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Notre Documentation
Notre Documentation
How to reach or run a website on Hyperboria, the Cjdns-propelled overlay network (a darknet indeed)
Hi, in this series of messages we'll discuss about an alternative way to reach and share multimedia web content which is, basically, a darknet. Please don't feel afraid, it's a friendly one, called Hyperboria. More of a trusted, friend-to-friend network, laid over the internet with in mind the idea to solve many issues that plague existing networks, especially concerns about privacy, scalability, and security.
You may have read from my pen here before, and know I maintain a netlabel called Crem Road. We got a website. This website is slow, costly. We got an Hyperboria site, which is easy, way more easy, for us to maintain, to run, simply on an home-housed inexpensive single board computer bought brand new for about €35 years ago, which allows us to serve audio and video with a decent power with no other cost that our fiber link monthly fee.
The basis
Cjdns, a shorthand for Caleb James DeLisle Network Stack, is a piece of software created more than one decade ago by, guess, Caleb James DeLisle, that you can install on some computers to allow them then to be a part of an "overlay" network : these computers will route data from one of them to another, and any computer on this network will be able to communicate with any other computer belonging also to this "overlay" network. Besides this, these communication are fully end-to-end encrypted and authenticated at the lowest possible level, making impossible
The peering
Hyperboria is the name of the global network of computers communicating together with Cjdns. People can choose to start to share they own access to this network with someone else. Giving access to someone else to the network, assuming you are already connected to it, is called "peering". This is the "friend to friend" aspect of the network. Note that there is currently (2024) some "public peering" servers that just accept anyone for peering with. They publicly announce their credentials and all you have to do is to add them to your own Cjdns piece of software running on your own computer to join Hyperboria.
The end of NAT
All these computers are natively speaking to each other just like if they were on a same, unified, global network. Did you ever heard of NAT, uPnP, port forwarding, availability of full stack address, and other wallet-in-the-garden means which will let your devices communicate with another device over Internet only if you choose to afford the cost of a centralized intermediate ?
With Hyperboria, it's just over. The overlay network gives you full duplex communication at worldwide scale. Then, to host your own brick of application on your hardware, at your home, with nothing to rent, nothing to pay.
How does it looks like
Most if not any common applications of Internet can work out-of-the-box over Hyperboria, like websites. If you were already connected to Hyperboria, you could browse the Crem Road hyped website straight for your web browser simply by following this link :
http://[fc71:fa3a:414d:fe82:f465:369b:141a:f8c]/cremroad
Naturally now if you click on this link, it will lead you nowhere. "fc71:fa3a:414d:fe82:f465:369b:141a:f8c" is an Hyperboria address, to be accurate the one of our particular machine on the Hyperboria network. Reaching this machine, which hosts an HTTP server (the first part of the address indicates that this link is a "web", as know as HTTP, link, waiting for a web server at the other side to reply and deliver content), would require that you can reach this IPv6 address. But this way, we are also allowed to be reachable by you, not matter behind which ISP "box" (router, modem-router) we are buried in. All we, all you need, is to be peering in a "overlay" way with another Hyperboria machine. And we can reach each other.
You may have read from my pen here before, and know I maintain a netlabel called Crem Road. We got a website. This website is slow, costly. We got an Hyperboria site, which is easy, way more easy, for us to maintain, to run, simply on an home-housed inexpensive single board computer bought brand new for about €35 years ago, which allows us to serve audio and video with a decent power with no other cost that our fiber link monthly fee.
The basis
Cjdns, a shorthand for Caleb James DeLisle Network Stack, is a piece of software created more than one decade ago by, guess, Caleb James DeLisle, that you can install on some computers to allow them then to be a part of an "overlay" network : these computers will route data from one of them to another, and any computer on this network will be able to communicate with any other computer belonging also to this "overlay" network. Besides this, these communication are fully end-to-end encrypted and authenticated at the lowest possible level, making impossible
- to counterfeit information transiting by the network : once a communication is established, you can be sure that it is the sheer message sent by the sender. Relays over its path are not able to access or alter it.
- to impersonate another sender or receiver : since cryptography ensure the safety of the communication, you can be sure that the people talking to you, or the people you are talking to, is owning the original cryptographic keys securing the communication.
The peering
Hyperboria is the name of the global network of computers communicating together with Cjdns. People can choose to start to share they own access to this network with someone else. Giving access to someone else to the network, assuming you are already connected to it, is called "peering". This is the "friend to friend" aspect of the network. Note that there is currently (2024) some "public peering" servers that just accept anyone for peering with. They publicly announce their credentials and all you have to do is to add them to your own Cjdns piece of software running on your own computer to join Hyperboria.
The end of NAT
All these computers are natively speaking to each other just like if they were on a same, unified, global network. Did you ever heard of NAT, uPnP, port forwarding, availability of full stack address, and other wallet-in-the-garden means which will let your devices communicate with another device over Internet only if you choose to afford the cost of a centralized intermediate ?
With Hyperboria, it's just over. The overlay network gives you full duplex communication at worldwide scale. Then, to host your own brick of application on your hardware, at your home, with nothing to rent, nothing to pay.
How does it looks like
Most if not any common applications of Internet can work out-of-the-box over Hyperboria, like websites. If you were already connected to Hyperboria, you could browse the Crem Road hyped website straight for your web browser simply by following this link :
http://[fc71:fa3a:414d:fe82:f465:369b:141a:f8c]/cremroad
Naturally now if you click on this link, it will lead you nowhere. "fc71:fa3a:414d:fe82:f465:369b:141a:f8c" is an Hyperboria address, to be accurate the one of our particular machine on the Hyperboria network. Reaching this machine, which hosts an HTTP server (the first part of the address indicates that this link is a "web", as know as HTTP, link, waiting for a web server at the other side to reply and deliver content), would require that you can reach this IPv6 address. But this way, we are also allowed to be reachable by you, not matter behind which ISP "box" (router, modem-router) we are buried in. All we, all you need, is to be peering in a "overlay" way with another Hyperboria machine. And we can reach each other.
Réponses
The system of choice remains Linux, which is needed whenever you want to to whatever serious with a computer with usability and versatility in mind since many years. That's not everybody who runs or is able to install Linux nevertheless. So seek help ! Hackerspaces, fablabs, free software user groups are present for decades all over the world. Concerning more especially Hyperboria,
The place to go is the IRC #cjdns Chatroom, on various IRC networks, most especially EFNet and Libera.chat to quote some of the most known ones.
The code can be found at https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns/
The place to reach on the web is obscure an tech-related but undoubtly https://cjdns.ca
The potential of Hyperboria is quite interesting. From deleting FAI and carrier operators from the landscape, to decentralize the services currently held by megacorporations of the internet like Facebook, Amazon, Spotify and their smaller competitor, which act as intermediates between actors that could easily stop feeding them. For some proof-of-concept of what all this means, you may want to read about the decentralized music streaming and download Hyperboria-fueled P2P system called Cjdradio : https://github.com/shangril/cjdradio
And for technical information, the current (and not always up-to-date) paper sheet can be found at our clearweb site in this "hyperboria" section : https://cremroad.com/hyperboria
And now the journey begins! Best wishes