Ask HN: What OSS projects exist for a distributed internet?

11 points by ryanisnan 6y ago ↗ HN

Centralized control over the internet is becoming a bigger and bigger risk for the freedom and autonomy of people all over the globe.

As countries experiment with (and grow more confident using) internet isolation/kill switches, we are losing our right to be able to speak up unconditionally, potentially when it matters the most.

To combat this, I am curious what open source projects exist to create a distributed internet?

2 comments

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cjbprime 6y ago ↗

I don't agree that countries are likely to disconnect themselves from the global Internet. It's economically suicidal. It's the sort of thing they might do only for 24 hours during a popular uprising. Even then, it's a large risk to take.

If they haven't totally disconnected from the Internet, people can use Tor, a VPN, etc.

fl0under 6y ago ↗

There are projects like Yggdrasil [0] and cjdns [1] which are encrypted, distributed networks. People will generally use these networks on top of the existing internet infrastructure though, because for now that is the most prevalent way computers are connected to each other. But there is nothing stopping people setting up their own mesh networks which could completly or partially avoid the existing internet infrastructure which governments have control over.

Also you may be interested in the SAFE network [2], it's not live yet but been in the works for some time and is getting close, more detail at [3].

0. https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/

1. https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns

2. https://safenetwork.org/

3. https://primer.safenetwork.org/