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Qaul – Internet independent wireless mesh communication app
- makeworld 3y agoAlso see https://briarproject.org/ https://briarproject.org/
- bullen 3y agoYou need 192Mhz, higher the range is too short, lower the bandwith is too low: http://radiomesh.org http://radiomesh.org
- rsolva 3y agoHow does this compare to Briar? It doesn't seem to support creating a mesh via bluetooth?
- c_o_n_v_e_x 3y agoThis uses WiFi which really limits the utility. Poor choice of physical layer imo. LoRa, WiFi HaLow, or an 802.15.4 based tech would be much better choices depending on range vs bandwidth.
- smeej 3y agoThis would have been useful in, say, a college dorm with one WiFi network for the building. I'm old enough that our dorms didn't have WiFi, but I do remember being pleasantly surprised I could listen to anyone's iTunes library over the LAN!
- Scoundreller 3y agoListen to? I think I ripped other people’s iTunes library with… was it mythnes?
- c_o_n_v_e_x 3y agoWe used DC++ in the mid-2000's
- wkat4242 3y agoYeah but what phone has a radio that can handle those?
- lxgr 3y agoDo you mean it's unsuitable because of the frequency? Bluetooth LE has a "long range" mode that seemed to have been available on some iOS/iPhone versions (by accident?) for a while [1], and the range on that seems to be vastly better (i.e. on the order of hundreds of meters) than most 802.15.4 implementations I'm familiar with, and they both use the same frequency band. [1] https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/665542 https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/665542
- ge96 3y agoCurious if it says range between two devices. eg. 2, 900MHz phones or whatever, multiband?
- __d 3y agoSee also, Reticulum (https://github.com/markqvist/Reticulum https://github.com/markqvist/Reticulum)
- gabeio 3y agoAlso see, cjdns (https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns) (adding to the list of similar projects)
- FireInsight 3y agoThis project seems cool but from the subreddit it sounds to be dead. Yggdrasil is touted as an alternative: https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/ https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/
- calebm 3y agoI wonder how iOS communication works - does it drop down to layer 2 and send raw data frames?
- lxgr 3y agoDefinitely not – unfortunately Apple is extremely picky on what they let apps do on the lower layers. True (cross-platform) P2P communications would be great, especially since the newest iphones have both long-range Bluetooth LE and 802.15.4 support, but the ball is in Apple’s court.
- raybb 3y agoAny ideas how it works on iOS then?
- lxgr 3y agoI'd be curious too! Most existing solutions I've seen use either Bluetooth LE (the only somewhat low-level API that can be used for cross-platform P2P things that Apple allows access to) or Apple-proprietary APIs like this one: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/multipeerconnectivity https://developer.apple.com/documentation/multipeerconnectiv...
- awei 3y agoIs it possible for mobile phones to directly exchange 4G/5G signals with each other, eliminating the need for conventional antennas and networks? 4G signals can cover distances between 2 to 4 miles (3 to 6.5 kilometers). Smartphones are probably the most spreaded pieces of hardware available to serve as p2p network nodes. Such a system would offer robustness and decentralization, especially in urban environments with high population density.
- RF_Savage 3y agoMC-LTE and ProSe have direct handset-to-handset mode, but currently there is something like two models on the market with functional support for that. That's it. And those are meant for the public safety market. As a direct, infrastructureless mode is required to reach feature parity with existing TETRA based networks.
- adastra22 3y agoWithout access to the baseband software, I don’t think so.
- euniceee3 3y ago100% agree. This is the same way a baseband exploit would be deployed. Would be really neat to see a proof of concept of this. And wonder what sort of filtering the telcos would introduce.
- g_p 3y agoNot really - the cellular protocols are designed around there being a base station to coordinate radio resource access and time slots and similar. Everything in a mobile network assumes there's a base station and core network to handle traffic routing and authentication. If you put that aside, you have a multi band transmitter and receiver in a phone. Assuming you could somehow make it do arbitrary things (which is a big stretch), you'd have a bunch of challenges to overcome. Firstly, nothing in cellular protocols is really designed to handle uncoordinated random access and users transmitting freely - you'd get collisions and interference when devices transmit over each other. You'd have different devices trying to do different things with each other, so you would need to implement something more akin to WiFi. Running something more like WiFi on other spectrum would be an option, although you don't (legally) have access to spectrum below 2.4 GHz in most countries that you could use in this way. You'd also struggle to do this anywhere there's a "real" mobile operator using the spectrum, as their base station downlink is significantly more powerful than your handset transmitter. Finally, one of the reasons mobile networks work over the distances they do (and you cite) is that they are able to use rooftop/hilltop and well-located radio sites with near line of sight over their service area. They also have large antennas focused on a given sector angle, with significant receiver gain - this helps them to receive signals from you when you're further away. This is what helps your phone with its (say) 250 mW maximum transmit power work over kilometres. You wouldn't get any of that in a mesh. If you tried to build a mesh like this, even putting aside all the software challenges and we assumed it was possible, you'd like find the performance/range not much better than WiFi. You'd effectively need to run WiFi protocols to handle multi user access on the airwaves, and despite having access to better propagating spectrum, you'll not get the benefits of range due to the small on-device antennas. Meshing WiFi together with some kind of gossip based forwarding protocol at application layer would likely be more effective.
- ajsnigrutin 3y agoMeh.... very very low range. For ~$20 you can get a LoRa dongle and https://meshtastic.org/ https://meshtastic.org/, and with some luck (someone putting a node on a hgh building or a hill), you can reach quite impressive distances.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- esafak 3y agoThis appears to intended to enable activists to organize protests with just their phones when the centralized telecommunication infrastructure is disrupted by the government. It is a different use case.
- ajsnigrutin 3y agoYou'll never get a critical mass of nerds to make such a short-range mesh viable. On the other hand, a $20 meshtastic node somewhere up a highrise can cover half the city
- sunshine-o 3y agoInteresting but what kind of load could it take ? From what I remember the data rate with LoRa is very low... In this case how many user could chat simultaneously? 10s, 100s, 1000s, more?
- bnpxft 3y agoThe Meshtastic site says that supports up to 80 device nodes depending on settings used. It is more geared towards a group of trusted people communicated with each other than a general purpose network anyone can use.
- BigBalli 3y agoany insight on how many people have it installed compared to the other products with the same concept?
- cyberax 3y agoDoes it solve the DDoS problem? I haven't checked the state-of-the-art in mesh networks for a while, but when I was actively interested in this area, it was either: 1. Centralized device management, so that each device has a unique "permit" from some kind of a central authority. 2. Be susceptible to DDoS where rogue devices can easily saturate the network.