Start your own Internet Resiliency Club
67 points by mjturner
67 points by mjturner
Meshtastic is absolutely useful for off-grid communication. However I’d be cautious about calling this an “Internet” resiliency club. Maybe “networking” or “communication” resiliency should be the target instead. Meshtastic doesn’t really seem suitable for most common Internet protocols. It does have a native MQTT integration, but don’t expect to be able to establish, say, a TCP connection over Meshtastic (though it’s theoretically possible).
What if I could organize a group of volunteer networking experts who could communicate without any centralized infrastructure? We could effectively bootstrap communications recovery with just a few volunteers and some cheap hardware.
I read this quote (from the submission) as meaning that the goal is not to be able to provide communications services that the internet provides - rather the goal is to be provide emergency communications services among technologists who will be the ones responsible for bringing the network back online. It is designed to solve a bootstrapping problem - hence the suggestion for “internet infrastructure” companies to give these to employees, if they’re so interested.
(Edit to note that this seems to confirm this interpretation?)
I’m always a bit bummed to see folks set up infrastructure around LoRa, a proprietary protocol owned by Semtech. That said, I haven’t found a good open alternative. DASH7 seems to have potential but I can’t seem to find any hardware that uses it.
I think that’s the big problem. I’ve been following that route as well.
After some thinking it feels a bit like using a Raspberry Pi that’s also depending on so many propietary things, so even if you do LoRa you’ll still be not completely free.
That being said of course having a free alternative would be more than welcome and there are more free kinda alternative, but as long as nobody is providing an accessible way to say least hardware I think not many will get meshtastic, etc. working on it. It’s again similar to RPi. There have been ARM evaluation boards etc. But the good news is that with LoRa’s ecosystem around there’s probably quite a bit to reuse should one of the more open alternatives emerge. Just as with RPi successora. So long as you make the low level parts going I think there are many people who’d enthusiastically add support for it. People in that are seem to be thrilled about alternative approaches anyways.
It’s just that there are a lot fewer people who can make the electronics accessible and with LoRa I think it helped that it was already pretty wide spread for monitoring and the hardware is available in a manner that makes it very usable for toying around.
It’s how it often is. It’s a good choice for easy access with now also a somewhat big (depending on what you compare it to) ecosystem around.
So in other words I can certainly imagine a situation where a nice DASH7 or other device comes to the market and there are multiple users and a big part of the community then runs that alternative or both and even links them one way or another. Maybe really quickly cause a lot of things can be reused. Not just software, also the community, various cases, potentially antennas, but likely suppliers, etc.
I’ve been learning about LoRaWAN to use as a resiliency strategy in conjunction with meshtastic. I think it’d be fun to set up a LoRaLAN in my community for events, local news, etc.,.
For those on the Fediverse, there’s also some discussion here.
Some interesting responses, though the author doesn’t seem to be interested in talking about the drawbacks of their approach.
Have we just reinvented ham radio?
From about a third down the page:
Ham radio is too expensive, difficult, and power-hungry
Initially I looked into ham radio, but it is just too expensive, difficult, and power-hungry to be practical. Then Alexander Yurtchenko told me about LoRa (Long Range) radio and Meshtastic, a cheap, low-power method of sending text messages across a few kilometers.
that doesn’t really make any sense. ham radio isn’t any kind of specific tech, it encompasses all licensed amateur radio. using shortwave to talk with someone on the other side of the planet? ham radio. astronauts on the ISS sending photos to people on the ground via radio? ham radio. you sending super low power morse code to your neighbor 1 km away? ham radio.
definitely makes sense to me - approximately no one - who isn’t already a radio ham - is going to spend hundreds of euros on a receiver, learn morse code, get a license and then store and keep charged some portable ham radio device, while a tiny little LoRA device you can buy on aliexpress for the price of a few beers is something I bet people have just ordered while scrolling through TFA out of curiosity.
Oh, for sure, the licensing part makes sense, but not the power part, nor anything about the cost of receivers. There’s no such thing as a “ham radio” device, nor any requirements to spend hundreds of dollars on a receiver. My point is that ham radio can be anything on any band available to amateurs. A decent enough SDR receiver is like $20, and a $5 raspberry pi can transmit signals strong enough to be detected hundreds of kilometers away. I’m not arguing ham radio is the solution, I just don’t think the cited reasons make much sense. Bigger hurdles are the aforementioned licensing requirement (I don’t think you need to learn morse code anymore, though) and the fact that encryption is illegal for ham radio.
encryption is illegal for ham radio
Depending on the jurisdiction, not only encrypted transmissions are illegal, but any transmission that isn’t Morse or voice is against the rules and even slow-scan television or ax.25 can technically get one’s license revoked. The rule against using ham radio for commercial purposes can also be applied very broadly.
Nothing that falls into the licensed ham radio territory can really be used for communication resiliency in the modern world.
Which jurisdictions are those? I’m only familiar with Sweden and the US.
I’m also aware of quite a few times when radio hams in the US have helped people communicate in emergencies, so it seems to me like it works quite well in the modern world.
I think at least all post-Soviet states still prohibit anything except Morse and voice. There may be more. Although it might have changed recently, sadly there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to check…
It’s worth noting that encryption is not always illegal for Ham Radio in the US. There are several exceptions that are obviously called out (e.g., for the purpose of authenticating remote operation of devices)
The general take of several major radio clubs is that so long as it’s possible to identify what kind of traffic you’re using and who’s license is being used, Ham Radio mesh networks are probably fine. Enough so that we’ve used them in various contexts including contexts inclusive of federal government.
Setting a Ham Radio based wifi network to a registered owner’s call sign is generally considered to be enough by the radio groups I have firsthand experience with.
Ham Radio devices are not that expensive though. They can be quite low power, as well! You can buy them for less than hundreds of dollars (e.g., Yardstick One).
I think the real reason to participate in this via Ham Radio is because dumpster dived hardware power things like SFWEM and Aredn. For “internet” resiliency these are superior. This is actual disaster resiliency. The kind of thing which you can use to help firefighters and emergency responders coordinate. The kind of thing that can backhaul a gymnasium full of refugees to Facebook so they can tell their relatives they’re alive.
There’s no problem with firing up a lorawan network. It’s a nice introduction, the barrier to entry is low. But LoRA is optimal for sensors and minimal telemetry. Even basic image data will take a long time under normal conditions.
The article’s message is well taken and the barrier to entry is low, but I think if you want to live up to the name offered you’d start building some sort of higher bandwidth mesh network.
Ham radio is not dead, it’s just transforming from old grumpy men chatting over shortwaves to things like Meshstastic.