Hello.
The safe network will still use current telecoms infrastructure to send data throughout the network. Is it possible to differentiate SAFE network traffic from non-SAFE network traffic and block SAFE network traffic within the internet backbone or at other junctions? Just wondering what’s technically possible to disrupt SAFE network should threatened interests decide to act.
SAFE traffic will appear as https traffic does.
It is a doubt I have, about SAFE network but also about other decentralized technologies:
At the initialization of a node, how does it discover other nodes to connect to ? does it need to connect to a reference site in order to get a list of nodes ? If is it the case? Can an ISP or government block access to this reference site, so effectively disrrupting the network?
The SAFE network does not connect to the clearnet at all and does not use servers so no, no reference site from the clear net.
In theory the government could block access to the maidsafe website to prevent access to the software needed to connect to the SAFE network but given it’s all open source it could simply be uploaded elsewhere. It’s kind of like trying to block popcorn time. It just keeps popping up since it’s open source. Also the SAFE network will eventually be able to form it’s own mesh network as more and more users adopt the technology.
I’m not sure how SAFE network handles this and was wondering this too. In Bitcoin there are bootstrap or seed nodes. These are some DNS entries or IP addresses that are hardcoded into the Bitcoin Core client that it will use to try to get up and running/connected. With the China ban rumors that were going around, one thing I heard was that they would block the bootstrap IPs so that people would have some trouble getting a node started up. But there are multiple ways to feed IP addresses into the client…like you could ask your friend what their IP address is, or ask someone to share their ‘peers.dat’ file that list all of the peers that they know about. Once you connect to the network, additional peers can be relayed to you by the peers you have connected to. Refer to Satoshi Client Node Discovery - Bitcoin Wiki and https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4dicny/dns_seeds_servers_hardcoded_in_bitcoin/
A config file contains a list of hard coded contacts (IP address and port). These contacts can be any nodes in the network, not just those run by MaidSafe. If governments try to block some of them, then people could maintain and exchange dynamic lists of currently working nodes.
Cool ! 
I think maybe some people will prefer to connect using this hard coded list , with trusted users, In a way similar to the used in Hyperboria Cjdns network . Would it be possible and advantageous ?