I have a couple questions I haven't seen directly answered

1)  How does DNS work on a peer to peer setup like this?  I see that you can access a node by http://nodename:8080, but let's say I run another web server on that machine, is it still the same nomenclature, or can I set up another DNS entry somehow and broadcast that to the network?  Or would I just set up another node with that name?

2) Related to #1, as BBHN becomes more and more popular and the effective size of networks increase, what are the implications of node name collision?  Is that already handled somehow?  

3) I hear people talking "advertised services".  Is there something special to that other than to just set it up for network sharing on the configuration of the node it is connected to?

I'm really excited to try and get started with this soon, I'd like to run some basic cloud services on the meshnet as an off-grid alternative.

I will TRY to answer your questions, but there are much more knowledgeable people than I on here...

1. DNS is all handled by the mesh routers and you really don't need to do anything other than setup your advertised services, attach them to an IP or name and you will be up and running. I have web servers and other things hanging off of my nodes. People from New Zealand to Paris find my stuff... :)

2. Once you have one setup, you will figure it out...  It starts making sense after a while, I swear!
   

3. This is why a lot of us are pretty adamant about anyone connecting via our tunnels to have UNIQUE names on their services and nodes, like prefaced with their call sign or something. Because, over time, as things grow, there will inevitably be 137 “Towercam” entries and we need to keep them all straight! It falls into the category of good operating practices. Peer pressure comes in many forms! :)

4. Yep, you setup your services attached to a name and possibly an IP address and they show up.

If you want to take a peek at a node and see what you can see check this out...

http://n5mbm.net:8084/cgi-bin/status

Hope that helps!

Bill – N5MBM

www.n5mbm.net