Hello hackers. What would be your advice for Belarus protesters to keep connected to each other and the rest of the world.There are some solutions for short-range communication (e.g. https://briarproject.org/), but what are the solutions for the mid-range (e.g. city) and long-range (hundreds of kilometers) communication? I suppose the HAM radio could be used for that or AMPRNet. Any ideas how to provide low-cost, decentralized, communication infrastructure for the time when internet is cut off?
Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
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Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
#2Why 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.
Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
#3Why 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.
Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
#4Why 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.
Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
#5Maybe with Bridgefy?
Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
#6You 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.
Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
#7For large gatherings you can have Bluetooth connected mesh networks. There are apps that already implement this out of the box like Bridgefy or Briar.
You can have a network of consumer radio walkie talkies with privacy codes, each node spread with a range of about 20km, depending on the weather and terrain. But this is would need dedicated hardware which I assume is not easily sourced in the current restricted environment.
Edit: Maybe if you setup a network of walkie talkies on rooftops you could probably maximize the node spread if are able to keep line of sight across each node.
Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
#8Why 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.
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Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
#9You 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.
Thanks, I'm aware of that - that is why I was thinking about low cost (say cost of Raspberry Pi) and distributed. When it is low cost - there is grater chance that large number of nodes can be deployed and single point of failure can be avoided.
Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
#10In 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.