Johnathan Corgan
d0a0824768
Same split as the maint-to-master merge: version identity stays with the receiving branch, project state flows up. Kept next's: Cargo.toml and Cargo.lock at 0.6.0-dev, the status badge, and the paragraph identifying next as the wire-format-breaking line that will not interoperate with v0.2.x, v0.3.x, or v0.4.x peers. Only the shipped-release pointer inside it moved from v0.4.0 to v0.4.1. The changelog conflict was additive rather than competing, and resolving it either way would have lost real content. Next's [Unreleased] Fixed section carries the XX rekey divergence and dual-initiation work; master brought the [0.4.1] section. Git could not tell these were adjacent rather than rival, so both were kept in order, with next's Breaking block and its own [Unreleased] entries untouched. Took from master: the bloom FPR default change and its duplicate-definition fix, the docs describing them, the v0.4.1 release notes, the v0.4.0 date correction, and the root RELEASE-NOTES.md mirror. Checked before merging that no incoming content names the Noise handshake pattern, since next is XX where master is IK. The two "Noise IK" strings on master both predate v0.4.0 and next already carries its own wording for them, so nothing needed rewording here. Quartet green: 1698 tests passed, clippy clean with -D warnings.
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.