2022-10-15_SaT notes

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+# `2022-10-15` SaT Meeting Notes
+
+Last SaT Robby and I talked about the mesh network/internet ideas that we've been thinking of.
+
+We want alamodians to have their own mesh network and internet that they can take part in, host things on,
+allocate addresses in, DDoS each other with and much more. This is a good opportunity to dig a little deeper
+into how the internet "really works" and have a little fun.
+
+And there's some legitimate use-cases for the network as well:
+* Robby wants to host services without putting them on the public internet. He used to just rely on auth, but ended up 
+switching back over to WireGuard (WG) anyways. He wants so share other services too that aren't behind auth and this 
+is the "best" way to do so.
+* I (fisher) also want to start to host more and more services as well. I'd like to put some internal services of my 
+own up, host a CI builder, etc. I want to experiment with:
+  * writing and using my own DNS server.
+  * hosting my serverless functions.
+  * writing my own email server (right, lol).
+  * and other internety things.  
+  Having our own internet makes all of the above safer and I don't need to care about hackers and portscanners messing
+  with me. 
+
+## The Old and the New
+
+There are two overall ideas and we'll be doing both:
+
+1. Recreate our own version of the internet. Have things like address allocation, [ASNs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_system_(Internet)),
+root DNS servers, IANA, bureaucracy, etc. 
+2. Create a _new_ version of the internet, using a home-grown p2p mesh. Would likely be built on top of [pinecone](https://matrix.org/blog/2021/05/06/introducing-the-pinecone-overlay-network)
+and be essentially a rewrite of the OSI stack.
+
+Both sound pretty cool; we can kinda learn what it really means to run our own ASN with prefixes, allocate addresses 
+and route things around. After a time, we'll learn why p2p networks are hard as balls and maybe we'll have two 
+computers talking with each other.
+
+# What's next?
+
+## Determining a prefix
+
+We need to determine a prefix for the network. [IPv6 address space](https://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv6-address-space/ipv6-address-space.xhtml).
+There's some good options here. cjdns uses `fc00::/7`. Yggdrasil uses `0200::/7`. It really doesn't matter what we do,
+but we should decide one something. We might also be able to use `fec0::/10`. Whatever we use, we should use the next
+avaiable bit to denote a old-internet vs mesh network address.
+
+## Peering
+
+We're going to need to peer (connect) with each other. Basically what a fiber cable does today. We'll most likely be 
+using the built in WG tunnel in the kernel to peer. We might need a custom userspace program for the mesh network, but 
+overall it will be guard.
+
+I think we should take inspiration from dn42's peering/ASN process and pretty much hard-copy them. We should just peer
+with everyone for now, we'll test routing recovery and announcements with BGP
+
+## Figuring out how the fuck BGP works
+
+Now that we're connected with eachother, we gotta start the "real" work. I'm pretty sure this is "just" running a daemon
+on a box (bird), running some config and calling it good. Automating that will be extremely useful and a good learning 
+experience in linux networking.
+
+Once we got BGP running, we'll need to setup some failure tests to check route stabilization and if BGP is actually 
+working. 
+
+## Before we start the mesh in earnst
+
+It should be _as easy as possible_ to configure your mesh, peer and add routes. It would be nice if pretty much every 
+device on one's network was peered / running the BGP daemon (iBGP for internal BGP). Idk how realistic that is, but UX 
+is the key.
+
+
+# Conclusion
+
+We need to:
+1. Determine a prefix. One of `fc00::/7`, `0200::/7`, `fec0::/10` etc.
+2. Copy dn42 for peering, ASNs, basically everything.
+3. Actually peer with eachother and test network resiliency.
+4. Start hosting things!  
+  * Make it easy to spinup services on internal networks.
+5. Design doc for p2p network.