Coat-Hanger Star Mesh Federated Networking Architecture
A Zero-Trust Federated Networking Architecture for Decentralized Virtual World Infrastructure
Keywords:
network, tcp/ip, federation, zero-trustAbstract
The Coat-Hanger Star Mesh (CHSM) is a zero-trust networking overlay architecture designed primarily for OpenSimulator (OpenSim) but extensible to any federated or decentralized application requiring secure, authenticated, low-latency connectivity. CHSM replaces legacy cleartext UDP and TCP transit with Just-In-Time (JIT) WireGuard tunnels negotiated through the ActivityPub protocol, a decentralized social communication standard that underpins the Fediverse.
The architecture introduces the metaphor of a coat-hanger rack: a user's device acts as the rack, and each encrypted tunnel to a remote grid or service is a hanger added on demand and pruned when no longer needed. This approach enables dynamic multi-homing, where a user simultaneously maintains independent encrypted channels to multiple destinations without traffic crossing between them.
This dissertation presents the full technical specification of CHSM, including its threat model, lifecycle phases, implementation stack in the Rust programming language, Windows kernel-mode driver integration via WireGuard-NT, ActivityPub JSON-LD schema extensions, DNS privacy guarantees, server-to-server mesh communication, and extensibility to non-OpenSim gaming and virtual reality platforms.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Fiona Sweet (Author)
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