Would BBS work during an emergency situation / civil war? reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zeroknowledgeproofs · 2018-06-29 23:47 If the wireless internet was down, could BBS systems still be of use during emergency situations? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dmxrob · 2018-06-30 00:18 Well that depends, actually... The original POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) network was designed to withstand a nuclear war. In fact, the very concept of "Five Nines" of uptime originated with the Bell System. The issue is nowadays a lot of the legacy POTS network is no longer - replaced with digital switching, etc. A lot less moving parts, for sure, but a lot more reliant on "technology" being in place. For example, the old POTS network could run even during a power outage because of battery cells they had to supply the equipment with the power it needed. Assuming we had a major disaster, and assuming that parts of the POTS system still exist, it would be possible to continue communications via modem and dialup. Granted, it would be spotty I think based on where you were. I could see Intra-city and Intra-state communications via dialup working much better than Interstate communications. That's my guess -- Cell phones and the Internet are great, but they come nowhere to matching the reliability and uptime of POTS. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ScootyPuff-Sr · 2018-06-30 00:27 Yes? No? Sorta? Not really? Set the WABAC machine to 1989, and you'll find BBSes being used during a major telecommunications outage in San Fransisco Bay area. See, they just had a pretty significant earthquake (the "World Series quake"). BBSes are being used to pass "health and welfare" traffic ("Tell Grandma in New Jersey that Timmy is okay at a shelter in Oakland and he'll phone as soon as he can"). Tens of thousands of messages are being handled this way. Thing is, they're not phone line BBSes, and telnet BBSes aren't even a thing yet. These are packet radio BBSes, run by ham radio operators, mostly using VHF & UHF radio links with the odd (longer ranged but far slower) HF jump. But that works because there's thousands of these things in range of each other, sort of like a mesh network, basically coast to coast. So within a day, the message has been passed system to system to get outside the telecom outage area, and perhaps all the way to New Jersey, where some local ham picks up the phone and makes a local call to deliver the message. \*\*That network is dead and gone.\*\* And it's never coming back, at least not in that original form. Today, I would say no. In your hypothetical "the internet is down" scenario, I strongly suspect that whatever took the internet down took the phone system with it -- so many people today have VoIP services, and the plan old phone network is pretty much a fancy VoIP interface now as far as I understand it. The closest replacement we have to the packet BBS is a system called Winlink, which allows for simple email over radio. Your computer uses a radio to call up a server in your neighborhood. If that server is still connected to the internet at large, it can send and receive internet email. If the server's connection to the internet is cut off, some servers have long range HF links that may be able to jump over the damaged area to another similar server. Otherwise, it can still act as a local email server, similar to an isolated BBS, for the people in your area. Your local emergency management office almost certainly has this sort of system set up. At the end of the day though, in a telecommunications apocalypse, I would be much more worried about how my grocery store will get restocked tomorrow than how I'm going to check my Barren Realms Elite moves. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SwordOfKas · 2018-06-30 01:06 I had a professor from India. In flooded areas with cell connections going down, they would use ham/cb radios ---------------------------------------------------------------------- flecom · 2018-06-30 06:02 you would be better off using a ham radio and doing packet radio... you can use VHF for local communications or HF for long distance communications ---------------------------------------------------------------------- eclectro · 2018-06-30 10:41 Nope. Because we do not have the dead simple POTs infrastructure that we once did. There is a real question that the old POTs would work too, because they worked on the principle that not all subscribers would need to use the phones at the same time. So whatever system you have, if SHTF everybody will cram on it anyway and then it's dead. As a ham though, I have given considerable thought to this very thing. I just don't have the time to sit down and write the software atm. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- eclectro · 2018-06-30 10:48 Old POTs was great because a lot of thought was given to it's design to survive emergency situations. But the problem is that you're still dependent on the main office giving you a dial tone. So even the old system could not supply everyone with a dial tone in an emergency. You'd pick up a handset, and it would literally be just dead. I personally don't understand why the old CB bands could not be given over to new tech and why they have to *still* be stuck with just voice. Because they could give one of the channels to some very slow- boat twitter/irc like messaging service that might work great for an emergency. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SqualorTrawler · 2018-06-30 22:40 One thing I would never have predicted 20 or 30 years ago would be the end of the POTS system as we know it. I would not have guessed that ordinarily landline phones would have gotten as sparse as they have, at least in certain areas/demographics. This is the main problem. The best bet - and there aren't enough of them - are packet radio based bulletin board systems, which are done on ham radio frequencies. I am surprised there aren't more of them but then again amateur radio has become more niche too. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zeroknowledgeproofs · 2018-06-30 22:56 How would one access a packet based BBS? Would it have a graphical interface like a telnet BBS ? Would/could you use windows/linux/mac to interact with a packet radio based system? Does one need a licence to operate a packet based BBS system using a ham radio? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SqualorTrawler · 2018-07-01 00:51 > Does one need a licence to operate a packet based BBS system using a ham radio? Yes, to transmit, which would be required simply to log in and work menu commands. A technician license is very simple to obtain - there are sites which simply drill you with the whole test bank (multiple choice) - learn them, and then you'll see a subset of the same questions on the exam. Experienced amateur radio operators would ordinarily hope you understand these principles on a deeper level but to get the actual license is - for better or worse - just memorization. You then need specific hardware from there. [Here is a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Hm6omrVaeE) showing you what it's like. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ScootyPuff-Sr · 2018-07-01 15:49 The traditional setup for accessing a packet BBS would look like: * An antenna for the intended frequency (usually the 2-meter band, 144-148 MHz) * A radio for that same band, most often a "mobile" rig meant for car installation, sometimes a handheld (walkie-talkie) with a power cord because those old rechargeable batteries were not going to last you * A Terminal Node Controller, which is basically the radio guy name for a modem * A teletype, dumb terminal, or any home computer behaving as a text terminal (I think radio guys trended toward the Radio Shack computers at the time, but I've always been partial to the Apple II) A modern setup would likely look like: * The same antenna, because physics haven't changed * A modern radio that costs about the same as it did in the 1980s. OR, for guys who are already big in to ham radio, they likely already have an all-mode, "all" bands HF/VHF/UHF desktop rig. * A sound card interface, really just a box with some transformers in it to electrically decouple the computer from the radio * A Windows, Linux, Mac, Android or iOS machine running some sort of "soundmodem" software * Terminal software running on the same - it may even be built into the same software acting as the soundmodem. There is a new generation of cheap handheld ham radios. They are a great, inexpensive ($30) way to get in to conversational ham radio but I have not been able to make mine work reliably for packet radio and I haven't read of anyone else having much better results. A mobile from one of the major manufacturers (Yaesu, Icom, Kenwood, Alinco) would be the way to go and guys are selling those used for fair prices all the time. The BBS itself would have a smilar setup. If it is lucky enough to be in an area with a network of packet BBSes, it likely has a higher speed backbone link to one or more other boards. That probably consists of another antenna, radio, and hardware TNC. Plugging off- the-shelf gear together, you get a speed of 1200 bps on packet radio, and user ports are kept set up that way to make it easier for new users to get set up. But for the purpose-made links forwarding messages between boards, a higher speed of 9600 bps is possible by connecting the TNC's output deep in the guts of the radio, bypassing parts that would help clarify spoken voice but mangle the digital signal. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- timbernutz · 2018-07-02 23:10 If d2d lte ever happens. http://www.radio- electronics.com/info/cellulartelecomms/lte-long-term-evolution/4g-lte- advanced-d2d-device-to-device.php . Then you could see a resurgence of self hosted wide networks like bbs had back in the day. And you could also have a very reliable emergency information system. But it would still be a very niche group who uses it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- YserviusPalacost · 2018-09-07 19:07 I'm actually starting to look into this. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- flecom · 2018-09-08 08:24 here are some things to get you started https://hackaday.com/2017/03/24/shut-up-and-say-something-amateur- radio-digital-modes/ another mode that's becoming popular is WSPR... an advantage it has in a SHTF scenario is it's low power requirements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WSPR_(amateur_radio_software) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- YserviusPalacost · 2018-09-17 19:20 Thank you, sir! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- YserviusPalacost · 2018-09-17 19:23 Thanks for the info, Scooty Puff! The Infosphere thanks you. 😊