Irdest is a decentralised networking project, aiming to create easy-to-use solutions for ad-hoc wireless, and mesh networks. It supports many common desktop operating systems (Linux, Windows, MacOS, NetBSD, …), and Android mobile phones. iOS support is on the roadmap.
The core component of the Irdest project is Ratman, a decentralised, peer-to-peer packet router (following the gossip protocol approach), written in Rust. With Ratman you can create private overlay networks (similar to VPNs), connect to a wider community mesh of existing overlay networks, plug into specific wireless drivers for fully off-the-grid routing, or do all of them at the same time.
Following is an overview of the available components. Components have additional information in their respective README files.
| Component | Description |
|---|---|
| clients | End-user applications using Irdest. These include both shims to traditional networking, as well as apps written specificically for Irdest |
| docs | Manuals (for both users and developers), and tools to build and deploy documentation |
| licenses | Set of license texts that are in use in this repository |
| netmods | Platform-specific networking interface drivers |
| nix | Nix related build utilities |
| ratman | Router daemon and API client libraries |
| tests | Integration tests over multiple components |
| utils | Various utilities in use all over the repository that don't fit in anywhere else |
Most traditional networking infrastructure (both the transmission layer, as well as applications) operate in a centralised way. Clients connect to servers, and devices to ISPs. This makes the infrastructure vulnerable to attacks. Natural disasters or opressive governments can easily shut down communication for millions of people, potentially putting them at risk, and slowing down or disrupting any organisation or activist movement.
Irdest aims to solve this issue by creating decentralised circuits between devices directly. These direct device-to-device connections can be imperfect and unstable. Irdest's routing approach takes these issues into account by caching undelivered messages, and carrying them towards their destination until the receipient comes back online.
Routing in an Irdest network is done via a user's ed25519 public keys, creating a 32 byte large address space (twice as lange as IPv6). Connecting devices together happens via channel-specific drivers (for example the tcp internet overlay). Therefore when creating a circuit, roaming between different connection types is normal, and no single connection technology has to work on all possible devices or platforms.
To learn more about the technical side of Irdest, check out the developer manual.
The easiest way to get started using Irdest is to download Ratman and its associated utilities. To learn how, check out the user manual!
To get started to hack on Irdest, check out the HACKING section in the developer manual.
Social processes, code, and design guidelines are outlined in the developer manual. We have a developer chat hosted on Matrix where we would be happy to answer any questions you have.
If you want some inspiration for what you can do with irdest, check out the clients section.
Irdest is free software licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 or later.
Additional Permissions: For Submission to the Apple App Store:
Provided that you are otherwise in compliance with the AGPLv3 for each covered work you convey (including without limitation making the Corresponding Source available in compliance with Section 6 of the AGPLv3), the irdest developers also grant you the additional permission to convey through the Apple App Store non-source executable versions of the Program as incorporated into each applicable covered work as Executable Versions only under the Mozilla Public License version 2.0.
Copies of appropriate license texts are included in this repository. We use the REUSE specification. All license texts can be found in the LICENSES directory.