[e2e] overlay over TCP

[John Kristoff]

On Wed, 12 Jan 2005 20:21:24 -0500
"David P. Reed" <dpreed at reed.com> wrote:

> Anyone know of any experiments that have involved overlay networks that 
> run over TCP virtual circuits, but which try to avoid some of the 
> application-layer problems of reliable in-order delivery?

No, but I think I know precisely what you're talking about.  I've often
thought about the very same thing myself recently if so.  It would have
probably been appropriate as an April 1 RFC a few years ago, but now it
doesn't seem so silly.  It would be a natural evolution.  The Internet
may route around damage, but users route around the suppression from a
centralized control model.  First it was freedom of processing now it
is freedom to network.  It may come as either this type of overlay or
as something more fundamental through new channels (wireless) that have
no central control.

It would be very interesting to build those Internets on top of the
Internet.  Dealing with one-way circuit setups, instabilities of that
first Internet layer and further attempts to restrict communications
at that first layer could pose significant hurdles however.  The
closest thing that I can think of that has been deployed are things
like the onion router projects and more recently Tor:

  <http://tor.eff.org>

John