[tor-talk] Decentralized internet with Tor

[Brian Barker]

Hi Tor Talk,

I've been pondering over some stuff regarding net neutrality, Tor, etc.
 There are a number of people interested in decentralizing the internet via
self-hosted mesh network nodes.  Basically, everyone hosts a node and they
all link up to create a wide-area mesh net.  To summarize my thoughts, I'll
quote what I just posted to /r/darknetplan about this (full post
<http://www.reddit.com/r/darknetplan/comments/27e9h7/mesh_net_with_tor_tor_coin/>
):

I recently wondered why we didn't just make a mass, decentralized network
> by linking self-hosted nodes. As is typical with the internet, a little
> googling and I find others have similar thoughts. I thought I'd share a few
> of my own on this.



CJDNS seems alright, but why not build on some things out there that
> already solve similar problems? We have Tor, which is great at bouncing
> around nodes to get to a distant endpoint, has end-to-end encryption, and
> more. Granted, Tor is currently built to purposefully take a less-efficient
> route in the name of obscurity, but adapting that to a mesh network seems
> less work than starting from scratch.



Getting people to host nodes could be an issue over time. It will take
> hardware, electricity and a sizable crowd of those willing to contribute.
> The Tor group just released their plan for TorCoin
> <https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7r4osQgWVqKTHdxTlowUVpsVmJRcjF3Y3dtcTVscFhEaW5F/view?sle=true>
>  to deal with this issue. It's a method of mining TorCoins as you host a
> node, using the proof-of-work schemes to verify you contributed a given
> amount to the network. Seems like a great way to make this more popular.


> Lastly, the Grugq has a project called Portal
> <https://github.com/grugq/portal> which configures routers as tor-only
> network nodes. There's also a Raspberry Pi version
> <https://github.com/grugq/PORTALofPi>. These could be a fantastic
> starting point to creating easily-configurable devices to put on the mesh
> net.


I would love to hear more from Tor experts or anyone else interested in how
this could work.