[HN Gopher] IPv8: Authenticated Private P2P Communication
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       IPv8: Authenticated Private P2P Communication
        
       Author : WillDaSilva
       Score  : 48 points
       Date   : 2021-02-23 19:50 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | crypt0x wrote:
       | The docs could benefit from a comparison against other existing
       | projects, like cjdns, i2p or zeronet which all have "slightly"
       | different trade offs.
        
       | darkhelmet wrote:
       | It's not even the first IPv8. There was an IPv8 doing the rounds
       | in the late 1990's for a while. I had some trouble finding
       | references, but I think this is the sanitized version:
       | https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-terrell-ip-spec-ipv7-ipv8-... I
       | have fond memories of reading about how stargates, galaxy routers
       | etc, etc were going to solve all our problems. The IPv8 in the
       | link is a far more pedestrian read.
        
       | sarnowski wrote:
       | Sounds like I2P[0]; what are the differences?
       | 
       | [0] https://geti2p.net/en/about/intro
        
       | pythonaut_16 wrote:
       | Calling this IPv8 seems pretty irresponsible when it is not an
       | IETF standard in any way.
        
         | omginternets wrote:
         | This, along with the lack of an RFC (see my top-level comment)
         | seals my judgement of this project as mere content marketing.
         | 
         | IMHO, the libp2p specifications [0] are much more interesting.
         | 
         | [0] https://libp2p.io/
        
         | ACAVJW4H wrote:
         | Like calling your own totally independent and unrelated
         | implementation of a neural network yolo.v5 This is just
         | clickbait.
        
         | imoverclocked wrote:
         | So much this. Please don't call this IP. We already have an
         | Internet Protocol and this project seems to work as a layer on
         | top of it, much like a P2P-VPN.
        
         | abvdasker wrote:
         | I find it funny and irreverent. There probably never will be an
         | IPv8 so there's no need to worry about a naming conflict.
        
           | wyldfire wrote:
           | I'm all for funny names but this one seems like it would just
           | cause more confusion than it's worth. The fact that they list
           | it as the sole FAQ probably means that many folks have been
           | confused.
           | 
           | I hereby request that they change the project name to one of
           | the not-too-perilous-but-frequently-selected-references-to-
           | Monty-Python for a very silly name indeed.
        
       | bawolff wrote:
       | Trying to ignore the name issue, what even is this? The security
       | goals are totally unstated, the network routability goals are
       | unstated. I dont see any links to an actual project objective.
       | 
       | It sounds like an encrypted overlay network over the internet.
       | Does it even aim to provide anonyminity? Is it just an
       | abstraction over network addresses to replace DNS and do NAT
       | hole-punching? Something else? What even is the goal here?
        
       | swiley wrote:
       | How is this different from TOR?
        
       | jaytaylor wrote:
       | I've been playing around with ipv8 recently (just for DS fun),
       | and it definitely can work and is pretty cool. Unfortunate that
       | it's currently Python-only, and the examples really lacked depth
       | / practical coverage.
       | 
       | Biggest complaint: The wire object serialization for messages was
       | a major PITA and I ended up resorting to packing everything into
       | a single JSON-encoded string.
       | 
       | On the topic of distributed secure networks, I've continued on to
       | combing through 0x-mesh, which is compelling to me because it's
       | go and they've reused other open source libs as much as possible.
       | A neatt approach with some higher level facilities compared to
       | ipv8.
       | 
       | https://github.com/0xProject/0x-mesh
        
       | c7DJTLrn wrote:
       | This caught my attention since I've been interested in a rethink
       | of Tor for a long time.
       | 
       | I'm a bit confused about this claim:
       | 
       | >No infrastructure dependency
       | 
       | How is this possible? To pierce NAT you need a rendezvous server
       | at the least.
        
         | infogulch wrote:
         | I2P?
        
         | gtirloni wrote:
         | UPnP-IGD
        
         | jlokier wrote:
         | If you can discover a peer who is willing to help and not
         | behind NAT, they can act as your rendezvous server, and either
         | relay traffic, help with NAT traversal, or help you find
         | another peer that might help instead.
         | 
         | Skype did something like this when it first came out.
        
           | c7DJTLrn wrote:
           | You'd need to scan for random hosts on the Internet and hope
           | they're running a client to do that, no?
        
             | colejohnson66 wrote:
             | Even BitTorrent's DHT requires somewhat hardcoded IPs for
             | nodes to assist in bootstraping IIRC.
        
       | ehutch79 wrote:
       | Can we flag github projects as having spam names?
        
       | nashashmi wrote:
       | Do we really need a separate IP-based protocol? I was thinking a
       | protocol parallel to hyper-text transfer like https but upgraded
       | with the features being proposed here.
        
       | federona wrote:
       | Seems like an Android client and a distributed key value store
       | with phone numbers tied to public keys is all you would need and
       | probably an erlang app like that written for Whatsapp back in the
       | day to build something useful from this.
        
       | bawolff wrote:
       | Stealing someone else's name is pretty obnoxious
        
       | omginternets wrote:
       | Is there a spec somewhere?
       | 
       | This kind of thing really benefits from a clear explanation of
       | how it works.
        
         | loup-vaillant wrote:
         | Came here to say this. The Libsodium dependency suggests
         | they're using bog standard cryptography that should be easy to
         | implement in a gazillion contexts (which is great). But we do
         | need a spec so independent implementations can arise.
         | 
         | That being said, https://py-
         | ipv8.readthedocs.io/en/latest/reference/serializa... seems to
         | provide at least part of what we need.
        
           | sumtechguy wrote:
           | Yeah I think RFC format would be more ideal?
        
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       (page generated 2021-02-23 23:03 UTC)