Re: ad-hoc wifi news transport

Ethan Carter <ec1828@somewhere.edu> writes:

bp@www.zefox.net writes:
>

Ethan Carter <ec1828@gmail.com> wrote:

Toaster <toaster@dne3.net> writes:
 

Posting this here (was on comp.misc)
>
I was researching NNTP and came across this project:
>
https://github.com/nntpchan/nntpchan/
>
Using NNTP as a base protocol for other services. Personally, I think
it's a great idea, and it got me thinking.
>
Wireless ad-hoc mesh networks are an interest of mine. Normally the
purpose of the network is to route traditional TCP/IP protocol stacks
on top of whatever routing technology (like babel). But for radios,
they broadcast out naturally, it seems like a service like news/store
and forward message sending would be a natural fit.
>
The idea is to use a smart flooding algorithm, like uflood
(https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/~jaya/uflood_thesis.pdf) and skip all the
routing/high speed packet delivery problems and just flood news
articles over it. I think it would be a good fit.
>
Usenet is already decentralized, decentralizing the infrastructure seems
like a cool idea. If I were going to do it, I'd add some kind of
proof-of-work scheme to prevent spamming the network. Bandwidth would
be low due to the air-time of a large mesh network being saturated, but
I see that as a plus, prevents abuse (spamming binaries on the net).
>
It's half baked, but I wanted to put my thoughts out there and see if
other work has already been done on something like this.

 
Everything in your post looks interesting, but I'm reading it all for
the first time.  I would have liked a slower presentation of everything.
For instance, nntpchan.net is down.  I'm asking for help on their IRC
channel at Rizon.  It's not clear what it aims to achieve, but it looks
interesting.
 
What I'm working on right now is an NNTP server for a small community.
So far the server is not able to peer itself with another one.  Where am
I going?  I see a lot of websites hosting forums.  That's the wrong
thing to do.  These forums should have an interface-independent storage
that provides the data for a web interface as well as others such as
NNTP itself.
 
I'm beginning the work with the NNTP protocol because it allows us to
use the system right away with all the NNTP clients out there.  But I
plan to build an HTTP API with which people can build their web
preferred web interface and then power their communities.
 
But I'm aware you're talking about something considerably lower level
here---which is also interesting.  Perhaps I could keep the idea in mind
while I work on this project.

>
To a degree, ad-hoc wifi bears some resemblance to the dialup connections
used in the days of UUCP. I wonder if a UUCP-like approach, at some level
in the stack, might be useful.

>
A UUCP approach sounds nice for peering.  Now, typically servers would
peer by plain TCP, so the server should plan for a UUCP-type of exchange
ahead of time.  I am not there yet, but I'll keep that in mind.  I
believe a UUCP-type of exchange might be too much for a first release
with peering support.  I also think we should take advantage of what's
available.  I think TCP plus NNTP is what the most popular servers do.
>

AIUI, NNTP relies on always-on, always-same network connections.

>
I think a server can come online, fetch all articles their peers want to
deliver and then disconnect.  But, yes, I think peers register their
peers and communicate with the same ones always.  I don't think we
should go towards a discovery of peers, say.
>

UUCP functions with mostly-off, manually configured connections. That
seems like dialup.

>
That makes sense.

By the way, look at what John Goerzen has posted today on
comp.mail.uccp.  We should look into NNCP and NNCPNET.  The whole
project looks pretty important.  I will make sure I understand it before
I continue my work on this NNTP server.  Whatever I do, it should fit in
well with NNCPNET.  I'm going to embrace the project.

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Message-ID: <slrnvv03u1.18ctm.jgoerzen@slrnh.complete.org>
From: John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp
Subject: NNCPNET, the successor to UUCP networks, now available
Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2025 16:58:41 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: Alexandria NNCP news system
Injection-Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2025 16:58:41 -0000 (UTC)
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User-Agent: slrn/1.0.3 (Linux)

Hi everyone,

I've mentioned before that NNCP is to UUCP what ssh is to telnet.

I've been thinking about this for a LONG time, and have finally done it:
created software to run an email network over NNCP.

You can read about it here:

https://salsa.debian.org/jgoerzen/docker-nncpnet-mailnode/-/wikis/home

Basically, it is a Docker container (multi-arch, so you can also run it
on a Raspberry Pi) that bundles these components:

* Exim mail server

* NNCP

* Verification and routing tools I wrote

* Automated nodelist tools - it will freq a nodelist from quux daily and
  update its configuration accordingly.  I also updated tooling on quux
  to support this.

It is open to all.  The homepage has a more extensive list of features.

I even have a mailing list running on-net; see
https://salsa.debian.org/jgoerzen/docker-nncpnet-mailnode/-/wikis/interesting-addresses

There is EXTENSIVE documentation, and of course the source to the whole
thing is available.

In the future, I hope to make an Internet gateway available (on a purely
opt-in basis) as well.

Please feel free to ask any questions, and I hope to receive NNCP email
from you soon!

- John
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