Hello Future Sushant! or anyone else reading this. I am planning to contribute to the organisation IP over P2P / IPOP this Gsoc season. This is an introduction for me if I wanna start contributing to IPOP again.

I will approach this as if I am the new kid on the block, with zero idea whats going on!

So there is this project called IPoP which I found on GSoC Melange, which allows users to create their own VPN.

What is VPN?

According to my understanding it allows you to create a local (private) network over the internet (say you have a friend abroad and you are at home, VPN can allow you to be in the same local network, he can be 192.168.1.2 and you can be 192.168.1.1 as if you are in the same room)!. You can login to his computer, and vice-versa , play LAN games , share files and what not!, cool right?

Whats the big deal in that?

You see, currently transition to IPV6 is ongoing. And most of the computer around the world still use IPV4. Unlike IPV6, IPV4 has limited address spaces. And we can’t afford to have separate IP addresses for all internet connected devices (Laptops, Mobile Phones, Tablets etc. and Now even smartwatches!). Thats where NAT comes in. Just think of it as something which Maps multiple IP addresses to single IP address. If you want to connect to someone outside your local network, there are very high chances that they are using NAT (or firewalls). So in short, you cannot uniquely identify the other person on the internet.

Why use IPoP?

Centralised services such as online social networks (OSNs) allow users to communicate with their peers. Because user­ to­ user communication goes through a centralised backend (e.g. Facebook) it leads to privacy issues (your messages can be monitored), performance limitations (more users, less service to each one) and Fault tolerance (server crashes). IPoP is user defined, Self­ configuring and it doesn’t depend on external virtual routing infrastructures on the internet. It doesn’t go through centralised infrastructure like typical VPN softwares, so your data is safe!