Anonymous · 6mo · No.61
Does anyone here participate in one of those "people's mesh nets", like Freifunk, NYC Mesh, AWMN... Or maybe there are gemblogs about that?
I want to read about experience of setting that up, and more important, engaging people. It seems that Internet in Russia, where I leave, is gonna be much less free very soon :/
Anonymous · 6mo · No.66
No but I'm interested in exploring it when I have more time. Lately I've been looking into low bandwidth, long range meshnets like Meshtastic (uses LoRa). I don't know if Gemini over LoRa is a realistic goal, but why not try?
Anonymous · 6mo · No.71
@66, very nice!
Anonymous · 6mo · No.76
@61 community meshnets seem like such a great idea to be a part of but i wonder if the entry cost for the equipment is too high to be practical. specifically for your case in russia are VPNs not accessible?
@66 meshtastic looks like a really easy and cheap way to break into it. would an urban setting be too dense to participate?
Anonymous · 6mo · No.78
@76 I don't know about entry cost :( Chips are pretty cheap now, right?
VPNs are good just yet. But couple of days ago I read about a proposition to the Parlament, that includes allowing the g-men to *turn off the communications for civilians* during emergency situations. Now, I doubt that proposition is going to be accepted, but a) current party are losing their positions and b) weird shit like that happens time to time
Having mesh nets, we could at least have local chats and VoIPs
Anonymous · 6mo · No.100
@76 Range in dense areas is much lower but still reasonable, especially since it should be easier to place powered nodes in a city. Could also use directional antennas or rooftops to get extra range. Generally it's way better range than wifi no matter what the situation.
Anonymous · 6mo · No.102
@78 that's terrifying and i'm sorry that's even on the table. i remember there being an offline bluetooth p2p messaging service around the hong kong protests. having an impromptu mesh net like would be a huge sense of security. having community owned infrastructure like @76 with directional antennae would be more reliable though more easily targeted
@76 do mesh nets tend to need directional targeting? as in, is there no general purpose AP node you can set and forget to participate in the network? i suppose it may be too RF noisy and power intensive that way so i'm probably naive in my way of thinking
andrew!z8MmXsU4 · 6mo · No.106
@102
>offline bluetooth p2p messaging service
Yep, that's Briar, I have its apk on my smartphone :)
Anonymous · 6mo · No.107
@102 wifi mesh nets typically do need directional antennas due to low range and noisy environments. With LoRa it depends on how far apart your nodes are, in flat rural areas you may get by without it.
Anonymous · 6mo · No.108
@102 you could also create an alternative kind of offline mesh where nodes are independent Secure Scuttlebutt servers. SSB was designed for operating on sailboats where connectivity is rare. You pull down all "updates" from friends and push your own updates whenever you are connected, and you can then browse that data offline. Individual nodes store that data and pass it along to others when they connect. So it's like an offline mesh.
Anonymous · 5mo · No.115
@108 scuttlebutt looks like it does exactly what kind of thing i was hoping for (and its branding is super cute.) it looks like it even works on local networks so i can imagine a system of freely accessible non-internet connected wifi community hotspots that can help automatically sync communications through. that is a really cool platform thank you for sharing that
Anonymous · 5mo · No.116
@106 i just now also read about briar and it does what scuttlebutt looks to do as well but goes even scrappier about it. man there is a lot of interesting work in this space that makes me less worried about our future dystopian centralized surveillance states. i'm still _very_ worried don't get me wrong, but there are and will be ways we can still have our privacy
Anonymous · 5mo · No.134
Althea also looks interesting from the perspective of tapping the profit motive to get people to deploy additional access points/repeaters.
Anonymous · 5mo · No.137
@134 True, but I'm by also afraid it will end up as an IoT botnet for "smart" spy devices. Similar to how Amazon wants to use the Ring network.
Anonymous · 5mo · No.139
@137 Isn't that a risk with all meshnets?
Anonymous · 5mo · No.140
@139 I guess so, if the communications are encrypted and private. Maybe not if it's run by a small group of friends or a communityy
Anonymous · 5mo · No.145
@140 Limiting the size would certainly reduce risk of exploitation.
I see now that you didn't mean "botnet" in the way I'm used to hearing the word used. Regarding corporate exploitation, the pill against that seems to be maximizing end user control over their own devices (i.e., maintaining a libre stack) and minimizing the ability of the provider to lock them into an exclusive relationship.
AFAICT, Althea does meet this standard. All their code seems to be open source, and the payment layer is disintermediated via a proof-of-stake cryptocurrency. It looks to me like a very practical take on bootstrapping a libre meshnet, TBH.
Anonymous · 5mo · No.150
@145 apologies, I've been poisoned by memes and I tend to use "botnet" to mean any exploitative and widespread tech. It's a bad habit.
Anonymous · 5mo · No.153
i'm not one for social media in this style but here's an easy way to break into scuttlebutt https://www.manyver.se/
Anonymous · 5mo · No.154
althea does have the profit incentive but man do i die a little more inside each time yet another project tries to justify their yet another cryptocurrency
Anonymous · 5mo · No.167
https://www.helium.com/
Anonymous · 5mo · No.168
@167 That effort sure looks quite a bit more polished than Althea Thanks for the link.
Anonymous · 5mo · No.169
and helium also looks like yet another project pushing their yet another cryptocurrency 🤔
Anonymous · 5mo · No.171
@169 TBH, I think native cryptocurrencies may make sense for projects like Althea and Helium. They allow network providers to be rewarded in tokens representing access to network capacity without running the risk of creating a liquidity crisis, especially in the early days when demand for the nascent network may not be all that high.
Anonymous · 5mo · No.174
@171 I don't know how an incentivised network would even work without it's own cryptocurrency. I guess you could have fiat distribu
Anonymous · 5mo · No.175
(Accidently pressed enter too soon) I suppose the project leaders could distribute fiat (or an existing crypto not tied to the network) to nodes based on performance somehow. That might be bad for privacy though as they would have to have an overview of the network. Also centralisation is just bad (what if the project goes bust? what if the project leaders start censoring connections based on personal views?).
Anonymous · 5mo · No.176
@175 An incentivized meshnet could use the native currency of whatever smart contract platform it has chosen to build on, but then there would be little incentive to be among the first to set up nodes, as one would not be compensated in any way. If a meshnet has its own currency, then it can issue that currency as compensation, essentially allowing it to borrow against the future value of the network, thus resolving the liquidity problem and helping the network bootstrap.
Anonymous · 5mo · No.220
@176
As in, users of the network would pay node operators to use their nodes?
I was thinking that the native coin could be printed to give to node ops automatically. But this way sounds better.
What do you mean by "borrow against the future value of the network"?
Anonymous · 5mo · No.228
Right. But as I said, it makes the bootstrapping problem harder.
"Borrow against the future value of the network," in the same way that startups "borrow" against future value by granting stocks and options to early employees.
Anonymous · 5mo · No.462
I know that feel bro. I am from Russia too. Censorship is rampant. It would be nice if I could make a mesh network in my university
andrew!z8MmXsU4 · 5mo · No.465
@462 I thought about it, but it would be nearly useless