Installing low cost computers on router DMZ for worldwide distributed network & services

People on the net talk alot about anonimity whether it is through VPN's, anonymous proxies or using TOR among other things. The problem with running a lot of these apps is that they are run on the computer, tablet or phone inside the network's firewall, so there is an issue with complete anonimity if anyone can get past the routers firewall and then it is pretty easy to narrow down where the traffic is originating.

Most routers have a DMZ (demilitarized Zone) which is not fully behind the firewall as the computer/tablet/etc would be and it is kind of sitting on the edge between the inside and outside of the network. This feature is often used with dual firewalls, where the DMZ is positioned in between 2 firewalls, the external (facing the internet) is a little less strict as it will allow traffic that would otherwise be blocked by the inner firewall.

Applications that are often run in the DMZ are things like web, mail, FTP, VoIP servers, VPN's, proxies, torrent clients, remote desktop, CCTV & streaming services (among others). These services are available from the WWW with the proper access (if access is restricted at all). We could also install a TOR or proxy server on this to allow others to help anonymize their internet use as well, and it is often recipricated by those who use these services.

I'm wondering what would happen if a large number of people dedicated a moderately powerful machine that could host services such as those above, along with hard drive storage. I'm thinking the cost of a device could start at about $50 for a very low end unit and up to $200-300 for a fairly robust unit that would be more than capable of running most app's/software on demand and these devices could take the place of many of the online services offered either for free or via pay, and these devices would be prolific and accessible to either verified or anonymous users (depending upon the service used).

If a large number of people (say 500,000 to millions within the US alone) placed devices such as this on their networks, would it be possible to build a more distributed internet where hosting of sites could be done on these devices with their own IP address (or with something like DynDNS) especially with IPv6 it should allow for individual/home internet connections to have their own IP address (well that was the intention when it was released..)

I'm also thinking that there would be a lot more software that would be written to take advantage of devices such as this, like having multiple devices across the net forming into one group, their own private network - though they might/may still allow for general public access to the devices.

If a distributed internet is what some people want, then this setup could also create their own MESH networks as well that runs independently from the ISP's paid lines of cable, DSL, LTE 3/4/5G, etc

I would think that spending a fairly small amount of money for a device such as this would offer great benefits in an exponential rate/ratio as the more who join in and add devices or add more capable devices the better and more robust the network. If something like this were to be setup there could come a point where a large amount of people wouldn't even need to have their own internet service at home but I think we would still be reliant upon the large fiber backbones that transmit across the country or world.

What do you guys think about something like this, do you have any ideas that would be helpful in a setup like this? Is there anything that is especially attractive in this idea?

Seems like a more cost effective method than others I have explored.

I've done the monetary math and theoretical range calculation for a semi distributed "dark net"(old definition of dark net, not current laymen definition)

The idea was to create a mesh dark net of semi-autonomous routers that could intercommunicate hops between each other and be mostly air gapped from the "major internet" with some routes offering entrance and exit points to the wider internet. Essentially a large semi-autonomous open WAN.

I explicitly calculated the cost of setting these routers up with solar power and battery systems and distributing them to cover as much human populated area as possible. Thankfully, humans live in generally tight clusters.

90% of the world population could have access to this solar powered mesh dark net, at a cost of around $58 billion USD. (Excluding maintenance or upkeep fee)

The routers would operate on the longest range versions of 802.11n standard, and blanket the highest population centers.

Those valuations were calculated well over a year ago. It is likely even cheaper than that, now.

A world-wide municipal dark-net is a real possibility.

One major corporation could do it at a total cost under $200 billion, with ease.

It's a large investment with very minor tangible payoff though, from an opportunity cost standpoint, it is very understandable why this operation has not yet been undertaken.

That's dumb you're still going over the physical infrastructure in place. You're data would be traced and deciphered before you ever hit the next pc within the network.

After seeing what a few dedicated trolls can do on a forum with just a modicum of anonymity provided by VPNs, I have kind of fallen out of love with the idea of complete anonymity for all. There are way too many vulnerable people on the internet and a lot of them don't want to be anonymous (they're vulnerable because they're stupid/ignorant or both). They want to broadcast their exact name and location on Facebook and then wonder why some creepy stalker shows up on their doorstep one day.

The benefit to doing what I explained is to break the chains that bind us to the ISP's, cell phone companies, Web hosting companies, data collection services, enabling fully anonymous internet use, allowing free internet access (or "MESH" network access, which would undoubtedly have internet ports/connections), free VoIP, Free file sharing and lots more.

Think how much computer you can get for $300 now. Even if you got a Raspberry Pi and hooked up an external HD and an externally powered high watt (250mw - 1w with high gain directional antenna) Wifi (N, AC, BG, or whatever is needed due to terrain) that would run the "private MESH network" where everyone on it could share files like being in one big apartment building, dorm, campus, where everyone shares files with everyone else, but this could be expanded hundreds or even thousands of miles (even globally) if using a standard internet connection (like a 1Gbps up/down) that links the MESH to Internet 1.0 where it would do the long distance transfer from NYC to London, or San Fran to Tokyo, etc. All that traffic on the internet could be 100% encrypted and the device that links the MESH to the internet would need to be more robust to handle the encryption/decryption and processing all the packet routing/requests/transfers.

There would be an absolutely amazing amount of apps/services that would be developed for this. It would put web hosting for personal sites or small companies out of business for a large part as they could be hosted on these boxes. Dropbox wouldn't need to be used anymore as it could be done externally.

Email with Google, MS, etc? Forgetaboutit! On top of having a distributed server hosting various accounts (with redundancy and parity backups) this would be the first time that TRUE symmetric and asymmetric (shared public key and TKIP) encryption could be used in all email, VoIP, video chat, etc. Sure there are services that offer this now, but they all have back door contracts with NSA/CIA/GCHS (or whatever Brits call it). Finally we could have totally private comm's!.

There could also be an actual Silk road setup if someone desired,and it would be distributed across maybe 5,000 devices in the hosting process, requests would get bits and pieces from each small device and "knit" the data together using the algorithm and decryption key for your account on "Silk Road".


I can't get into all the benefits, but I came up with about 4 pages of positive benefits (listing services that would be possible) when I wrote about this a coupled years ago.

It would also be great for the open source community, if people banded together and built a whole new browser and even created some new protocols that would work with the new MESH setup while also moving to the Internet 1.0.

This would also enable people in restrictive/authoritarian regimes to completely circumvent the censorship.

There would also be a way to make mini communities - think of a Craigslist for each town, with actual authentication of user accounts - buy sell, trade, post jobs, etc, all hosted on these little boxes in the town - but also browse able from people across the country - maybe have an aggregation boc that pulls all the individual towns together for one large market place that can be searched (and scams can be ID'd in a number of ways that would keep people from getting ripped off) and an actual review of a seller would be able to work and not be forged like on ebay.

The possibilities are endless and I just can't type it all as I'm super busy on some other issues.

I don't think asking someone to spend $100-300 for a router add-on that would allow for so many amazing services, appz, security, anonymity, etc.

also, this would be a spammers nightmare as they could be shut down almost immediately across the the wide spread (global) nodes. I also think we are going to find a that groups, forums, and collaboration sites would be created on the MESH which would otherwise be harassed on Internet 1.0 and this will lead to an explosion of sharing.

originally posted by: BrianFlanders
After seeing what a few dedicated trolls can do on a forum with just a modicum of anonymity provided by VPNs, I have kind of fallen out of love with the idea of complete anonymity for all. There are way too many vulnerable people on the internet and a lot of them don't want to be anonymous (they're vulnerable because they're stupid/ignorant or both). They want to broadcast their exact name and location on Facebook and then wonder why some creepy stalker shows up on their doorstep one day.

There would be ways to mitigate this with new protocols in place with the MESH network. spam bots posting 1000's of times a minutes woudn't be allowed to function to begin with, and there are may other ways that you can put them on the gallows.

originally posted by: SR1TX
That's dumb you're still going over the physical infrastructure in place. You're data would be traced and deciphered before you ever hit the next pc within the network.

Only a very little bit would be going over the Internet 1.0, and much of that would have implemented TRUE multi-level symmetric encryption that I'm not worried about ease-dropping by the current tech companies with the way I have things planned.

the problem with this is that it is a very big project and it is best completed by people volunteering their time to develop the software/code/protocols and even some unique hardware!!!

The reason we have the problems we do with the internet is because it was specifically DESIGNED to be vulnerable in so many ways. Those who knew the faults/vulnerabilities were able to rule/own others and gain power. There is a way to remove this paradigm and create a system/network which was originally envisioned by honest (and maybe naive) people from the late 60's to early 90's. This whole Internet has been made to benefit the VERY VERY SMALL few at the expense (literal financial cost and by lost of personal data) of the masses wll the while it being hidden in the shadows.

Zuckerburg and Facebook is the best example of this, A $500 billion company that made all their $$ from user data, which they sell, or give away. The new system won't be ANYTHING like that but will be profit driven by users/customers actually voting/buying with their dollars/credits/crypto etc.

Also, I have figured out how to replace much of the banking system including checks, credit cards & money transfers but am still struggling with figuring out how to handle cash, but that can be done through businesses that partner with the "cyber currency banks" where they accept cash in exchange for cyber currency. It would also do away with Western Union, Money gram, Visa/mastercard charge rates, and much of the other banking schemes that keep the poor poor.

There would also be a new method of getting loans (like payday size, possibly up to $10,000 depending upon the users history).

I need to get my 30-40 page thesis (wrote it just as an exercise a few years ago) on this and maybe get some opinions.

Oh, also, the black market and money laundering would take a MAJOR hit, especially the drug market sales and laundering. Once you learn how some cryptocurrencies work and see how they can work together synnergystically, there are A LOT of things that can be done to fix problems within out society. When I wrote this thesis ~ 18 months ago, I felt like I was being guided/inspired/touched by God (or possible AI or aliens??) by the way the ideas flowed through me, the ideas that inter-connected other new to old ideas just seemed so apparent seemed so extreme and "good" that how they had been totally ignored and mocked by the Tech establishment for the last 20+ years became clear - it was 100% to retain total control.

It sounds great, keep working on it and get as many people involved as possible. There are existing mesh-nets groups that could be interested in your ideas.

I would think that it could get started at the local community level. Then once the communities start adding services and websites that become popular, others will want to join in. There are certainly a number of LANs (like businesses, colleges and libraries) that could be linked immediately with a community center network where people can be instructed on how they can join and help create the new network.

Small rural communities are desperate for internet access and larger communities are packed with WiFi signals. Although the government and corporate interests should naturally be avoided in such a project, it sounds like a grant worthy one that could get startup funds fairly easily.

PM me, I'd like to talk more about this with you.

a reply to: DigginFoTroof

I used bbs and gopher -- wasnt that great. Sounds ripe for abuse. The internet is a utility. You pay taxes on certain communication services that provide broadband to rural and underprivileged areas. It's called the Federal Universal Service Fund. You pay this on all voice services including POTS, VoIP, and cellular services. Possibly on bandwidth but I have not looked into that as of now. Much of the FO ran across the states was subsidized by the federal government. The people already own the internet as far as I am concerned. What is the end game?

a reply to: DigginFoTroof

Forgot to mention that LoS (Line of Sight) is a factor you maybe need to consider, and check out ubiquiti. (Ubnt.com) They are huge in WISP, and cheap.

originally posted by: drewlander
a reply to: DigginFoTroof

I used bbs and gopher -- wasn't that great. Sounds ripe for abuse. The internet is a utility. You pay taxes on certain communication services that provide broadband to rural and underprivileged areas. It's called the Federal Universal Service Fund. You pay this on all voice services including POTS, VoIP, and cellular services. Possibly on bandwidth but I have not looked into that as of now. Much of the FO ran across the states was subsidized by the federal government. The people already own the internet as far as I am concerned. What is the end game?

Well the purpose of creating an alternative "hosting" system on "mini servers" in the DMZ (and I'm ot limiting these to a $300 unit, someone may want to add a nice $1,000 - $3/4000 server in the DMZ, it just depends on what they want the unit to do.

I'm not planning on forgoing the use of the current network infrastructure, but use is as an additional mode of connectivity, it might be as essential as the MESH network, especially when people start to get high speed access of 100Mbps - 1Gbps service with their own unique IP (or at minimum a DynDNS like database to find the server in the DMZ). If there is a town of say 5,000 people who has a very strong MESH network which is basically their own local community LAN/WAN - that has connections to standard ISP connections that is used to transfer data to another small town, maybe 200 miles away of 10,000 miles away. I intend to fully integrate existing infrastructure into the plan.

Now the real reason for this is to get away from the big tech companies that use their customers as Datamines. I think a new search engine that would blow away Google is more than possible and I think there are LOTS of people who would work on sch a project. Also, web hosting services, of which there are fewer and fewer and the way they protect users privacy has been eroded over time wile they increase the amount of data they extract from your internet use.Then there is Social media like Facebook (some people think it is impossible to move away from FB and their apps, but that is so far from the truth if people really understood how things work and what was being done to them w/o their knowledge they would march in the streets ( well most of them).

I've come up with an interesting way to create something like a social media platform, where users generate a public profile (and can include whatever they want, have private stuff, etc) and it is 100% owned by the customer and it can be hosted on their little box, but the content is indexed on a more centralized server for easier searching and finding what you are looking for. These public profiles would be a part of a smaller community group which will allow for actual verification of the person (think of this small community a town, district, school, etc). The user creates an account and their name is verified by a number of methods so that there is proof of who the person is, a fake account can not be made up very easily and there are safegaurds to protect the system from "spam"/fake accounts. Let's say the community is "West chester, NY", there would be someone who verifies the members of the West chester NY group (I'm not disclosing the methods of ID now) and upon registering the user will get an email address such as [email protected] (.org, .net, etc) this will be a public email address which they will always have access to (small monthly/yearly fee - depending on how much space/capacity you need for your accounts - so it could be $5-20 /year, $20/month, etc. It will have things like dropbox like hosting, a web hosting account FTP, SSH, access and much more all included with signing up. You can also create a 'store" for ecommerce and list items for sale (this varies in size it's not meant for a large company, but small sole proprietor shops or people getting started, garage run, etc) and there will be a review system by other members who also have authenticated accounts with their own local community (it may cost something like $10 for initial authentication or may vary for level/amount of services requested). The authenticated people can give reviews for other users for things like sales, trades, services rendered, etc much like Google and Yelp, but these won't be from fake accounts and you can trace back the person ho made the review (possibly have option for anonymous - but still listed as verified - contact can be made though unique contact procedure which hides original name/address). I'm thinking that it might be a good idea to offer aliases to the main account name and email address - but it is linked to the main account. This is so a user can make posts where they may fear retaliation or are embarrassed about asking or buying something. A whole process to keep aliases and official names separate has been created, not coded, but worked out how to do it. Think of this similar to a Craigslist with authenticated users in geographical locations, but also being able to search the the entire nation and buy things from someone across the country who has good reviews ( and is registered under their legit name within that community).

I have also figured out a way that a wallet can be created to transfer money from account/s people, even with current banking laws, as well as buying and selling, trading all kind so crypto currencies, transfers within country and most probably externally (still legal if done correctly) and a lot of other really neat financial options

Local businesses (and reg/national) could advertise on to the local users, target them to their specific liking, or seek out new customers. Order online, pay as well. This aspect, the advertisements of local (or regional/national) businesses is what would help subsidize maintenance of the setup.

What I want to do is take all of these actions out of the hands of the big 4-5 tech companies - Google/aplhjhabet, Facebook (and subsidiaries), Apple services, Microsoft services and more.

I've been working on this for at lest 5 years and written and re-written the ideas about 20-25 times, making improvements when I find something out that would make it better.

It is even possible to get into gambling if people were so inclined - it would have to be managed in a way not to break fed/state laws but those have gotten much more lenient lately.


AS far as line of sight for Mesh networks, I've found an ingenious solution for this in many rural areas and have talked to many property owners who are happy to allow use of their structure(s) which can boost range by anywhere from 1-10kn easily (well depending upon speed) most only wanted to have free access to the Mesh network once it was up and running.

The hardware for the MESH would be paid for by the community (part of the original startup fee, and we aren't talking $300 or anything, very reasonable rates. Some of the $$ will have to go to local techs (bringing good jobs to the locals) who help install the line of sight relays and help people setup their systems in-house.

Are you talking about decentralizing the network backbone with a peer to peer networking system?

I'm assuming that's the next evolutionary phase of the internet

The above idea is actually part 2 of what I would do to get the Internet working correctly and part 1 has to do with creating a whole new paradigm by the way people use Social media, free Email services, search engines and how they buy things. I'm not going into this as it is a LONG post, but it does have some similarities to my idea above, and the main one is having a robust authentication system for each user on the 'network' so people can't make up fake accounts to spread fake news or to scam people. It takes advantage of the way people work in close knit communities and the way people react to shame when doing something wrong witin these communities. So there could still be fraud, but the people in the community would all know (and be able to research it) and the person would be effectively blackballed from various community activities (such as sales, auctions, payments, jobs, etc).

The system would work extremely well in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, NZ, most all of Europe, portions of South america, South Africa, Israel, some middle eastern countries (or portions of them- Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and probably some others) India, China, Thailand, Vietnam, Korea and many other well developed countries.

You have some great ideas and the world needs more thinkers, problem solvers like you.

Go forth and try your damndest put your plans into action. Make it happen. If you ever come to Colorado in the US I can put you in contact with a couple similar minded people whom i work with.