They do wade into the IP / transport territory a bit but those are not the 6 companies I was referring to. I was thinking of Verizon / AT&T / Lumen / Zayo / etc.
Those for sure… in the US.
Which international ties to they have? I know Vodafone is present in a lot of countries (the brand, it’s a different company altogether in each country) but don’t know many more… nor do i know of any that has a global monopoly of network nodes.
Lumen and Verizon both have subsea cable connections to Europe. EXA Infrastructure is in the process of acquiring Aqua Comms, both of which own subsea cables. Google, MS, and Meta have all invested in subsea infrastructure to varying degrees as well. These are not monopolies in the classic sense of the word but they’re not exactly owned by benevolent interests either.
That said, the point is that a malicious government with sufficient pull, for example the current Trump administration, wouldn’t have to bully very many people to severely limit the flow of information between North America and Europe. So much of the internet depends on US infrastructure that this wouldn’t be terribly far off from censoring the entire internet. In that scenario there isn’t much that can be done about it. Europe can control their own information flow to Asia and Africa but at minimum this would be a severe disruption for a significant amount of time. Other entities might take such an opportunity to impose their own restrictions and make the situation even worse.
So do a million different forms of encryption. That doesn’t make the infrastructure any less centralized. If the people who own the fiber decide to only allow pre-approved types of traffic to cross their networks then it doesn’t make any difference what sort of protocols exist. Building free cross-country or subsea fiber routes is not economically viable and the internet doesn’t exist without them.
I2P’s protocols are efficient on most platforms, including cell phones, and secure for most threat models. However, there are several areas which require further improvement to meet the needs of those facing powerful state-sponsored adversaries, and to meet the threats of continued cryptographic advances and ever-increasing computing power.
The people involved in the project you’re referring to acknowledge that governments can, by influencing carrier policy, disrupt and subvert the project’s intended function. Why then are you implying they are incorrect?
While there are interesting projects in that list, everything that I see is either only useful in a local setting, like wireless mesh networks and their derivative protocols, or assumes that no one is actively restricting what can be transmitted over the privately owned long haul fiber networks that make up the backbone of the internet. How would someone in Seattle transmit more data than can be sent via a ham radio equivalent signal to someone in New York without the use of those fiber networks?
No it isn’t. Either traffic is allowed to flow freely or it isn’t. Once you start down the “isn’t” path there’s not much that can be done to get around the fact that a few people control a huge chunk of the infrastructure.
You’d need to decentralize the Internet itself. Good luck with that one…
What do you mean by that? Most of the infrastructure that makes up the internet is owned by like 6 companies.
GAFAM holds a large chunk of social media HTTP/S traffic, plus cloud crap. That’s all application layer.
Do they own main trunk IP routers too?
They do wade into the IP / transport territory a bit but those are not the 6 companies I was referring to. I was thinking of Verizon / AT&T / Lumen / Zayo / etc.
Those for sure… in the US.
Which international ties to they have? I know Vodafone is present in a lot of countries (the brand, it’s a different company altogether in each country) but don’t know many more… nor do i know of any that has a global monopoly of network nodes.
Lumen and Verizon both have subsea cable connections to Europe. EXA Infrastructure is in the process of acquiring Aqua Comms, both of which own subsea cables. Google, MS, and Meta have all invested in subsea infrastructure to varying degrees as well. These are not monopolies in the classic sense of the word but they’re not exactly owned by benevolent interests either.
That said, the point is that a malicious government with sufficient pull, for example the current Trump administration, wouldn’t have to bully very many people to severely limit the flow of information between North America and Europe. So much of the internet depends on US infrastructure that this wouldn’t be terribly far off from censoring the entire internet. In that scenario there isn’t much that can be done about it. Europe can control their own information flow to Asia and Africa but at minimum this would be a severe disruption for a significant amount of time. Other entities might take such an opportunity to impose their own restrictions and make the situation even worse.
I2p exists
So do a million different forms of encryption. That doesn’t make the infrastructure any less centralized. If the people who own the fiber decide to only allow pre-approved types of traffic to cross their networks then it doesn’t make any difference what sort of protocols exist. Building free cross-country or subsea fiber routes is not economically viable and the internet doesn’t exist without them.
Please look into how i2p works. It’s not just some form of encryption.
Please explain how you can bypass carrier enforced traffic shaping policy.
From geti2p.net:
The people involved in the project you’re referring to acknowledge that governments can, by influencing carrier policy, disrupt and subvert the project’s intended function. Why then are you implying they are incorrect?
This could give some helpful insights: https://github.com/redecentralize/alternative-internet?tab=readme-ov-file#networking
While there are interesting projects in that list, everything that I see is either only useful in a local setting, like wireless mesh networks and their derivative protocols, or assumes that no one is actively restricting what can be transmitted over the privately owned long haul fiber networks that make up the backbone of the internet. How would someone in Seattle transmit more data than can be sent via a ham radio equivalent signal to someone in New York without the use of those fiber networks?
You are arguing a different point here than you were above and I’m not going to entertain the misdirect.
Perhaps you misunderstood my point in your haste to make a complicated problem seem simple but no, my argument has not changed.
That’s a very different story than requiring I’d for some websites
No it isn’t. Either traffic is allowed to flow freely or it isn’t. Once you start down the “isn’t” path there’s not much that can be done to get around the fact that a few people control a huge chunk of the infrastructure.