.

#German

Zweck der Gesellschaft ist die Förderung der Wissenschaft und Forschung (§ 52 Abs. 2 Satz 1 Nr. 1 AO) sowie Förderung der Erziehung, Volks- und Berufsbildung einschließlich der Studentenhilfe (§ 52 Abs. 2 Satz 1 Nr. 7 AO).
Die Gesellschaft erfüllt ihre Zwecke in Abs. (1) insbesondere durch folgende Maßnahmen:
1. Forschung und Entwicklung von neuen Technologien in offenen und dezentralisierten, computergestützten Software- und Systemarchitekturen, insbesondere zu den folgenden Themenbereichen:
  - Datentransparenz und Datenhoheit bspw. durch Technologien, die die Übermittelung von persönlichen oder personenbezogenen Daten für die Betroffenen einsehbar machen und es ermöglichen, dieser feingranular zuzustimmen oder entgegenzuwirken;
  - Datenkompatibilität und -interoperabilität bspw. durch offene Standards, welche die Übertragung von Daten von einem an einen anderen Dienstleister vereinfachen, ohne Verlust an Metainformationen, der die spätere Bearbeitung beeinträchtigen könnte;
  - Sicherheit und Privatsphäre bspw. durch kryptographische Systeme, die sicherstellen, dass Daten so verschlüsselt werden, dass nur eine ausgewählte Zielstelle sie einsehen kann (Ende-zu-Ende-Verschlüsslung);
  - Datentransfer bspw. durch Netzwerkprotokolle, die Daten nur unter Berücksichtigung der o.g. Bereiche übermitteln.
2. Durchführung wissenschaftlicher Veranstaltungen (z.B. Konferenzen und Symposien).
3. Veröffentlichungen sowie Veranstaltung von Fortbildungen, Vorträgen und Seminaren.

#English

The purpose of the company is the advancement of science and research (§ 52 Abs. 2 Satz 1 Nr. 1 AO) as well as the furtherance of public education and occupational training, including student support (§ 52 Abs. 2 Satz 1 Nr. 7 AO).
The company fulfils its purpose in paragraph (1) especially by the following measures:
1. Research and development of new technologies in open and decentralized, computer supported soft- and system architectures, in particular as relating to the following topics:
  - data transparency and data sovereignty, e.g. through technology that makes visible the transfer of personal or personally identifiable information, and that allows agreeing to or preventing it;
  - data compatibility and interoperability, e.g. through open standards that ease data mobility from one service provider to another, without loss of meta information that could hinder later processing;
  - security and privacy, e.g. through cryptographic systems that ensure data is encrypted in such a way that only the recipient can access it (end-to-end encryption);
  - data transfer, e.g. through networking protocols that transfer data only under consideration of the topics above.
2. Realisation of scientific events (e.g. conferences and symposia).
3. Publications and events relating to education, lectures and seminars.

OpenWashing

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

OpenWashing refers to practices that follow the letter of open source, but not the spirit, with the intent of falsely making something appear as open when it follows a closed ideology.

#Open Source

“Open” has many different meanings, but colloquially it is understood to have permissionless access to either participation in or results of a process. In practice, it may not even mean that.

In the context of Open Source[^cite-1] it is used to describe a permissionless model of collaboration in software development, with results made available to the general public and with few constraints.

packeteer

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

#Introduction

Packeteer is a cross-platform networking abstraction with a socket-like interface, providing datagram capabilities as first class citizens.

The design of this library goes back a long time, before networking code was anywhere near standardization in C++. While this is changing, even now the majority of abstractions over sockets in C++ assume a connection-oriented design, which on the Internet implies TCP/IP[^cite-1].

However, in order to implement protocols that do not follow the connection paradigm, a datagram oriented API is also required. This typically also requires a more reactive API that responds to network I/O events rather than simply waiting.

Peer-for-Peer

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The term “peer-for-peer” stems from Zenna Elfen’s master thesis[^cite-1] and describes networking protocols that are characterized by small, modular and community-driven infrastructures.

There is a strong overlap beween this term and the human-centric networking (HCN) concept. The main difference is P4P’s focus on smaller networks, while HCN’s scope is global.

Peer-to-Peer

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Peer-to-peer refers to a mode of connecting computers so that every participating node is equal in rights and responsibilities, at least potentially. Unlike the client-server model, peers in p2p can choose whether to initiate an action (acting as a client) or respond (acting as server) at any time.

#Client-Server

In the client-server model of networking, the protocol design determines which machine initiates a request or action, and thus acts as the client. By contrast, a server machine idles until it needs to fulfil a client request.

Personally Identifiable Information

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Personally identifiable information or PII for short refers to any information that can be used, either alone or together with other information, to identify a person.

Some countries or states place particular protections on such data, such as via the European Union’s General Data Protection Rules[^cite-1] or the California Consumer Privacy Act[^cite-2].

Unfortunately, not all legislations have such specific laws – however, as the right to privacy is one right codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights[^cite-3], which many nations ratified (in the EU, also Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms[^cite-4] applies), in theory all those nations should offer some protection for PII. Unfortunately, that theory is not necessarily well reflected in reality.

PrivacyWashing

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

PrivacyWashing refers to practices making something appear conscious of the data privacy rights of individuals, when in actual fact data privacy is not a big concern.

For example, the law may permit collecting personally identifiable information without asking for informed consent. When an entity then advertises an easy method for reviewing and deleting gathered information, without disclosing when such data is collected, that could count as PrivacyWashing.

The first concern of privacy conscious operations should be to minimize data collection – not merely to offer ways of repairing damage already done.

s3kr1t

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

#Introduction

Similar to liberate, s3kr1t is primarily an abstraction library. However, rather than abstracting out platform differences, the goal is to provide abstraction from cryptographic libraries of the underlying operating system.

The library is best understood as a very narrow slice of an API for the specific cryptographic functions the other Interpeer sub-projects need.

Other than providing a stable API independent of cryptographic library used, this primarily simplifies the maintenance of builds. Cross-platform building is hard enough, so encapsulating some choices in a sub-project eases the burden on other libraries.

Security

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

spin_bit

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

#Introduction

This library is a tiny C++ header implementation of spin bit based RTT measurements in network traffic.

The design is inspired by QUIC[^cite-1], and based on Piet De Vaere's master thesis.

#Overview

The spin bit is a single bit that the client in a network connection sends, and the server reflects back. When the client receives a bit with the same value it has sent, it flips the bit for the next packet it sends. In this way, an observer in the middle can infer a round-trip and time it accordingly.

Surveillance Capitalism

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Surveillance capitalism refers to the practice of monetizing data collected about the users of a service. Doing so increases the incentives for collecting more user data, which in turn violates user privacy further.

The practice may be legal, if the user consents to the collection of data. Some businesses offer free services in exchange for the use of user data. Unfortunately, it is not always made sufficiently clear how the data is used, and whether it involves the collection of personally identifiable information.

Technical Sovereignty

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Technical Sovereignty refers to having access to knowledge and operational artifacts of digital technology, such that it can be freely used and adapted.

In a sense, it is a rewording of the Four Freedoms of the Free Software Definition. Though the rewording does not imply using OSI-approved licenses in published software, this is a reasonable interpretation.

Technical Sovereignty is one part of Digital Sovereignty.

#Definition

A possible definition of Technical Sovereignty could be:

vessel

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

#Introduction

Vessel is a container format for information-centric networking (ICN) resources, suitable also for streaming applications. It provides optional confidentiality via encryption, and permits multiple authors to contribute to the same resource in parallel.

Being a container format, it encapsulates arbitrary data. In order to support multiple authors, it provides an extensible mechanism by which the owner of the resource can specify which authors are permitted¹. As a side effect, vessel distinguishes between separate multiplexed data streams within a single container, which can also be used by applications to distribute related sub-resources.

wyrd

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

#Introduction

Wyrd is an implementation of a Conflict-free Replicated Data Type (CRDT) built to integrate with vessel, and thus provides a framework for collaborative editing. It represents a resource as a sequence of edits, which can be merged into a finalized state after synchronization.

#Status

Wyrd is completed in principle, but integration with vessel is ongoing. As such, it is not yet easy to synchronize files produced by wyrd incrementally. This is expected to change in early 2023.