Indian government shutsdown internet after removal of article 370
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/indias-int...
Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
21–30 of 162 posts
Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
#22During the arab spring, people in Tunisia managed to communicate with outside world thanks to proxies set by outside crackers on tunisian governement's servers. Turns out that when tyrants want to cut their people out of the internet, they still want access themselves.
If crackers around the world want to actually be useful, now is the time.
Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
#23All of these censorship resistant communication projects tend to assume that the network needs to be low latency, always connected, etc. It’s far easier to build a robust network if you relax that assumption, and cheap hard drives + e2e encryption mean you ought to be able to route a large volume of private p2p messaging / email in addition to any curated content that’s distributed more widely.
https://boingboing.net/2018/05/03/inside-cubas-massive-weekl... https://www.wired.com/2017/07/inside-cubas-diy-internet-revo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Paquete_Semanal
Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
#24[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
#25Two-way satellite modems were banned long ago in Belarus, so there is not much equipment on hands.
Mesh / opportunistic network solutions are great in theory, but require the installation of special software, which is difficult to coordinate on large scale. Also, this is an adversarial environment. We need to assume that every new network will be infiltrated by pro-government forces.
Only mobile internet was affected so far, so for now the most effective response was encouraging people to remove their WiFi passwords.
Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
#26The penny has just dropped with me. This scenario is exactly where Starlink[1] can shine (no pun intended). Find a way to get uplink routers into the locked down country and it would be impossible for totalitarian governments to block internet access completely.
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Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
#27Indian government shutsdown internet after removal of article 370 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/indias-int...
(1) This is not related to current discussion.
(2) 2G internet was available
(3) 4G service is restored now. https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/4g-internet-to-be-allowed-on...
Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
#28For 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?
A large part of the reason for the blackout is to prevent people from organising protests. Mesh networks are perfect for that kind of thing, as generally you only need to communicate with people in the same city.
Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
#29This is an important area in which I feel development has been disappointing, mainly because the commercial value isn't there. There are a few off-grid mesh dongle products that have been released in the past few years. Unfortunately, they're all crazy expensive.
Examples: https://gotenna.com/
They all rely on your phone and themselves cost more than a whole low-end phone! I am really confused as to why meshing requires much additional hardware that isn't already in a phone.
Re: Ask HN: How Belarus can keep connected despite internet blackout?
#30Loon flight systems create a network in the stratosphere similar to terrestrial based cell towers. The difference is on the ground, cell towers are fixed and transmit their signals to moving cell phones. With Loon’s solution, both the cell towers and the people are moving...
More here: https://loon.com