Internet shutdown typically happens during riots/ violent protests. Starlink makes "internet shutdown" impotent. Though Starlink has to follow country's laws and actually shutdown the internet. Most if not all protest are sponsored by entities that are against the host country and they will find ways to enable the internet for protesters with starlink or some other ways.
Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'
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Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'
#82What are the best ways for citizens to get their own p2p internet going?
The way to do p2p communication without the Internet is to remove immediacy from it.
Old email servers were configured this way, they’d try to communicate the next time they got a connection.
For text it could be simple as encrypting and sending it to as many devices as you see until you get an ack back - something almost blockchain-like, but without the CPU and just signing.
Ack’d messages would be purged from ThePile and you could also expire them after a time. It’d be a few gigabytes perhaps, and could share diffs when you see another device.
Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
DIY mesh networks (I'm speaking of Wi-Fi, not Meshtastic, but even that has its place), isolated pirateboxes, dead drops, and (horror of horrors) going to the pub and talking to people . It's trivial for a government to make the first one illegal and relatively trivial to enforce it, but difficult in increasing magnitude for them to actually control the remainder.
Have WiFi mesh networks ever been proven to work at scale? The few experiments that I've seen seemed to be slow and unreliable. And in order to be of any real value, at least one of those mesh network nodes needs a connection to the real Internet.
> And in order to be of any real value, at least one of those mesh network nodes needs a connection to the real Internet.
I don't know what this means. If all of my family and friends are on a private network, and I'm serving my copy of Wikipedia, and all of us are sharing our books, movies, and music, we have a bulletin board, voice and video chat...
No real value?
Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'
#84Some might say the other countries should stay out of it. For example people might say Switzerland should stay out of those nations issues. However, if Switzerland provided technology thought a normal market or not, to the rulers, they have already interfered with the natural progression of that nation. There is no hope of the people making the situation better while Switzerland is providing the rulers with tech and…
That's like saying that because the store sold you the belt you're using to beat your children, the owners should break into your house to physically stop you from doing so.
lots of people think gun manufacturers should be liable if the customer shoots someone so it's not like this is an argument without precedent
Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
this literally happens in mexico, monterrey in 2022 during biggest drought in the century, public supply was shut down while coca-cola keep producing soft drink from that reservoir, they end-up give some percentage back after a protest. https://www.jornada.com.mx/2022/08/06/estados/022n1est
Wow, I try to come up with an exaggerated hypothetical and it turns out to be a real example. We live in a ridiculous world.
Look up artisanal oil refining.
Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, alternatively, we consider whether doing our communications via the same few huge American corporations is actually a good idea. The internet was literally designed to be resilient to enemy attack and look what we've done to it. Decades later, still on IPv4 and using ridiculous hacks to keep it all just barely working.
I know the current situation isn't the most optimal but barely working is an extreme hyperbole.
You're replying to a thread where people lose internet connectivity when a bunch of men are kicking a ball around a field.
Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'
#87Internet shutdown typically happens during riots/ violent protests. Starlink makes "internet shutdown" impotent. Though Starlink has to follow country's laws and actually shutdown the internet. Most if not all protest are sponsored by entities that are against the host country and they will find ways to enable the internet for protesters with starlink or some other ways.
> Starlink makes "internet shutdown" impotent
It still requires a radio transmitter. If push comes to shove, a government can still track RF leakage or worst case GPS jamming (if it's really that existential).
Iran did the same thing when cracking down on Satelite TV and SatPhones during the crackdown of the Green Revolution (anti-Ahmedinijad protests in 2009) and anecdotally, Starlink terminals have been increasingly unstable in Iran.
I also vaguely remember a DIUx RFS within the past year for startups working on minimizing RF leakage from terminals.
Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have WiFi mesh networks ever been proven to work at scale? The few experiments that I've seen seemed to be slow and unreliable. And in order to be of any real value, at least one of those mesh network nodes needs a connection to the real Internet.
> And in order to be of any real value, at least one of those mesh network nodes needs a connection to the real Internet. I don't know what this means. If all of my family and friends are on a private network, and I'm serving my copy of Wikipedia, and all of us are sharing our books, movies, and music, we have a bulletin board, voice and video chat... No real value?
How did you get your copy of Wikipedia? How do you update your copy of Wikipedia?
How do you get your books, movies, and music? How do you get new ones?
Yes, it has real value as a fill-in-the-gap until you can reconnect to the real internet. Long term I guess it still has some value as a way to look at a static collection of things (plus content generated by people on the mesh), but the real internet is much more valuable.
Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's like saying that because the store sold you the belt you're using to beat your children, the owners should break into your house to physically stop you from doing so.
Individuals looking for belts and nation-states looking for networking equipment are not really the same thing… also belts don’t usually include service/maintenance contracts etc, or the ability to be revoked from the public at large (imagine the embarrassment)
It doesn't have to be the same, that's what makes it an analogy. What is the same is the relative relationships between the elements involved. Although, now that you've made me think about it, I guess it's not quite right anyway, because I doubt it's Switzerland selling technology, but Swiss companies. It'd be more correct to say that because you bought a belt from the store, the store-owner's father (as well as some of his neighbors, let's be real) should break into your house to stop you from beating your children with it.
Re: Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
the Internet Protocol, IP, is already peer to peer. Assign yourself an address (V6) and get a peer, assign them an address, plug in a cable, voila! Get a switch and another computer and you have an Internet. Ok, we would generally call it an "intranet," but that's because -the- Internet with a capital I is specifically a net of intranets. So, if you were to start an ISP, which is the proposal, you would buy an uplink…
IP is P2P, but a lot of the layers built on top of it are centralized, and very vulnerable to attack. DNS is hierarchical with 13 root name servers. Google is a private company, but if websearch ever goes offline, the utility of the Internet decreases dramatically. Some stupid percentage of webhosts are protected by Cloudflare; Cloudflare outages have taken large portions of the Internet offline. Same with AWS on the…
in a small network you just put the hostnames in /etc/hosts and you're done, or you set up a local DNS server. The GP asked about "making a p2p internet," and that's how it's done. Hostnames are not a hard problem.
Google Search is useless on a p2p internet. Why would you want to search the corporate network on your separate net? Doesn't make any sense. You wouldn't use the global DNS system in this scenario either, you can just set up your own -- DNS is hierarchical but there's no reason you cannot have your own roots, or just pass around hosts files like the old days, either on sneakernet or using another protocol
> You can't use HN to tell me
HN wouldn't be on my private "peer to peer" internet, it's on the regular internet. Set up a mirror or find a route to the regular one through any one of your PEERS.
I don't get it, I thought the GP wanted to know how to set up their own Internet, or thought that the Internet was centralized. It's not. Build your own network, be creative, replace DNS if you need to. The tech is there, it's well-established, well-tested, and we use it today for the regular internet.
The grandparent only needs to read some man-pages.