[HN Gopher] Irdest: Decentralised ad-hoc wireless mesh communica...
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Irdest: Decentralised ad-hoc wireless mesh communication
Author : pcr910303
Score : 39 points
Date : 2021-04-24 15:29 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (irde.st)
(TXT) w3m dump (irde.st)
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| Is this like an open-source Find My?
| myself248 wrote:
| I feel like every such project should be asked to justify its
| existence by explaining why it's not actually identical to some
| other similar project. Reviewing the existing literature might
| save a lot of repeated work.
|
| Even if the answer is "the community that runs this one is
| friendlier", hey, that's a valid differentiation, okay. But
| seriously, there are ten bazillion wireless meshes now, what
| makes this one worthy of anyone's attention or effort?
| montroser wrote:
| Justify to whom? If you put in the research and work to build a
| thing, you get to have it exist.
|
| Even if there are already similar projects, each next one may
| end up with a novel variation that could contribute to the
| broader understanding. Or even if not, even if it's just like
| all the others, it still has value for those learning from
| being involved.
| zamadatix wrote:
| To the people these pages are for, doesn't seem like they
| were built and spread for the author's own reading. Not that
| "I wanted to build my own to learn" isn't justification as
| well or wouldn't let people know what's special about it one
| just can't find such information in the pages.
| chrispeel wrote:
| Althea started out with a similar pitch. I'm not sure where they
| are now
|
| https://althea.net/how-it-works
| radec wrote:
| just an lurkers prospective, but they really seem to be growing
| fast. They have a lot of networks up and running and have been
| doing a pretty impressive job of getting people real broadband
| internet where there wasn't any before.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I have an idea for a bunch of low powered nodes that make an sms
| analog, a bbs and an ebook library available during natural
| disasters. It'd be nifty to allow communities to communicate
| during extended disasters, where 4g towers can often lose their
| backup power.
|
| I would love it if one of these mesh wifi projects really made it
| somewhere. That would be very convenient for this project.
| throwaway1090 wrote:
| Remember the guy who rescued a lost hiker by deducing his
| location Sherlock-Holmes-style using a single photo? [1][2].
| The story was trending on HN few days ago.
|
| He's got a pinned tweet [3] that says "One of the key
| technologies which has helped in crowdsourced response to
| extreme weather disasters (fires floods hurricanes) these last
| years has been ability to monitor local emergency radio
| channels remotely. Let's get these everywhere. #raspberrypi
| #rtlsdr #scanner"
|
| He (Benjamin Kuo) is a HAM Radio operator active during
| disasters.
|
| It's different from what you wanted, but just putting it here.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/15/us/missing-hiker-
| found.ht...
|
| [2] https://twitter.com/ai6yrham/status/1382371967618097157
|
| [3] https://twitter.com/ai6yrham/status/1085609599661617152
| olah_1 wrote:
| Helium is taking off in the IOT space. I am not sure if it can be
| used for regular communication like messaging or not, but that
| would be amazing if it could. https://www.helium.com/
| superkuh wrote:
| If the frequencies used are above the plasma frequency of the
| ionosphere (typically >30 MHz) like here then the only solution
| to "mesh" or cell networks is line of sight and that only comes
| from height above terrain. And height above terrain, except in
| rare and unique cases, is always expensive.
|
| The only reason cell networks work is that the telcos pay big
| money for getting access, power, and backhaul to places up high.
| No amount of power increases, modulation gain, reflector
| aperture, software, or anything else you can think up is going to
| get around the lack of line of sight.
|
| Unless a decentralized mesh network has enough money to do this
| it will only ever work in specific regions where single
| individuals or groups can pay $$$ and cover large areas. Like in
| Seattle where the mountainous coastal terrain is useful for
| hamwan's network, or in mega-cities like New York where residents
| have skyscraper roof access for p2p wireless community ISPs.
| na85 wrote:
| They're good solutions for places like Athens where the
| population is dense and urbanized and people are more concerned
| with getting any connectivity at all rather than getting low
| ping times in CSGO.
| woah wrote:
| Actually, wireless ISPs are very common around the world. Yes,
| line of sight to another node or a tower is always necessary.
|
| There's such an odd divide between tech geeks who like to sit
| around and think about "p2p wireless decentralized mesh
| networks", and don't know of any network that doesn't use those
| buzzwords, and wireless ISP operators who actually build them
| in the real world despite never having heard the word "mesh".
|
| Generally the networks started by the mesh geeks perform much
| worse, and have few, if any subscribers, despite the fact that
| topology and equipment are identical to a wireless ISP.
|
| Source: was a mesh geek, started a company making open source
| software for p2p mesh networks, now it serves wireless ISPs,
| who tend to have 100x the hustle and professionalism of the
| mesh geeks.
| superkuh wrote:
| A wireless ISP is not running a "mesh". But yeah, having an
| income stream to pay for height above terrain makes all the
| difference.
| throwaway1090 wrote:
| That's very interesting. Do they deliver internet through
| WiMAX ?
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(page generated 2021-04-24 23:01 UTC)