mirror of
https://github.com/jmcorgan/fips.git
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Johnathan Corgan
6a564e26ac
Everything the release needs except the version number, which stays at 0.5.0-dev until the tag. The changelog entry covers only the work that is new on this line. The point release's forty-six entries arrived under their own heading with the forward merge and are left alone; the twenty that remained are regrouped by topic and eight more added for changes no entry covered. Three of those eight matter to someone upgrading. Five root modules and four re-exports left the public library surface and Node::connections narrowed, none of it recorded anywhere; the entry names what to use instead and distinguishes the removed connection-phase enum from the Noise type of the same name, which is a different type that still exists. Tracing targets moved, so an existing RUST_LOG filter stops matching rather than erroring. And the handshake resend interval key no longer governs the first resend, which is now a constant, though it still governs later ones. Seven more entries cover the work that landed after the first content pass was written: the experimental native datagram API, the fipsctl probe diagnostic, per-instance transport addressing, the app-owned UDP socket seam, and the connect, disconnect and path-MTU fixes. The four bug fixes among them all reach the deployed line, so the release notes no longer claim this release carries exactly one fix for a shipped bug; it carries four. There is no security section, because after the split every security entry belongs to the point release. The release notes say so plainly rather than leaving a reader upgrading across both releases to conclude this one carries no security work. The notes are organized by audience, since the release spans OpenWrt routers, embedders, FreeBSD, and the existing platforms, and a single list serves none of them. The native datagram API is given a section of its own rather than folded into the embedding seam: it is a client-facing API rather than a way to host a node, and its one rule with no Berkeley-socket counterpart, that the v1 wire carries no half-close, needs to be somewhere a client author will read it. FreeBSD is advertised as supported on x86_64 only, stated wherever the platform appears. Android is advertised as an embedding seam and not as a supported platform: a compile-gated library surface with no artifact and no host application guide. The configuration table rename is carried through every shipped file that taught the old spelling: nine documentation files, the OpenWrt sample config and a test generator, twenty-two sites in all. Guides written this same cycle were among them, which is how the omission was found. The documentation that arrived with the native API was checked for the same omission and was already clean. The compatibility tests keep the old spelling deliberately, since they exist to test the fold. The changelog section is the fold of master's [Unreleased], not a snapshot of it. An earlier version of this commit took a copy that then drifted, so each section ended up holding a bullet the other did not and re-folding them would have picked a winner silently. Both causes were fixed on master instead — the NixOS module had never been recorded there, and the pre-release batch of fixes was new — so [Unreleased] is a strict superset and this is a copy rather than a merge. [0.5.0] carries all forty-six bullets byte for byte, [Unreleased] is empty, and [0.4.2] is untouched, checked by hashing it against master's copy. The BLE work landed after the content pass and gets one summary entry in the changelog and one section in the release notes rather than nine bullets: the ble_available gate replacing target_os = "linux", packet-boundary recovery for stream-oriented backends, peer recognition by node identity instead of a rotating link address, the L2CAP PSM moving into the backend seam and onto the advertisement, the embedder-supplied Android radio, bounded probe retry, and inbound handshakes moved off the accept loop. The two release-notes copies no longer share their link paths. Relative links resolve from one directory only, so the seven written for docs/releases/ all 404ed from the root copy. The root copy now uses paths from the repository root and the versioned copy keeps the ../ form; both sets were resolved against the tree. The same two links are broken the same way in the v0.4.0 through v0.4.2 notes, left as shipped history. The contributor tallies are re-derived against maint..HEAD rather than adjusted: twenty commits from outside the project and 171 from me, with Arjen at fifteen and fr34aky at two. An earlier count of twelve and 138 was carried from a measurement taken three days before this content was written, and the BLE branch widened the gap after it. Arjen's NixOS flake module, the UDP sin6_scope_id fix and most of the BLE rework were uncredited, as was fr34aky's L2CAP PSM seam. They want one last re-derive at tag time if anything lands before the tag. A sweep of all 99 tracked markdown files against the tree corrected fifty-three of them. Four told the reader to run a build.sh that does not exist; the only harness builder is testing/scripts/build.sh. The BLE build prerequisites were described as optional on the strength of a probe that build.rs does not perform, and bluez was named a build prerequisite when libdbus-sys asks only for libdbus-1-dev and pkg-config and bluez is the runtime daemon. Link cost is the primary sort key in next-hop ranking, not reserved for future use; Ethernet runs on macOS as well as Linux; the BLE MTU is the L2CAP CoC MTU rather than a negotiated ATT_MTU; effective Ethernet MTU is 1497; the LAN discovery subsystem is src/mdns and eight citations still named a src/discovery that never existed here. The connectivity states in three tutorials were invented, and their jq filters matched nothing including healthy peers. One command filtered on a literal fd97: address prefix, which only the first byte of fixes, so it returned empty for all but one reader in 256 and every later step using the variable failed silently. transports.tor.advertise_on_nostr was undocumented despite being validated against node.rendezvous.nostr.enabled. The transport design document gains the BLE section it never had, written from the source: the backend cascade and its compile_error tripwire, the platform gate, the PSM advertisement wire layout and the byte budget that forces a 16-bit service-data key, and the probe and admission bounds. Three source files carried the same class of staleness and are corrected with the documentation: the OpenWrt ipk usage line and Makefile error text both named a packaging/openwrt that does not exist, and chaos.sh parsed --subnet without listing it. Folded in with the content commit, having been prepared alongside it: The three GitHub Action pins that had gone stale. Every third-party action is pinned to a commit SHA, nothing reports that a pin has aged, and re-resolving all ten against their tags found dorny/test-reporter@v2, taiki-e/install-action@v2 and vmactions/freebsd-vm@v1 had moved. The three install-action@nextest references stay unpinned, since that action reads the tool to install from the ref name. check-action-pins.sh passes at 75 references and all nine workflow files parse. The lockfile refresh, which is the mutating half of the dependency sweep. Thirty-six packages move to their latest semver-compatible versions and every one is transitive; nothing declared in Cargo.toml changes version. No advisory forces any of them. It was taken before the validation battery, because a gate run against a lockfile that later moves proves nothing about what ships. The sha2 0.10 to 0.11, hkdf 0.12 to 0.13 and bech32 0.11 to 0.12 majors, three of the four deferred at v0.4.0 for change surface rather than security. All three land with no source change. sha2 and hkdf must move together, since both depend on digest 0.11, and neither changes an algorithm. That matters because the chaining-key KDF in the Noise handshake is built on Hkdf::<Sha256>, where an output change would be a wire break rather than a compile error; no known-answer vectors exist for that path, so the wire-compatibility gate is what covers it. secp256k1 0.31 is deliberately absent, since nostr's own requirement would leave two copies of the ECC library in the tree. The README support matrix, rebuilt as one feature table broken out by Linux variety. A single Linux column hid that Debian, Ubuntu, Arch and NixOS are one glibc build differing in packaging, that OpenWrt is musl and drops BLE, and that Android is not a daemon platform. Transport rows sort by how many platforms carry them. A Native API row reads its platform set from the cfg gates. The installer row becomes a package format row naming the artifact, and only the .deb is exercised per release. Four changelog and release-note gaps the BLE re-walk found: a Bluetooth LE bullet stranded inside the released 0.4.2 section, a missing Fixed entry for the scan and probe loop counting a pool-refused connection as an established link, the unnamed embedder call that installs an application-owned radio, and the fact that stopping the transport now stops scanning as well as advertising. Three release-document gaps found walking the unsurveyed commits: the UDP reuse-flag fix stated in the direction opposite to the one it was made, with the silent second-daemon bind it prevents left unsaid; the corrected native-API socket paragraph carried into both release-note copies, which still named SOCK_SEQPACKET on FreeBSD and two kernels where three are handled; and the coordinate-cache hardening, which shipped with no text anywhere despite adding four operator-visible status fields. That last entry states plainly that the checks are mitigations and not a closure, since the coordinate is still not authenticated. Also folded in, the documentation pass that followed the content commit: A stage-pipeline diagram for the probe, embedded in the fipsctl reference under the five-stage list. It draws the five stages left to right with each stage's failure reasons below it, and the bypass that skips both lookup stages when the coordinates are cached or the target is a direct peer. Its branches come from the probe state machine rather than from the report, so the path stage is drawn as the one failure that does not stop the probe. A rewrite of the README's "What FIPS does" section. It now opens with what a machine running FIPS gets, rather than with the two deployment modes, and gives the self-organizing and permissionless property its own paragraph since it holds for both modes. A regrouping of the README's feature list into the mesh, getting traffic onto it, and running a node, with a bullet added for the native datagram API, which had none despite sitting in the support matrix. The Quick start now leads with the released packages rather than a source build. It also fixes a real defect: the package enables fips.service and fips-dns.service and starts neither on a fresh install, so .fips name resolution was silently dead until the next reboot and neither page said to start the service. A rewrite of the release notes. They opened with seven subsections of upgrade caveats and reached the first feature two hundred lines in; they now open with a summary of the release and elaborate below it in the same order. Android is stated as supported through an embedded crate rather than as a standalone daemon, consistently across all three documents. The OpenWrt pair is corrected: it is 802.11s between routers with FIPS supplying encryption, authentication and routing, plus a convention of an open !FIPS SSID a client joins over WiFi, not meshing over a router's own radios. The probe's path output is described as the least-common-ancestor walk, which is the worst-case fallback route rather than the route a packet takes. Detail that did not change what a reader does was cut from the notes and kept in the changelog.
386 lines
18 KiB
Markdown
386 lines
18 KiB
Markdown
# FIPS: Free Internetworking Peering System
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[](LICENSE)
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[](https://www.rust-lang.org/)
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[](#status--roadmap)
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A self-organizing encrypted mesh network built on Nostr identities,
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capable of operating over arbitrary transports without central
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infrastructure.
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> FIPS is under active development. The protocol and APIs are not
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> yet stable. See [Status & roadmap](#status--roadmap) below.
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## What FIPS does
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A machine running FIPS becomes a node in the mesh with a self-generated
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cryptographic identity, tunneling existing IPv6 traffic over the mesh
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or bypassing IP altogether and letting natively written applications
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communicate directly with each other. In either case all traffic between
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nodes is end-to-end encrypted and authenticated.
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The mesh is self-organizing and permissionless. Any node can join and reach
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any other node without a central address registry, routing configuration, or
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coordination server. Peering between nodes can be manually configured or
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use auto-discovery.
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There are two equally-supported deployment modes.
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**As an overlay** on top of existing IP networks, FIPS lets your node reach
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any other FIPS node wherever it sits: behind a NAT, on a different ISP, on a
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phone over cellular, on a laptop with only Bluetooth in range, or behind a
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Tor onion.
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**Ground up** over raw Ethernet, WiFi, or Bluetooth, FIPS provides a
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complete permissionless network without any pre-existing IP infrastructure,
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ISP, or DNS. Any node that joins the link gets routable IPv6 addresses, peer
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discovery, and a path to every other node automatically. Support exists in
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OpenWrt for turning a router radio into a backhaul link and for creating an
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open access SSID so a phone or laptop can join without any configuration.
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Either way, existing networking software runs over it unchanged — SSH, HTTP
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servers, file transfer, anything IPv6-native works the same way it would on
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a local network. Applications written to the FIPS native API skip that
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layer entirely and address each other by public key, with no IPv6
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emulation.
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## Features
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### The mesh
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- **Self-organizing mesh routing.** Spanning-tree coordinates with
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bloom-filter-guided discovery; no global routing tables, no
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flooding.
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- **Multi-transport.** UDP, TCP, Ethernet, Tor, Nym, and Bluetooth
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(BLE L2CAP) ship today; transports compose on a single mesh and a
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node may run several at once.
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- **Self-assigned cryptographic identity.** secp256k1 / schnorr
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keypairs as node addresses; no registration, no central authority.
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- **Two-layer encryption.** Noise IK between peers (hop-by-hop) and
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Noise XK between mesh endpoints (independent end-to-end), with
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periodic rekey for forward secrecy.
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- **(Optional) Nostr-mediated discovery and NAT traversal.** Peers may
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publish endpoint adverts on public Nostr relays, exchange peering
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candidates, and establish direct paths through NATs using
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STUN-assisted hole punching. On the local network, mDNS LAN discovery
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finds peers directly without relays.
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### Getting traffic onto it
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- **IPv6 adapter.** A TUN interface maps each remote npub to an
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`fd00::/8` address, so unmodified IPv6 software reaches mesh
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peers as `<npub>.fips`. Built-in `.fips` DNS resolver, with
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optional static name mapping via `/etc/fips/hosts`.
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- **Native datagram API.** A local program moves bytes between two
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public keys over the mesh, addressing a peer as `npub:port` with no
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IPv6 emulation and no TUN device in the path. `connect` and `bind`
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take a key and a port, and from there it is ordinary socket calls.
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- **LAN gateway.** Optional `fips-gateway` service folds an entire
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unmodified LAN into the mesh: outbound (LAN clients reach mesh
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destinations through a DNS-allocated virtual IPv6 pool and
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nftables NAT) and inbound (LAN-side services exposed to the mesh
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through 1:1 port forwards).
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- **OpenWrt support.** FIPS ships as an OpenWrt package. Routers run
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802.11s between themselves as a bare L2 link, with FIPS supplying the
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encryption, authentication and routing over it. A second helper brings
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up an open `!FIPS` SSID, the same on every router, which a FIPS client
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joins over WiFi without configuration.
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### Running a node
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- **Operator visibility.** `fipsctl` CLI for control and inspection
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with time-series stats history queryable for any metric,
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`fipstop` TUI for live status with inline sparkline dashboards,
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and a JSON-line control socket on each binary for direct
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programmatic access.
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- **Per-link metrics.** RTT, loss, jitter, and goodput on every
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hop, plus mesh-size estimation, via the Metrics Measurement
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Protocol.
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- **ECN congestion signaling.** Hop-by-hop CE-flag relay with RFC
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3168 IPv6 marking and transport kernel-drop detection.
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- **Mesh-interface security baseline.** Optional default-deny
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nftables policy for `fips0` shipped as a packaged conffile
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(`/etc/fips/fips.nft`) with an operator drop-in directory
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(`/etc/fips/fips.d/`) and a disabled-by-default
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`fips-firewall.service`. The baseline polices only the mesh
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interface, leaving Docker, Tor, and the host firewall untouched.
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- **Reproducible builds** with toolchain pinning and
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`SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH`.
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## Quick start
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**Start from a released package.** Every packaged platform in the table
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below gets an installer built and published per release, with checksums,
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on the [releases page](https://github.com/jmcorgan/fips/releases/latest).
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Building from source produces the same artifacts and the same
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post-install state, so it is the path to take when you want to modify
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FIPS rather than run it.
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On Debian or Ubuntu, download `fips_<version>_amd64.deb` (or
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`_arm64.deb`) and install it:
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```bash
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sudo dpkg -i fips_<version>_amd64.deb
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sudo systemctl start fips fips-dns
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```
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This installs the daemon, CLI tools (`fipsctl`, `fipstop`), the
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`fips-dns` service that wires `.fips` name resolution into the host
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resolver, the optional `fips-gateway` service, systemd units, and a
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default `/etc/fips/fips.yaml` you can edit before starting. The package
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enables `fips` and `fips-dns` but starts neither, which is why the
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second command is there.
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For macOS, Windows, FreeBSD, OpenWrt, the systemd tarball or a Nix
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flake, see [docs/getting-started.md](docs/getting-started.md)
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for the full multi-platform installation guide.
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To join a live mesh and reach your first peer, follow the new-user
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tutorial progression starting at
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[docs/tutorials/join-the-test-mesh.md](docs/tutorials/join-the-test-mesh.md).
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### Building from source
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To build the Debian package yourself rather than downloading it:
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```bash
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git clone https://github.com/jmcorgan/fips.git
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cd fips
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cargo install cargo-deb
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cargo deb
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sudo dpkg -i target/debian/fips_*.deb
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```
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For the binaries alone, without an installer:
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```bash
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cargo build --release
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```
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Requires Rust 1.94.1+ (edition 2024). Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, and Windows
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run as standalone daemons. FreeBSD is packaged for **x86_64 only**;
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no aarch64 FreeBSD artifact is built or tested. Android is supported as
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an **embedded crate** rather than as a standalone daemon: a
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compile-gated library surface where the host app owns the TUN (a
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`VpnService`, for example) and reaches the built-in resolver through
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`Node::dns_local_addr()`. There is no Android daemon artifact and no
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host-app guide. Transport and feature availability varies by platform.
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| Feature | Debian/Ubuntu | Arch | NixOS | macOS | OpenWrt | FreeBSD | Android | Windows |
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|----------------|:-------------:|:----:|:-----:|:------:|:---------------:|:-------:|:-------:|:-------:|
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| UDP | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
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| TCP | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
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| Tor | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
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| Nym | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
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| Ethernet | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
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| BLE | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ |
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| Native API | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
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| Package format | `.deb` | AUR | flake | `.pkg` | `.ipk` / `.apk` | `.pkg` | ❌ | ZIP |
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A column records what builds and runs in a packaged daemon, FreeBSD on
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x86_64 only. **Native API** is the native datagram API, which is off by
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default; Windows cannot carry it, because it has no `SCM_RIGHTS` with
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which to pass a descriptor. **Package format** names the artifact you install,
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and a ❌ there means the platform ships none. Windows is the odd one:
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its ZIP is an archive you unpack yourself rather than a package an
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installer consumes, and there is no MSI.
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Five of these columns are Linux: Debian/Ubuntu, Arch, NixOS, OpenWrt
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and Android. Linux is not one target. Debian, Ubuntu, Arch and NixOS
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are the same glibc build, and what
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differs is the packaging: Debian and Ubuntu take the same `.deb`, Arch
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takes `fips` from the AUR, and NixOS uses the Nix flake described
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below. **Only the `.deb` is exercised per release**, by the
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`deb-install` suite across debian12, debian13, ubuntu22, ubuntu24 and
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ubuntu26; neither the AUR package nor the flake is. OpenWrt is a musl
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target rather than glibc, and it takes an `.ipk` on 24.x and earlier or
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an `.apk` on 25 and later; both carry the `fips-mesh-setup` and
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`fips-ap-setup` helpers.
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**Android records what compiles for `aarch64-linux-android` under the
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CI cross-check and nothing more**: no transport in that column is
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exercised on a device or an emulator, so read it as "compiles", not
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"verified here". Being an embedded crate rather than a daemon platform, it
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has nothing to
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install, which is what its ❌ package format records. The BLE cell is
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narrower still: the transport compiles, but the radio behind it is
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supplied by the embedding application rather than by FIPS, and no part
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of that path is device-tested.
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On Linux, a source build requires `libclang` — the LAN gateway's
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nftables bindings are generated by `bindgen` at build time, which
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needs `libclang.so` on the build host. Install it before building
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(`sudo apt install libclang-dev` on Debian / Ubuntu); without it the
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build fails inside the `rustables` crate with an "Unable to find
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libclang" error. This is a build-time prerequisite only — it is not a
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runtime dependency, and the pre-built `.deb` artifacts do not need it.
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BLE compiles on every glibc Linux target and on Android, and is
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excluded on musl. On glibc Linux, libdbus is a hard build prerequisite
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(`sudo apt install libdbus-1-dev pkg-config` on Debian / Ubuntu) —
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without it the build fails inside `libdbus-sys` rather than skipping
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BLE. The BlueZ daemon itself is a runtime dependency, not a build one.
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The OpenWrt ipk is a musl target, so it omits BLE.
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Nym (mixnet) transport builds on all desktop platforms. The OpenWrt
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❌ is provisional, pending verification of `nym-socks5-client`
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availability on the target; it will flip to ✅ only if confirmed
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buildable there.
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Alternatively, the repo ships a [Nix flake](flake.nix): `nix develop`
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drops you into a shell with the pinned toolchain and every build
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prerequisite (libclang, dbus, pkg-config) already provided, and
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`nix build .#fips` builds all four binaries with no host setup. See the
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Nix / NixOS section of [packaging/README.md](packaging/README.md).
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## Documentation
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`docs/` is organised by reader purpose:
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- **[Tutorials](docs/tutorials/)** — hand-held walk-throughs from
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a fresh install through to a participating mesh node, plus
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advanced deployments (gateway on OpenWrt, hosting services,
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ground-up two-device mesh).
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- **[How-to guides](docs/how-to/)** — operator recipes for
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specific tasks: firewall activation, Nostr discovery, Tor onion
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service, Bluetooth peering, 802.11s mesh backhaul and the open
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access SSID on OpenWrt, LAN gateway deployment and
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troubleshooting, MTU diagnostics, host aliases, persistent
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identity, unprivileged-user setup, UDP buffer tuning.
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- **[Reference](docs/reference/)** — `fips.yaml` configuration,
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wire formats, control-socket protocol, CLI references for each
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binary, security posture matrix, Nostr events catalog, transport
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statistics inventory.
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- **[Design](docs/design/)** — protocol-level architecture and
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layer specifications. Start with
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[fips-concepts.md](docs/design/fips-concepts.md) for the framing,
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then [fips-architecture.md](docs/design/fips-architecture.md) for
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the protocol stack.
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- **[Release notes](docs/releases/)** — per-version notes, including
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[v0.5.0](docs/releases/release-notes-v0.5.0.md).
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If you want to contribute, see [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md)
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and [testing/README.md](testing/README.md).
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## Examples
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- **[examples/sidecar-nostr-relay/](examples/sidecar-nostr-relay/)** —
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Run a [strfry](https://github.com/hoytech/strfry) Nostr relay
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|
reachable exclusively over the FIPS mesh. The relay container
|
|
shares the FIPS sidecar's network namespace and is isolated from
|
|
the host network.
|
|
- **[examples/sidecar-nostr-mixnet-relay/](examples/sidecar-nostr-mixnet-relay/)** —
|
|
Single-container demo of FIPS peering through a **mixnet**
|
|
(implemented with [Nym](https://nym.com/)): the FIPS daemon, the mixnet
|
|
proxy, and a strfry Nostr relay all in one isolated container, with
|
|
the direct route to the peer firewalled off so traffic provably
|
|
crosses the mixnet.
|
|
- **[examples/k8s-sidecar/](examples/k8s-sidecar/)** — Run FIPS as
|
|
a Kubernetes Pod sidecar. The sidecar creates `fips0` in the
|
|
Pod's shared network namespace so every other container in the
|
|
Pod gets mesh access without modification.
|
|
- **[examples/wireguard-sidecar-macos/](examples/wireguard-sidecar-macos/)** —
|
|
Reach the FIPS mesh from a macOS host through a local Docker
|
|
container over a WireGuard tunnel. Only traffic destined for
|
|
`fd00::/8` transits the sidecar; regular internet traffic
|
|
continues to use the host network.
|
|
|
|
## Project structure
|
|
|
|
```text
|
|
src/ Rust source: library + fips, fipsctl, fipstop, fips-gateway binaries
|
|
docs/ Documentation: tutorials, how-to, reference, design
|
|
packaging/ Debian, AUR, systemd tarball, OpenWrt ipk/apk,
|
|
macOS .pkg, FreeBSD .pkg, Windows ZIP
|
|
examples/ Deployment examples (Nostr relay, K8s sidecar, macOS WireGuard)
|
|
testing/ Docker-based integration test harnesses + chaos simulation
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
## Status & roadmap
|
|
|
|
FIPS is at **v0.5.0** on the `master` branch, the first feature
|
|
release since v0.4.0.
|
|
[v0.4.2](https://github.com/jmcorgan/fips/releases/tag/v0.4.2) was the
|
|
last release on the maintenance line, so how much of this release is
|
|
new to you depends on which version you are upgrading from. The core
|
|
protocol
|
|
works end-to-end over UDP, TCP, Ethernet, Tor, Nym, and Bluetooth on a
|
|
global, public test mesh of thousands of nodes.
|
|
|
|
v0.5.0 is a platform-and-lifecycle release. It adds FreeBSD as a
|
|
packaged platform (x86_64 only), OpenWrt setup helpers for an 802.11s
|
|
mesh between routers (`fips-mesh-setup`) and for the open `!FIPS` client
|
|
SSID (`fips-ap-setup`), and an Android embedding interface for apps that own
|
|
their own TUN.
|
|
Node health is now determined at start completion and published as
|
|
`Degraded` or `Failed`, a node with **no transport up is a fatal
|
|
start** rather than a silent one, and shutdown runs a bounded drain
|
|
window (`node.drain_timeout_secs`, default 2 seconds) so live traffic
|
|
is not cut mid-flight. The `node.discovery.*` configuration table
|
|
splits into `node.lookup.*` and `node.rendezvous.*`; a deployed
|
|
`node.discovery:` block still loads, folded in with a one-time
|
|
deprecation warning. New wire-format work continues to be staged on the
|
|
`next` branch for the subsequent release line.
|
|
|
|
### What works today
|
|
|
|
- Spanning-tree construction with greedy coordinate routing.
|
|
- Bloom-filter-guided destination discovery (no flooding,
|
|
single-path with retry).
|
|
- Two-layer Noise encryption (IK at the link, XK at the session)
|
|
with periodic hitless rekey for forward secrecy at both layers.
|
|
- Persistent or ephemeral node identity with key-file management.
|
|
- IPv6 TUN adapter with built-in `.fips` DNS resolver and
|
|
multi-backend auto-configuration (systemd dns-delegate,
|
|
systemd-resolved, dnsmasq, NetworkManager).
|
|
- Native datagram API for FIPS-aware applications (npub:port
|
|
addressing without the IPv6-shim path): off by default, with a
|
|
surface that may still change.
|
|
- Static hostname mapping (`/etc/fips/hosts`) with auto-reload.
|
|
- Per-link metrics (RTT, loss, jitter, goodput) and mesh size
|
|
estimation.
|
|
- ECN congestion signaling (hop-by-hop CE relay, IPv6 CE marking,
|
|
kernel-drop detection).
|
|
- UDP, TCP, Ethernet, Tor, Nym (mixnet), and BLE transports (BLE
|
|
via L2CAP CoC with per-link MTU negotiation).
|
|
- Nostr-mediated overlay endpoint discovery and UDP hole punching
|
|
for NAT traversal, plus mDNS LAN discovery for local peers.
|
|
- LAN gateway (`fips-gateway`) with both outbound (LAN-to-mesh)
|
|
and inbound (mesh-to-LAN port-forwarding) modes.
|
|
- Peer ACL: per-npub allow / deny admission control at the link
|
|
layer; opt-in mesh-firewall baseline at `fips0` ingress.
|
|
- Runtime inspection and peer management via `fipsctl` (including
|
|
`fipsctl probe` for reachability diagnosis and `fipsctl address`
|
|
for mesh-address derivation) and `fipstop`.
|
|
- Reproducible builds with toolchain pinning and
|
|
`SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH`.
|
|
- Node lifecycle and health reporting (`Starting`, `Running`,
|
|
`Degraded`, `Failed`, `Draining`) with a fatal start when no
|
|
transport comes up and a bounded shutdown drain window.
|
|
- OpenWrt setup helpers for an 802.11s mesh between routers
|
|
(`fips-mesh-setup`) and for the open `!FIPS` client SSID
|
|
(`fips-ap-setup`).
|
|
- Linux (Debian, systemd tarball, OpenWrt `.ipk` and `.apk`, AUR),
|
|
macOS (`.pkg`), FreeBSD (`.pkg`, x86_64 only), and Windows (ZIP,
|
|
service) packaging.
|
|
- Docker-based integration and chaos testing.
|
|
|
|
### Near-term priorities
|
|
|
|
- Security audit of the cryptographic protocols.
|
|
|
|
### Longer-term
|
|
|
|
- Packaged mobile applications: an Android host app, and iOS. The
|
|
Android embedding interface ships today (see
|
|
[Building from source](#building-from-source)); what is absent is a
|
|
packaged app on either platform.
|
|
- Bandwidth-aware routing and QoS.
|
|
- Protocol stability and a versioned wire format.
|
|
- Published crate.
|
|
|
|
## License
|
|
|
|
MIT — see [LICENSE](LICENSE).
|