This project is currently in early-access deep-alpha testing phase. Do not rely on it for anything.

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cryptic-net

The cryptic-net project provides the foundation for an autonomous community cloud infrastructure.

This project targets communities of individuals, where certain members of the community would like to host services and applications from servers running in their homes or offices. These servers can range from simple Raspberry Pis to full-sized home PCs.

The core components of cryptic-net, currently, are:

• A VPN which enables direct peer-to-peer communication. Even if most hosts in the network are on a private LAN (e.g. their home WiFi network) or have a dynamic IP, they can still communicate directly with each other.

• An S3-compatible network filesystem. Each users can provide as much storage as they care to, if any. Stored data is sharded and replicated across all hosts that choose to provide storage.

• A DNS server which provides automatic host and service (coming soon) discovery within the network.

These components are wrapped into a single binary, with all setup being automated. cryptic-net takes "just works" very seriously.

Participants are able to build upon these foundations to host services for themselves and others. They can be assured that their communications are private and their storage is reliable, all with zero administrative overhead and zero third parties involved.

Documentation

cryptic-net users fall into different roles, depending on their level of involvement and expertise within their particular network. The documentation for cryptic-net is broken down by these categories, so that the reader can easily decide which documents they need to care about.

User Docs

Users are participants who use network resources, but do not provide any network or storage resources themselves. Users may be accessing the network from a laptop, and so are not expected to be online at any particular moment.

Documentation for users:

• Getting Started
• Creating a daemon.yml File
• Using DNS (advanced)
• Restic example (TODO)

Operator Docs

Operators are users who own a dedicated host which they can expect to be always-online (to the extent that's possible in a residential environment). Operator hosts will need at least one of the following to be useful:

• A static public IP, or a dynamic public IP with dDNS set up.

• At least 100GB of unused storage which can be reserved for the network.

Operators are expected to be familiar with server administration, and to not be afraid of a terminal.

Documentation for operators:

• Contributing Storage
• Contributing a Lighthouse
• Managing garage
• Firewalls

Admin Docs

Admins are users who control membership within the network. They are likely operators as well.

Documentation for admins:

• Creating a New Network
• Adding a Host to the Network
• Removing a Host From the Network (TODO)

Dev Docs

Devs may or may not be users in any particular cryptic network. They instead are those who work on the actual code for cryptic-net.

Documentation for devs:

• Design Principles
• cryptic-net daemon process tree: Diagram describing the pmux process tree created by cryptic-net daemon at runtime.
• Rebuilding Documentation
• Releases
• Gateway: Tentative spec for gateway functionality in cryptic-net

Misc

Besides documentation, there are a few other pages which might be useful:

• Roadmap
• Glossary