Hi There!
I thought I'd take the opportunity as a Lethean project community member to say hello and introduce myself, my name in the community is "darbs" and I'd like to share what I've been thinking about and working on, and areas I'd like to focus on for the Lethean project. See our website for more information on who we are and what we're working on. https://lt.hn/en/about.
Some of these particular ideas have come from nearly 20 years of industry experience in Network Security.
It feels very humbling and a privilege to be involved in such an important project which has much relevance to the people of the world. Thanks for your time and attention.
What is Lethean's use case?
For most, Lethean has been seen only as one thing, a means of privately paying for VPN/Proxy services and accessing public facing systems while providing anonymity and privacy. We're unique due to the much known privacy layer for payment.
I personally felt this was was still quite a limited view of what Lethean is as a privacy project. I will shortly expand on what I believe can and should occur to build upon existing VPN/Proxy capabilities, but firstly we'll explore the networking improvements I'm pursuing.
Exit Nodes, Network Routing and Path Selection
At present when a Lethean user wishes to use a VPN or proxy providers exit node, they would presently select a node, pre-purchase the nodes minimum minutes of usage (time) and connect to start using desired internet services.
At a high level this works well, however can be improved upon in many ways:
Dynamic node selection based on a Lethean users proximity to a node
Although as a user we may really want a particular node in a country being used, it may not offer the best performance and/or user experience. Dynamically selecting the best exit node(s) in a geo-location makes sense and improves overall user experience.
Refund features were worked on historically and today can/should be incorporated to offer a solution when particular geo-locations simply don't have a reliable node.
Dynamic network SLA management
- It's possible that a nodes performance can degrade, and let's face it, there is no such thing as an SLA of 100% over the course of a year. Monitoring network path reliability and node performance and re-routing via either a different path to a node or a different node on a public network is important to maintain the best possible user experience and ensuring survivability of service when users need them most.
Local private networks as routing paths towards nodes (as an alternate path when internet is unavailable or is a better routing path):
Lethean users and exit nodes don't necessarily need a public network to operate. This is one area I'd like to spend some time expanding on. It's an exciting area stretching the boundaries of possibly all solutions I have seen today.
Residential or commercial network environments (wired or wireless) are possible routing paths providing node access.
Mobile/IoT devices can provide and extend local network access where mobile cell sites/towers do not exist and operating in remote areas. Think of DoD and why TCP/IP protocol was created. We need a network to be accessible and survivable with as many network routing paths possible, the more the better.
Multiple active network routing paths
Two or more paths and/or nodes used at one time. Could be described as a meshed network of routing decisions towards node(s), could apply to either private or public networks.
It may make sense to use more than one exit node due to the type of resource the user is accessing. Countries will have laws governing what resources are prohibited, therefore accessing resources via a single node for one resource, then disconnecting to use another node (where access is permitted) makes sense however impractical from a user experience point of view.
Routing user traffic dynamically to nodes which are permissive for the type of access required makes sense. Laws can be mapped to policy and provide users piece of mind when accessing any resource in a jurisdiction they are not completely aware of.
Least cost routing
- Cost of VPN or proxy services in a geo-location may dictate what node is used based on Lethean user preferences. A 'least cost routing' mechanism is particularly important for users that are on a budget when accessing VPN/Proxy. It would be unfair to assume that all people have equal financial freedoms. Lethean should be accessible to all people, and in fact node providers can set the price of services to be almost zero while paying only the Lethean blockchain transaction fees.
Exit Node access policies
Minimum required policy for node providers
- A firewall policy template needs to exist for any exit node built in a particular geo-location. The nodes policy controls would be directly mapped to the nodes geo-location laws. This supports a node operator with easily showing compliance if required to do so.
All of the above still focuses only on the network transport methods and how to reliably provide Lethean users connectivity to locally available resources.
I just said the words "locally available resources".. and will touch on this in a moment. What if I told you this was not even close to what Lethean is, and there's still an un-realized capability today. At a high level we've partially solved most of the privacy issues of today by tunneling user access to a node or via multiple nodes, then using exit node local internet break-out to provide access to resources. From this point and beyond the user or even exit node operator has no control over how this data traverses publicly to/from remote servers, how it's inspected and the analytics which is gathered while using a public network outside of Lethean's eco-system.
Here's the bombshell of what Lethean is in my eyes and currently a shared view with involved community members:
(1) A self-contained privacy network providing it's own access to services in a distributed environment.
Exit Nodes can provide services, not only secure data transport.
Examples of use cases:
Think of an eCommerce website selling a product or service. Lethean users don't need to leave the Lethean network in order to access such products or services. An exit node can host the website. Think of shopping online without being monitored or being targeted by the likes of Google or Amazon.
Merchant services / POS terminals. Node operators can also be businesses accepting Lethean for products or services.
(2) Protect what's yours.
- Encrypt your data with Lethean and take ownership of your data!
Now that I've said all this, I'll let all that sink in and just say a couple more closing statements since it's already quite possibly information overload.
There is no-one I'm aware of today doing what Lethean is aiming to accomplish. You can immediately see that we're no longer just a VPN/Proxy provider like many others. We're working on an end-to-end complete privacy solution, and capabilities for a self contained network with access to any resource not only publicly but within Lethean's distributed node network itself.
This path is not without it's challenges, and there are entities which will not support such a project with this agenda since it directly contradicts their capitalist mindsets. Humanity must come first.
Let's make an impact together,
Darbs
Infra Comms & Security Lead
Lethean Community
darbs@lt.hn
https://lt.hn