Name reminds of https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksempf%C3%A4nger Probably intentional.
Me too. They could maybe recycle a few old slogans too:
"Ein Volk, ein Reich, eine Netzverbindungmitteilungsgesellsschaft"
Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone
61–70 of 124 posts
Re: Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
s/because/thanks
Our current legislation gave us a relatively "clean" frequency space. Would be so much worse without it
Re: Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Practicality is an issue though. Mostly because of our current regulation, must be said.
s/because/thanks Our current legislation gave us a relatively "clean" frequency space. Would be so much worse without it
I thought "because" is a neutral word (I'm not a native speaker). The distinction between regulatory and technological problems is an important one to make - regulations can be changed. E.g. what would happen if we separated a whole band with enough bandwidth for an open mesh network?
Re: Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I work with 900MHz radios and infrastructure, here's my thoughts: > The frequencies are what I'm confused by as well. To have a half mile range at relatively low powers it would need to be a low frequency band. > I'm guessing they haven't bought licenses from the FCC, so my bet is that they're using the 900 MHz ISM band. Seems likely, and probably even works in controlled tests over relatively short distances. 900MHz…
What if you used the noise as the carrier wave for the signal? Like, if in an urban area you have a "stable" probability distribution of noise, modulate that.
You're being downvited because, whilst this is a clever sounding idea, unfortunately it doesn't work like that.
The noise is random, so you can't modulate it because you can't predict what it will be. A probability distribution isn't enough; say you want to modulate by XORing with a random, uniformly distributed stream of zeros and ones. Knowing that distribution doesn't enable the receiver to extract the data.
(Fun fact: GPS signals are under the noise floor, but detectable because they are encoded with a predictable pseudorandom carrier which can be found even in the noise.)
Re: Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone
#65Name reminds of https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksempf%C3%A4nger Probably intentional.
That prefix certainly comes with baggage. There were a lot of affordable "Volks-" (read as: "for the people") products created by the DAF (German Labour Front) between 1933 and 1945. The more (internationally) known ones are the Volkswagen, Volksempfänger (radio receiver), Volkskühlschrank (refrigerator), Volksgasmaske (gas mask).
On the other hand, the infamous "BILD" tabloid started using that prefix brand again in 2002, with the Volks-PC and has been marketing 200 products with that prefix since and other companies/projects/products followed (like Volks.Fahrrad - which had to rename because of the product proximity to Volkswagen).
Re: Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
And you haven't even mentioned the fact that mobile phones can move around, leading to high rates of dropped connections as devices come and go. There's no way this is going to work.
Whoops, my phone connected to someone on a train that just went past! My phone call just dropped.
Why would your call be routed just via one single phone?
Re: Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone
#67How can internet connectivity be free? Doesn’t someone need to pay for a connection?
To answer my own question, as per the FAQ: Volk Fi counts data usage and bytes shared via WiFi. Every user gets the amount they share, unlimited. If a Volk user consumes more data than they share in a month, there is a 5GB data cap. After that, the user can pay the super cheap price of $1/GB for additional data.
I'm a bit puzzled about this: how do they plan to enforce such a cap in a distributed network? Doesn't this require distributed trust (about multiple users accounting the usage of each client)? Or are they assuming that the network will only consist of their phones running their unmodified software, so each phone can be trusted to do their accounting honestly?
Re: Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone
#68I'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…
In Germany there is exactly this for free.
https://freifunk.net/en/
Altough its far away from good coverage you get free wifi here and there. Especially Coffee Shops and in Big Citys.
Re: Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 all…
LoRa might enable this, and easily reaches 10-20km range (up to 100km in theory). A lot of projects in Europe experimenting with it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRa
Re: Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone
#70That's cool. A few years back I ran an indiegogo campaign for a static mesh network. It encoded geohashes into ipv6 addresses and used physical location as a waypoint for next hop routing using Vincentys algorithm. Clever solutions were designed to handle local congestion and mobile devices. Ofc it went nowhere, but maybe Volk can steal those ideas...
Another idea to borrow: The campaign also shipped with a global WIFI app. Eg. you put your WIFI password into the global database and could use the ones other people shared.