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I really like ad-hoc networks like this. I hang out on the marine bands these days. Makes me think, maybe we could turn on unsecured WiFi (e.g. WiFi network n

I really like ad-hoc networks like this. I hang out on the marine bands these days. Makes me think, maybe we could turn on unsecured WiFi (e.g. WiFi network named ‘community-wifi’), establish IPs and provide some simple services for free to a local community. Something like a digital version of little free library. Provide digital book library, DMs, email, voice chat option and so on? It’d be nice to talk with local radios. Plus no need to pay to communicate. Curious if there are projects like this out there? If not, this makes me want to run some simple services (DNS, BootP/DHCP, HTTP server and homepage with a description and links to additional services).

hilbert42 7y ago
"I really like ad-hoc networks like this." As one who got my license and call sign decades ago when I was at school (but which I've long since let lapse), I'm very familiar with ad-hoc networks of this type. My past AR experience also made me a great believer in mesh networks for similar reasons. Both have one great virtue and that is that they're essentially independent from infrastructure that one doesn't own or control directly. When corporations, authoritarian states, dictatorships and or natural disasters get in one's way it's very comforting to know that one can always fallback upon some pretty low tech kit to communicate across the world. Under reasonable conditions, an old telegraph pounder, an 807 beam power tube designed in the late 1930s and a little help from the ionosphere will still easily get you across the planet. ;-)
Ao7bei3s 7y ago
That exists, e.g. Freifunk ("free radio", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freifunk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freifunk) is a collection of open wifi mesh networks in major German cities. The larger ones of these meshes have several thousands of nodes. It is community operated (ie, anyone can participate, though in practice technical issues are driven by technical people and important backbone infrastructure is done with professional hardware). It has an ideological focus on local services, but really what most users use it for is just internet access. And the question is - as a service operator, why would you want to limit something to local people and spotty mesh networking tech, when you could put it on the internet where it can be available to everyone? You're looking at it constructively (add a service for the local community), but from my perspective, availability on the internet is the default, and if there's a local mesh network that encourages people to offer services on the local mesh in particular, that is taking something away that could have been offered on the internet. In a way this is similar to net neutrality - the content should not be tied to the network or vice versa. Obviously over the years that's been a constant point of discussion/contention within the Freifunk community as well, and in general there has been some contention between ideology and technical reality (for example, ideologically, open mesh networks are obviously superior due to fault tolerance and democratized control. But in practice, and in particular the way the real Freifunk meshes are built, things are less decentralized than one would naively expect, the mesh links are unreliable, lossy, bandwidth-constrained, and high latency/jitter, the mesh protocols like batman-adv don't scale well, broadcast spam and management traffic overhead are real problems, etc. - Ideologically there should be no central control, but practically practically you have to have a blessed firmware for interoperability reasons, or if you offer internet access someone needs to control the AS and IP ranges etc.)
- jedieaston 7y ago
  It'd probably be used in a place where internet access is infeasible (much like amateur radio is used sometimes). The kiwix project provides an example of this, where you download a compressed (either with or without images, without is a bit smaller) version of Wikipedia which is then served over the wireless NIC in a Raspberry Pi, which is handy if the internet isn't available (for example, in schools in developing areas). https://www.kiwix.org/en/downloads/kiwix-hotspot/ https://www.kiwix.org/en/downloads/kiwix-hotspot/
  - state_less 7y ago
    I was thinking of places where internet access is not available, not affordable, limited/censored or routing to the internet is not allowed/legal. I'd welcome routing to the internet as an additional service or if routing to other radios was available. Personally, I'm in a number of anchorages where I can see other WiFi beacons, but they are secured and not setup to share anything. I'd like to open up an AP or adhoc network and enable voice and text over more than VHF. Basically, if someone wants to chat with me or read my library, they can. VHF is still a nice fallback though. Kiwix looks like a nice project. Thanks for the link.
closeparen 7y ago
Modern MacOS and iOS are really unhappy about joining SSIDs that don't have internet access. I wonder if there's some way of quieting these warnings.
- state_less 7y ago
  I think if you have a DHCP server on the network supplying IP addresses and DNS, iOS doesn't complain right away. I gave it a try just now with a cheap GL Inet 750m travel router and was able to connect without warnings despite the router not being connected to the internet. After some time, I did get an error about the wifi not being connected to the internet. I was asked if I should keep trying WiFi. Not sure what the details of this new iOS behavior is and if you can disable it somehow?
wglb 7y ago
Give this a look: http://oemcomm.org/ham-mesh-network-primer/ http://oemcomm.org/ham-mesh-network-primer/ And this: https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/mesh-networking-over-ham-radio-our-own-emergency-backbone-network.593869/ https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/mesh-networking-ove... And this: https://www.arednmesh.org/ https://www.arednmesh.org/
- state_less 7y ago
  Very cool, thanks!

hilbert42 7y ago

"I really like ad-hoc networks like this." As one who got my license and call sign decades ago when I was at school (but which I've long since let lapse), I'm very familiar with ad-hoc networks of this type. My past AR experience also made me a great believer in mesh networks for similar reasons. Both have one great virtue and that is that they're essentially independent from infrastructure that one doesn't own or control directly. When corporations, authoritarian states, dictatorships and or natural disasters get in one's way it's very comforting to know that one can always fallback upon some pretty low tech kit to communicate across the world. Under reasonable conditions, an old telegraph pounder, an 807 beam power tube designed in the late 1930s and a little help from the ionosphere will still easily get you across the planet. ;-)

Ao7bei3s 7y ago

That exists, e.g. Freifunk ("free radio", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freifunk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freifunk) is a collection of open wifi mesh networks in major German cities. The larger ones of these meshes have several thousands of nodes. It is community operated (ie, anyone can participate, though in practice technical issues are driven by technical people and important backbone infrastructure is done with professional hardware). It has an ideological focus on local services, but really what most users use it for is just internet access. And the question is - as a service operator, why would you want to limit something to local people and spotty mesh networking tech, when you could put it on the internet where it can be available to everyone? You're looking at it constructively (add a service for the local community), but from my perspective, availability on the internet is the default, and if there's a local mesh network that encourages people to offer services on the local mesh in particular, that is taking something away that could have been offered on the internet. In a way this is similar to net neutrality - the content should not be tied to the network or vice versa. Obviously over the years that's been a constant point of discussion/contention within the Freifunk community as well, and in general there has been some contention between ideology and technical reality (for example, ideologically, open mesh networks are obviously superior due to fault tolerance and democratized control. But in practice, and in particular the way the real Freifunk meshes are built, things are less decentralized than one would naively expect, the mesh links are unreliable, lossy, bandwidth-constrained, and high latency/jitter, the mesh protocols like batman-adv don't scale well, broadcast spam and management traffic overhead are real problems, etc. - Ideologically there should be no central control, but practically practically you have to have a blessed firmware for interoperability reasons, or if you offer internet access someone needs to control the AS and IP ranges etc.)

jedieaston 7y ago
It'd probably be used in a place where internet access is infeasible (much like amateur radio is used sometimes). The kiwix project provides an example of this, where you download a compressed (either with or without images, without is a bit smaller) version of Wikipedia which is then served over the wireless NIC in a Raspberry Pi, which is handy if the internet isn't available (for example, in schools in developing areas). https://www.kiwix.org/en/downloads/kiwix-hotspot/ https://www.kiwix.org/en/downloads/kiwix-hotspot/
- state_less 7y ago
  I was thinking of places where internet access is not available, not affordable, limited/censored or routing to the internet is not allowed/legal. I'd welcome routing to the internet as an additional service or if routing to other radios was available. Personally, I'm in a number of anchorages where I can see other WiFi beacons, but they are secured and not setup to share anything. I'd like to open up an AP or adhoc network and enable voice and text over more than VHF. Basically, if someone wants to chat with me or read my library, they can. VHF is still a nice fallback though. Kiwix looks like a nice project. Thanks for the link.

closeparen 7y ago

Modern MacOS and iOS are really unhappy about joining SSIDs that don't have internet access. I wonder if there's some way of quieting these warnings.

state_less 7y ago
I think if you have a DHCP server on the network supplying IP addresses and DNS, iOS doesn't complain right away. I gave it a try just now with a cheap GL Inet 750m travel router and was able to connect without warnings despite the router not being connected to the internet. After some time, I did get an error about the wifi not being connected to the internet. I was asked if I should keep trying WiFi. Not sure what the details of this new iOS behavior is and if you can disable it somehow?

wglb 7y ago

Give this a look: http://oemcomm.org/ham-mesh-network-primer/ http://oemcomm.org/ham-mesh-network-primer/ And this: https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/mesh-networking-over-ham-radio-our-own-emergency-backbone-network.593869/ https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/mesh-networking-ove... And this: https://www.arednmesh.org/ https://www.arednmesh.org/

state_less 7y ago
Very cool, thanks!