The IQNets network is a friend to friend network. IQNets provides for links to, and routes through, unknown peers/nodes (ala bittorrent). IQNets is built on certain principles such as quid pro quo. For example, since primary network entry is via friends, friends are giving or sharing bandwidth between themselves. IQNets incentivizes sharing ([private request from Bill to John] "yo John, can you stay online for 20 minutes, I want to finish downloading last year's GoT.") Such requests may be broadcast to your group of friends, and possibly their friends, possibly anonymously (but verifiably as belonging to one of your friends if you previously established the appropriate cryptographic comms ring/net; Getting more friend nodes results in greater maximum up/download capacity for any one node at a time (given typically bursty nature of impatient youtube watchers and movie downloaders), thus motivating meat space connections. also, friends don't dominate friend's internet connections - friends have a far greater tendency/incentive, to play nice with one another, than completely anonymous "fly by night" contacts. Classes of nodes (from a node's perspective): - direct friend nodes with a meat space asserted trust level, which may be anywhere on the trust axis - both above and below zero - indirect "friend of friend" nodes and so on - "unknown" nodes, once you get beyond friends of friends of friends I guess - there is also every reason to utilize a bittorrent style DHT to make contact with "genuinely 'unknown' nodes" - DHT bootstrapping? also, read up on PEX Classes of locality: - legal jurisdiction locality - relevant magnitude is most likely "nation" or "state" - ISP locality - other IQNets users within my ISP - "roaming" IPv6 addresses? Is this a thing yet? - If this exists, it could be called dynamic network locality, and is probably important and useful to know about. - Certainly seizing dynamic connectivity by the horns is going to be useful for maximizing "ad hoc p2p wireless" within a crowd of people. Classes of quid pro quo: - network connectivity - storage/ content caching resources (design TODO) Storage metrics, just as with network metrics, are also maintained in order to establish fairness - quid pro quo. At its most basic, the internet is about making available, and downloading, content of one form or another, be it tweets, web pages, movies or phone calls; iow, the internet is a content distribution network. The internet as it was conceived has core design principles which are desirable for robustness and censorship resistance, such as peer to peer communications and flexible routing. In practice, the internet today falls somewhat short of its founding ideals due primarily to our governments (military) stalking us and snooping on us, and corporations (profit at all costs) interests. A bittorrent like protocol shall form the fundament of IQNets, with configurable settings which would impact possible levels of privacy and anonymity. In other words, the goal is high speed and relatively efficient network utilization for arbitrary, and arbitrarily large, content distribution, whilst maintaining configurable levels of (at least partially achievable) privacy and anonymity. I.e. "large file distribution" is a first class citizen in the IQNets network. With a shout out to cypherpunk Juan for suggesting the idea. IQNets - making the impossible possible. Framed in the terms of our fundamental human rights, IQNets reclaims for all end user "nodes", the role of primary authority; echos of GNS (GNU Name Server) design principles. On gaming reputation: - nodes self declare intentions or expectations such as bandwidth, uptime/ connectivity, the node's estimated/assumed monthly quota, suitable times for use of bandwidth (peak vs off peak), and more. - metrics are empirically measured of course and stored so that sane and safe routing and connection decisions can be made - friends share metrics (at least, on request) - nodes may collude to proclaim "great metrics" amongst themselves, which they broadcast to other nodes who ask, but ultimately, the empirical evidence that I observe, is the primary metrics data of relevance, followed by that shared with me by my 'friends', and finally, that which other nodes self declare