Johnathan Corgan
5a36cbda76
Carries the release and the four commits beneath it onto the development line: the fipsctl probe report rework, the native datagram API end-of-file fix and its client-author documentation, the release content, and the version bump. The version conflict resolves to next's 0.6.0-dev, as the forward merge always does. README keeps next's side throughout: the badge, the two-layer Noise XX description, and the status paragraph all describe this line, and taking the release side would have replaced them with the older IK and XK model that next no longer uses. The CLI reference takes the release side, whose wording is version-agnostic where next's had hardcoded a version string in an example. The changelog needed repair the merge did not flag. Git aligned the released heading with next's Unreleased heading, which filed 181 lines of next-only work under a released date, left the block holding the released content marked unreleased, and produced two headings for one version. It also dropped the entry describing the lost IPv6 scope on inbound source addresses, which appeared nowhere on this line afterwards. All four are corrected, and each correction is checked by diffing against the side it came from. The Unreleased block is byte-identical to its state before the merge. The released block differs from the release line's by one line, the deliberate rewording that drops the handshake pattern name because this line uses a different one. The Breaking block is untouched.
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.