RHnet

RHnet
Name	RHnet
Type	Decentralized networking initiative
Founded	2016
Founders	Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf, Brewster Kahle
Headquarters	Geneva, San Francisco, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Area served	Global
Focus	Mesh networking, distributed content delivery, resilient communications

RHnet is an open initiative to develop a resilient, decentralized networking fabric for content distribution, emergency communications, and community-owned infrastructure. Drawing on research from Internet Engineering Task Force, World Wide Web Consortium, and academic centers like MIT Media Lab and Stanford University, RHnet emphasizes mesh topologies, peer-to-peer protocols, and interoperability with existing protocols such as Border Gateway Protocol, IPsec, and Multipath TCP. The project has attracted participants from nonprofit organizations including Internet Archive, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and regional projects such as Guifi.net and Freifunk.

Overview

RHnet proposes a layered, vendor-neutral approach combining hardware, firmware, and software stacks to enable resilient local- and wide-area connectivity. It integrates concepts pioneered by Napster, BitTorrent, and Openswan implementations for secure tunnels, and adapts routing insights from OLSR Project and B.A.T.M.A.N. to support ad hoc topologies. Designed to interoperate with backbone carriers like Level 3 Communications and public-interest networks such as APNIC and RIPE NCC, RHnet targets disaster response actors like Red Cross and civic groups modeled on Civic Hall initiatives.

History and development

Initial design workshops convened engineers from IETF meetings and community networkers from Barcelona's Guifi.net in 2016. Early prototypes reused hardware platforms from Raspberry Pi, Ubiquiti Networks, and TP-Link routers, and incorporated firmware forks of OpenWrt and DD-WRT. Pilot deployments occurred alongside humanitarian partners including Médecins Sans Frontières and municipal projects like City of Boston mesh pilots. Funding and technical contributions came from foundations such as Mozilla Foundation, Ford Foundation, and research grants from institutions like National Science Foundation and Horizon 2020. Subsequent releases aligned with standards discussions at IETF working groups and with testbeds like PlanetLab and GENI.

Architecture and technical features

The RHnet architecture adopts modular subsystems: a physical layer of commodity radios and fiber where available; a link layer supporting 802.11 variants and long-range radio modules used by LoRa Alliance deployments; a routing layer implementing hybrid proactive/reactive algorithms inspired by OSPF and B.A.T.M.A.N.; and an overlay providing distributed content addressing and retrieval akin to Content Delivery Network patterns and systems like IPFS and Hypercore Protocol. For trust and security RHnet integrates identity constructs influenced by DNSSEC and WebAuthn, and leverages cryptographic primitives championed by OpenSSL and NaCl. Management tools borrow telemetry models from Nagios and Prometheus and orchestration ideas from Kubernetes and Ansible for configuration of mesh gateways and edge caches. Interconnection plans include peering arrangements similar to those negotiated by DE-CIX and route exchange practices used by Internet Exchange Point operators.

Applications and use cases

Use cases span disaster relief operations coordinated with agencies like United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and urban resilience programs such as Resilient Cities initiatives. RHnet supports community broadband alternatives exemplified by Community Broadband Network projects and enables distributed content hosting for cultural organizations like Internet Archive and local media outlets modeled on ProPublica. Other applications include rural connectivity pilots akin to Google Station and OneWeb-adjacent hybrid deployments, mesh-enabled sensor networks for smart-city pilots led by laboratories at MIT Media Lab and ETH Zurich, and peer-to-peer educational platforms used by institutions like Coursera and Khan Academy in offline-first scenarios.

Governance and community

Project governance follows a multi-stakeholder model influenced by the governance practices of IETF and W3C, with working groups for interoperability, security, and community outreach. Contributors have included civic hackers from Occupy Wall Street-era collectives, researchers affiliated with University of California, Berkeley and University of Cambridge, and NGOs such as Access Now and Creative Commons. Licensing and intellectual-property policies parallel those of Apache Software Foundation and Mozilla Foundation, favoring permissive and copyleft arrangements to enable local adaptation. Regional chapters coordinate with community networks like Freifunk in Germany and Guifi.net in Catalonia for deployment support and training.

Security and privacy considerations

Security design addresses risks familiar to operators of Border Gateway Protocol-connected networks and content platforms similar to YouTube and Twitter. Threat models include route hijacking observed in incidents involving AS 7007 and cache poisoning attacks relevant to DNSSEC-challenged systems. Mitigations include authenticated routing policy mechanisms inspired by RPKI and BGPsec, end-to-end encryption modeled on TLS 1.3 and Signal Protocol for messaging, and privacy-preserving caches borrowing techniques from Tor Project and Cmix research. Operational security guidance incorporates lessons from vulnerability disclosures coordinated with CERT Coordination Center and incident-response playbooks used by US-CERT and ENISA.

Category:Computer networking