about the monkeynet project

Let’s start from the initial idea by Silky:

So I’ve been thinking recently of giving up on society, tv, internet, whatever. It’d be nice, I think, to live in a Japanese/Canadian-style forest in a tree-house that I’ve built, right near a lake, and so on.

Enter monkeynet …

So we know the purpose of monkeynet - to provide an environmentally-friendly internet.

So how does monkeynet work? what does it involve? monkeys. Specifically, monkeynet operates by monkeys passing USB keys to other monkeys (referred to, inside monkeynet, as “nodes”) who then continue to pass it around other nodes, until the data reaches it’s destination.

Benefits

• self-sustainingNodes can self-replicate via the miracle of love-making with other nodes. Further, nodes can actually repeat this behaviour with many nodes (if they are so incined) creating a very productive and ‘ever-increasing’ node-base. This is in direct contrast to the regular internet, where nodes cost money and must be put in place by large organisations.
• secureAsk yourself, would you have the balls to try and stop a monkey from achieving it’s goal, as it’s barrelling down the street USB-key in hand? I think, if you look deep inside your heart, you’ll find the answer to be no. You won’t mess with a node in transit. You can’t XSS a node. You can’t “spoof” a node; other nodes will recognise monkeys via node-2-node recognition protocol, that is in-built into the brain of the nodes. The nodes maintain a database of ‘known’ nodes that they will work with. When finding they must work with a new node, they will first undergo a series of ‘trust’ exercises (falling back into the node, to see if it catches them, eating dinner with the node, exchanging numbers, etc).
• environmentally friendlyThis pretty much speaks for itself. The environment isn’t harmed by the generation of nodes; in fact it is aided by it. The nodes help sustain environment by spreading seeds and generally enjoying trees and vines. As monkeynet increases, the need for ‘modern’ facilities will decrease, and we can enjoy the wonder that is nature by allowing more trees to grow, and encouraging vines in our general area (so-as to speed up the delivery of monkeynet messages).

  monkeynet also provides a valued and special work environment for the otherwise un-employed.

Issues

• BITM attackalthough we know that monkeynet won’t be vulnerable to the classical MITM attack (as discussed above) it may be susceptible to BITM - Banana in the Middle Attack. We here at monkeynet HQ are working on this problem, and we hope to mitigate it by teaching monkeys to not accept bananas from unknown agents. We’re making progress, mainly we need to instruct by example (you know the old saying: “monkey see, monkey do”.)

Our motto at monkeynet is: monkeynet - the environmentally-friendly net!