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Signal is having technical difficulties

status.signal.org

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Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#11

Post by zrm »

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #2

The centralized-infrastructure-Tower-of-Babel is about to collapse. As much as I love Signal, we've got to move to things that are decentralized. I setup a prosody[1] server a while back, but have nobody to talk with. If anyone wants to try their system out, I'm bjt@2n3904.net on XMPP. 1 - https://prosody.im/

I wonder if Signal would be open to doing that.

I know they don't like third party implementations because then if you need to make a protocol change you'd have to wait 30 years for everyone else to update their clients. But if you're already requiring a single client that it makes it easier to do decentralized messaging for exactly the same reason.

Another option that works pretty well is to do both. So try decentralized (DHT / direct connection) first and fallback to a central server if that doesn't work. Then you're up as long as either one of them is working. And there is a lot less load on your central servers.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#12

Post by graeme »

tomp wrote: post #4

At least they tell you about it - there's a banner on the top of the app. Last time WhatsApp was having issues, it didn't give any indication - messages just weren't being delivered (but as a user, there's no way to distinguish between "no messages" and "messages not being delivered").

You on android? No such banner on my ios client.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#15

Post by bjt2n3904 »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #5
bjt2n3904 wrote: post #2

The centralized-infrastructure-Tower-of-Babel is about to collapse. As much as I love Signal, we've got to move to things that are decentralized. I setup a prosody[1] server a while back, but have nobody to talk with. If anyone wants to try their system out, I'm bjt@2n3904.net on XMPP. 1 - https://prosody.im/

I can't figure out how to use it. xD

It's not the easiest thing to setup. There's a few places I'm sure which let you get free XMPP accounts, and a handful of good clients.

I'm using Conversations for Android. If you have a server that will allow self service registration, you can make an account right from the app.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#16

Post by bjt2n3904 »

Zash wrote: post #7
bjt2n3904 wrote: post #2

The centralized-infrastructure-Tower-of-Babel is about to collapse. As much as I love Signal, we've got to move to things that are decentralized. I setup a prosody[1] server a while back, but have nobody to talk with. If anyone wants to try their system out, I'm bjt@2n3904.net on XMPP. 1 - https://prosody.im/

Hi, Prosody dev here. It looks like your server isn't reachable. If you'd like help with that you can join the community support channel: https://prosody.im/discuss/

Aww beans. I looked at the IM observatory, and it seemed to check out fine...

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#17

Post by okso »

kortex wrote: post #8
bjt2n3904 wrote: post #2

The centralized-infrastructure-Tower-of-Babel is about to collapse. As much as I love Signal, we've got to move to things that are decentralized. I setup a prosody[1] server a while back, but have nobody to talk with. If anyone wants to try their system out, I'm bjt@2n3904.net on XMPP. 1 - https://prosody.im/

I thought signal was highly decentralized? What traffic does the server handle once two clients have "found" each other? Which I believe uses hashes of phone numbers.

This article from 2018 illustrates the architecture of Signal: https://sorincocorada.ro/signal-messanger-architecture/

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#18

Post by rcMgD2BwE72F »

Nice workaround for Android users: tap and hold the send button to switch to SMS (insecure but still)

https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007321171-Ca...

You'll keep all your message history in Signal that way. Good to know when your contact don't have an Internet connection, too.

Re: Signal is having technical difficulties

#20

Post by Zash »

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #16
Zash wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, Prosody dev here. It looks like your server isn't reachable. If you'd like help with that you can join the community support channel: https://prosody.im/discuss/

Aww beans. I looked at the IM observatory, and it seemed to check out fine...

Tried the server-to-server test?
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