Testing out the Substratum Open Beta

Hello Steemians! Substratum released their open beta on 11th May, but the earlier versions of the beta Substratum nodes did not work for me as I was using Windows 10. It is only on the most recent version, 0.3.2, that I finally get to test it successfully. Before I walk through the beta test, you might be asking, what is Substratum? Substratum is a platform which is currently being developed. Their aim is to create a decentralized internet without censorship. To quote their mission statement:

Substratum is developing an open-source foundation for the decentralized web, providing free, unrestricted, and uncensored access to content for a new Web 3.0

The Substratum team provided a one-liner explanation of what their project is about,

The Substratum Network is a worldwide collection of nodes that uses industry-leading cryptography to deliver secure content anywhere, all without the need for VPNs or Tor.

Essentially, Substratum functions a little like Tor, allowing users to access the internet through the nodes in the Substratum network. The key difference between Substratum and Tor is that users are incentivized by the native cryptocurrency, $SUB. In this early beta release, the node is capable of routing traffic inwards through the local node. In the upcoming 0.4.0 release, the "Neighborhoods" feature will be released. With that feature, users will be able to route through other nodes to access the internet without censorship 😎. To learn more about the project, do check out the mini-documentary below:

Open beta testing

To conduct the beta test, head over to https://substratum.net/open-beta/ and download the suitable Substratum beta node package for your operating system. Install the downloaded package.

Once installed, launch the "SubstratumNode" executable and you should see the following window,

Before you switch it on, I will like you to do a ping to one of your favorite site. For demonstration purposes, I am using "substratum.net".

Notice that when you ping the site now, it is resolving to a proper IP address. I did a further test with WireShark and I can see that the traffic is routed to my configured CloudFlare DNS.

Flip the 2 switches on, and do a ping on your favorite site again. This time round, it should resolve to your local loopback address (127.0.0.1).

This shows that your traffic is now routing inwards through the Substratum node. By checking my WireShark again, I noticed that the DNS queries are now sent to Google DNS. This should have been pre-configured by the Substratum team in this beta node.

If you head over to your adaptor settings -> IPv4 properties, you will find that your DNS server is now set to 127.0.0.1.

Now, browse your favorite website with a web browser. Does it load successfully? If it does, then Substratum node is working fine on your PC!

What do you think about a decentralized internet? Do you think it is the solution to provide a neutral and censorship-free internet? Thanks for reading.