Files
fips/docs
Arjen 2548ca0cc6 docs: design for multi-path switchover
One peer, several paths: a peer reachable over more than one transport
keeps one Noise session and moves its traffic between transports on
failure or degradation, with no handshake. The document records what
in the code binds a peer to one path today, the decisions taken and the
alternatives that lost, the wire and config additions, the order of
work with the wire-free steps first, the calibration plan, and the
open questions with what the code does today for each. Cited from the
source comments of every commit that follows.

Refs #143
2026-09-23 11:41:29 -03:00
..
2026-09-12 14:41:38 +00:00
2026-08-30 10:42:59 +00:00

FIPS Documentation

FIPS (Free Internetworking Peering System) is a self-organizing encrypted mesh network built on Nostr identities, capable of operating over arbitrary transports — local networks, the public internet, Tor, Bluetooth, or point-to-point links — without central infrastructure.

With FIPS, your machine becomes a node in the mesh with a self-generated cryptographic identity. There are two ways to deploy it.

As an overlay on top of existing IP networks, FIPS lets your node reach any other FIPS node wherever it sits — behind a NAT, on a different ISP, on a phone over cellular, on a laptop with only Bluetooth in range, or behind a Tor onion. The mesh forwards IPv6 traffic transparently and end-to-end encrypted, with no central VPN concentrator or coordinating server.

From the ground up over raw Ethernet, WiFi, or Bluetooth, FIPS provides a complete permissionless network without any pre-existing IP infrastructure, ISP, or DNS. Any node that joins the link gets routable IPv6 addresses, peer discovery, and a path to every other node automatically.

Either way, existing networking software runs over it unchanged: SSH, HTTP servers, file transfer, anything IPv6-native works the same way it would on a local network.

New to FIPS? Start with the Getting Started guide.

Documentation Sections

Tutorials

If you are starting from scratch and want a guided path to a working mesh, go here.

How-To Guides

If you have a specific task in mind — enabling a feature, deploying a component, diagnosing a problem — go here.

Reference

If you need to look up wire formats, configuration keys, command flags, or counter inventories, go here.

Design

If you want to understand how the mesh self-organizes, why FIPS makes the choices it does, or how the pieces fit together, go here.

Releases

If you want the notes for a particular version — what changed, what broke, and what to do about it on upgrade — go here.