(found at slashdot.org)
early on in my sojourn here at destee, i got to thinking about the fact that, while having a forum such as this open to the internet is a good thing, it can not be actually "secure" in terms of privacy. one of my thoughts was to build an application that would enable all members (maybe "premium member only"?) to connect with the forum/each other "privately" via a "virtual private network" (VPN) that would connect each user's computers directly to every other member that was logged on ("peer to peer" - P2P). in this way, we could share any aspect of our puters that we chose to. (initially, nothing shared at all; just a space for communications - anything else would have to be explicitly turned on. such as file/music/picture sharing.) the biggest difference between this idea, and what is available via the internet, is that this would not require a central server somewhere acting as a "middle man" where all communications are actually stored; open to anyone at that central location, as well as to anyone that happened to compromise that central server.
(maybe i did this backwards? i found the weekly security column while reading one of the comments on this story where they were talking about a P2P VPN product called Hamachi.)
Multi-State Family Networking?"The last few members of my extended family just entered the 20th century and went to broadband. Now that we're all on-line with small home LANs in place, we'd like to start sharing stuff via a VPN. The only problem is I'm the only marginally tech savvy one in the bunch, and I'd rather not have to hop a plane to configure everyone's box. Any recommendations for a broadband router that supports VPN to use on the mother-ship network that will play nice with all versions of Windows XP SP 2 (Pro, Home and Media Center) and its VPN client?"
early on in my sojourn here at destee, i got to thinking about the fact that, while having a forum such as this open to the internet is a good thing, it can not be actually "secure" in terms of privacy. one of my thoughts was to build an application that would enable all members (maybe "premium member only"?) to connect with the forum/each other "privately" via a "virtual private network" (VPN) that would connect each user's computers directly to every other member that was logged on ("peer to peer" - P2P). in this way, we could share any aspect of our puters that we chose to. (initially, nothing shared at all; just a space for communications - anything else would have to be explicitly turned on. such as file/music/picture sharing.) the biggest difference between this idea, and what is available via the internet, is that this would not require a central server somewhere acting as a "middle man" where all communications are actually stored; open to anyone at that central location, as well as to anyone that happened to compromise that central server.
(maybe i did this backwards? i found the weekly security column while reading one of the comments on this story where they were talking about a P2P VPN product called Hamachi.)