[tor-bugs] #4855 [Tor Relay]: Allowing TOR to use LAN and other connections, not only internet

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#4855: Allowing TOR to use LAN and other connections, not only internet
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 Reporter:  MirceaKitsune            |          Owner:                     
     Type:  enhancement              |         Status:  new                
 Priority:  normal                   |      Milestone:  Tor: very long term
Component:  Tor Relay                |        Version:  Tor: unspecified   
 Keywords:  lan,wireless,networking  |         Parent:                     
   Points:                           |   Actualpoints:                     
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Changes (by nickm):

  * milestone:  Tor: unspecified => Tor: very long term


Comment:

 This is a big architectural change[*], to go from an overlay network to a
 mesh network.  It's a neat idea, but there are a lot of research and
 deployment challenges that would need to get solved first.  (Not least of
 which is how to bootstrap a citizen-hosted meshnet up to critical mass.)

 If you're interested in this general direction, you might want to check
 out the "phantom" project.  I haven't reviewed their stuff, but I seem to
 recall that working as a meshnet was one of their explicit goals.

 Personally, I think that anonymity meshnets are promising, but they're
 going to have to follow a similar research-and-development path as
 anonymity overlay networks did: there's going to need to be a series of
 peer-reviewed designs for anonymizing meshnets, and a bunch of experience
 building meshnets in the wild, before anybody converges on a secure design
 worth building.

 [*] Actually, it's a batch of big architectural changes, since "going from
 node to node inside the cloud" implies going to an object-store kind of
 system (like freenet) rather than Tor's current data-transport
 architecture.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/4855#comment:1>
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