[dingnuts]

the Internet Protocol, IP, is already peer to peer. Assign yourself an address (V6) and get a peer, assign them an address, plug in a cable, voila!

Get a switch and another computer and you have an Internet. Ok, we would generally call it an "intranet," but that's because -the- Internet with a capital I is specifically a net of intranets.

So, if you were to start an ISP, which is the proposal, you would buy an uplink to the rest of the Internet for your intranet that you just built, from another ISP or backbone provider.

But you don't have to do that, you could partner with another intranet, and have a separate Net. Similar to what happens in China actually.

My point is: the Internet is already peer to peer. You just have to use the technology. Thirty years ago every tech nerd knew how to start an ISP.

The only reason individuals don't do it as much anymore is because we want the ISP to lay dedicated cable for our connections, rather than just using the phone lines, and laying cable is really expensive.

But you could use phone or amateur radio (like the JS8 digital mode) if lower speeds are acceptable, or lay your own Ethernet or fiber if you're capable.

The only thing that makes today's Internet seem like it's not peer to peer is the investment needed to start an ISP with the performance modern consumers expect

[nostrademons]

IP is P2P, but a lot of the layers built on top of it are centralized, and very vulnerable to attack. DNS is hierarchical with 13 root name servers. Google is a private company, but if websearch ever goes offline, the utility of the Internet decreases dramatically. Some stupid percentage of webhosts are protected by Cloudflare; Cloudflare outages have taken large portions of the Internet offline. Same with AWS on the backend; when AWS has gone down, people find that a large number of the websites they depend upon go down too. Most people's consumer IPs are blocked off from the public Internet by their ISP and NAT.

Actually using an Internet based on IP addresses alone is ridiculously difficult. Quick, tell me how the IP protocol works using IP addresses alone! You can't type anything other than IP addresses into the address bar of your computer, and your browser can't make any secondary requests unless they're to a raw IP address. No using Google or Wikipedia unless you have their IP addresses memorized and have HOST file entries for all the secondary resources they request. You can't use HN to tell me; you need to find my computer's IP address and SSH in to me. Oh, and whatever certificate validation SSH does can't make any network requests to a DNS entry.

[dingnuts]

in a small network you just put the hostnames in /etc/hosts and you're done, or you set up a local DNS server. The GP asked about "making a p2p internet," and that's how it's done. Hostnames are not a hard problem.

Google Search is useless on a p2p internet. Why would you want to search the corporate network on your separate net? Doesn't make any sense. You wouldn't use the global DNS system in this scenario either, you can just set up your own -- DNS is hierarchical but there's no reason you cannot have your own roots, or just pass around hosts files like the old days, either on sneakernet or using another protocol

> You can't use HN to tell me

HN wouldn't be on my private "peer to peer" internet, it's on the regular internet. Set up a mirror or find a route to the regular one through any one of your PEERS.

I don't get it, I thought the GP wanted to know how to set up their own Internet, or thought that the Internet was centralized. It's not. Build your own network, be creative, replace DNS if you need to. The tech is there, it's well-established, well-tested, and we use it today for the regular internet.

The grandparent only needs to read some man-pages.

[pessimizer]

> DNS is hierarchical with 13 root name servers.

It's a closed network, we can just hardcode everyone's address.

> Google is a private company, but if websearch ever goes offline, the utility of the Internet decreases dramatically. Some stupid percentage of webhosts are protected by Cloudflare; Cloudflare outages have taken large portions of the Internet offline. Same with AWS on the backend; when AWS has gone down, people find that a large number of the websites they depend upon go down too. Most people's consumer IPs are blocked off from the public Internet by their ISP and NAT.

All of this is irrelevant on a private network. I don't think you understood the comment you were replying to. The Internet is a bunch of little internets mashed together. Instead of mashing your internet with the others, you can provide services internally. No, other people's websites will not necessarily be on it, but they will anyway, because you'll probably provide a tunnel out to the wider internet. Anyway, you already have the internet, use it like you always did. The internet police don't make you give up the internet if you set up your own network.

You may not be able to appreciate the value of a communication system without access to google (you can download Wikipedia and serve it yourself if you find it a useful tool and your connection to the wider internet is endangered.) I remember an internet without Google, and I liked it more. The only thing Google ever did that was interesting was pagerank, and pagerank, being not resilient at all, was completely obsoleted by SEO. Everything else they've done has been a result of taking advantage of when they controlled an important market (access to the wider resource of the internet) for a few years over a decade ago.

When the internet goes down, my home network doesn't become either ridiculously difficult or useless. It will without pause or much notice still serve dozens of terabytes of data to anyone I allow to connect to wireless, and allow us to communicate with each other.

BBS's were useful.