User:NGC354

anoNet is an underground peer-to-peer IP network which serves as a medium for free speech on the Internet.

Purpose
Censorship is a common problem in many countries (such as China), and is not highly regarded in the eyes of the people. Due to the fact that censorship is based on religous beliefs, government policies, and other ideas, not all people can have a say in what they believe. anoNet attempts to break this barrier with the use of encryption and anonymity over a global network which does not live by the laws of the Internet.

Technical specifications
A vast variety of tools make anoNet complete. At the very bottom of the network structure, a VPN client/server such as OpenVPN is used to connect peers to each other. Peers exchange their IP addresses with each other and establish a form of authentication (such as TLS or a static key). This builds a secure tunnel for which communication can occur. Packets are always encrypted with a cipher chosen by the peering party.

Routing is taken care of with BGP. After a secure communications tunnel is established, the two peers may trade routing information. BGP is currently used due to its ability to filter routes (as opposed to OSPF).

In its current implementation, anoNet currently uses the 1/8 IPv4 address space. When using this address space, no real geographical information is available to anyone, thus protecting anonymity. The range is rerved by IANA and has no use anywhere. This helps to avoid IP address conflicts.

Network structure
It is encouraged to peer with at most, three other peers. Having a large list of peers would increase redundancy, but would also mean that if the box is subpoenaed or compromised, the IP addresseses of all the peers would be exposed.

anoNet is a cooperative network. Traffic may be filtered or modified by any node you route through (the routers are run by your peers). Unfortunately, there are no data integrity systems as one might expect to find on Freenet. Data integrity can be implemented through the use of GPG/PGP, SSL or any other type of cryptograhpy system. However, traffic filtering allows a peer to be "shunned" by the network as a whole. The only way that this can occur is if all peers cooperate and filter routes around this person.

anoNet has all of the systems that the Internet has. Such systems include IP and AS registration, root nameservers, and a certificate authority similar to VeriSign. User services include an IRC network, a Google like implemenatation, an Icecast server, a SILC server, and more.

Due to the anonymous nature of anoNet, it is impossible to tell how large the network is.