XPost: news.admin.peering

Hi folks,

If you haven't heard of it, NNCP [1] is to UUCP approximately what ssh is to rsh/telnet. NNCP is asynchronous, delay-tolerant for fire-and-forget secure reliable files, file requests, Internet mail (and now NEWS) and commands transmission. All packets are integrity checked, end-to-end encrypted, explicitly authenticated by known participants public keys. Onion encryption is applied to relayed packets. Each node acts both as a client and server, can use push and poll behaviour model. NNCP can operate over a lot of transports: Internet, USB sticks, tapes, CD-ROMs, ssh, Dropbox, etc.

So basically it's UUCP for the modern world. I've used NNCP for everything from
automated git repo synchronization [2] to hundreds-of-GB ZFS backup streams.

And I now intend to offer Usenet feeds to interested people that would like to receive them over NNCP. The setup is easier than with UUCP, the environment is more secure, and the approach is so similar that it needs only a tiny bit of glue to drop in to INN in place of UUCP.

Over at https://github.com/jgoerzen/nncp-tools/blob/main/docs/usenet.org you can
find my instructions on doing this. It contains instructions both for communicating with news.quux.org over NNCP (including prerequisites and expectations) as well as some background on setting up NNCP for standalone INN-based non-public networks.

It is also a sort of brief-ish tutorial on the minimum setup necessary to get INN working with NNCP in this way. It could also, by extension, be somewhat of a starting point for the INN side of things for those wishing to use UUCP as well. The primary difference is using nncp-exec instead of uux, and there is a small shell wrapper to pretend to be uux and transform the uux invocation into an nncp-exec one. No INN patching is necessary.

For those interested, NNCP's integration page [3] discusses how to integrate it with Postfix or Exim (agin using UUCP-like techniques), BitTorrent, etc. Over at my nncp-tools page [4] I have information on the NNCP public relay I operate,
tunneling NNCP over other transports, and so forth.

I would welcome any corrections, contributions, feedback, etc. on any of this.

Thanks,

John

[1] http://www.nncpgo.org/ or https://nncp.mirrors.quux.org/

[2] https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10274-distributed-asynchronous-git-syncing-with-nncp

[3] https://nncp.mirrors.quux.org/Integration.html

[4] https://github.com/jgoerzen/nncp-tools

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XPost: news.admin.peering

So basically it's UUCP for the modern world.

UUCP for people with personality disorders.

There's been hundreds of projects trying to implement
Cypherpunk-approved sub-Internets.. but in the
$CURRENT_CENTURY they only attract trash and not the
people who create communities.
And needs moar Blockchain.
And less Go. Are you deliberately trying to be anti-interoperative?

--
Chris

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["Followup-To:" header set to news.admin.peering.]

On 2021-08-31, Chris Baird <cjb+usenet@brushtail.apana.org.au> wrote:

So basically it's UUCP for the modern world.

UUCP for people with personality disorders.

There's been hundreds of projects trying to implement
Cypherpunk-approved sub-Internets.. but in the

That is not what NNCP is trying to do.

NNCP is low-level tooling. It is not about building some large community any more than ssh is. It's not Hyperboria or Tor or I2P. The NNCP front page says it's "intended to help build up small size (dozens of nodes) ad-hoc friend-to-friend..."

It is a Unixy tool. It's not a website, not a community, not some TCP replacement. A command-line tool, that requires an exchange of public keys before conversation can even begin.

I don't really want to veer too far off-topic in this group, and would welcome an email conversation.

Fundamentally, we have been in a place for awhile now where there's no good Unixy way to do async. UUCP's security model is, at best, clumsy for this moment in time. When your only tool is ssh, every problem looks like a synchronous one. Those that don't need synchronous communication often resort to it anyhow because the alternative is difficult and clumsy. Those that MUST have async (eg, network backups to tape, certain large-scale logging aggregations, etc) have to implement it custom each time.

So, I figure, what better way to explore secure async on Unix than with some things it's ideally suited for? I have been using NNCP for my own backups. I use it for syncing my org-mode git repo. It is close enough to UUCP to be a fairly easy drop-in replacement for the things that still support UUCP: Postfix,
Exim, INN, and the like.

$CURRENT_CENTURY they only attract trash and not the
people who create communities.
And needs moar Blockchain.
And less Go. Are you deliberately trying to be anti-interoperative?

I'm not sure where that comes from - please do enlighten me if I'm making some mistake here. I am open to feedback from the community and want to make sure I am not causing a problem. I had visited about this plan with one of the long-time server operators here before beginning. On every page I've written about, I've emphasized that I welcome NNTP peers. I have several (thank you!) and I want to give back in that way - and this one.

The post you were replying to was transmitted over NNCP. That didn't seem to cause any trouble with propagation any more than UUCP would. It's just a different layer underneath INN.

If there are specific suggestions you have for how to make sure I'm doing this well, I'm all ears. But if what you're saying is "crypto transport leads to bad
things", I guess ssh (and UUCP over ssh, which some people still offer for Usenet) would like a word with you. This is USENET we're talking about. It's not a separate anything. It's still going to propagate via encrypted NNTP to the globe, like anything else.

You will notice also, I hope, that I tried to be very clear for people getting a
NNCP feed from me what the expectations would be.

- John

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On Tue, 31 Aug 2021 03:01:06 -0000 (UTC)
John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> wrote:

Hi folks,

If you haven't heard of it, NNCP [1] is to UUCP approximately what ssh is to rsh/telnet.

Coming from n.a.peering (but removed the crosspost since it's offtopic
there) and I'd just like to give thanks for making me aware of NNCP. I
think one or more people I know may be interested in toying with it.

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On 2021-09-13, opal hart <usenet@wowana.me> wrote:

Coming from n.a.peering (but removed the crosspost since it's offtopic
there) and I'd just like to give thanks for making me aware of NNCP. I
think one or more people I know may be interested in toying with it.

Great! Feel free to ask any questions you may have - here, on the NNCP mailing list, wherever.

The quux public relay may be of interest to you also:

https://github.com/jgoerzen/nncp-tools/blob/main/docs/quux-relay.org

- John

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John Goerzen wrote:

If you haven't heard of it, NNCP [1] is to UUCP approximately what ssh is to rsh/telnet. NNCP is asynchronous, delay-tolerant for fire-and-forget secure reliable files, file requests, Internet mail (and now NEWS) and commands

How do you see this working for email? Would one need an explicit .nncp
address (like in the old days with .uucp addresses)?

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On 2021-10-09, Crypto God <CryptoGod@china.com> wrote:

John Goerzen wrote:

If you haven't heard of it, NNCP [1] is to UUCP approximately what ssh is to >> rsh/telnet. NNCP is asynchronous, delay-tolerant for fire-and-forget secure >> reliable files, file requests, Internet mail (and now NEWS) and commands

How do you see this working for email? Would one need an explicit .nncp address (like in the old days with .uucp addresses)?

As with UUCP, it would be up to the individual site; NNCP is a transport, as UUCP is.

I've written up docs for running BSMTP over NNCP, but one could just as easily run rmail over it, as it is nearly a drop-in replacement for uux.

https://nncp.mirrors.quux.org/Integration.html has the details on working with Postfix (by the NNCP author) and Exim (by me).

I think the most common use would be for leaf sites (as in the final days of mainstream UUCP) but it could be whatever a person wants to build it out as.

- John

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XPost: news.admin.peering

Hi folks,

If you haven't heard of it,

i havent

NNCP [1] is to UUCP approximately what ssh
is to rsh/telnet. NNCP is asynchronous, delay-tolerant for
fire-and-forget secure reliable files, file requests, Internet mail (and
now NEWS) and commands transmission. All packets are integrity checked, end-to-end encrypted,
explicitly authenticated by known participants public keys. Onion
encryption is applied to relayed packets.

unnedded for usenet

Each node acts both as a
client and server, can use push and poll behaviour model. NNCP can
operate over a lot of transports:
Internet, USB sticks, tapes, CD-ROMs, ssh, Dropbox, etc.

what about usb and dial up and 1(or two for input and one for uotput)(+)
pin RasPI GPIO

So basically it's UUCP for the modern world. I've used NNCP for
everything from automated git repo synchronization [2] to hundreds-of-GB
ZFS backup streams.

And I now intend to offer Usenet feeds to interested people that would
like to receive them over NNCP. The setup is easier than with UUCP, the environment is more secure, and the approach is so similar that it needs
only a tiny bit of glue to drop in to INN in place of UUCP.

im out of glue

Over at https://github.com/jgoerzen/nncp-tools/blob/main/docs/usenet.org
you can(t)

i added the t

find my instructions on doing this. It contains instructions
both for communicating with news.quux.org over NNCP (including
prerequisites and expectations) as well as some background on setting up
NNCP for standalone INN-based non-public networks.
It is also a sort of brief-ish tutorial on the minimum setup necessary
to get INN working with NNCP in this way. It could also, by extension,
be somewhat of a starting point for the INN side of things for those
wishing to use UUCP as well. The primary difference is using nncp-exec instead of uux, and there is a small shell wrapper to pretend to be uux
and transform the uux invocation into an nncp-exec one. No INN patching
is necessary.

but can i us nncp and uucp

For those interested, NNCP's integration page [3] discusses how to
integrate it with Postfix or Exim (agin using UUCP-like techniques), BitTorrent, etc. Over at my nncp-tools page [4] I have information on
the NNCP public relay I operate,

that removes to f2f part

tunneling NNCP over other transports,

can i use it on yggdrasil?

and so forth.

I would welcome any corrections, contributions, feedback, etc. on any of this.

Thanks,

youre not welcome

John

[1] http://www.nncpgo.org/ or https://nncp.mirrors.quux.org/

yggdrasil http://y.www.nncpgo.org/

[2]
https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10274-distributed-asynchronous-

git-syncing-with-nncp

[3] https://nncp.mirrors.quux.org/Integration.html

[4] https://github.com/jgoerzen/nncp-tools

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On 8/31/21 05:01, John Goerzen wrote:

Hi folks,

If you haven't heard of it, NNCP [1] is to UUCP approximately what

ssh is to

rsh/telnet. NNCP is asynchronous, delay-tolerant for fire-and-forget

secure

reliable files, file requests, Internet mail (and now NEWS) and commands transmission. All packets are integrity checked, end-to-end encrypted, explicitly authenticated by known participants public keys. Onion

encryption is

applied to relayed packets. Each node acts both as a client and

server, can use

push and poll behaviour model. NNCP can operate over a lot of

transports:

Internet, USB sticks, tapes, CD-ROMs, ssh, Dropbox, etc.

So basically it's UUCP for the modern world. I've used NNCP for

everything from

automated git repo synchronization [2] to hundreds-of-GB ZFS backup

streams.

And I now intend to offer Usenet feeds to interested people that

would like to

receive them over NNCP. The setup is easier than with UUCP, the

environment is

more secure, and the approach is so similar that it needs only a tiny

bit of

glue to drop in to INN in place of UUCP.

Over at

https://github.com/jgoerzen/nncp-tools/blob/main/docs/usenet.org you can

find my instructions on doing this. It contains instructions both for communicating with news.quux.org over NNCP (including prerequisites and expectations) as well as some background on setting up NNCP for

standalone

INN-based non-public networks.

It is also a sort of brief-ish tutorial on the minimum setup

necessary to get

INN working with NNCP in this way. It could also, by extension, be

somewhat of

a starting point for the INN side of things for those wishing to use

UUCP as

well. The primary difference is using nncp-exec instead of uux, and

there is a

small shell wrapper to pretend to be uux and transform the uux

invocation into

an nncp-exec one. No INN patching is necessary.

For those interested, NNCP's integration page [3] discusses how to

integrate it

with Postfix or Exim (agin using UUCP-like techniques), BitTorrent,

etc. Over

at my nncp-tools page [4] I have information on the NNCP public relay

I operate,

tunneling NNCP over other transports, and so forth.

I would welcome any corrections, contributions, feedback, etc. on any

of this.

Thanks,

John

[1] http://www.nncpgo.org/ or https://nncp.mirrors.quux.org/

[2]

https://changelog.complete.org/archives/10274-distributed-asynchronous-git-syncing-with-nncp

[3] https://nncp.mirrors.quux.org/Integration.html

[4] https://github.com/jgoerzen/nncp-tools

(Necropost, but this project is still actively advertised on your site.)

My concern with this idea is that you may have designed an Abstraction Inversion (https://wiki.c2.com/?AbstractionInversion): it seems like
NNCP is a protocol stack to transfer news over something virtually
identical to news, or at least something virtually identical to e-mail.

You make a point that everything's nice and simple because NNCP packets
are fundamentally just files - but so are news articles (and e-mails).
If you have a system to transfer NNCP packets containing news articles,
why not just transfer the news articles? I feel that e-mail and news
(not SMTP and NNTP) are already the asynchronous communication system
you want. I think the biggest difference is that in NNCP every node is
an anonymous remailer.

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