[MLB-WIRELESS] Applications on the melb-wireless network

dwayne dwayne at pobox.com
Tue Mar 19 20:18:21 EST 2002


wow, did your fingers get sore?

Ben Anderson wrote:
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Toliman" <toliman at ihug.com.au>
> > nodes to share traffic. it's a utopian ideal. he also predicted
> > micropayments, which are pretty much only in advertising but 7 years on,


No he didn't, micropayments were around long before then. DEC's millicent idea
was being trialled in 95, not to mention Chaum's stuff.


> If we go guerilla fibre to the desktop, rough calculations suggest we can
> install the network at similar cost of a years cable internet access...
> Yes, I do realise that this calculation relies on high-density sign-up --
> which is doable, though it means a fairly impressive 'neighbourhood
> co-operation' and doorknocking type scheme to get everyone onboard...
> Finance could be looked at, for those with "600 upfront" issues...

This is ultra-cool, but highly unlikely.  Mainly because of council regs.
There have been people trying this overseas, The Little Garden in SF did it
years ago, as did the Seattle Networking Co-Op or whatever they were called. 
But they got local govt permission.

Seattle People's Internet Collective
damn, no links. Oh well.

Now, I'd like to think councils will think this is great, but like I said
earlier, it was tried in Williamstown and the council refused permission.  And
I seem to recall something about not running comms cables across property
lines without a carrier's license.



> 'held back or slowed down' -- implies we need large buffers on the
> backbone...  And then that limits the usability of the network...  if ping
> times go to 30 seconds, the usefulness drops so that the only application
> that's really useful is shifting bulk amounts of data around -- exactly the
> type of traffic that's likely to _cause_ the congestion.  So effectivly,
> games, IP phone, IRC, chatting, all get DoS'd by people trading mp3's.  If
> we don't mind doing nothing but trading mp3's, then fine, just do a blind
> queue.  Or is there another solution that you're proposing to this problem
> that I'm not reading into your response properly?

Doesn't tcp/ip have a priority which is never used?  That was the basis of
varian's pay-for-priority scheme years ago, I'm assuming that is still the
case.  
 

> That's not so much my core point.  Regardless of the total bandwidth we have
> available, we need a way to be able to have low-latency traffic on the
> network, without simply banning any high bandwidth applications.  And it
> should be done in some sort of a 'fair' way.  This is why I proposed the
> concept of 'mojo' (still looking for another name...).

Yeah, see previous comment.
 

> (the U stands for ubiquitous, not utopian...  utopian is infinite infinite,
> and can't happen...  Ubiquitousness is possible, utopia realistically isn't)
> When a client *moves* they'd have to retransmit their location back to some
> fixed 'home' node for that device.  Whether it's dns-like or not, I haven't
> decided yet.  I haven't found an alterative that solves the scalability
> problem while still allowing nodes to roam on the network.  If you can see
> one, please pipe up :)

I have a link to something which seems to cover this. An MIT doctoral thesis.
I have a mirror if it is not online.

from: http://www.aetherwire.com/UWBWG_Archive/msg00020.html
---------
During the meeting at Interval Research last week, the thesis entitled
"Decentralized Channel Management in Scalable Multihop Spread-Spectrum
Packet Radio Networks" by Timothy Jason Shepard then a student at MIT
came up. I came up because his concept practically demands UWB.
---------

aha!

this was REALLY hard to find:
ftp://ftp.tapr.org/ss/MIT-LCS-TR-670.pdf
ftp://ftp.tapr.org/ss/MIT-LCS-TR-670.ps


and in fact I ***highly*** recommend trawling through

ftp://ftp.tapr.org/ss/


and the entire 

http://www.tapr.org/ website.

These guys have been doing spread-spectrum research and design since at LEAST
94, if not earlier.


 
> Hmmm, another example...  DeCSS can be done with a prime number.  Numbers
> are not illegal, and don't make sense to be made illegal.  When data is
> encrypted, they become just numbers without the key.  I'm pretty sure
> there's been a test case on this, which means the liability can be
> effectilvy dissipated.  Or at very least, assuming it still is illegal, the
> nodes are protected by the security of the encryption -- nobody knows what
> the data is unless they have a key.  It's going to be difficult to prosecute
> someone for a number that's difficult/impossible to prove exactly what it's
> content decrypts to.

In the UK you'll go to gaol for refusing to reveal your passphrase and secret
key.
I'm not sure if that is the case here, but it has been illegal to use ANY
encryption method the govt cannot circumvent since World War 2.
 

> Give me examples of abuse, and I'll design defenses into the initial
> specification.

Rowry!     <---- (authentic frontier gibberish)
 

> Powerful enough machine == all the computers in the world for hundreds of
> years (including machines that follow mores law from the future) means that
> the network will work for now.  

Except for in britain where they'll just assume the worst and sentence
accordingly  (really, that's how the law works).

I, personally, would not rely on unbreakable encryption since they can break
*you* to get at your encryption.


> Yes, the encryption will need to improve
> along with the speed of computers to maintain the safety of the networks
> nodes. 

Watch legal developments as well.

>  High speed, high security encryption is not beyond cheap technology
> thesedays.  a pentium 200 can encrypt DES at around 10Mbits/sec.
> A node having kiddie porn does in **no way guarantee** that the nodes around
> it are guilty of broadcasting it.  The data could have come on CD, on a
> wired network, on a roaming wireless node...  And being encrypted, unless
> someone is sitting there taking a copy of the network layer data, then it's
> going to be basically impossible to prove beyond any kind of reasonable
> doubt.

Which ASIO will do they moment they smell a rat, and they probably WILL ANYWAY
until they get the hang of what we are doing, just to be safe and sure.

We are in heady times for this sort of power-to-the-people stuff.

> I realise GPS has privacy issues, but I'm at a loss to find an alternative
> technology that both allows the network to scale, and protect privacy
> effectivly.

GPS is not as accurate as you think.  No one will be able to find your house
with just GPS co-ordinates.

I think  :-/
 
Dwayne

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