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Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone

volkfi.com

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Re: Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone

#41

Post by kwhitefoot »

The hard part will be getting enough such mobiles out in the market for the mesh to ever work and getting the price down low enough for people who are not ever so interested to buy it.

Presumably this is using something like Wimax so it shouldn't be difficult for other players to introduce compatible devices. In fact it should be possible to make a Wimax version of the portable Mifi routers that connect to mobile networks then you could use your existing devices and some kind of VOIP solution.

Re: Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone

#42

Post by anonymous5133 »

sliken wrote: post #23

I'd happily put a large omnidirectional wifi antenna on my roof to help out with something like this.... if I could get a fair rate for the bandwidth used. My city has 70k people or so, and is perfectly flat. Similarly I'd be willing to help with any p2p type wireless, with a radio, antenna, and raspberry Pi or similar. Sadly most p2p wireless internet gateways are proprietary.

I've always wondered about this as well. Get independent hobbyists to setup micro wifi networks. Run all traffic through a vpn or some sort so the operator doesn't risk their IP/ISP banning their service. Monetize the whole thing on a pay as you go service. $1/gb and give 70 cents of that to the independent operators. The big telecoms already have these little mini-wifi networks in bigger cities that you can get access to but only if you are a subscriber to their services.

For me personally I would definitely pay the $1/gb to get access to such a network. Right now, I only use my cell data for e-mail and light web browsing. The cost of 3g/4g data is simply too expensive for me.

Re: Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone

#44

Post by woah »

sliken wrote: post #23

I'd happily put a large omnidirectional wifi antenna on my roof to help out with something like this.... if I could get a fair rate for the bandwidth used. My city has 70k people or so, and is perfectly flat. Similarly I'd be willing to help with any p2p type wireless, with a radio, antenna, and raspberry Pi or similar. Sadly most p2p wireless internet gateways are proprietary.

Check out althea.org

Re: Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone

#45

Post by weddpros »

sequoia wrote: post #33

Website just about crashed my browser. I hope I can find out what it's about here.

confirmed... worst website experience this far in 2019! and I tried both Chrome and Safari!

Seriously Volk Fi: fix this asap (like before you continue working on your business)

Re: Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone

#46

Post by TomMarius »

anonymous5133 wrote: post #40
int_19h wrote: post #20

This makes a bit more sense: "Every Volk phone has a SIM card slot and supports use on traditional LTE networks. However, a SIM is not necessary and the phone will always prioritize the Volk network first. The Volk network works as such: every Volk user gets a special router with their phone. The router acts as a wireless Qi charging pad also. The router connects to your existing internet via Ethernet or something si…

Sounds like a genius idea to me. In theory at least.

Practicality is an issue though. Mostly because of our current regulation, must be said.

Re: Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone

#47

Post by viraptor »

I like the idea, but I'm not sure how the abuse will work on those networks. There are two possible cases:

1. Volk data goes out via their gateway (proxied): They get access to your data. Their IPs get CloudFlare captchas all the time. (Like tor)

2. Volk data goes out from your router: You get to explain the CP access from your network. Your home IP gets CloudFlare captchas all the time. You get to monitor random people's traffic.

Which option is it?

Re: Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone

#48

Post by sliken »

anonymous5133 wrote: post #42
sliken wrote: post #23

I'd happily put a large omnidirectional wifi antenna on my roof to help out with something like this.... if I could get a fair rate for the bandwidth used. My city has 70k people or so, and is perfectly flat. Similarly I'd be willing to help with any p2p type wireless, with a radio, antenna, and raspberry Pi or similar. Sadly most p2p wireless internet gateways are proprietary.

I've always wondered about this as well. Get independent hobbyists to setup micro wifi networks. Run all traffic through a vpn or some sort so the operator doesn't risk their IP/ISP banning their service. Monetize the whole thing on a pay as you go service. $1/gb and give 70 cents of that to the independent operators. The big telecoms already have these little mini-wifi networks in bigger cities that you can get acce…

I pay $0.05 per GB or so at home ($60 per TB). I'd happily sell my data at a small profit just to offset whatever the equipment is that's required.

Someone else on this thread mentioned gotenna, which seemed like a similarly cool idea. Unfortunately they rejected the idea of allowing gotenna internet gotenna via a gateway I offered to write. They already have a unique id per device and I was going to use a DHT to allow all the gateways to track which user was behind which gateway. Seemed like a killer app to me, after all why limit who you message to being within 2-3 hops of you... why not allow the other few billion folks on the planet?

Sadly they wouldn't allow access to the underlying mesh meta data and instead required using their extremely limited API.

Having near free widgets that can mesh at low bandwidth (think SMS and IM like bandwidths) and then pay per GB for faster links seems like an excellent idea. I can imagine having phones/tablets without a $50 per month WAN charge if it could mesh and use wifi. Would be handy for sensor networks, home security, public safety monitoring (like cars going the wrong way on the highway), etc.

Re: Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone

#49

Post by TomMarius »

mdaniel wrote: post #35
doitLP wrote: post #5

I don’t get the invite model. Ask someone already invited to send you an invite? I guess it prevents spam reservations but I don’t have Facebook or twitter, so I guess I’m out of luck.

I was also curious, and found https://volkfi.com/whyinvite which has a constructive sounding heading > Why is Volk Fi invite-only followed by blather blather about the technology and then finally some invite-sounding text of > But, because Volk Fi is crowdsourced, it needs a certain user density in order to have full coverage and reliability which seems to run directly in contradiction to why one would want the syste…

Makes complete sense to me. The assumption probably is that people you invite are usually close to you.
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