Citadel Dispatch

CD193: FIPS - FIXING THE INTERNET

10 snips
Mar 6, 2026
A deep dive into FIPS, a mesh networking system that gives devices cryptographic identities to bypass central servers. They explore peer discovery over Wi‑Fi, Bluetooth and local broadcast. Discussions cover routing without IPs, encryption handshakes, community resilience, bridging meshes via tunnels like Starlink, and incentives such as sats for peering.
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INSIGHT

Transport And Routing Are Separate Layers

  • FIPS decouples physical transport from routing to let the same networking layer run over Wi‑Fi, Bluetooth, Ethernet, or satellite.
  • Nodes expose a simple send/receive interface; FIPS routes regardless of underlying link so apps needn't be rewritten.
INSIGHT

Encrypted Local Discovery With Bloom Filters

  • Local peer discovery uses broadcasts (Wi‑Fi/Bluetooth) and Noise-handshakes to immediately encrypt hop‑to‑hop links.
  • Each hop is encrypted and peers exchange bloom filters (≈1KB) listing reachable endpubs for efficient routing.
ANECDOTE

Starlink Can Reconnect Cut Meshes

  • In protest scenarios like Iran, local meshes enable internal communication even when authorities cut the internet.
  • A single Starlink tunnel can reconnect a local mesh to global relays so communities can broadcast out again.
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