Hello everyone! I hung out with dan and bentley from seattle on mumble last
night to clear up some things about cjdns. Most of the following i already
knew but wanted to confirm my understanding before elaborating.
Before i continue, id like to say that while i prefer cjdns, i support
people deploying what they are more comfortable with. There exist several
connected communities with different protocols running. I heard of some in
Italy that connect batman-adv communties through babeld communities in the
middle.
So cjdns is indeed a mesh protocol and does not require the internet (which
is also a mesh net) to work. What it does require is a connection (radios,
wires, switches, etc.). It may have required the internet to get it off the
ground but telecommix helped a great deal with their ethernet interface
contribution.
And cjdns can act as a gateway to the internet or it can be completely
isolated from it. So you can provide internet access or you can have a
darknet (not to be confused with an anonymous darknet). Or you can connect
your local darknet to another local darknet over the internet.
While cjdns differs from other protocols in routing techniques, its not
because the developer ignored the work behind other protocols. Instead it
was felt that a different approach was needed. The approach started slow
but seems to be in a great condition now.
Routes are determined by bitshifting voodoo on the address packets and
lowest latency and lowest packet loss. Every node keeping track of routes
to addresses near its own address space.
As it stands now, cjdns operates on layers 2 & 3. It sets up routing tables
up to 1mb in size and prunes unused & poor connections (not sure if its
only when a limit is reached). It is not meant to anonymize traffic but
instead offer privacy through native encryption. Tor, i2p, and any other
service can operate on cjdns.
Im also told that the code is pleasant on the eyes, so you might like to
start with
https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/blob/master/admin/angel/Angel.c
It does throw people off initially because its not what they expect
(batman,,tor,internet access, etc).
Any specific concerns, please feel free to raise them. Ill be hanging out
again tonight and Ill see what answers i can get.
Alcides Gutierrez
http://e64.us