.public is a design for a pervasive, self sustaining, mesh network infrastructure consisting of a global name space providing strong identity and point to point encryption, and providing tools for creating a community using open source wireless tools.

Our goal is to publish information and software which will enable people to build a network with more bandwidth, local services, better reliability and more potential than any carrier class network. These publications will take the form of everything from designs sketches, to finished blueprints, patterns and recipes for creating truly public networks.

• IPv6: more addresses, better auto-configuration
• mesh: creates infrastructure less networks on the fly
• name space: local directories for identity and cryptography
• community: local resources lists and exchange
• security: information, resources and guidelines

This includes all the components necessary for people to create their own fully mobile, always on, high speed network which allows for all current internet protocols as well laying the groundwork for new, and ground breaking applications.

IPv6, by allowing people to have unique addresses and making configuration more automatic reduces the amount of technical knowledge or management required to get a network setup. In combination with mesh routing protocols, this flattens the network hierarchy, turning master and slave arrangements into collaboration between individual peers which will act as client, server and router in turn and with strong security.

Providing for transparent secure transit such a network is a critical goal. By creating a geographically distributed, publicly accessible name space to holds credentials for network members we allow for secure electronic commerce, banking and legal activity by realising the vision of digital signatures and strong identity within credible groups or associations.

Creating a new class of community and location based applications, such as communal voice notes and local resource inventories, take advantage of the networks natural geographical and bandwidth relationships. Traditional peer to peer file sharing software can also make much better choices about what hosts to contact in this scenario.