[woah]

Hey, add http://altheamesh.com to your list. We are creating a system where routers pay each other per byte for bandwidth, and packets are routed along the best and cheapest routes.

To address CJDNS, it’s a project that inspired a lot of people, but it’s not actually used for internet access. It’s mostly used by people who are connecting to it over their existing ISPs. This is because it is not good at finding efficient routes. People trying to set up an efficient network will use distance vector protocols like Babel or Batman. We have some patches to Babel that enable our price based routing. To my knowledge CJDNS is not used by any mesh networks actually providing people with internet access.

Why people connect to CJDNS over their ISPs, I’m not sure, but who am I to judge what people do in their spare time. My guess is that it’s easier than actually doing the work of setting up a real network but they can still feel like they are part of a “mesh network”.

[mnzaki]

Cool project (altheamesh.com) but please don't spread FUD about CJDNS...

What do you mean by "internet access"? If you mean access to the "commercial internet" then I assure you a lot of CJDNS peers provide gateways to the "clearnet", as they like to call it, and traffic gets routed to it when needed.

A lot of the nodes are connected over existing infrastructure because infrastructure is hard; but yet there are already several dozens of thousands of wireless mesh nodes running CJDNS. For one example of a network (that is not over existing ISPs): https://www.freifunk-karte.de/ and I'm sure you can google for more. The CJDNS project clearly promotes setting up wireless mesh over going with your existing infra.

I believe the flexibility to be part overlay part independent at the same time is a powerful boon to the project actually. Perhaps that's why there are 100s of thousands of CJDNS nodes around the globe?

Regarding routing, CJDNS uses "source routing" which has various advantages. All the satisfied nodes running CJDNS don't seem to be complaining about the routing efficiency.... BATMAN is superior when nodes are actually changing location (i.e. mobile mesh networks), which is not the intended use-case here (CJDNS nodes are at fixed locations and peering connectiongs are set up manually by exchanging keys out-of-band). Also BATMAN is only a routing protocol whereas CJDNS does address allocation and cryptographic peer auth as well, and the routing protocol can actually be changed anyway.

[mnzaki]

One final note, I personally prefer networks where the incentive to support the network is simply because the members want to see it succeed (mutual benefit all around), not because each node wants to accumulate cryptocurrency.

And it seems to be working just fine without cryptocurrency being involved. Call me naive but I think it's possible to motivate people without money.

[tscs37]

>What do you mean by "internet access"? If you mean access to the "commercial internet" then I assure you a lot of CJDNS peers provide gateways to the "clearnet", as they like to call it, and traffic gets routed to it when needed.

In this case "internet access" refers to access to the big backbones of ISPs that allow CJDNS peers to exchange data. If you don't have an ISP to connect you up to the larger networks a CJDNS peer will not be able to send any data anywhere.

Or how does CJDNS send data across the transatlantic fibre without an ISP?

[mnzaki]

It was sorta rhetorical to make a point about 'internet' meaning just interconnected networks :D And any wireless mesh based network will face the same issue (my reply was mainly about FUD against CJDNS, and some implication that http://altheamesh.com/ is superior because ????)

But anyway, access to the commercial internet and sending data over the transatlantic obviously need "normal" ISPs, but as others have noted below (replies to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16135626) that's not the "big issue".

[woah]

Why would I imply that Althea is superior to CJDNS? They are not the same kind of thing. I was relating my experiences as an engineer that assessed CJDNS for my project. You’ve somehow taken it as an attack on a sacred cow.

[woah]

Are you implying that Freifunk uses CJDNS? This is not true. I am not “spreading FUD” about CJDNS. Althea is not superior to CJDNS, because it’s not a competition. We looked at CJDNS when building Althea and found that Babel or Batman (which is what Freifunk actually uses) were much more efficient and effective. They also don’t roll routing, address allocation, and crypto into one huge ball of code.