Add "Supported Layers"?

[ghost]

It'd be nice if peers could announce somehow an ordered / conditional list of preferential layers for peering.

I'm thinking:

• Local-only peers could use this to announce that they're available as public peers, but only within geographical boundaries.
• Conditional public peers could announce their existence for members of, for example, a hackerspace.
• Public-public peers could announce themselves but indicate that they only accept peering over Tor, or Wifi, or IP-over-carrier-pigeon.
• Public peers without preferences could simply point out that if you're living somewhere local, it'd be better to use a direct peering system than to tunnel over the clearnet: a peer might have an ordered list of preferences starting with "ethernet/cat6", then "wifi/band:channel", then "clearnet/ipv4", or something.

This would need RFCifying or standardisation, and because each interface might present differently, it might even require multiple peer entries, with a new key indicating applicability, geographical boundaries, or special conditions.

This might seem at first glance like a way of adding conditions to the public peering list that make it less useful, but I think conditions like these would actually make it easier to add a public peer without worrying about becoming an inappropriate global hub.

Of course, that would rely on people actually respecting the instructions given therein, so perhaps a way to announce a peer without actually providing peering credentials, and instead indicating an email address to ask, might also be needed to make it work in practice..

[ansuz]

#12