Substratum: The Answer to the Net Neutrality repeal

[Kukielka]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

The way I interpret it, this is not a "VPNless VPN". It is just a VPN.

Except it's a VPN that you pay per website visit with.

Anyone running a node gets FREE access to the entire web and also gets paid in $SUB for requests they serve.

 

A classic VPN, is a connection routed through a known server of range of ips. SUB is kind of a VPN with all traffic routed through decentralized computers. Even in a connection some of the data packages can be routed through several decentralized computers. So, how can you stop/ban this VPN? You can't. Only if you BAN all internet. Also all communication is encrypted and no one can see what is being accessed/requested.

22 hours ago, Shreyas1 said:

" small reward " does this mean another mining craze?

Sub isn't mined, it's farmed. It doesn't require tons of electricity to provide your unused internet bandwidth.

21 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

So the whole "darknet" thing (this is not the same as "deep web") that my friend back in college was talking about 10 years ago is finally being pushed again?

This is not another "darkweb". Sites that are hosted on the Substratum Mesh Network can still be seen if you're not using the Substratum client at all.

12 hours ago, Sierra Fox said:

this is dumb

???

[Kukielka]

Edit: How did I end up here lol, pls delete

Edited January 18, 2018 by Kukielka

[cj09beira]

22 hours ago, Sauron said:

Even if someone did that it couldn't last for long. The only real way of fighting it would be mass plan canceling, but of course that would mean being willing to stay without internet for however long it takes.

i think the way to resolve the issue is by separating the isps from the cable providers, so that if one isp doesn't give you the service you want you can just use another without having to change physical connections, this would mean there would be no way for isps to prevent competition and the internet would start flourishing again 

[LAwLz]

9 minutes ago, Kukielka said:

Anyone running a node gets FREE access to the entire web and also gets paid in $SUB for requests they serve.

So where does the $SUB come from if it doesn't come from the visitors?

If it's generated out of thin air, who is in charge of that system? Is that also decentralized?

If so, how would the system protect itself from someone flooding their own server with requests, thus generating a lot of $SUB?

 

10 minutes ago, Kukielka said:

A classic VPN, is a connection routed through a known server of range of ips.

Depends on what you define as a "classic VPN". DMVPN doesn't, and it literally has "VPN" in the name.

Substratum sounds like a VPN to me. Maybe not the VPN providers like PIA or Tunnelbear, but those are just someo

 

13 minutes ago, Kukielka said:

So, how can you stop/ban this VPN? You can't. Only if you BAN all internet.

Ehm, what about blocking the ports used by Substratum? If it uses dynamic ports then just do DPI and default to throttling unknown traffic.

If you think that sounds too complicated, T-Mobile already does it (minus the throttle on unknown traffic) for video.

 

20 minutes ago, Kukielka said:

Also all communication is encrypted and no one can see what is being accessed/requested.

So just like a VPN if configured with encryption?

[Kukielka]

18 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

So where does the $SUB come from if it doesn't come from the visitors?

If it's generated out of thin air, who is in charge of that system? Is that also decentralized?

If so, how would the system protect itself from someone flooding their own server with requests, thus generating a lot of $SUB?

$SUB has been generated once and got distributed by the ICO.

The currency is beeing traded like any other currencies on exchanges.

Demand creates Value. If you want to host a website on the network, you have to pay up.

By hosting a node you don't generate $SUB, you'll get them sent from an distribution wallet.

 

18 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Depends on what you define as a "classic VPN". DMVPN doesn't, and it literally has "VPN" in the name.

Substratum sounds like a VPN to me. Maybe not the VPN providers like PIA or Tunnelbear, but those are just someo

DMVPN actually comes closest to Substratum, however it still uses vpn protocolls. U could say Substratum is more "bare bones".

18 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Ehm, what about blocking the ports used by Substratum? If it uses dynamic ports then just do DPI and default to throttling unknown traffic.

If you think that sounds too complicated, T-Mobile already does it (minus the throttle on unknown traffic) for video.

Copied from the FAQ:

Quote

Due to the distributed nature of Substratum, in order to block a site the ISP would have to blanket ban all internet users in an area and leave limited access to government facilities or public service locations that need internet access (..this is extreme and if it happens it's because your country is probably in a war; blanket internet bans basically stop a lot of local commerce from happening. People working at pc from work or home, internet phone lines, chain stores, anything that uses cloud computing, or server side computing that relays data remotely, including credit processors, with some exceptions; offline transactions are possible but have their own set of issues, would all be blocked.) This reason for such drastic measures being required to block a substratum hosted site is due to the fact that substratum traffic simply looks like standard http web traffic so the ISP has no clue if you are running a node or just uploading a file to a website. Ontop of this the nodes hosting a specific site are constantly changing and no single node contains a whole file for any site. And the icing on the cake, multiple nodes are required to serve a single request with no single node knowing the full route path. This means that if the ISP did block the first node in the path, there would still be multiple more nodes behind that still ready to serve the request.

 

18 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

So just like a VPN if configured with encryption?

Multiple nodes serve a single request, providing more security.

 

EDIT: Good read here btw: 

 

[LAwLz]

42 minutes ago, Kukielka said:

Demand creates Value. If you want to host a website on the network, you have to pay up.

Pay to whom?

If it's to a single organization then this is even more centralized than the regular web.

 

42 minutes ago, Kukielka said:

DMVPN actually comes closest to Substratum, however it still uses vpn protocolls. U could say Substratum is more "bare bones".

How is it more "bare bones" than DMVPN? Or any VPN for that matter.

 

44 minutes ago, Kukielka said:

Copied from the FAQ:

Again, they don't have to do that. DPI and throttle if it detects whatever signature this traffic will have. Maybe a blanket throttling on all traffic on all HTTPS traffic.

The great firewall of China has a list of all the publicly known Tor entry relays, and uses DPI to check for the Tor handshake pattern in order to detect the secret relays. When it detects the handshake it tries to form its own connection to the relay, and if it works then it gets added to the blacklist.

The same technique could most likely be used for detecting this too.

 

It's a lot harder to block/throttle than other services, but it's by no means impossible, nor does it require the extreme measures described in the FAQ.

[Kukielka]

10 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Pay to whom?

If it's to a single organization then this is even more centralized than the regular web.

You can buy $SUB currently at Binance (the largest crypto exchange), Kucoin, Hitbtc and many more to come, pretty much every major crypto exchange will support $SUB.

You don't buy it from a company, it is a currency.

 

15 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

How is it more "bare bones" than DMVPN? Or any VPN for that matter.

You might wanna take a peak in the whitepaper for that.

https://substratum.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Substratum-Whitepaper-English.pdf

 

18 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Again, they don't have to do that. DPI and throttle if it detects whatever signature this traffic will have. Maybe a blanket throttling on all traffic on all HTTPS traffic.

The great firewall of China has a list of all the publicly known Tor entry relays, and uses DPI to check for the Tor handshake pattern in order to detect the secret relays. When it detects the handshake it tries to form its own connection to the relay, and if it works then it gets added to the blacklist.

The same technique could most likely be used for detecting this too.

 

It's a lot harder to block/throttle than other services, but it's by no means impossible, nor does it require the extreme measures described in the FAQ.

Sure you could just throttle everything, lol. Nothing is immune to that.

Also: 

 

However I can't explain how Substratum deals with the problem you mentioned in it's entirety.

Maybe the guys over at https://t.me/SubstratumCommunity can help you.

 

 

[Sauron]

2 hours ago, cj09beira said:

i think the way to resolve the issue is by separating the isps from the cable providers, so that if one isp doesn't give you the service you want you can just use another without having to change physical connections, this would mean there would be no way for isps to prevent competition and the internet would start flourishing again 

Sounds good in theory until you realize cable providers would have complete control on who gets the cables, opening further avenues for corruption and favoritisms.

[cj09beira]

4 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Sounds good in theory until you realize cable providers would have complete control on who gets the cables, opening further avenues for corruption and favoritisms.

the idea is that cable providers don't control what runs on the cables, and it shouldn't be hard to prevent them from throttling specific isps after the first law suite 

[Sauron]

9 minutes ago, cj09beira said:

the idea is that cable providers don't control what runs on the cables, and it shouldn't be hard to prevent them from throttling specific isps after the first law suite 

The FCC is currently being sued for the repeal of net neutrality, we'll see how that turns out... the thing is the US already had laws that forbade throttling, but lobbies and shills got rid of them. No matter the system, this will always be a risk.