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Amazon details its low-bandwidth Sidewalk neighborhood network

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Re: Amazon details its low-bandwidth Sidewalk neighborhood network

#91

Post by heavyset_go »

jdeibele wrote: post #76
larrydag wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised more hobbyists haven't developed public mesh networks. There are so many wireless routers and devices that this seems like a great opportunity. I would think makerspaces would be all over this idea. https://www.nycmesh.net/blog/how/

Back in the dark ages, there were hobbyists who would order alarm circuits ($6/month) and pay for the DSL equipment on each side. This let them connect to the internet back as it was in 1992 or so. The problem with this was that you had to know somebody who would be willing to be the other side of your connection. That obviously didn't scale very well. Portland tried having a [free WiFi]( https://www.oregonlive.com/b…

The free WiFi in NYC seemed to work pretty well, and there is NYC Mesh[1].

[1] https://www.nycmesh.net/

Re: Amazon details its low-bandwidth Sidewalk neighborhood network

#92

Post by ogre_codes »

mStreamTeam wrote: post #88
ogre_codes wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is my gross secret. I find much of what they do disgusting, but I still have Amazon Prime, still shop Amazon a fair bit. As abhorrent as it is, it's also just too convenient. That's why I also own shares in the company. They are just too damned sticky and too damned good at so many things. It reminds me of that scene from Clerks II. It's the most disgusting company I've ever seen... but I can't make myself mov…

People are so lazy. Anything you can buy on Amazon can be bought somewhere else online. Usually you can buy products directly from a companies website and cut out all the middle men. And its not even much effort to do so. Finding an alternative place to buy a product takes just a single Google search

> People are so lazy.

Why yes, this is why I'm invested in Amazon.

> Anything you can buy on Amazon can be bought somewhere else online.

The problem with other sites is often (still!) I have to deal with annoying setup. Then once I create an account, I end up with yet another damned weekly newsletter[1]. Then I opt out, but I still get changing terms of service emails for the next 100 years.

There are some sites where I don't have these issues, but it is common enough that it makes me averse to signing up for new sites.

It is almost a perfect prisoner's dilemma. If every single site on the net stopped doing this, I'd be more likely to use more sites and they would all benefit. But individually, sites find it more profitable to spam/ newsletter the hell out of their users by default.

Also, often I get thing cheaper on Amazon then on the third party seller's own site. Just recently I was shopping for bike parts and recognized the seller's name and went directly to their site. The product was the same price, but on Amazon I get a 5% rebate plus I use smile.amazon.com so a few pennies goes to the charity of my choice as well... plus I didn't have to deal with setting up and account and dodging an email newsletter.

So yes, lazy, plus tired of the gamble of dealing with user-hostile sites.

[1] I know most sites let you avoid the newsletter sign up, but too often they use dark patterns or opt in by default.

Re: Amazon details its low-bandwidth Sidewalk neighborhood network

#93

Post by [deleted] »

01100011 wrote: post #34
ponker wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a big advantage of cloud based cameras and that is that the data is off premises and can't be just taken away on an SD card. Of course you could send video to your own server but that is beyond the capabilities of most users.

I use 'rclone' and 'motion' to push video and images to my google drive account. If I wanted to, I could easily encrypt it first. I think it's superior to most cloud video providers. I don't think most LE agencies would think to check something like Google Drive for active video feeds. I also delete anything over 3 days(thanks rclone) and use a script which detects the presence of either my wife's or my phone on our…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon details its low-bandwidth Sidewalk neighborhood network

#94

Post by anigbrowl »

woah wrote: post #73
larrydag wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised more hobbyists haven't developed public mesh networks. There are so many wireless routers and devices that this seems like a great opportunity. I would think makerspaces would be all over this idea. https://www.nycmesh.net/blog/how/

Building and running a network that is useful (fast and reliable enough) for home internet use is a full time job, and is hard work. This is why most hacker space mesh networks have not achieved anything close to this. NYC mesh is the one notable exception, but this is because it is someone’s full time job, and it is run in a pretty professional manner, like a small wireless ISP. The alternative, a network that is no…

Infrastructure is another issue. There's a lot of it between me and my nearest hacker space and while it would be possible to bridge it with guerilla relay transmitters that means deploying a lot of quasi-illegal radio units that are going to need battery changes and the cost could mount quickly. I feel like $10/unit is the magic price point for potential orphan hardware.

I think there's a strong argument to be made in California for having community-operated communications infrastructure in case of earthquake or disaster but it's got to be completely turnkey, with something people can just take home, plug in, and forget about.

Re: Amazon details its low-bandwidth Sidewalk neighborhood network

#95

Post by tomcam »

tpxl wrote: post #31
tomcam wrote: post #24

> Sidewalk, which is somewhat akin to a mesh network that, with the right amount of access points, could easily cover a whole neighborhood, is now getting closer to launch Doesn’t that make it the very definition of a mesh network?

Nah, it's just a bunch of access points all wired to the internet, so all nodes are essentially 2 steps away from each other (node -> internet -> node) akin to a star topology.

Thank you! Was fuzzy on this

Re: Amazon details its low-bandwidth Sidewalk neighborhood network

#96

Post by fishmaster »

mStreamTeam wrote: post #88
ogre_codes wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is my gross secret. I find much of what they do disgusting, but I still have Amazon Prime, still shop Amazon a fair bit. As abhorrent as it is, it's also just too convenient. That's why I also own shares in the company. They are just too damned sticky and too damned good at so many things. It reminds me of that scene from Clerks II. It's the most disgusting company I've ever seen... but I can't make myself mov…

People are so lazy. Anything you can buy on Amazon can be bought somewhere else online. Usually you can buy products directly from a companies website and cut out all the middle men. And its not even much effort to do so. Finding an alternative place to buy a product takes just a single Google search

Of course I can, but then I need to create several different accounts on different sites to place different orders when I can just order everything in one order on Amazon.

Re: Amazon details its low-bandwidth Sidewalk neighborhood network

#97

Post by detaro »

lxgr wrote: post #57
ForHackernews wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally any major router brand?

That would require the capability to reliably and automatically push firmware updates out to existing devices, not something that I'd traditionally associate with home router manufacturers. Also, at least in my experience, most private households just use the (usually horrible) ISP supplied CPE.

Which typically are by one of the major router brands, and do typically have mechanisms for ISP-controlled updates.

Re: Amazon details its low-bandwidth Sidewalk neighborhood network

#98

Post by detaro »

jl2718 wrote: post #46
maxioatic wrote: post #15

Whitepaper link: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/G/01/sidewalk/privacy_secu...

It specifies that it will accept L1 connections from: LoRa, FSK, or BLE. So this is basically L2/3. Great, but is it an open-source license-free standard that anybody can put on a (e.g.) RPi, or is it just their way of dominating the IoT? Is there an IEEE for secure stateless mesh routing? I would be shocked to hear that AMZN is the first to figure this out.

This isn't mesh routing, but rather pretty much what e.g. LoraWAN does (devices send data to gateways that forward it to "the cloud" that forwards it to applications). Nothing revolutionary from a technical or protocol POV.

Re: Amazon details its low-bandwidth Sidewalk neighborhood network

#100

Post by mStreamTeam »

fishmaster wrote: post #96
mStreamTeam wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are so lazy. Anything you can buy on Amazon can be bought somewhere else online. Usually you can buy products directly from a companies website and cut out all the middle men. And its not even much effort to do so. Finding an alternative place to buy a product takes just a single Google search

Of course I can, but then I need to create several different accounts on different sites to place different orders when I can just order everything in one order on Amazon.

Most sites have guest checkouts today...
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