The Internet when conceived was an autonomous conglomeration of end user machines present at the edge of the network. These terminal machines were talking to each other using the infrastructure provided by the Internet Service Providers (ISP's). The only arbitrators in the Internet were the standards organization (like ISO, IEEE), which made the nodes on the Internet to follow universal protocols for intercommunication.
The Internet was simply 'decentralized'.
The Internet has been the grandest manifestation of democracy of the users. It has been free (free as in freedom ) and neutral (as in unbiased) until the late 1990's. Starting then, the Governments, primarily of the developed countries, in the name of making the Internet safer and secure have tagged with some of the big profit seeking corporations in the world wide web to monitor and influence the way the Internet works. The Internet today is no longer neutral and/or free; From being decentralized it is steadily converging to become a Centralized infrastructure with little or no freedom to the end users.
The closest to what the Internet should be resembling in the current scenarios is the Peer-to-Peer mode of networking. In this architecture, every end user apart from being a client, is also a server. This is in contrast with the rest of the services in the Internet where we have the Single Server- Multiple Client model. This model is called the Centralized model, where the online transactions occur between the mandating, giant servers and the helpless end users. This deterioration of the democracy in the Internet reflects a major invasion into the privacy of the users and more importantly infringement of the political freedom of the users as well. The case when the Internet services for Wikileaks was withdrawn by the corporations succumbing to the pressure of their Government is a direct manifestation of the impact that Centralization of the Internet can have.
As users, the point we need to be concerned about is the safety of the data we entrust to the biggies in the Internet. Every time we are online, there is almost a certain chance that either we are being spied, or our data is being used for increasing the business on the Internet.
One prospective solution to reinstate freedom in the Internet is, by the decentralization of servers, and giving the full control back to users. Decentralized Internet will comprise of not few servers where all the users will have to mortgage their data, but when fully decentralized, every user will end up having a small, cell phone charger sized Open Plug servers like the FreedomBox.
The FreedomBox again has been an initiative instigated by Prof.Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Law Centre and now the Debian Community of Free Software developers have kick started the project to set the Internet free.
To visualize it better, consider the current model of online Social Networking: About 500 million users on one famous Centralized Social Networking site have handed over all of their data to a single bunch of servers, after endorsing heavily privacy invading terms and conditions. Statuses, chats, pictures and the private interaction between users on the network is all under the scanner of on single Corporation.
To tackle such hegemony in the Internet, a new model of social networking is being tested. Distributed or Federated Social Networks, like Diaspora will decentralize the way online social networking will happen. Instead of all the users handing over their data to a server farm belonging to a single corporation, users can now put their data on smaller, independent servers like campus servers (called Pods) and get networked with other pods. In this way, the centralization can be reduced from a single hegemonic server cluster to decentralized, independent servers. The best part of this decentralization is that this decentralization can trickle down to the last of the users.
Using the Plug servers such as FreedomBox, individual users can run their own Diaspora Pods, with all the data residing in their personal mobile servers, which will communicate with other pods. Users will have total control over the data, and the extent of its availability to other users and even to the Internet.
This model of decentralization using FreedomBox like open plug servers will not only increase the privacy and security in social networking, but in near future will be applicable to mails, voice-over-internet phone calls, making the Internet neutral and democratic, reinstating freedom back to the users.
PS: The initial writeup for the recently published article in The Hindu , which was later optimized to concentrate mainly on Diaspora*.
http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Bangalore/article2132236.ece
The Internet was simply 'decentralized'.
 |
| P2P networks |
The Internet has been the grandest manifestation of democracy of the users. It has been free (free as in freedom ) and neutral (as in unbiased) until the late 1990's. Starting then, the Governments, primarily of the developed countries, in the name of making the Internet safer and secure have tagged with some of the big profit seeking corporations in the world wide web to monitor and influence the way the Internet works. The Internet today is no longer neutral and/or free; From being decentralized it is steadily converging to become a Centralized infrastructure with little or no freedom to the end users.
 |
| Centralised Server based networks |
As users, the point we need to be concerned about is the safety of the data we entrust to the biggies in the Internet. Every time we are online, there is almost a certain chance that either we are being spied, or our data is being used for increasing the business on the Internet.
One prospective solution to reinstate freedom in the Internet is, by the decentralization of servers, and giving the full control back to users. Decentralized Internet will comprise of not few servers where all the users will have to mortgage their data, but when fully decentralized, every user will end up having a small, cell phone charger sized Open Plug servers like the FreedomBox.
The FreedomBox again has been an initiative instigated by Prof.Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Law Centre and now the Debian Community of Free Software developers have kick started the project to set the Internet free.
To visualize it better, consider the current model of online Social Networking: About 500 million users on one famous Centralized Social Networking site have handed over all of their data to a single bunch of servers, after endorsing heavily privacy invading terms and conditions. Statuses, chats, pictures and the private interaction between users on the network is all under the scanner of on single Corporation.
To tackle such hegemony in the Internet, a new model of social networking is being tested. Distributed or Federated Social Networks, like Diaspora will decentralize the way online social networking will happen. Instead of all the users handing over their data to a server farm belonging to a single corporation, users can now put their data on smaller, independent servers like campus servers (called Pods) and get networked with other pods. In this way, the centralization can be reduced from a single hegemonic server cluster to decentralized, independent servers. The best part of this decentralization is that this decentralization can trickle down to the last of the users. |
This model of decentralization using FreedomBox like open plug servers will not only increase the privacy and security in social networking, but in near future will be applicable to mails, voice-over-internet phone calls, making the Internet neutral and democratic, reinstating freedom back to the users.
PS: The initial writeup for the recently published article in The Hindu , which was later optimized to concentrate mainly on Diaspora*.
http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Bangalore/article2132236.ece
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