The shape of a private network

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur. Topology gets discussed as a performance question and decided as a privacy one, which is why the two conversations so often talk past each other.

Three shapes

Nullam sed tellus pharetra egestas vitae consectetur. There are only really three, and each one tells you something different about who can see a flow.

• Hub. Everything transits one point, which knows everything.
• Mesh. Peers talk directly, and nothing central knows the flow existed.
• Hybrid. A mesh with a hub for discovery, which is what almost everything actually is.

Sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore. The honest version of the third one is that the discovery hub is the thing to reason about, because it is the only part with a full view.

Magna aliqua ut enim ad minim veniam quis. Ours is a hybrid, the discovery half holds no flow records, and the reason that is possible is that identity is a keypair rather than an account row.