-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Check out OpenLibernet (http://openlibernet.org) They suggest a design for a fee-based mesh network. It's worth some studying, just to grasp the complexity of the problem.
Also, you will probably find little enthusiasm from Tor community for this. What actual problem does the fee-based network solve? Free market is the best mechanism* to allocate scarce resources. Bandwidth is not that scarce, while private and pseudonymous or anonymous Internet access is not that desired (which is demonstrated clearly by how almost anyone who knows about benefits of Tor, GNU or PGP doesn't even bother trying). The lack of demand leads to the fact that Tor works fine even without being terribly efficient. Nobody cares about effective free market solution, and it may be that nobody will until it's too late. Thus, with a fee-based network, you target a rather narrow initial audience---which is not bad at all in itself, but, it hence requires a design far elaborate than something that can fit into a short plain-text email message. And a *very* clear understanding why** you'd want something better than Tor in its present state---not just "because free market makes things better". Sure it does but 1) lots of engineers currently in the distributed networking will disagree; 2) a better thing will not necessarily survive unless it's so much better that even a blind (which in our case would be a casual user) will see it. - ---- * A thermodynamic term would fit better but I'm close to being ignorant in thermodynamics. ** Some examples: a) Tor is less secure than it could be because it is not attractive enough for users to run its exit nodes; b) it is at mild risk of extinction, for the same reason; c) running a BitTorrent client via Tor is still regarded a bad idea; d) setting up an onion server and advertising it is more difficult than it should be. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.21 (MingW32) iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJVQnFJAAoJEFrbru/Rghxvpd8H/3TJm8kxDHhkR9ezRs+glRv7 N4QNT/lsp510kjj6ygEY62orXd41yO9BcpIBUNUFCu3iM7kurd9OpW9swqn8HG2P mY7X9Czg9oWsaXDmhZ9S/utjPk6X5FGOEZBiB8+jRiNoVq1BenYuFm5BWUtFe9Rd UjO0QWm0WoquS9+eV3iBpMBYWGn6RReyw3sO5YcVmF5g5t9euhERpv2NRn4LEFU8 8fjGMrxY0VvEIEU08bdrafYJy1eLwM8ZHFuNFVxWmUnvRMyAspPTimRX8Uq/0FMf jBbTkfND1uDTdZDtWBnYaxBag23djGFuhKE55L5AMe7oYQuoMCuhehdkKQfJfuw= =0GHv -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- tor-talk mailing list - [email protected] To unsubscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk
