4 ms·
fun thing is a bunch of hobbyists are running around with SDRs and old cell hardware and running low power experimental cell networks in their houses, questiona
by kotaKat 4mo ago
fun thing is a bunch of hobbyists are running around with SDRs and old cell hardware and running low power experimental cell networks in their houses, questionable legality be damned.
OpenBTS/YateBTS/OsmoBTS and friends are useful here to spin up a working network and relive a happier time.
I've been meaning to get one of the tiny SDR cards like an XRTX and place it into a Pi or similar device and build a "mobile mobile hotspot" - LTE/5G in, 2G/3G out for old crap.
EDIT: I almost forgot, too. The N95 has Wi-Fi and a SIP client, so it's not completely useless even in 2026!
- Melatonic 4mo agoThat's actually a very interesting idea - do you have any good resources for setting this up ? There are some cars that can only access 3G for certain features and it would be cool to test around and see what my vehicle can do and if I want to disable it for reliability reasons
- rahimnathwani 4mo ago802.11b/g :(
- vitally3643 4mo ago54Mbps is enough for anyone!
- joe_mamba 4mo agoMy powerful Android tablet is limited to 72mbps link due to a quirk with the way the XDA developer implemented wifi support on the lineageos branch of my tablet, meaning the device can't see the region specific 5ghz band of the modem of my ISP is outputting, so it can only connect to the 2,4ghz band of that SSID meaning it's stuck to 72mbps. And despite this, it works ok for what I used it: Brave web browsing, youtube via newpipe, Plex and Jellyfin streaming. Like I'm bummed I don't get the Gigabit and Wifi 6 speeds of the router and my internet plan is theoretically capable of, but somehow 72mbps seems sufficient in most of my use cases of that device so .. yay advanced video codecs I guess!?.
- moomoo11 4mo agoI get like 15-50 mbps down on my iPhone 16 when I'm on 5g... and that's enough to stream music, youtube, use as a hotspot, etc. sometimes if I'm lucky i'll get much higher speeds but I guess being in a city with 100s of thousands of other people within a few miles of me means I have to do with like 40 mbps
- vel0city 4mo agoThe biggest negative about having slow clients using older, less efficient wifi generations is they end up making the network slower for everyone else who could be faster on that same channel.
- joe_mamba 4mo agoYeah I know, but I can't control it.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- lxgr 4mo agoLive a little, allow horribly inefficient delightful retro device clients on a 2.4 GHz channel :) WEP is where I’d personally draw the line, but the N95 fortunately supports WPA.
- giantrobot 4mo agoI set up an isolated network on my LAN with its own WAP to play with my old devices that don't support WPA. I don't leave it on all the time and the network segmentation limits any blast damage. Works well since I have so much old crap with early WiFi.
- mschuster91 4mo ago> OpenBTS/YateBTS/OsmoBTS and friends are useful here to spin up a working network and relive a happier time. Indeed, but good luck setting something like that up and not upset a legitimate cell tower or other user of a frequency band that can be spoken by LTE equipment.
- lxgr 4mo agoSIP over Wi-Fi was so amazing on Symbian. Free international phone calls over Eduroam long before mobile Skype was a thing!
- brewtide 4mo agoI've been playing with asterisk and SIP and I'd like a simple device that would allow a to b contact on their end if only in select locations. So, thanks for this edit, because I now have the plan -- Dad gets to geek out and they get simple texting / calling but none of the other related phone bullshit. I'm pumped!