6 ms·

A fascinating idea, I wish you a lot of luck in this endeavor! If I were going to go this route, that is, to engineer a network not dependent on the Internet -

A fascinating idea, I wish you a lot of luck in this endeavor! If I were going to go this route, that is, to engineer a network not dependent on the Internet -- I'd first go down to the most fundamental principle of WiFi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, EDGE, EVDO, LTE, etc. -- and that most fundamental principal is RADIO. From there, I'd ask the question -- how can any device which implements one or more of the wireless protocols that we all know and love: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wireless_data_standards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wireless_data_st...) be converted back to raw radio? If it can be done, use that and design upwards. If it can't be done, then use the lowest abstraction level (above raw radio) possible that can be used for the device in question... That's the comm side of things. The "next job up" is to figure out the logistics of user adoption, getting these radio devices to communicate, what bitrates to use, what access patterns to use, how do you get data over longer stretches (if there's no user/node to hop off), etc., etc. But, quite the technical challenge! Of course, you can "cheat" -- and use pre-made protocols/software/drivers -- which gets you the highest amount of abstraction (but the least amount of control). SDR -- Software Defined Radio -- would seem to be a good middle ground between these two areas of abstraction... I'd almost argue that if someone were to make the simplest of all SDR's that could turn ordinary WiFi cards and devices into SDR, and couple that with a store-and-forward network like FidoNet or Bitnet (if anyone remembers those!), then they'd be in business! Anyway, it's a very interesting and challenging project! I wish you the best of luck in this endeavor!

swiley 6y ago
WiFi supports peer to peer stuff just fine. Before the internet was pervasive me and my friends would play starcraft/minecraft over ad-hoc wifi networks with link local addresses. Cell phone OSes automatically disconnect from these of course, there's no way to connect to the ad/telemetry services so what good would it be anyway?
- capableweb 6y ago
  > WiFi supports peer to peer stuff just fine Not to mention that there is huge mesh networks around the world deployed by private persons, all using WiFi over KMs of distance.
  - pdimitar 6y ago
    Any examples? Very interesting.
    - drblah 6y ago
      One example is Freifunk in Germany. There is also a large network in Spain, but I forget what it is called. There is also this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25412367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25412367 which was recently discussed on HN.
    - capableweb 6y ago
      - NYC Mesh - US - https://www.nycmesh.net/ https://www.nycmesh.net/ - Freifunk - Germany - https://freifunk.net/ https://freifunk.net/ - Guifi - Spain - https://guifi.net/en https://guifi.net/en Guifi is probably the largest of those, with 36.924 online nodes, most in Spain but some in other parts of the world. If my memory serves me correctly, there is peering working/in progress between Freifunk and Guifi as well.
- davidjade 6y ago
  > Cell phone OSes automatically disconnect from these of course Not all phone OSes. None of my iOS devices disconnect from local WiFi because they don't have Internet connectivity. I do this this all the time with several devices I have that broadcast their own WiFi for remote control connectivity.
loceng 6y ago
I'd love someone with knowledge-experience with radio to chime into the feasibility of such a system, what the constraints and potential legality of it could be. I'd imagine a mesh network like this could be most useful during natural disasters that disable wired/powered communications, maybe for wartime anti-tyranny - however radio waves could be blocked/tracked and targeted afaik, so maybe not foolproof for that use case.
- nemosaltat 6y ago
  I’ve been playing with Meshtastic and some ESP32s recently. Works like a charm, but no security other than “channels” and currently no iOS app. The Python API has a ton of features, and it seems like this could tie in nicely.
  - bigiain 6y ago
    Ummm, I've not touched any of my Meshtastic devices for a few months, but I'm _reasonably_ certain everything other than the "default" channel is encrypted. First ht on Google seems to agree: https://www.meshtastic.org/software/crypto.html https://www.meshtastic.org/software/crypto.html
- superkuh 6y ago
  Only[1] height above terrain matters for VHF radio and up. Unless you pay the big bucks for power and space on a tower or the top of some building, it doesn't matter how impressive your modulation gain is or how powerful your transmitter is or how high of gain your antenna is. Your software is barely relevant. The thing that makes the cellphone mesh network work is that they spend lots of money getting their antennas up high above the terrain and getting power to them. [1] Yes, there's sporadic e tranmission but it's just that, sporadic. And yes, there's troposcatter but that literally requires kilowatts and highly directional large antennas.
- adrianpike 6y ago
  There's a few groups working on this in various forms. Two ones I've been paying close attention to are; https://www.meshtastic.org/ https://www.meshtastic.org/ http://disaster.radio/ http://disaster.radio/ Legality-wise can get complicated, there's only certain frequencies you're legally allowed to run encryption on, and then there's wrinkles around hardware and transmission power.
armini 6y ago
I love the way you thought about solving the problem Peter. You clearly have a lot of experience peeling back the layers of technology. I wish more people left thought out comments like yours. Let me know if you're interested in brining to life your suggestion :)
- peter_d_sherman 6y ago
  Hi Armani, I greatly appreciate your kind and uplifting comment! (Although, and I'd say this to everyone else, I also appreciate highly critical comments -- because they challege me to think, to really think, to refine exactly where I stand on a position in words, and to fix that position if it contains any inconsistencies... On a side note, I should write that down in my philosophies in the future -- good comments (like yours!) are good, because they're positive and uplifting, but "bad comments are also good" (paradoxically!), because they force you, they challenge you to really think...) >"Let me know if you're interested in brining to life your suggestion :)" Well, I greatly appreciate it, but I don't have the time for it... I'm merely adding some ideas to the discussion. You know, add some "lively" ideas -- to an already "lively" discussion! <g> Anyway, thanks again for the kind words!
brmgb 6y ago
I don't really know how to read your comment. All the wireless protocol that we use are actually "raw" radio whatever that means. You can use them to do P2P communication if you want to as demonstrated by this protocol. The way you physically transport data can be safely decoupled from how you will encode and how you want your protocol to work. It makes thinking about the different layers easier and allow them to evolve independantly. Nothing prevents you from building an IP network using ham radio as a transport. The OSI model wasn't developed as a purely theorical concept. It does solve a practical problem.
- peter_d_sherman 6y ago
  >"I don't really know how to read your comment. All the wireless protocol that we use are actually "raw" radio whatever that means." Sometimes the most profound of truths, the most elegant of truths, are so simple, so as to be overlooked and/or written off by people. In this case, you see, if "everything is turtles" all the way up, then at the base layer, the turtle all the way at the bottom, the turtle who rests on no other turtle, well that turtle is "radio". Let's change the topic and talk about cars for a second. You have drivers, people who can drive a car, that is, people like you and me. But then you have a subsection of these people, who are mechanics, who can fix most typical problems that a car might have, but there are limits to their capabilities; they couldn't make a car more aerodynamic, or reengineer a gas car to be an electric one, etc. Then you have, as a subsection of Mechanics, Car Design Engineers (all Car Designers are in effect Mechanics also, because their knowledge is a superset of the mechanic's knowledge). The Car Design Engineer can do "miraculous" things that an ordinary Mechanic cannot -- he or she could make a gas car electric, an electric one gas, could design for higher MPG, could swap out systems, etc., etc. The Mechanic works at a lower level of abstraction than the car driver does, and so, can do many things that an ordinary car driver cannot, but the Car Design Engineer works at a still lower level of abstraction than the Mechanic -- and thus he or she can do "miraculous" things that the Mechanic cannot... "It's all raw radio" -- is the simple, elegant, most profound truth at the bottom of the stack of turtles (compare to the concept of common denominators in Mathematics), it's the lowest-level abstraction, it's the abstraction level that, should we work from it upwards (rather than pre-built protocols, drivers and stacks) downwards, we'd find that we can do things that we otherwise couldn't, if we were forced to work within the constraints of all of those pre-determined systems. Finally, the Internet itself -- the Internet itself -- IS A SERIES OF ABSTRACTIONS -- a series of "Turtles on top of other turtles". The Internet itself... Meditate on that one for a second... I did, and the implications of that meditation were profound! Why shouldn't someone commit to learning about all of those levels of abstraction, and gaining the corresponding power of amazing engineering (aka, "abstraction working") abilities -- should that knowledge be gained?
hausenfefr2 6y ago
"if someone were to make the simplest of all SDR's that could turn ordinary WiFi cards and devices into SDR" I dont think you said what you think you said.
bigiain 6y ago
> I'd almost argue that if someone were to make the simplest of all SDR's that could turn ordinary WiFi cards and devices into SDR SDR became wildly popular (well, relatively, amongst geeks) when someone worked out a ~$10 usb dtv tuner could be used easily as an SDR receiver. There are very few (but not zero) rules around recieving radio signals. Once you start transmitting though, things get way moire complicated very quickly. Some of those radio protocols you listed (Bluetooth/WiFi/ZigBee) typically use "ISM" radio bands, where the rules are less stringent (but there are still rules), some of the protocols you mention (EDGE/EVDO/LTE) will very quickly get you found/shutdown/fined if you start transmitting on them. Telco's pay millions for the licenses to those bands, and strongly protect their exclusive use of them. If you "just use" your wifi/bluetooth radios as they were designed, you'll be complying with all the regulations (including things like ensuring you abide by geographically different available channels, 2.4GHz channel 14 and sometime 13 and 12 are not available depending on where in the world you are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels#2.4_GHz_(802.11b/g/n/ax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels#2.4_GHz_... ) If you start screwing around at a low enough level to be controlling the radios without the higher level drivers - you become responsible for all the global regulatory shitstorms you might bump into. While that would be a fun thing to play with (and I say this as someone who's used a USB VGA dongle as an "SDR Transmitter" in ways that are _totally_ not legal where I live), it's not really a sensible path to go down if your goal is widely usable decentralised non-internet connected messaging.
- peter_d_sherman 6y ago
  First of all, a lot of good info, so I appreciate that! I'm not going down this route right now (too many other priorities), but I like to think strategically about this subject, as I do about many others. >"SDR became wildly popular (well, relatively, amongst geeks) when someone worked out a ~$10 usb dtv tuner could be used easily as an SDR receiver." Strangely, I never heard about this, but I'd be interested to learn more; links/references? >"Once you start transmitting though, things get way more complicated very quickly. Some of those radio protocols you listed (Bluetooth/WiFi/ZigBee) typically use "ISM" radio bands, where the rules are less stringent (but there are still rules), some of the protocols you mention (EDGE/EVDO/LTE) will very quickly get you found/shutdown/fined if you start transmitting on them." I don't question that certain types of radio transmissions may offend one or more people; and/or one or more "powers-that-be"... But, let's clearly, and I mean super-clearly understand the exact specifics of what those are, because you see, there is room, there is a lot of room for experimentation -- outside of those parameters. You see, what someone can or can't do, radiowise, is largely determined by a matrix of different factors -- think of this as a giant Excel spreadsheet -- but with multiple factors determining whether something in radio can be done or can't. So let's talk about some of those factors. One of them is the distance to other people. If I live in a cornfield in Nebraska, and my next door neighbor is 35 miles away, unless my radio transmission goes for more than 35 miles, it probably isn't going to piss off anyone. Conversely, if I live in a tightly packed city, like New York where my next door neighboor lives in an apartment 20 feet away -- then 20 feet might be the largest practical distance that my radio transmission might be able to go before it pisses someone off. So that's one aspect of this 'matrix'. Another aspect is, what country do I live in? Because different countries have different rules. On the ocean, at 200+ nautical miles from the coast of the nearest country, or on the North Pole, or South Pole, or in Outer Space (if I can get there) -- I can probably get away with a longer broadcast -- without pissing anyone off. But those are only some of the parameters of this matrix. Another parameter is frequency, another parameter is power relative to that frequency, another parameter is the directionality of the transmission (for example, am I using a directional radio beam formed by a cone-shaped transmitter, and how does that beam spread out, and how far does it go, and who is in its path?). Then, there are what are called "Caduceus Coils" -- they're a special coil/broadcast antenna -- which if it designed correctly, acts like the "laser beam" equivalent, except for rf; the radio transmission. If that tightly focused radio beam is about the size of a dime, and travels directly, over air, to its target location (which is some other guy agreeing beforehand to receive that transmission, to become a "node" on the network"), then that radio transmission will not interfere wtih any other radios (receiving or transmitting) outside of that laser-thin line; in other words, it should interfere with no-one, it should not piss any person or power-that-be, off... You see, to quote William Shakespeare's "Hamlet": "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." I don't mean to offend you by saying that; but you see, there's always another angle; another possibility that may have gone unthought-of (until someone points it out). In other words, "Don't assume", or phrased another way "Assume Nothing" (Mike Abrash). Yes, people would probably get offended if you connected with a cell phone tower on one of their frequencies using one of their protocols without their permission -- but I am not proposing that that be done! Instead, I'm saying -- look at the possibilities. The multi-page spreadsheet/matrix of factors must be created and then consulted to see where the empty spaces are (empty space = opportunity for experimentation!). Anything that is not prohibited -- is, and must be by default, permitted! (You know, that old Grace Hopper "permission vs. forgiveness" debate!). >"you'll be complying with all the regulations" My question is this: Do the regulators even understand what they are regulating? I understand both Law and Radio technology. I could do their job; they probably couldn't do mine... >"it's not really a sensible path to go down if your goal is widely usable decentralised non-internet connected messaging." Yes, but my goal isn't to go down this path -- it's to think about what to do about greater shitstorms (greater amounts of shit hitting the fan than it does already) if and when they happen! I hate to dumb it down to this level, but proverbially speaking, in this matter "I'm the good guys" (er, guy, singular, as the case may be... <g>)...
elgfare 6y ago
Not sure if there is any benefit to stripping back to raw radio. You can almost always build on top of other protocols to get a pipe that you can then build your protocol on.
kawfey 6y ago
More people need to get into or at least learn about ham radio for this reason. Modern telecommunications is a gross abstraction, and is taken for granted.

swiley 6y ago

WiFi supports peer to peer stuff just fine. Before the internet was pervasive me and my friends would play starcraft/minecraft over ad-hoc wifi networks with link local addresses. Cell phone OSes automatically disconnect from these of course, there's no way to connect to the ad/telemetry services so what good would it be anyway?

capableweb 6y ago
> WiFi supports peer to peer stuff just fine Not to mention that there is huge mesh networks around the world deployed by private persons, all using WiFi over KMs of distance.
- pdimitar 6y ago
  Any examples? Very interesting.
  - drblah 6y ago
    One example is Freifunk in Germany. There is also a large network in Spain, but I forget what it is called. There is also this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25412367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25412367 which was recently discussed on HN.
  - capableweb 6y ago
    - NYC Mesh - US - https://www.nycmesh.net/ https://www.nycmesh.net/ - Freifunk - Germany - https://freifunk.net/ https://freifunk.net/ - Guifi - Spain - https://guifi.net/en https://guifi.net/en Guifi is probably the largest of those, with 36.924 online nodes, most in Spain but some in other parts of the world. If my memory serves me correctly, there is peering working/in progress between Freifunk and Guifi as well.
davidjade 6y ago
> Cell phone OSes automatically disconnect from these of course Not all phone OSes. None of my iOS devices disconnect from local WiFi because they don't have Internet connectivity. I do this this all the time with several devices I have that broadcast their own WiFi for remote control connectivity.

loceng 6y ago

I'd love someone with knowledge-experience with radio to chime into the feasibility of such a system, what the constraints and potential legality of it could be. I'd imagine a mesh network like this could be most useful during natural disasters that disable wired/powered communications, maybe for wartime anti-tyranny - however radio waves could be blocked/tracked and targeted afaik, so maybe not foolproof for that use case.

nemosaltat 6y ago
I’ve been playing with Meshtastic and some ESP32s recently. Works like a charm, but no security other than “channels” and currently no iOS app. The Python API has a ton of features, and it seems like this could tie in nicely.
- bigiain 6y ago
  Ummm, I've not touched any of my Meshtastic devices for a few months, but I'm _reasonably_ certain everything other than the "default" channel is encrypted. First ht on Google seems to agree: https://www.meshtastic.org/software/crypto.html https://www.meshtastic.org/software/crypto.html
superkuh 6y ago
Only[1] height above terrain matters for VHF radio and up. Unless you pay the big bucks for power and space on a tower or the top of some building, it doesn't matter how impressive your modulation gain is or how powerful your transmitter is or how high of gain your antenna is. Your software is barely relevant. The thing that makes the cellphone mesh network work is that they spend lots of money getting their antennas up high above the terrain and getting power to them. [1] Yes, there's sporadic e tranmission but it's just that, sporadic. And yes, there's troposcatter but that literally requires kilowatts and highly directional large antennas.
adrianpike 6y ago
There's a few groups working on this in various forms. Two ones I've been paying close attention to are; https://www.meshtastic.org/ https://www.meshtastic.org/ http://disaster.radio/ http://disaster.radio/ Legality-wise can get complicated, there's only certain frequencies you're legally allowed to run encryption on, and then there's wrinkles around hardware and transmission power.

armini 6y ago

I love the way you thought about solving the problem Peter. You clearly have a lot of experience peeling back the layers of technology. I wish more people left thought out comments like yours. Let me know if you're interested in brining to life your suggestion :)

peter_d_sherman 6y ago
Hi Armani, I greatly appreciate your kind and uplifting comment! (Although, and I'd say this to everyone else, I also appreciate highly critical comments -- because they challege me to think, to really think, to refine exactly where I stand on a position in words, and to fix that position if it contains any inconsistencies... On a side note, I should write that down in my philosophies in the future -- good comments (like yours!) are good, because they're positive and uplifting, but "bad comments are also good" (paradoxically!), because they force you, they challenge you to really think...) >"Let me know if you're interested in brining to life your suggestion :)" Well, I greatly appreciate it, but I don't have the time for it... I'm merely adding some ideas to the discussion. You know, add some "lively" ideas -- to an already "lively" discussion! <g> Anyway, thanks again for the kind words!

brmgb 6y ago

I don't really know how to read your comment. All the wireless protocol that we use are actually "raw" radio whatever that means. You can use them to do P2P communication if you want to as demonstrated by this protocol. The way you physically transport data can be safely decoupled from how you will encode and how you want your protocol to work. It makes thinking about the different layers easier and allow them to evolve independantly. Nothing prevents you from building an IP network using ham radio as a transport. The OSI model wasn't developed as a purely theorical concept. It does solve a practical problem.

peter_d_sherman 6y ago
>"I don't really know how to read your comment. All the wireless protocol that we use are actually "raw" radio whatever that means." Sometimes the most profound of truths, the most elegant of truths, are so simple, so as to be overlooked and/or written off by people. In this case, you see, if "everything is turtles" all the way up, then at the base layer, the turtle all the way at the bottom, the turtle who rests on no other turtle, well that turtle is "radio". Let's change the topic and talk about cars for a second. You have drivers, people who can drive a car, that is, people like you and me. But then you have a subsection of these people, who are mechanics, who can fix most typical problems that a car might have, but there are limits to their capabilities; they couldn't make a car more aerodynamic, or reengineer a gas car to be an electric one, etc. Then you have, as a subsection of Mechanics, Car Design Engineers (all Car Designers are in effect Mechanics also, because their knowledge is a superset of the mechanic's knowledge). The Car Design Engineer can do "miraculous" things that an ordinary Mechanic cannot -- he or she could make a gas car electric, an electric one gas, could design for higher MPG, could swap out systems, etc., etc. The Mechanic works at a lower level of abstraction than the car driver does, and so, can do many things that an ordinary car driver cannot, but the Car Design Engineer works at a still lower level of abstraction than the Mechanic -- and thus he or she can do "miraculous" things that the Mechanic cannot... "It's all raw radio" -- is the simple, elegant, most profound truth at the bottom of the stack of turtles (compare to the concept of common denominators in Mathematics), it's the lowest-level abstraction, it's the abstraction level that, should we work from it upwards (rather than pre-built protocols, drivers and stacks) downwards, we'd find that we can do things that we otherwise couldn't, if we were forced to work within the constraints of all of those pre-determined systems. Finally, the Internet itself -- the Internet itself -- IS A SERIES OF ABSTRACTIONS -- a series of "Turtles on top of other turtles". The Internet itself... Meditate on that one for a second... I did, and the implications of that meditation were profound! Why shouldn't someone commit to learning about all of those levels of abstraction, and gaining the corresponding power of amazing engineering (aka, "abstraction working") abilities -- should that knowledge be gained?

hausenfefr2 6y ago

"if someone were to make the simplest of all SDR's that could turn ordinary WiFi cards and devices into SDR" I dont think you said what you think you said.

bigiain 6y ago

> I'd almost argue that if someone were to make the simplest of all SDR's that could turn ordinary WiFi cards and devices into SDR SDR became wildly popular (well, relatively, amongst geeks) when someone worked out a ~$10 usb dtv tuner could be used easily as an SDR receiver. There are very few (but not zero) rules around recieving radio signals. Once you start transmitting though, things get way moire complicated very quickly. Some of those radio protocols you listed (Bluetooth/WiFi/ZigBee) typically use "ISM" radio bands, where the rules are less stringent (but there are still rules), some of the protocols you mention (EDGE/EVDO/LTE) will very quickly get you found/shutdown/fined if you start transmitting on them. Telco's pay millions for the licenses to those bands, and strongly protect their exclusive use of them. If you "just use" your wifi/bluetooth radios as they were designed, you'll be complying with all the regulations (including things like ensuring you abide by geographically different available channels, 2.4GHz channel 14 and sometime 13 and 12 are not available depending on where in the world you are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels#2.4_GHz_(802.11b/g/n/ax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels#2.4_GHz_... ) If you start screwing around at a low enough level to be controlling the radios without the higher level drivers - you become responsible for all the global regulatory shitstorms you might bump into. While that would be a fun thing to play with (and I say this as someone who's used a USB VGA dongle as an "SDR Transmitter" in ways that are _totally_ not legal where I live), it's not really a sensible path to go down if your goal is widely usable decentralised non-internet connected messaging.

peter_d_sherman 6y ago
First of all, a lot of good info, so I appreciate that! I'm not going down this route right now (too many other priorities), but I like to think strategically about this subject, as I do about many others. >"SDR became wildly popular (well, relatively, amongst geeks) when someone worked out a ~$10 usb dtv tuner could be used easily as an SDR receiver." Strangely, I never heard about this, but I'd be interested to learn more; links/references? >"Once you start transmitting though, things get way more complicated very quickly. Some of those radio protocols you listed (Bluetooth/WiFi/ZigBee) typically use "ISM" radio bands, where the rules are less stringent (but there are still rules), some of the protocols you mention (EDGE/EVDO/LTE) will very quickly get you found/shutdown/fined if you start transmitting on them." I don't question that certain types of radio transmissions may offend one or more people; and/or one or more "powers-that-be"... But, let's clearly, and I mean super-clearly understand the exact specifics of what those are, because you see, there is room, there is a lot of room for experimentation -- outside of those parameters. You see, what someone can or can't do, radiowise, is largely determined by a matrix of different factors -- think of this as a giant Excel spreadsheet -- but with multiple factors determining whether something in radio can be done or can't. So let's talk about some of those factors. One of them is the distance to other people. If I live in a cornfield in Nebraska, and my next door neighbor is 35 miles away, unless my radio transmission goes for more than 35 miles, it probably isn't going to piss off anyone. Conversely, if I live in a tightly packed city, like New York where my next door neighboor lives in an apartment 20 feet away -- then 20 feet might be the largest practical distance that my radio transmission might be able to go before it pisses someone off. So that's one aspect of this 'matrix'. Another aspect is, what country do I live in? Because different countries have different rules. On the ocean, at 200+ nautical miles from the coast of the nearest country, or on the North Pole, or South Pole, or in Outer Space (if I can get there) -- I can probably get away with a longer broadcast -- without pissing anyone off. But those are only some of the parameters of this matrix. Another parameter is frequency, another parameter is power relative to that frequency, another parameter is the directionality of the transmission (for example, am I using a directional radio beam formed by a cone-shaped transmitter, and how does that beam spread out, and how far does it go, and who is in its path?). Then, there are what are called "Caduceus Coils" -- they're a special coil/broadcast antenna -- which if it designed correctly, acts like the "laser beam" equivalent, except for rf; the radio transmission. If that tightly focused radio beam is about the size of a dime, and travels directly, over air, to its target location (which is some other guy agreeing beforehand to receive that transmission, to become a "node" on the network"), then that radio transmission will not interfere wtih any other radios (receiving or transmitting) outside of that laser-thin line; in other words, it should interfere with no-one, it should not piss any person or power-that-be, off... You see, to quote William Shakespeare's "Hamlet": "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." I don't mean to offend you by saying that; but you see, there's always another angle; another possibility that may have gone unthought-of (until someone points it out). In other words, "Don't assume", or phrased another way "Assume Nothing" (Mike Abrash). Yes, people would probably get offended if you connected with a cell phone tower on one of their frequencies using one of their protocols without their permission -- but I am not proposing that that be done! Instead, I'm saying -- look at the possibilities. The multi-page spreadsheet/matrix of factors must be created and then consulted to see where the empty spaces are (empty space = opportunity for experimentation!). Anything that is not prohibited -- is, and must be by default, permitted! (You know, that old Grace Hopper "permission vs. forgiveness" debate!). >"you'll be complying with all the regulations" My question is this: Do the regulators even understand what they are regulating? I understand both Law and Radio technology. I could do their job; they probably couldn't do mine... >"it's not really a sensible path to go down if your goal is widely usable decentralised non-internet connected messaging." Yes, but my goal isn't to go down this path -- it's to think about what to do about greater shitstorms (greater amounts of shit hitting the fan than it does already) if and when they happen! I hate to dumb it down to this level, but proverbially speaking, in this matter "I'm the good guys" (er, guy, singular, as the case may be... <g>)...

elgfare 6y ago

Not sure if there is any benefit to stripping back to raw radio. You can almost always build on top of other protocols to get a pipe that you can then build your protocol on.

kawfey 6y ago

More people need to get into or at least learn about ham radio for this reason. Modern telecommunications is a gross abstraction, and is taken for granted.