Project Cosmo

Rant: Alternative Internet(s)

Warning: Long Rant Ahead (hey, that should be a road sign!)

I apologise for the mucho texto, it's a rant after all.

After I saw a thread on Agora Road (that seems like a theme on this blog lately) about Reticulum, I have to give a longer opinion that the one i already wrote (on AR).

I tried Reticulum using both Sideband and Nomad Network programs, and I'll start saying that Sideband is only a chat program (through Reticulum, of course) and Nomad Network adds a text based website-like system. I'll give them credit though: It's incredibly easy to make pages using a Markdown-esque markup language and hosting them is just some light config editing and no "router-abuse" (setting up your WiFi router).

It's actually pretty darn fast (atleast the public testnet) and it also works under Packet Radio and Serial. Honestly Reticulum is OK.

On the other hand, I2P, is a complete disaster. Again, no router-abuse is strictly required, but you might have to do it depending on your network setup-Hang on, I'm here to spit on I2P's face, not encourage you to do it! (of course, if you want to do it, I'm not yo' dad, do whatever you want)

Chapter 1: Setting up I2P WARNING: THIS IS NOT A GUIDE

Okay, after using a Java-based installer (never seen that before) I ran the i2prouter app, and i route my Firefox to the I2P Router. I try one of the sites on the main page but none of them work, and after a little bit of digging, you're supposed to leave the router on for a couple of either hours or days!?!? Holy Moly! Well, I leave it on, get frustrated, shut it down, uninstall it by deleting the folder (the wrong way of uninstalling it), re-install it, start it up again and it started working. Sure, whatever.

Chapter 2: Actually using this crap

I know everything is supposed to be decentralised or something like that, but it's slooow, "eepsites" (= websites but in I2P) as they call them are unresponsive, when you click something you might as well eat lunch and dinner and it'll still be finding a "path" to the eepsite. If you leave it on enough it'll become faster but I think that's complete BS (the BS being that it needs time to "integrate in the network", not that it doesn't work).

Complete Garbage.

Here is a shorter version of all of the text above:

Need to add more? Uhh, no.

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Chapter 3: What did we learn?

Reticulum is OK. Perfectly fine imo.

I2P has one huge flaw: speed

I know I'm expecting too much from a hobby project but just saying, if people wanted to join they'll be 100% be thrown off by the speed, and that's the problem with stuff like this, and I would excuse the speed if it was running via radio or something.

END OF POST (finally!) ----------------

P.S. These are 100% my opinions. No one else influenced me whatsoever.