In preparation for the Contact conference that I am helping to organize this October in NYC, I’ve been in discussion with many different communities about the types of initiatives they would like to bring to the table. The purpose of the event is to ‘realize the true potential of social media,’ and determine what infrastructures need to be in place to enable peer-to-peer commerce, culture, and governance.

My goal is to help facilitate these conversations now, so that come October, there is already a higher level of awareness and understanding of these issues, and more connections between groups working on similar objectives.

To that end, one of the conversation threads that has begun, with the help of Paul B. Hartzog, Richard C. Adler, and Sam Rose of the Future Forward Institute, is:

What are the fundamental requirements and building blocks of a distributed internet?

We’ve already seeded the question out on Quora and a google group, and found that developers will answer this question in many ways, because it raises many questions. Such as:

• Is a ‘distributed internet’ one thing or many things (one internet or many internets?)
• Should the focus be on hardware or software? Perhaps both in parallel, as a linked ecosystem of interoperable parts?
• Could we make more progress by building on the existing internet architecture, or would an entirely new architecture offer a better set of advantages?
• What about hybrid architectures of old and new (mesh networks conntected with community-owned ‘trunks’ for instance)?

Our plan is to get a sense of the various perspectives and opinions around these questions, find the common ground, and see what patterns and insights emerge. It’s not an either/or solution.. it’s probably more like both/and. As nature has shown us, diversity is a good thing. When you have a monoculture, you’re much more susceptible to collapse and catastrophic failure. Resilience is often associated with options.

So if we’re using evolutionary processes as our model, it would make sense to have a multitude of experiments and prototypes out there, with an understanding that “failure” is actually a necessary component of more agile iteration and adaptability.

As these conversations continue and we get a clearer understanding of the current landscape, a roadmap will start to come together with implementable ‘next steps.’ Once the basics are understood, we’ll start asking the harder questions, like:

• What are the political, economic, and technological reasons for a distributed internet(s)?
• Are distributed systems for technologically efficient?
• Do distributed systems afford more freedom?
• What are the core principles of a distributed internet(s)? (technology layers, philosophy, etc)
• Who are the key players in terms of people implementing hardware ann software, participating in co-governance, and exploring legal issues around emerging infrastructures?
• How do economics change when all of the participants are co-owners in the system?

And so on.

I hope this will be an opportunity for many of the communities, groups, and organizations to come together in a common forum and work through these questions together. This area is relatively new to me, so while I am aware of some groups, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Peer to Peer Foundation, and the Free Software Foundation, I know there are many more that I have yet to discover and engage.

If you have suggestions of people and groups that should be involved in the conversation, please pass it on! Another initiative we are working on is to map out an infographic that lists as many of the stakeholders associated with a distributed internet, as well as the many projects that are currently underway, in order to make sense of it as a larger ecosystem. Also, if you know of places where these conversations are already happening, please give us a heads up so we can direct people to those places as well.

As a start, we’ve posted the first question on Quora –

What are the fundamental requirements and building blocks of a distributed internet?

A google group was also started:

Building a Distributed Decentralized Internet

We’ll be distilling all the responses and posting results here within the next week or two, and then move through the various questions together.

As always, looking forward to learning with you!

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This post co-authored by Paul B. Hartzog, Samuel Rose, Richard Adler, and Venessa Miemis

For those interested in alternative internet infrastructures, I’ve been assembling a list of projects and initiatives working to build mesh network solutions, as well as communities and resources around this topic. I’ve also posted this on Quora. Please feel free to add any projects I’ve missed. We’re hoping to understand the landscape of this initiative and how these projects & communities can better coordinate their efforts, in preparation for the Contact Conference in NYC this October 20, 2011.

Projects:

– Open Mesh Project – building a mesh network for Egypt
– Open Source Mesh – group looking at how to build a reliable open source meshing software
– B.A.T.M.A.N. – better approach to mobile ad-hoc networking; routing protocol for multi-hop ad-hoc mesh networks
– Roofnet – 802.11b/g mesh network in development at MIT CSAIL
– GNUnet – framework for secure p2p networking that doesn not use any centralized or otherwise trusted services
– Dot-P2P – a free, decentralized, and open DNS system
– SMesh – seamless wireless mesh network being developed at John Hopkins University
– Coova – open source software access controller for captive portal (UAM) and 802.1X access provisioning
– Babel – a loop-free distance-vector routing protocol for IPv6 & IPv4
– SolarMESH – solar powered IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN mesh network  and relaying infrastructure solution
– WING – wireless mesh network for next-generation internet; partially built on Roofnet
– Daihinia – a tool for WiFi; turns a simple ad-hoc network into a multi-hop ad-hoc network
– P2P DNS – building a distributed p2p DNS system
– Digitata.org – develop an inexpensive infrastructure (low bandwidth internet terminals) for basic internet exposure to children in African countries
– Netsukuku – an ad-hoc netowork that uses only WiFi connectivity and a specifically-built adddress system that allows direct communications between machines without resorting to the HTTP protocol
– Tonika – open source organic network project; administration-free platlform for large-scale open-membership (social) networks with robust security, anonymity, resilience and performance guarantees

Communities:

– We Rebuild – cluster of net activists who have joined forces to collaborate on issues concerning access to a free internet without intrusive surveillance
– Freifunk – non-commercial initiative for free wireless networks, in english here
– Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network – grassroots wireless community in Greece
– Wireless community networks by region – list on wikipedia
– wlan ljubljana (in slovenian) – open wireless network in ljubljana
– The Darknet Plan – reddit thread dedicated to organizing anad creating a decentralized VPN as the first stage of the darknet plan
– the connective – Q&A for a citizen-owned internet

Resources:

– Border Gateway Protocol – free and open source implementations of BGP
– XO laptop by OLPC – resource for mesh networking details
– Ad hoc network routing protocols – list on wikipedia
– list of ad-hoc mesh network routing protocols that can be used during an ‘internet kill switch’ – reddit thread

Commercial:

– Meraki – cloud-hosted networking systems bringing enterprise-class networking to organizations
– Open Mesh – creates ultra low-cost zero-config, plug & play wireless mesh network solutions
– firetide – manufacturer of wireless networking equipment & provider of wireless infrastructure mesh for video surveillance

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related:

– How to Remain Connected if your Internet Gets Shut Off

– How to Communicate if the US Government Shuts down the Internet

– How To Set Up An Open Mesh Network in Your Neighborhood

– How Do We Communicate if the Internet Goes Down? (Quora)

– Diaspora-dev on google groups

– What true P2P networking projects exist or are in development, which may spring into action if the Internet is ever unacceptably co-opted or controlled? (Quora)