WEPN + Unbounded/Snowflake FAQ
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This page is intended for a special audience. |
For a select audience, WEPN is providing devices that can run Snowflake (by Tor) and Unbounded (by Lantern). These projects, as explained below, are to allow you to donate some of your home bandwidth to support people behind internet censorship.
Each of the projects is explained below. The impact, including bandwidth usage or electricity usage, are also explained below in the next questions.
Since our number of devices is limited, participating in this project is limited to invitations. If you choose not to set up your device, we may ask you to return your pod.
WEPN pods distributed in this project are configured slightly differently than the devices you purchase directly from our shop. As a result, the details explained in this page do NOT apply to you if you are not part of this project and just purchasing a regular device from our shop.
Not for this limited project, thanks to support from Open Technology Fund. We ask you to optionally contribute an amount if you can, for example the shipping costs or the part of the device costs that the OTF fund does not cover.
If you end up not setting up the device or letting it operate, we might ask you to return it so we can send it to another person.
Visit this link, fill the form, and use the "access code" you were provided in the email.
Unbounded by Lantern is a crowdsourced computing project designed to help people in censored regions access the open internet.
It works by turning your web browser (and in this project the WEPN Pod in your home) into a "digital bridge" to the open internet:
Volunteering Your Connection: If you live in a region with unrestricted internet access, you can volunteer a small portion of your internet connection by enabling Unbounded.
Routing Traffic: Your pod securely routes traffic through Lantern's servers, which then act as the final endpoint to the requested websites or services.
Benefits for Users: This allows users in censored regions to bypass government firewalls and access blocked content.
Safety and Privacy: Lantern is a non-profit organization dedicated to internet freedom and has safeguards in place:
All connections are encrypted.
Your IP address is not visible to the websites the users in censored regions access (they only see Lantern's servers).
It uses a safelist of approved sites to prevent your connection from being used for objectionable or illegal content.
The traffic is kept low and manageable to minimize impact on your internet speed.
Essentially, it's a way for people in uncensored areas to easily and safely support global internet freedom.
Tor Snowflake is a software package designed to help people circumvent internet censorship and access the Tor network.
Here are the key points about Tor Snowflake:
Purpose: Defeating Censorship
It acts as a pluggable transport for Tor, meaning it disguises Tor traffic to look like ordinary, non-Tor traffic (specifically, like peer-to-peer video conferencing traffic using WebRTC).
This allows users in heavily censored countries—where direct connections to the regular Tor network are blocked—to still connect to Tor and access the open internet.
How it Works: The Three Components
Snowflake relies on three main parts:
Snowflake Proxies (Volunteers, like you hopefully): These are temporary, lightweight relay nodes run by volunteers, often just by installing a browser extension or keeping a web page open in an uncensored country. They are numerous and ephemeral, making them hard for censors to block all at once.
Tor Users (Clients): People in censored regions who use an application like the Tor Browser or Onion Browser with Snowflake enabled to connect to the Tor network.
A Broker: A server that securely connects a censored user with an available volunteer proxy.
Key Features
Ephemeral Proxies: The proxies are short-lived and numerous, which helps them evade block lists.
Uses WebRTC: It uses the WebRTC protocol, commonly used for video and voice calls, to establish a direct peer-to-peer connection between the user and the proxy, helping the traffic blend in.
Easy to Use (Client-Side): It's often built directly into the Tor Browser and other Tor-powered apps, making it easy for censored users to activate.
Protection for Proxies: The volunteer proxies are only entry points to the Tor network. The user's eventual visible IP address is that of a Tor exit node, not the volunteer's proxy, so volunteers do not have to worry about the content the user is viewing.
No. Both Snowflake and Unbounded just use your home WEPN pod as entry point. The traffic exits servers or other exit nodes operated by others, and will not be affiliated with you.
No. Their traffic will be only routed through your home, and they are not able to see anything about your home.
A WEPN Pod (photo) is a physical hardware device designed to be a self-hosted, home server. It is a 5"x4"x2" (13 x 11 x 5 cm) device. We are able to run various types of software on this hardware box. We also provide a mobile app (Android and iOS) to control this device.
Depending on what the configuration of the device is, the device can serve various purposes. As a result, you might find documentation about the “VPN” feature of the WPEN pod. While you might be able to set that up as well, the focus of this current project is not doing that.
No. WEPN pods distributed in this project are configured slightly differently than the devices you purchase directly from our shop. As a result, the details explained in this page do NOT apply to you if you are not part of this project and just purchasing a regular device from our shop.
Some of your home internet bandwidth, and some electricity running the WEPN pod at your home.
The exact amount depends on the cost of electricity where you are. Typically a WEPN pod draws ~6W, so based on power rates in California, one of the most expensive in the US, it will cost around $1.4/month in electricity costs for running it 24/7. This will be part of your monthly regular electricity bill.
It does not directly affect you. We limit the amount of bandwidth, so it should not be noticeable. We are in the process of adding software capabilities to allow you to adjust the limits, but it takes a bit for it to be ready.
We are putting a hardcoded limit of 300MB per day, which goes to around 1GB per month. We are in the process of adding software capabilities to allow you to adjust the limits, but it takes a bit for it to be ready.
Soon you will be! We are working on the software changes, so you can adjust the times, bandwidth limits, and other parameters using our mobile app.
The original purpose of the WEPN pod is to run personal VPN servers. This is great for when you are out of your home, or if you have relatives that are behind censorship.
WEPN pods run Shadowsocks/Outline and Wireguard servers.
We are working on a software update that allows you to be notified if your home network is compatible. Once you set up your home pod, after a day or two the device will self test and notify you. Stay tuned for the updates that enable this!
We are trying to focus on the Unbounded/Snowflake for now.
Please send an email to support at wepn.dev, and mention “kindness” in the subject line.