This is a specialization of our general Technology section, focusing more explicitely on the 'true internet' or distributed P2P infrastructures.

• On the overall perspective of the P2P Foundation: What Digital Commoners Need To Do, a meditation on the strategic phases in the construction of a peer to peer world Amd please help us improve our definition of what a true P2P Infrastructure should be: Defining True P2P Infrastructures
• Mark Pesce: Four Design Principles for True P2P Networks
• Programmatic Statement for the creation of a world-wide user-controlled network based on a distributed architecture, by Raffael Kéménczy

Introduction

Projects we find worthty of support:

1. We Rebuild is a cluster of net activists who have joined forces to collaborate on issues concerning access to a free internet without intrusive surveillance [1]
2. Open Source Mesh Networking projects monitored by Open Source Mesh
3. Various strategies to achieve Free Fiber to the home
4. High Priority Free Software Projects: "The FSF high-priority projects list serves to foster the development of projects that are important for increasing the adoption and use of free software and free software operating systems."

Projects to decentralize/distribute the internet:

1. Appleseed [2] - distributed social network
2. Bitcoin, a decentralized internet currency.
3. Diaspora will hopefully be a social networking community where users can run their own federated “pods”, thus owning their personal data and directly controlling what is shared with who.
4. The Dot-P2P Project, an alternative DNS hierarchy that resists censorship.
5. The Freedom Box initiated by Eben Moglen and the Freedom Box Foundation: independent plug-in server
6. GNUnet is a framework for secure peer-to-peer networking that does not use any centralized or otherwise trusted services
7. GNU Social [3]
8. LittleShoot is a new web-based p2p file sharing site founded by one of the creators of LimeWire that could live up to its pedigree
9. Lorea [4] - distributed social networks, already running on 10 networks
10. One Social Web [5] - distributed social network using xmpp
11. One Swarm [6]- F2F (friend2friend) P2P sharing; a new peer-to-peer tool that provides users with explicit control over their privacy by letting them determine how data is shared
12. Open BTS: working on a new kind of cellular network that can be installed and operated at about 1/10 the cost of current technologies, but that will still be compatible with most of the handsets that are already in the market.
13. Open Media Vault [7]
14. Open Moko, A project to create a 'free' or open source Open Mobile Telephony platform.
15. Open PGP encryption is based on self-issued certificates which gain authority as a result of a web of trust expressed via user- maintained keyrings rather than a hierarchical certificate authority system that can be centrally compromised.
16. Open Storage Pod, [8] open hardware project, small cubes to store terabytes
17. Open WRT [9]- GNU/Linux based free firmware for gateways and routers.
18. Own Cloud, data storage project from the wider KDE community
19. Pirate Box [10] is a self-contained mobile collaboration and file sharing device. Simply turn it on to transform any space into a free and open file sharing network.
20. Plexus [11]: "Plexus is a protocol for the social web, ‘plumbing’ that allows all social web components to communicate: from each, according to their ability, to each, according to their need"
21. Retro Share [12] - secure communications with friends
22. Seeks Project [13] - "social websearch"
23. Sovereign Computing Group [14] - similar project to Freedom Box, with a very interesting Manifesto.
24. Sparkle Share, [15] open source 'dropbox' replacement
25. Status.Net is a microblogging system that allows users to run their own Twitter-like site and federate selected streams with other systems.
26. The Tahoe Least-Authority File System, a highly fault-tolerant, secure internet filesystem.
27. The Tor Project, an anonymizing overlay network.
28. Unhosted: "Unhosted is a project for strengthening free software against hosted software. With our protocol, a website is only source code. Dynamic data is encrypted and decentralised, to per-user storage nodes. This benefits free software, as well as scalability, robustness, and online privacy."
29. YaCy is a search engine where many nodes share information to build a distributed index.

Distributed Technologies by Layer

Addressing

projects that attempt to solve hardware addressing issues on a distributed internet

Routing and DNS

projects that attempt to solve routing/dns addressing issues on a distributed internet

Software

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Distributed Technologies by Sector

P2P Currencies

1. Bitcoin, a decentralized internet currency.

P2P Filesharing and Storage

1. LittleShoot is a new web-based p2p file sharing site founded by one of the creators of LimeWire that could live up to its pedigree
2. Open Storage Pod, [16] open hardware project, small cubes to store terabytes
3. Own Cloud, data storage project from the wider KDE community
4. The Tahoe Least-Authority File System, a highly fault-tolerant, secure internet filesystem.
5. Unhosted: "Unhosted is a project for strengthening free software against hosted software. With our protocol, a website is only source code. Dynamic data is encrypted and decentralised, to per-user storage nodes. This benefits free software, as well as scalability, robustness, and online privacy."

P2P Hardware

1. The Freedom Box initiated by Eben Moglen and the Freedom Box Foundation: independent plug-in server
2. Sovereign Computing Group [17] - similar project to Freedom Box, with a very interesting Manifesto.

P2P Network Computing

1. For the most fully distributed Peer to Peer Computer Networks at present, please check out Tribler ;Peerple ; Wipeer
2. Research into more fully distributed P2P systems for the future: Chord, CX Project, Farsite, Globe Project, Oceanstore, Pastry
3. Decentralized P2P software programs are monitored and indexed here; Flud maintains a list of Distributed Internet-based Backup Systemssuch as Tahoe

P2P Social Networks

1. Appleseed [18] - distributed social network
2. Diaspora will hopefully be a social networking community where users can run their own federated “pods”, thus owning their personal data and directly controlling what is shared with who.
3. GNUnet is a framework for secure peer-to-peer networking that does not use any centralized or otherwise trusted services
4. GNU Social [19]
5. Lorea [20] - distributed social networks, already running on 10 networks
6. One Social Web [21] - distributed social network using xmpp
7. One Swarm [22]- F2F (friend2friend) P2P sharing; a new peer-to-peer tool that provides users with explicit control over their privacy by letting them determine how data is shared
8. Plexus [23]: "Plexus is a protocol for the social web, ‘plumbing’ that allows all social web components to communicate: from each, according to their ability, to each, according to their need"

P2P Searching

1. List of Distributed Search Engines; [24]
2. Seeks Project [25] - "social websearch"
3. YaCy is a search engine where many nodes share information to build a distributed index.

P2P Virtual Worlds

1. Peer to Peer Virtual Worlds: VastPark, Solipsis, Vast; see also: Multiverse

P2P Wireless Meshworks

1. Pirate Box [26] is a self-contained mobile collaboration and file sharing device. Simply turn it on to transform any space into a free and open file sharing network.

Resources

Key Articles

General Infrastructure

1. Peer-to-Peer Systems. By Rodrigo Rodrigues, Peter Druschel. Communications of the ACM, Vol. 53 No. 10, Pages 72-82 [27]: overview of one decade of deployment
2. The Rise of the Stupid Network. David Isenberg's classic essay for locating intelligence in the periphery, not the core.
3. End-to-End Arguments in System Design: The best way to design a network is to allow the sender and receiver to decide what the data means, without asking the intervening network to interpret the data.
4. World of Ends: Doc Searls and David Weinberger summarize the key characteristics of the internet.
5. P2P and the Social Cloud. Rafael Pezzi: Part 1 and Part 2: programmatic statement on a truly open and non-proprietary internet infrastructure

Broadband

1. Telecommunication expert Gordon Cook asks: Is Bandwidth Infinite?
2. Various strategies to achieve Free Fiber to the home

Free Software Infrastructure

1. Understanding Free Software, Open Source Software and Floss, thanks to this booklet

P2P Network Computing

1. Peer-to-Peer Networks as a Distribution and Publishing Model: the best introduction to the advantages of P2P Computing!

Secure Communications

1. FLOSS Manual for Circumvention Tools‎ ; Bypassing Internet Censorship. [28]
2. Guide to Mobile Security for Citizen Journalists‎; [29]
3. EPIC Online Guide to Practical Privacy Tools‎ [30]
4. Anonymous Blogging with WordPress and Tor‎ [31]
5. Security in a Box‎
6. Quick Guide to Secure Communication‎ [32]
7. Everyone's Guide to Bypassing Internet Censorship‎

Wireless Meshworks

1. How To Set Up An Open Mesh Network in Your Neighborhood. By Paul Davis.
2. Wireless Networks as Techno-social Models. By Armin Medosch.

Key Books

• Internet Architecture and Innovation. Barbara van Schewick. MIT Press, 2010

Key Directories

1. Complete list of P2P Filesharing programs with comparative notes. + A list of free and open source filesharing systems
2. High Priority Free Software Projects: "The FSF high-priority projects list serves to foster the development of projects
3. Find Open Source Alternatives to commercial software in the OSALT directory
4. Top 100 Open Source Linux Applications
5. Open Source Living: guide to the best freely available open source software on the web
6. List of Wireless Community Networks Worldwide
7. Open Source Mesh Networking projects monitored by Open Source Mesh