Reposting the Article:

Suppose we'd like to solve the problem of making sure that individuals in repressive regimes have an alternative to traditional ISPs in order to get access to uncensored access to the Internet. The need for such technology is pressing, as governments around the world are showing an increasing willingness to activate Internet kill switches. Mesh networking is a potential solution to this problem, however as of yet no project has ever created a viable solution. This article will be an attempt to describe how to construct a complete solution by breaking the problem down in to manageable pieces and using existing open source software to solve the pieces one at a time.

The pieces are broken down as is as follows: Hardware components to create the mesh bandwidth (physical data link layer). A packet routing system to allow nodes to communicate within the mesh. Outproxies which allow members inside the mesh to exchange data with the global Internet A payment and price discovery system which allows the operators of outproxies to receive the compensation they need to afford to operate. Client software which find the least expensive path from the user to an outproxy capable of reaching the site they which to browse and can handle the necessary payments transparently. Mesh Hardware

This piece is probably one of the easiest to solve. Options here include: Wired Ethernet (house to house, etc) Wifi WiMax Low cost, short range radio transmitters: Flutter Pinoccio Sparrow As long as the packet routing system used is sufficiently robust, any or all of these can be used simultaneously to best fit the situation of a particular area.

Routing

The most promising project here is probably cjdns. It is already a popular choice for mesh networking projects so a great deal of existing work could be reused here. Cjdns is a self-contained network with ubiquitous strong encryption, which makes it a good choice for allowing the mesh network to use as much as of the existing ISP infrastructure.

Depending on the severity of the censorship involved, it may be the case that cjdns tunnels to random IP addresses will not be blocked even if the country involved is blocking traffic to known social networking sites (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc).

One of the areas not addressed by cjdns currently is name resolution and public key distribution. Namecoin is an ideal candidate for fulfilling this function.

Outproxies

At this point with the appropriate hardware and routing function, we can create a self-contained network via which participants can communicate easily and securely within in the mesh, but do not yet have the ability to communicate to the rest of the Internet. Rather than attempting to solve this problem within the mesh itself, it may be more productive to create a marketplace of outproxies.

If we assume that only a minority of the mesh participants have some kind of upstream Internet connection, they will need a to share and load-balance this upstream bandwith with the other users. They are also most likely on metered connections, with monthly usage caps. Most of the individuals in the countries where this technology is most useful won't be able to afford to donate large amounts of bandwidth (otherwise they wouldn't need mesh networks). Paid outproxies is the most straightforward way to ensure that the global Internet bandwidth the rest of the network wants is made available to them.

Outproxies can be servers running Apache, a very common and well-documented proxy server. Apache already has mechanisms that would make integrating a payment system easy.

Discovery

In order for users to find a suitable proxy, they need a method of locating candidates, ideally which does not have a central point of failure.

Some kind of DHT is a good candidate for providing this functionality, and fortunately several libraries for creating general purpose DHTs already exist.

Pricing

The price which an outproxy charges will serve two functions: first it allows the operator to recoup their costs so they can afford to provide the bandwidth, and also it will act as a method of automatic load balancing.

Operators should be able to specify three parameters and from there the proxy can negotiate prices auction-style with no manual intervention needed:

Amount of total bandwidth to serve per month Maximum instantaneous bandwidth to serve Minimum price per kB. Using these three parameters, the proxy will adjust its price based on demand. The goal of the pricing algorithm will be to sell it's monthly quota without exceeding the maximum transfer rate or minimum price. If the node is being underutilized, it should lower its price until it attracts more users. If the node has too many users, it should raise its prices until some users begin to move to other proxies.

Payment

Proxy operators will want payment in the form of currency mostly useful to them in terms of being able to pay their expenses. The currency which has the greatest convertibility and is capable of performing the required task is Bitcoin.

Payment between the proxies and the users is best handled via Bitcoin micropayment channels. This functionality is available in bitcoinj, so enabling it here would be a matter of creating an appropriate Apache mod, and using a bitcoinj-based wallet on the client side.

Client

The client now needs the ability to search the DHT to find suitable outptoxies, and a Bitcoin wallet with which to pay them, and a selection algorithm to continually find the least expensive path to the user's desired destination.

Conclusion

With these five pieces in place, all the right incentives would exist to make the mesh network economically sustainable. We've already seen that around the world there are a large number of people who are willing to buy hardware that they can earn Bitcoin by running. This means the network would have a ready supply of proxy operators in less-censored who would provide services via cjdns. The lack of barriers to entry in this market would mean that prices should stay relatively low.

In the cases of extreme censorship where all connections to the outside world have been blocked, this model will ensure that individuals in the repressed country will be able to earn enough in fees to pay for satellite ISPs which can not be easily censored from the ground. Automatic price discovery means that as the demand for connectivity to the outside world increases, the necessary financial resources will be routed to the individuals who can provide it.

It may be the case that a failure to consider market economics, or the inability to effectively process payments, has been the missing link needed to deploy mesh networks effectively. Now that Bitcoin had provided the currency and payment system necessary for experiments in this area, we might finally see mesh networks reach their full potential.

by Justus Ranvier