Maybe scuttlebutt could work, if the gossiping works across mesh wifis.
Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
11–20 of 162 posts
Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
#12Why and how is the internet cut off? You could send an email/tweet to SpaceX and ask to be part of the Starlink beta program. They'd have to be granted a license for your country first, however.
Why - I suppose that government want to get tactical advantage over protesters by limiting information flow and making protest coordination more difficult.
How - both deep packet inspection + filtering and primitive solution - making communication services (mobile and broadband) stop functioning. Such things happen already in the past in Turkey, Egipt, Iran.
Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
#13A YC company is (was?) working on creating mesh communication network from just mobile devices (not sure if they can be deployed right away independent of Internet connectivity): https://volkfi.com/
There are companies that sell software-defined radio products to help deploy volunteer-run radio networks, but those may be easy to jam and/or illegal: https://limemicro.com/products/boards/limesdr/
Not sure how far srsLTE (https://www.srslte.com/) can go here without requiring special equipment and Internet connectivity (someone well-versed can perhaps comment on its feasibility as a standalone backhaul): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18569961
Walkie-talkies work nicely for comms but not secure, should work well enough for coded messages; however.
I stumbled upon now-defunct https://opentech.fund backed https://www.qaul.net a few days back, developed in response to censorship in MENA, that I personally like: They maintain a mapping of devices (similar to BitTorrent) over Wifi P2P and/or Bluetooth to create a decentralised secure routing network. No extra hardware needed.
Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
#14In addition to short-range bluetooth app like Briar. There exist long range communication : Meshtastic, with $20 devices you can send messages with kilometers range. What would be ideal is for Briar to embrace the "Bluetooth to LoRa node". We can extend Briar Bluetooth network by adding Bluetooth to LoRa node that can connect multiple bluetooth mesh networks together.
LoRa cannot handle much data at all. At the lowest data rate you're talking 51 bytes taking 400ms to transmit. Its also far better at uplink traffic than downlink, meaning 2 way communication is very, very, very limited.
Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
#15You need to be careful with long range radio solutions. Radio waves sources are very easy to locate with cheap equipment. Wifi/Bluetooth is perhaps better since it's already everywhere, but the range isn't good.
Watch out, Wifi and Bluetooth and any radio source can be located (with direction finding, Time Difference on Arrival, ...).
It's sometime a bit more difficult: with spread spectrum technologies for example, widely used wireless technologies that work well in dense usage. It works also on cellular networks (2G, 3G, 4G, 5G).
Just so people don't get a false sense of security with some solutions.
Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
#16In addition to short-range bluetooth app like Briar. There exist long range communication : Meshtastic, with $20 devices you can send messages with kilometers range. What would be ideal is for Briar to embrace the "Bluetooth to LoRa node". We can extend Briar Bluetooth network by adding Bluetooth to LoRa node that can connect multiple bluetooth mesh networks together.
Meshtastic (and the LoRa tech underneath it in general) has a lot lower bandwidth than some people expect.
It's a reasonable solution for "a few dozen nodes up to 8-10km apart under ideal conditions", and enables SMS-style messaging across the mesh - but it's not "an internet replacement" by a long shot...
Think more "30people in an irc channel - without pics/video" rather than "Stream your protests to Instagram or Facebook Live"...
Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
#17In addition to short-range bluetooth app like Briar. There exist long range communication : Meshtastic, with $20 devices you can send messages with kilometers range. What would be ideal is for Briar to embrace the "Bluetooth to LoRa node". We can extend Briar Bluetooth network by adding Bluetooth to LoRa node that can connect multiple bluetooth mesh networks together.
> $20 devices
I couldn't find anything less than $100, where can you buy them from?
Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
#18In addition to short-range bluetooth app like Briar. There exist long range communication : Meshtastic, with $20 devices you can send messages with kilometers range. What would be ideal is for Briar to embrace the "Bluetooth to LoRa node". We can extend Briar Bluetooth network by adding Bluetooth to LoRa node that can connect multiple bluetooth mesh networks together.
LoRa cannot handle much data at all. At the lowest data rate you're talking 51 bytes taking 400ms to transmit. Its also far better at uplink traffic than downlink, meaning 2 way communication is very, very, very limited.
Yeah. Meshtastic in default (very long range) config has practical limits of ~30 nodes/users on a channel and can only broadcast old-school SMS style messages across the mesh.
It's super fun to play with. But it isn't gonna "save democracy by circumventing nations-state internet shutdowns"
Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
#19For everyone talking about solutions that involve short-range mesh networking: Belarus is about 600km across and the capital Minsk is about 130km from the border with the nearest free country, Lithuania.
For everyone talking about solutions that involve deploying additional hardware: who's going to pay for it and how are you going to get it into Belarus?
Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
#20In addition to short-range bluetooth app like Briar. There exist long range communication : Meshtastic, with $20 devices you can send messages with kilometers range. What would be ideal is for Briar to embrace the "Bluetooth to LoRa node". We can extend Briar Bluetooth network by adding Bluetooth to LoRa node that can connect multiple bluetooth mesh networks together.
> $20 devices I couldn't find anything less than $100, where can you buy them from?
Meshtastic runs on these:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000897355282.html
And if you don't need GPS (they'll use the GPS in an Android phone), these too:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000329729312.html
You could save a buck or two more by getting ones without screens, but it makes Bluetooth pairing more complex (you need to read the pairing code off the serial console over the USB port. But yo only need to do it once. It's not _awful_ if your plan is always to pair each device with the same (Android) phone)