What gave you that impression?

> The Promised LAN is a closed, membership only network...

I can't tell what you are trying to add to the conversation here, or of it's just sarcasm.

I was teasing you and the op because you both made hedges ("seems", "sounds") when it was very clearly stated in the very first eight words of the first sentence of the first paragraph on that site.

I've never tried to join, so I don't know how exclusive it is. There are private clubs and groups that you just need to ask and they'll let you join. Others do a lot of vetting. If it's the former, it's not all that private.

You should read the article and the linked manifesto, because they are very clear that it’s none of that.

I already did read the article and I did not get that impression. If it's really that small and private, why mamke a website about it for friends and prospective members? Why architecture the network in a way that favors scaling, including mulitple backbone nodes running diverse software with the option to add more? Clearly these indicate thats it's not that small or exclusive. I would bet that if you were to bump into someone at DEF CON and they were a member, all you'd have to do to join is say "that's so cool, how can I join".

It is as small as it says. BGP/IPSec might be silly at its size, but it was also the path of least resistance given the background of the people in the Bureau of Lan Management. I guess it was also for lolz to see if these things could be made stable and reliable without the big-organization clownery that we constantly run into.