The Internet Is Broken: Idealistic Ideas for Building a GNU Network [pdf] (2014) | Hacker News Reader

The Internet Is Broken: Idealistic Ideas for Building a GNU Network [pdf] (2014)

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79 pointstodsacerdoti15 comments

Somewhat related - I really like the model of authenticating users via a wallet for the Ethereum network. It's not without it's problems and it's friction, but it creates a single public profile a user can use across different walled gardens. If you happen to use a wallet anyway, the experience of logging into various websites with it is rather glorious.

I often want the opposite, multiple profiles within the same network

It can do that too, as it supports essentially unlimited accounts.

Could use a 2014 in the title. One of the authors is the inventor of GNUnet.

Year added above. Thanks!

For what's worth there is a new book released on the evolution of Internet Architecture, perhaps it's even more relevant today compared yester days [1]. For the brief review on the book refer to this blog post [2].

[1] The Real Internet Architecture: Past, Present, and Future Evolution:

https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691255804/th...

[2] What is Network Architecture, Really? The Internet as a Case Study:

https://systemsapproach.org/2024/08/05/what-is-network-archi...

In a world of authenticated access, many security problems vanish.

Instead of implementing anonymity, which is baked into the internet, people should be trying to make authentication and privacy coexist and designing a network where authentication is built-in.

Did any projects come of this technical paper?

We've been mostly working on GNU Taler (https://taler.net/), the GNU Name System (https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9498.html) and GNU Anastasis (https://anastasis.lu/). They all relate.

What are the plans with GNUnet development? Some years ago there was an active p2p network, but it seems there have been multiple backward incompatible changes. I don't know it the network is still active now.

I'm personally primarily busy with GNU Taler, but still in touch with the more active developers. Major work is still happening on the transport subsystem with the goal of improving NAT traversal. Some work is being done to make the code run on Android. A messenger application (incl. text and voice) works --- if your network/NAT are happy, which most of the time they are not (see my first point). There is also fun cryptographic work happening on Reclaim:ID (SSI), and improvements to the GNU Name System (registrar implementation, automatic scalable import of large DNS zones). Plus some work on automatically testing the system using Linux network namespaces. But yes, quite regular breaking changes and still too frequent breakage on the transport layer means that the active network is tiny. OTOH, until NAT traversal reliably works (incl. our self-imposed restriction to not simply assume that Google runs a TURN server/ICE environment to relay our for us), GNUnet is really only suitable for developers anyway. So normal users sadly still cannot use it. But, development is still quite active.

Thank you for the detailed explanation. I'm glad to hear that gnunet is still slowly but actively developed. Recently I saw that the gnunet package in Debian is orphaned and will be removed by the end of month [1]. But if the network is currently not really usable, except for developers, then that is probably not a big deal.

[1]: https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gnunet

Yes routers learn details about the destination of the packets they carry, but this is not a problem for most purposes. The author goes on to make some vague insinuation that tls implementations are insecure but if they are the solution is to fix the implementation. The Internet is designed so that all types of implementations of networking software can communicate on equal terms which means that it is already an open protocol. L take

> Yes routers learn details about the destination of the packets they carry, but this is not a problem for most purposes.

For which purposes is it a problem?

Typically it involves some entity which can use traffic-data to strip away the privacy people think they have.

A simple example might be to determine the true identity of an HN poster: Even with the content encrypted, it's harder to hide the fact whenever Account X makes a post, Person Y is always sending packets to HN.

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