Encryption / Secondary Channels

Hi @mc-hamster, thank you for caring.

First thing I would do is clean-up the vocabulary, and possibly the code-base, so that concerns are well defined and well separated.

Current “channel” definition includes both radio settings and channel settings. It would be an improvement, in my opinion, to separate both more clearly. Radio settings are only radio settings, and define basically how to send packets through the LoRa layer, and how to listen. Channels on the other hand is a property of the meshtastic protocol, one layer above (at least). If the word “channel” is too ambiguous, let’s use “private room”.
Also, I don’t think selecting the radio sub-band based on the name given to the “channel” is a great idea. This is a fairly basic setting that most users will understand.

I think it is fine to have a default channel (private room).

I also think it could be desirable to have “non private rooms”, IE rooms that you will receive and be able to decode if you listen on the right radio settings, but I will let others discuss this feature.

“Private rooms” should provide the following desirable features :

  • groups privacy
  • repeater selectivity (select what channels should be repeated, don’t repeat everything so that you save bandwidth if other groups are using same radio settings, and also prevent a easy DoS on the mesh network by a bad guy)
  • users should have an easy way to share 1 “private room” (basically its key) with an other user, without having to share “all private rooms”. Currently, it seems that the way to share a secondary channel is to share all of them, which is a real defect in my opinion.

On the user interface design, there is plenty of inspiration to take from the myriad of group messaging apps, such as telegram etc. In my opinion, nothing fancy is required, basically 1 tab per “private room”, sorted by most recently used rooms, and this is perfect.

I would really, really love to see that implemented, and if I can help please let me know how.

Regards,

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