[HN Gopher] We may soon have city-spanning 900 MHz mesh networks
___________________________________________________________________
We may soon have city-spanning 900 MHz mesh networks
Author : RiderOfGiraffes
Score : 179 points
Date : 2021-03-07 15:10 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cheapskatesguide.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (cheapskatesguide.org)
| throwanem wrote:
| > This means in two to five years we may be able to surf the
| internet or talk on our [phones] while walking down the sidewalk
| in nearly any city
|
| What a prospect! Can you even imagine?
| Triv888 wrote:
| A true open wireless mesh network is what the internet needs to
| become to overcome censorship and similar issues.
| datameta wrote:
| LoRaWAN's use case isn't that of cellular data or wifi. It is
| what will be the backbone comm network of billions of edge ML
| devices by mid-decade.
| lwhi wrote:
| Why do I want this as a consumer?
| choeger wrote:
| Is there any _benign_ scenario that explains why amazon should do
| that? They have essentially put listening devices into every home
| and now they bypass the home owner 's network? Am I the only one
| that thinks this looks like it is about surveillance? What's the
| next step? Mandatory amazon smart meters? Smoke detectors?
| londons_explore wrote:
| Amazon isn't in the business of being evil to the public. If
| they did, they would lose massively more revenue than they gain
| from a few smart meters.
|
| You should be more worried about companies where you are the
| product not the customer...
| [deleted]
| sgt wrote:
| Fits perfectly with the technology I imagined for the post-
| apocalypse: Gopher, lynx and text messages!
| dboreham wrote:
| And it will be slow with crappy QoS.
| bri3d wrote:
| Worth noting that the maximum bitrate of the base LoRa encoding
| is not going to replace your cellphone anytime soon, even for a
| fantasy re-hash of the text-based Internet that this article
| suggests.
|
| I believe the maximum speed of LoRaWAN on 900Mhz spectrum is a
| blazing 27 kbps (that's bits), so the cited 80Kb/s in the linked
| article for Sidewalk-to-IP communication is several orders of
| magnitude higher and must contain a lot of (unsurprising)
| overhead.
|
| LoRa is good for applications where it used, like meter
| monitoring, control systems (oilfield etc.), and RC airplane
| control (R9/Crossfire/Ghost). It could certainly be used for the
| proposed motion detection and lighting use cases. With modern
| codecs, you could maybe complete 1-2 voice calls at a time over
| it, maybe. But my guess is that Amazon's play here is "smart home
| without the WiFi configuration," not "replace your cell phone."
|
| It's not going to replace your cell phone data plan.
| jeffypoo wrote:
| I tried (and failed) to build a GoTenna competitor using LoRa
| and what you say here is 100% correct. Large scale mesh
| networks are incredibly difficult to build and often end up
| requiring extreme optimizations for specific use cases. We
| ultimately abandoned mesh networking in favor of a TDMA
| approach with base stations.
|
| "smart home without the WiFi configuration" is exactly what
| Amazon's network is for, but it won't be anything more than
| that. The bandwidth and latencies required for content rich
| applications is simply not there. Sidewalk is cool enough
| without trying to sell the magic mesh network pipe dream.
| joshmlewis wrote:
| I don't often see FPV related knowledge on HN. I've wondered if
| others were aware of these implementations and it's cool to see
| them mentioned here.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| So basically for IoT.
| tmiahm wrote:
| A network for Amazon devices is certainly one use case. Another
| is selling network access to other IoT devices.
|
| I would expect most residential broadband TOS would explicitly
| prevent reselling their network bandwidth/access. That's what
| you are doing with networks like Helium, even if it is in the
| form of a token instead of dollars. Amazon has gotten around
| this by just not paying. You buy the Amazon device, you provide
| the network access, Amazon gets the revenue.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| That makes sense, I had wondered about the crypto angle on
| Helium. Then again, even if you were relaying a lot of
| messages from sensors etc. I wouldn't expect it would
| actually add up to a very big percentage of your total usage
| (I guess it'd be 24/7, unlike your Netflix/Zoom consumption).
| So it seems a little implausible your ISP would care (or
| notice), unless they wanted to get into that business
| themselves?
| bri3d wrote:
| Yes, Amazon already offer a Sidewalk SDK as part of AWS IoT
| offerings. I didn't even think about the cost angle, which is
| a really interesting point (although, I think ISPs have an
| argument against the Amazon devices here still as it's
| effectively connection sharing, which they also usually ban
| in ToS). My consideration was just for the customer sales
| pitch, which is "your IoT devices Just Work magically."
| chrismorgan wrote:
| > _27 kbps (that 's bits), so the cited 80Kb/s in the linked
| article for Sidewalk-to-IP communication is several orders of
| magnitude higher and must contain a lot of (unsurprising)
| overhead._
|
| That's not several orders of magnitude, that's only 3x. Both
| figures are kilobits per second.
|
| I would also mention that the Amazon Sidewalk thing is for a
| hybrid of Bluetooth Low Energy and 900 MHz, and it's quite
| plausible that that 80 Kbps could only be achieved over the
| close-range Bluetooth and not in the long-range 900 MHz
| frequency. As an outsider to the industry with no specific
| knowledge of what actually caps LoRaWAN's speed, I'm going to
| wildly guess that this 900 MHz band, in _whatever_ guise, may
| be more likely to yield 10-20 Kbps speeds in good conditions.
| greggyb wrote:
| Hey, that's more than an order of magnitude in binary! Great
| way to make a doubling (or greater) sound bigger than it is.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Still not several. :D
| klyrs wrote:
| "Order of magnitude" is one of my linguistic pet peeves.
| I've seen it used referring to base 2, base 10, base
| 1000, and base 1024. What does it all mean? In base
| 2^(1/100), trebling is many, many orders of magnitude
| increase!
| chrismorgan wrote:
| "Order of magnitude" is context-dependent, like a great
| many things in natural language. In the absence of any
| contrary context, it'll mean a decimal order of magnitude
| in English. It will do you no good to rail against the
| inclusion of cultural context in resolving the meaning of
| language (and even its structural parsing!), because it's
| so very widespread in English and I presume in every
| other natural language (though logical languages could
| potentially theoretically evade it).
|
| I've never encountered non-integral bases in real life,
| but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-
| integer_base_of_numeration tells me they are sometimes
| used. Fun stuff!
| klyrs wrote:
| Agreed, railing against language and cultural context is
| literally futile. Factoradic is the one true base. There,
| "order of magnitude" would depend not only upon (my very
| unique) cultural context but also the absolute magnitude
| involved (at the low end, "double" is an order of
| magnitude; then "triple", then "quadruple", etc).
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I prefer to say "several times larger/greater" and it is
| even fewer syllables! "Order of magnitude" works better
| for convincing people to do something your way, though.
| jrockway wrote:
| The only logical base to use here is 2.71828182.
| bri3d wrote:
| My fault, I thought the figures in the article were kilobytes
| (and even then, I suppose it's just a single order of
| magnitude in base-10!). I don't think this mistake affects my
| point.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| The universal convention is: b = bits, B = bytes. I see
| errors only rarely, and they're almost always when people
| write Mb or Gb instead of MB or GB (just MB, not MB per
| second or such). It also fascinates me how we
| conventionally write Mbps (with a p), but MB/s (with a /).
| trepetti wrote:
| It also has a proprietary PHY protocol, which always struck me
| as an major downside to something whose adoption is closing to
| making it the next de facto standard. DASH7 [1] is an
| interesting alternative in this regard, good for urban areas,
| but not quite as long range for very sparse nodes in a rural
| environment. It does not the same duty cycle limitations that
| LoRa has and is actually used to complement LoRa even on the
| same device in some interesting case studies [2] which come
| from Semtech themselves (the patent holders on the LoRa PHY).
|
| [1] https://dash7-alliance.org/ [2] https://tech-
| journal.semtech.com/making-the-most-of-the-unli...
| icedchai wrote:
| Also, with LoRaWAN, devices have duty cycle limitations. They
| can't hog all the bandwidth for a extended period of time. It
| is really intended just for short, bursty, infrequent
| transmissions like you describe.
| d21d3q wrote:
| That limitation is not specific to LoRa but to anything
| transmitting in ISM band e.g. ~868 MHz in EU, ~900 MHz in US.
| It limits single transmitters air time to 1% so that one can
| build radio communication with any modulation, any protocol
| and limits probability of collision with different devices in
| range.
|
| I wonder if ISM band will provide dedicated spectrum for LoRa
| with unlimited airtime.
| elihu wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that's not true for 2.4 ghz part 15 devices
| in the U.S. (i.e. 802.11 wireless).
|
| (I had thought that ISM referred specifically to the 2.4
| ghz band, but I guess there is actually more than one band.
| I do find it funny that that one of the most heavily used
| spectrum bands is the one where we put all the
| unintentional radiators like microwave ovens and industrial
| and medical devices, and then the FCC decided that we might
| as well let people do unlicensed transmission on that "junk
| band" because it wouldn't be interfering with anything
| "important". It's sort of the policy equivalent of the
| common phenomenon where over time the most important
| services eventually often end up running on the oldest,
| slowest computer.)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISM_radio_band
| myself248 wrote:
| I don't think that applies to 900MHz in the US. It
| definitely does to 433 and I think 315, though.
| anthk wrote:
| 433 and multiples are harmonics.
| cjhdev wrote:
| I think this depends on the region. In the US you shouldn't
| exceed a dwell time limit on a single channel.
| heyrhett wrote:
| Helium network has been growing fast. Just crossed 20,000
| hotspots and will probably reach 100,000 this year. It uses a
| crypto mining incentive so the network expands without any
| central corporation needing to spend a dime on infrastructure.
| People are already building cool IoT projects with it from
| adafruit kits.
|
| https://explorer.helium.com/coverage
| ja27 wrote:
| Around makerspaces, mesh networking plans rank slightly above
| perpetual motion machines. It's not impossible but there are
| substantial challenges. Ask any ham involved in packet radio for
| the past 40 years.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > we can expect that Amazon will do everything in its power to
| lock every non-Amazon-sanctioned device out of its network
|
| I expect the opposite: for Amazon to sell this as a utility
| network service to all compatible devices (a la LoraWAN).
|
| If they do, they are likely to quickly eclipse The Things Network
| and Helium.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| If you're looking for an open lora-wan network, you might want to
| investigate helium (https://www.helium.com/)
|
| its got some block-chain hypermegadrive bullshit, but at its
| heart it looks like a super cheap quite widespread lora network
| rkagerer wrote:
| I use a wireless phone headset from Plantronics that operates in
| the 900 MHz range. It works so much better than Bluetooth since
| the range is farther (especially indoors) and the band is less
| crowded with interference.
|
| The last thing I want to see is a bunch of new random consumer
| junk cluttering it up.
| lxgr wrote:
| > new random consumer junk
|
| Like wireless phone headsets?
|
| What makes your use of this public band more important than
| that of others?
| rkagerer wrote:
| In fairness, that headset is something I rely on every day,
| for hours of the day.
|
| The article says Amazon began shipping this feature in its
| products secretly, so 'junk' in the sense that consumers
| didn't ask for the feature and it's crowding the medium
| mainly for Amazon's benefit.
|
| (Ps. This was authored before you edited your comment)
| lxgr wrote:
| Arguably, being able to find a lost pet or wallet is not
| only Amazon's benefit. (Yes, it's a for-profit company
| selling the equipment, but isn't that true for headsets as
| well?)
|
| As long as spectrum fairness is ensured (and I think there
| are pretty strict rules on duty cycles for the 900 MHz
| band, i.e. any given device can't be transmitting more than
| a few seconds every few minutes), I think it is up to the
| owners of the band to decide what's critical and what
| isn't: The public.
|
| If you think about it, hours of phone calls every day are
| probably a more significant use of that spectrum than all
| lost cats and dogs of a city combined.
| mproud wrote:
| Good old Hydrogen... Mozzerella?
| mnemotronic wrote:
| Hondo-mega? hega-mertz? Ronna-hertz & Quecca-hertz just doesn't
| do it for me.
| amenghra wrote:
| Nit: HMz in title looks like a typo. If anyone wants to fix.
| dang wrote:
| Fixed. Thanks!
| nsb1 wrote:
| I love the idea, but this has Tragedy of the Commons written all
| over it IMHO. It won't take very many bad actors before it's
| ruined for everyone.
|
| That said, it's not stopping me from participating.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| When the apocalypse comes, these mesh networks might be the only
| way to communicate. We must have an alternate web that serves
| these networks.
|
| Systems for email, notifications, etc.
| anthk wrote:
| Eh, no. You must be young. Email works perfectly on low bw
| conns. So does IRC, and Gopher.
| notriddle wrote:
| Email's fine for low-bandwidth, high-latency mesh wireless.
|
| IRC and Gopher are not. The latency, and potential
| unreliability, would kill it.
| anthk wrote:
| https://hackaday.com/2020/12/12/irc-over-lora-for-when-
| thing...
|
| If not, maybe icb uses less bw.
|
| EDIT
|
| Also:
|
| https://github.com/dmahony/LoRa-AX25-IP-Network
| pomian wrote:
| But, what will power it? Would each installation have a battery
| and solar panel? Maybe a good idea, small units should be
| installed, similar to those cheap night lights, if some fail
| ok, but enough for basic Comms.
| londons_explore wrote:
| We need a mesh networking standard which is trustless. Ie. anyone
| can join the mesh, but not easily disrupt it and be evil.
|
| Today 802.11s is a great mesh standard, but it isn't trustless -
| all mesh nodes need to know the network password, and if you
| shared that password with the world, then someone could join and
| make the entire mesh stop working (and steal all your data).
| sneak wrote:
| It's ridiculously easy to disrupt low power wireless networks
| of any kind, no matter what the protocol or standard.
|
| Anyone can make the whole mesh stop working today, even without
| a password.
| londons_explore wrote:
| With Wifi, I can easily disrupt within a few hundred yards of
| my house. But disrupting something a few miles away is much
| harder.
|
| With a mesh network, the network is much bigger, which makes
| it important an attacker can only disrupt their small corner
| of the network.
| ac29 wrote:
| > But disrupting something a few miles away is much harder.
|
| If you follow the rules. Presumably an attacker wouldn't
| care about that, and would be happy to dump a few orders of
| magnitude extra power into their jamming signal.
| 177tcca wrote:
| A big one set off from a mile up is the normal way science
| fiction predicts the chaos begins.
| decker wrote:
| There's no reason to build a LoRa mesh network if all the devices
| are connected on WiFi. Instead, it sounds like Amazon is building
| out a network of LoRa access points where their customers pay for
| the hardware and operate the access points. It's hard to say what
| their plans are for the network, but if they wanted to make a
| tile competitor that could find your stuff in an entire city,
| this would make it possible.
| m463 wrote:
| in the OpenWrt source tree, a large section of the repo is
| devoted to Freifunk ("Free Radio" in german)
|
| It is a giant mesh network.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenWrt
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freifunk
| varispeed wrote:
| I can see that this could be exploited by drug dealers creating
| local anonymous marketplaces or by any resistance movements to
| coordinate their actions against oppressive governments. Ergo it
| will be quickly outlawed...
| amelius wrote:
| Bitcoin is used by criminals, and it still exists, _and_ it is
| legal.
| DanielR31D wrote:
| So is cash
| amelius wrote:
| Not nearly as convenient.
| augusto-moura wrote:
| > between 500 meters and a mile in urban areas
|
| Good way to confuse both imperialists and metricists
| Filligree wrote:
| In some metric countries, a "mile" is 10 km.
| brokenmachine wrote:
| Which countries?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| What I'm looking forward to is low-cost, mid-bandwidth and ultra-
| high-latency store-and-forward LEO satellite constellations.
|
| Something that you can use in the middle of anywhere and
| send/receive text news, messages and short voice recordings.
| Maybe a handful of photos per day if you want to point your
| antenna to the sky manually and follow the satellite for a few
| minutes for max bandwidth on an upload.
|
| There's a few projects out there, but still out of reach of the
| consumer because I guess... they can charge more to a corporate
| user.
| ultrarunner wrote:
| This is interesting. Do you mean services like Iridium, or
| something newer? What projects did you have in mind?
| lxgr wrote:
| Myriota [1] sounds very interesting. It's exactly what GP
| describes if I'm not mistaken!
|
| [1] https://myriota.com/
| Scoundreller wrote:
| This is one I've seen:
|
| https://www.keplercommunications.com
|
| Iridium is a << live >> network... with much high costs of
| construction and operation.
| haarts wrote:
| What would you use it for? Some IoT project?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| A cabin or hike without (or poor) cell service where this
| would provide just enough connectivity to real life.
|
| I like the idea of being able to read the news and maintain
| comms but can live without live 2-way video.
|
| Also cool to imagine there will be a nano/micro cubesats with
| a enough gbs in SSDs circling earth every couple hours making
| that possible.
|
| Could have different levels if priorities to balance
| supply/demand.
| ghshephard wrote:
| I'll let you all in on a little secret - for the last 15+ years
| there have been _lots_ of cities with 902 Mhz FHSS networks
| covering every little inch of them. Any of the Utilities
| (predominantly electrical, but some water) - that have remote
| meter reading often use that part of the spectrum with enough
| duty cycle that they can trap nearby GFCI breakers. In the case
| of companies like the old Silver Spring Networks (itself, a
| descendent, technologically in many way from Richochet) - it 's
| IPv6 for consumer distribution. 25 Million+ nodes when I left
| them in 2017. Since merged with Itron, so I'm sure it's doubled
| or tripled since then.
| minitoar wrote:
| Not sure I see this as a replacement for my cellphone plan as the
| author suggests. I regularly stream video which I think needs
| more bandwidth.
| londons_explore wrote:
| The internet and the IP protocol is kinda incompatible with mesh
| networks.
|
| A city-spanning mesh network which connected to the internet at
| peoples home broadband connections couldn't reasonably function.
| Someone who was downloading a file over the mesh wouldn't be able
| to have their data use _any_ connection to the internet - they
| would have to keep using the same gateway from the mesh to the
| internet, because if they switched gateways their IP would change
| and existing connections would fail.
|
| It's the same reason switching from WiFi to Mobile data and back
| causes a reconnect in video calls.
| freedomben wrote:
| Not trying to nitpick, but IP handles that just fine (see
| mosh[1] for a great example of flawless roaming).
|
| It's the TCP that doesn't handle it. Unfortunately HTTP and
| most other protocols are on top of TCP so suffer from the same
| problem.
|
| [1]: https://mosh.org/
| londons_explore wrote:
| IP doesn't handle it fine.
|
| If I roam from network A to network B, then someone else
| cannot send me an IP packet till they know my address on
| network B.
|
| I can only send out a "Hey, I'm now at this address" message
| to them if I know they will be wanting to contact me, and I
| know my own address has changed. Neither of those is
| guaranteed.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I believe "Mobile IP" was designed to solve this exact
| problem.
| freedomben wrote:
| You're not wrong about the other party needing to know your
| changed IP address, but that's still a result of higher
| level protocols that are leaking the abstraction of IP for
| addressing. You could use hostnames instead, or put some
| other addressing method on top of it to adapt. It's not
| commonly done since you'd have a DNS lookup before each
| packet, which would be horribly inefficient, but it's
| possible because IP itself doesn't handle the details of
| connections. IP itself is connectionless/stateless.
|
| There is no concept in IP of a "user", "client", or other
| party that exists beyond the lifetime of that packet. IP is
| basically a stateless logical address sitting on top of
| some physical address with a few delivery options to
| facilitate traffic flow (like congestion handling).
|
| Any connection state or concept of user/client/server/etc
| is held at either the TCP level, or for UDP-based protocol
| higher up the stack (commonly at the application level).
|
| If you still insist on IP being at fault here, let's
| consider an analogue. If a user sets up an Amazon
| subscribe-and-save, and then moves to another city and has
| a different physical address, but the user does not inform
| Amazon by updating their address in Amazon's system (the
| higher level protocol), would you say that the postal
| service is at fault when the delivery ends up reaching the
| an incorrect party?
| teeray wrote:
| This is part of the special sauce that LTE adds, so that
| you can pretend that IP handles roaming just fine. That and
| also QoS guarantees, which IP also doesn't do out of the
| box.
| marcthe12 wrote:
| IP breaks but there are way to workaround if layer 4 allows.
| Unfortunately TCP also breaks. UDP allow a workaround over
| that. So MOSH(SSH) and QUIC(HTTP/3) can deal with this due
| basically due to having nachnism to handle it and also they are
| UDP. Also both have some kind of cryptography layer such as SSH
| or TLS so prob that is use to handle it.
| mordechai9000 wrote:
| You currently can't change your endpoint address on existing
| connections without breaking them, unless you have a protocol
| that's aware of the possibility and uses a broker or some other
| method to re-establish the link. This wouldn't really be any
| different. I don't think you'd want your network address to
| change on a mesh, it would just find a different path to reach
| it.
|
| It might make sense to use something similar to MPLS that can
| encapsulate IP, to hide the details of the mesh network.
| rjsw wrote:
| There is MobileIP [1]. I have MobileIPv6 compiled into all my
| mobile devices and home gateway.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_IP
| ajsfoux234 wrote:
| There's the Multipath TCP protocol for use cases like this:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multipath_TCP
|
| For example, Apple already uses it when you ask Siri a question
| on an iOS device. Hopefully this standard gains more usage.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Multipath TCP sadly seems to have died... I believe it was
| incompatible with internal load balancing systems at some big
| companies, so nobody deployed it.
| toast0 wrote:
| Apple deployed it in iOS and macos. You can access it as a
| developer of either.
|
| There is a load balancing issue, but I don't think it's any
| worse than http/3 which also allows for peers to change IP
| (http/3 has a much limited scope of changes).
| ryukafalz wrote:
| I mean, I haven't deployed it on my own servers just
| because it still requires a kernel fork to enable on Linux.
| There was an effort to upstream it as of late 2019 though;
| not sure if that's stalled, but I can understand it taking
| a long time as I believe it's a pretty big change to the
| Linux networking stack.
| rmoriz wrote:
| Regulatory duty cycles/time on air (ToA) will prevent the legal
| use for highish bandwidth applications and are necessary to keep
| the frequency open for everyone.
|
| See https://lora.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
| darig wrote:
| Actual laws and regulations have nothing to do with why this
| will be prevented. Telecom lobby money on its own has been
| working for decades.
| ac29 wrote:
| There are no duty cycle limitations for 900MHz in the US. Its
| regulated largely like 2.4GHz (see 47 CFR SS 15.247). There are
| rules for frequency hopping systems that limit the amount of
| time you can dwell on any given channel, but there are less
| restrictions on non-hopping systems. High-ish bandwidth 900MHz
| radios are pretty common and can do multiple megabits per
| second (at least with enough signal-to-noise ratio, which isnt
| always practical over non-trivial distances).
| rmoriz wrote:
| The duty cycle limits by ETSI are in place because of the
| population/usage density. If FCC does not put in place a
| regulation there will no shared high bandwidth usage over a
| long distance in high density areas. Think of 2.4 GHz WiFi.
| jeffypoo wrote:
| Can you share some examples of high bandwidth 900 radios? In
| my experience, it's difficult to get bitrates above ~100kbps
| on 900 over any meaningful distance.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Yeah I'd be very happy to be pointed in the direction of a
| multiple megabit per second 900 radio. Take my money!
| KirillPanov wrote:
| I have the Ubiquiti M900 radios. With a (~5-foot) yagi
| they definitely deliver the advertized 100mbit/sec.
| myself248 wrote:
| The Ubiquiti Rocket M900 would be a good place to start.
|
| Or if you have a couple old Ricochet E-radios and want to
| do some packet hacking, they'll do 1Mbaud at whatever
| modulation you ask.
| ac29 wrote:
| I work with industrial grade 900MHz radios, and most can do
| over 1Mbps... with enough SNR, which as I mentioned can be
| difficult. I would say a typical ~city sized network I've
| worked on tend to operate in 100-1000kbps modes, with real
| world throughputs maxing out at more like 300-400 kbps on
| typically 1-10 mile links.
|
| Manufacturers include FreeWave, GE MDS, XetaWave, 4RF, and
| others. These are typically ~$1000 radios, so not great for
| hobbyist use.
| altcognito wrote:
| I like the idea of mesh networks, but I think they have all the
| character of do-it-yourself personal data.
|
| So, wait, now I get to bear the burden of understanding how my
| network traffic is being routed and figuring out when I have
| issues?
|
| Not keen on that honestly. I might be technically capable, but
| that doesn't mean I'm interested or have the time to spend on it.
| porsupah wrote:
| For a good example of how such a mesh network can indeed function
| well, consider Ricochet, which once offered service in a few
| metro regions, including the Bay. The relay units were typically
| mounted on utility poles, by arrangement with the relevant
| agencies.
|
| True, 128kbps wasn't anything that'd compare with 4G, but this
| was 1999. It wasn't great at handoffs either, but still, I was
| able to use it on BART regardless. Imagine, connected to the net
| - on the move!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricochet_(Internet_service)
| Animats wrote:
| I had Ricochet. It was OK, but slow. It used little units
| bolted under street lights, with a little spiral antenna
| pointed down. It was abandoned in place some years later. You
| could still use it to talk to nearby locations, but the
| connection to the external Internet was gone.
|
| It's certainly possible to build a 900MHz mesh network, but it
| can't deliver much bandwidth. Email and SMS, yes. Voice, only
| on slow days. Today's web, no way. It would be like building a
| network for Blackberries.
|
| One of the more successful off-grid comm systems is
| SailMail.[1] This is worldwide email, over 10MHz, for boats.
| Down at 10MHz, radio can cross oceans. This was a side project
| of Stan Honey, who invented car navigation systems. He's
| seriously into sailing and holds records for crossing the
| Atlantic, sailing around the world, and such. So he developed
| this for the long-distance sail community. They maintain about
| 25 fixed stations around the world, and if you can connect to
| any of them over HF, you can send and receive email.
|
| [1] https://sailmail.com/
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Out of curiosity, do you know if some units are still around?
| The Wikipedia page isn't clear as to what happened to the
| existing hardware after the last acquirer's liquidation - was
| it just left in place, did the municipalities explicitly
| remove them or repurposed them for something else?
| Animats wrote:
| Some were around for years, but I haven't seen one in a
| while. I suppose they were removed as part of normal
| street-light maintenance. There may be some nodes,
| somewhere, still trying to connect.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > Voice, only on slow days
|
| Then why did we have 900 MHz analog cordless phones in the
| 1990s?
| vel0city wrote:
| It's not necessarily a limitation of bandwidth possible at
| 900MHz, it's a limitation of the normal equipment deployed
| and inefficiencies of mesh routing.
|
| Those 900MHz analog phones were also usually low power, low
| distance, analog only devices with a few number of
| channels. Try having dozens of those phones all in the same
| room and see how useful they all are at once.
| spullara wrote:
| It was amazing. And then we went on a dry spell for a few years
| after it was shut down and tethering wasn't a thing.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Long range isn't a necessity for mesh networks.
|
| Regular wifi would be fine - the vast majority of the world's
| population lives within 100 yards of another person.
|
| Shorter links actually increases spectrum utilization.
|
| The issue is that wifi never managed to make a decent mesh
| networking standard. No router you buy today acts as an open mesh
| node for anyone to mesh with.
| sebow wrote:
| I would say that's mainly a software/vendor
| issue(standardization, because we're not necessarily gonna wait
| years for ISO here).Not to mention routers/similar hardware are
| not robust enough for becoming part of a mesh infrastructure:
| usually low-quality and very rare updates, shitty software,
| most often than not locked-down access to them,etc.(Obviously
| exceptions like ~Asus for ex. exist, but the vast majority of
| people have something way worse that is not "hackable")
|
| If anything a dynamic and robust mesh network through mobile
| devices seem more potent. Of course this would only work in
| massively dense areas.And with Wifi-6 we're reaching a point
| where the accumulated bandwidth could be enough.
| tmiahm wrote:
| The author is conflating max allowed bandwidth from the bridge to
| Sidewalk server with per-end-node bandwidth. The 80Kbps includes
| the bundle of all of the LoRaWAN messages it has received for all
| end-node-devices within range. This is a marketing point to show
| the Amazon device owner that this won't consume large amounts of
| their bandwidth. The Things Network suggests a maximum
| expectation of 250 BITS/s. This is not going to replace cell
| networks.
| https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/lorawan/limitations.ht...
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I am reminded of the old Ricochet network:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricochet_(Internet_service)
|
| http://daedalus.cs.berkeley.edu/talks/retreat.6.96/Metricom....
|
| It was an idea ahead of its time.
| myself248 wrote:
| Truly. I used to run Ricochet.wikispaces.com and am sitting on
| a mountain of docs and stuff. Can't believe they managed to
| market it into the dirt and burn through five billion bucks.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I still have a couple of the old modems lying around
| somewhere. There wasn't ever service where I live, but I
| played around w/ direct modem-to-modem communication. It was
| fun.
| danimal88 wrote:
| Thats true, but it won't be some sort of open platform, it will
| be a utility for amazon that will come with some sort of
| monetization scheme. I say this as someone that has deployed 10s
| of thousands of 900 Mhz radios in devices over the last few
| years. Conceptually though, some sort of interop standard that
| would offer end to end encryption and access control could be
| quite cool. On the other hand, sending the garage door signal
| over an unknown network path and trusting that there is no chance
| for manipulation is also a tough sell compared to the relatively
| short wireless->wired topology that dominates most consumer IoT.
| I'm sure there are use cases where it could work great though.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Surely the data is over either HTTPS or some encrypted VPN
| protocol - the only possible attack would be DOS.
| c22 wrote:
| Well, you could also attack the implementation.
| lxgr wrote:
| It would really be great to see license-free 900 MHz radios come
| to smartphones. Text only store-and-forward would be more than
| fine for many use cases.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| Any form of Non-Cellular Internet is good as telecommunication
| industry is at best oligopolies or at worse monopolies in most
| countries; But unfortunately wireless Internet is still largely
| dependent upon them.
|
| Apart from other reasons discussed here on why mesh Networks
| aren't the go-to choice yet, there's another problem I'm noticing
| in India; 4G(LTE) Internet is cheaper than any other form of
| Internet delivery here.
|
| It's well-known that India has the cheapest 4G data plans, So in-
| spite of innovative startups trying their best to crack into
| city-wide mesh network they just couldn't compete with the
| pricing of cellular Internet besides 4G data is the means to
| Internet in most households here and they are not going to change
| to WiFi when they leave the house.
|
| P.S. I've been tracking the need gap in 'Non cellular network
| mobile Internet' & I welcome related resources. Link in my
| profile.
| spiritplumber wrote:
| Already do in San Rafael, CA.
|
| http://f3.to/cellsol/ here's firmware and schematics, add to it!
| :)
| dmqctx wrote:
| "One must also assume that Amazon will do its best to encrypt its
| network traffic and make its devices as hard to hack as
| possible."
|
| Somebody feel free to disuade my fears, but all I'm able to think
| about this weekend is the Microsoft Exchange hack that just
| ravaged "30,000" organizations we're told. And here Amazon is
| building a publically usable network based on our Ring doorbells
| and "Hey Alexa devices". What could possibly go wrong?
| eevilspock wrote:
| {off topic}
|
| I don't normally like pink but I'm loving this black serif text
| on this shade of pink (#FFD4F5) background.
| ACAVJW4H wrote:
| I think the worst outcome of this yet one more avenue gobbled up
| by a large tech conglomerate. My understanding is that ISM bands
| are supposed to be free for personal use and are the last fronts
| for small scale connectivity innovation
| decker wrote:
| There's FCC rules on how the space can be used to prevent what
| you are describing. Sure, this will increase the noise floor,
| but Amazon can't show up and start acting like they are the
| only ones allowed to use it.
| ac29 wrote:
| > My understanding is that ISM bands are supposed to be free
| for personal use
|
| They are also free for use by businesses and governments. The
| rules make no distinction (other bands do have eligibility
| restrictions).
|
| > last fronts for small scale connectivity innovation
|
| Amateur radio operators would beg to to differ. You can do a
| _lot_ with a relatively easy to get amateur radio license, and
| it is restricted from commercial use.
| sneak wrote:
| You're still allowed to use them free for personal use, as are
| the personal users who bought Amazon-branded hardware.
|
| Nothing is being gobbled.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| >Nothing is being gobbled.
|
| I mean, I disagree with your opinion here. It's entirely
| possible that we end up in a world where corporations use all
| of the unlicensed spectrum to operate their corporate
| networks (on "user-owned hardware" that is centrally
| coordinated and controlled), leaving very little of it to
| alternative uses. There is only so much unlicensed spectrum
| so this is very much a realistic outcome, especially if the
| "user-owned devices" are coordinated and designed to maximize
| the company's use of the spectrum. I think "gobbling" is a
| pretty accurate description of this.
|
| What you are saying is that our current legislation around
| these bands permits that use, in the same way that it might
| be legal for Amazon to house all of its workers on public
| land in some states. The question to ask is whether this is
| actually good.
| giantrobot wrote:
| I'm not intending to defend Amazon but as a general
| statement about ISM bands: there are regulatory limits
| (output power, duty cycle, etc) on these bands. The output
| power limits are meant to limit the propagation distances
| from isotropic radiators.
|
| So for Amazon's (or any) system to swamp the ISM band(s)
| they would need to absolutely saturate an area with their
| radios. That would end up running at cross purposes with
| their network since their own base stations and user
| devices would end up interfering with each other.
|
| While I don't trust Amazon to do the "right" thing I do
| trust them not to step on their own toes.
| gruez wrote:
| >It's entirely possible that we end up in a world where
| corporations use all of the unlicensed spectrum to operate
| their corporate networks (on "user-owned hardware" that is
| centrally coordinated and controlled), leaving very little
| of it to alternative uses.
|
| Why does there need to be a distinction? What's the
| difference between amazon's sidewalk network compared to an
| at&t wifi router?
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| The answer to this question depends entirely on what the
| hardware does and how much it prevents other uses.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Have the 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz unlicensed bands become
| unusable by device proliferation? What makes you fear the
| 900 MHz band will be meaningfully different?
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| > Have the 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz unlicensed bands become
| unusable by device proliferation? What makes you fear the
| 900 MHz band will be meaningfully different?
|
| We are both commenting on an article that describes how a
| massive corporation (Amazon) might be deploying large-
| scale mesh networks on this band, and using this to drive
| huge numbers of devices at near the maximum feasible
| bitrate. This is obviously a speculative article and
| maybe none of this will come to pass. But within the
| bounds of speculation, this seems qualitatively different
| than what's happened (as of today) on the 2.4 and 5.8 GHz
| bands.
| sokoloff wrote:
| That's why I cite the other bands; this is what has
| happened already in the US and Europe on the other
| unlicensed bands.
|
| Looking at my WiFi network right now, I have 2 APs and 25
| clients connected (8 of which are amazon-). When I turn
| on my TVs, those power up a few additional clients
| (Chromecasts and FireTVs) on WiFi. I can see between 12
| and 18 other networks depending on when I scan (plus who
| knows how many that aren't broadcasting SSIDs).
|
| Is Amazon likely to be able to put _more_ devices on Lora
| than I have on WiFi now? More concentrated than NYC or
| Paris WiFi is today?
|
| The maximum bitrate the article references is not a
| Shannon-Hartley bitrate limit, but rather a fairness-
| limited maximum transmission duty cycle to ensure other,
| also unlicensed users can access the spectrum.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Edited to rephrase as a question rather than an argument:
| How much is the "fair duty cycle" mandated by the law,
| and how much is politeness? My understanding is that
| multiple providers could be competing in this space and
| (if this system is popular) they may want larger and
| larger slices of that cycle. I don't know what the law
| requires here, so I don't know that there's any
| requirement that personal WiFi users need to get much if
| any spectrum once every corporate user has taken their
| piece.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Unlicensed spectrum doesn't mean unregulated. It just
| means individual users of devices don't need operator
| licenses. To facilitate that operations in unlicensed
| bands have regulatory operating limits. Devices are under
| the general rules covering harmful interference (don't
| cause it), accepting interference from licensed
| operations (you must accept it), and basic electronic
| device regulations.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| But a corporate player or players can deploy a lot of
| devices that individually comply and eat up a lot of the
| available bandwidth, making personal applications like
| Wifi less functional. And moreover: once there's a
| financial incentive to do this (which really resilient
| mesh networks will provide) the financial incentives to
| use this bandwidth may be much greater than they have
| been historically, and saying "well it hasn't happened
| yet so it won't be a problem" offers very little
| predictive value. This is my concern, and I am open to
| being convinced that the regulations in place will
| prevent this. So far none of the comments in this thread
| have given me a convincing reason not to worry, though
| it's nice that someone actually posted the (individual
| device) transmission limits.
| jeffypoo wrote:
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/15.247
| asah wrote:
| for a taste of citywide mesh: https://www.nycmesh.net/
|
| impressive map: https://www.nycmesh.net/map
|
| I'm not sure about latency...
| DanAtC wrote:
| https://disaster.radio/ is more apt.
|
| NYC Mesh is built from discrete, high bandwidth (very high
| relative to LoRA) point-to-point radios. Assuming all the links
| in a path are healthy, latency should be excellent.
| kylegalbraith wrote:
| Does this actually solve the network hole problem though? Just
| because Amazon devices have this capability doesn't mean folks in
| rural areas have Amazon devices. Perhaps thats not the point of
| this article.
| pmorici wrote:
| Check out Helium it's a proof of coverage crypto currency. The
| "mining" is proof of coverage. Believe it operates in the
| 900Mhz ISM band. Something like this could probably solve the
| hole problem because it incentivizes people to run access
| points were there isn't coverage
|
| https://www.helium.com/
| Natales wrote:
| I find Althea [1] a lot more interesting than Helium, where
| their crypto is used basically as an incentive model for
| bandwidth, with no proprietary hardware or software in the
| mix.
|
| [1] https://althea.net/
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