←back to thread

Start your own Internet Resiliency Club

(bowshock.nl)
579 points todsacerdoti | 4 comments | 16 Jun 25 07:38 UTC | HN request time: 0.86s | source
Show context
__MatrixMan__ ◴[16 Jun 25 14:31 UTC] No.44289917[source]▶
I feel like the better path to resiliency is not persistent radio connections between hobbyists on other sides of the state but rather intermittent ones between people on opposite sides of the bus and an application layer that arranges for people who are heading that way anyhow to carry "internet" traffic on a filesystem in their pocket.

You just get a different type of threat landscape when each hop is also an opportunity to shake somebody's hand and attest that the holder of their private key is a real human. It creates a minimal trust layer you can then build on. You don't get that with a hardware address found drifting on the wind.

Both modes have some potential to attract harmful attention to network operators based on the behavior of their users, but to a very different degree. So far as I know nobody is kicking down meshtastic operators' doors looking to follow a transmission to its source, but I think that would change if the other modes of long range skulduggery were to fail.

The most resilient infrastructure would be one with no high value targets: one where each user is equally an operator.

replies(5): >>44290021 #>>44290523 #>>44291126 #>>44291504 #>>44294144 #
1. hashstring ◴[16 Jun 25 15:28 UTC] No.44290523[source]▶
> to carry "internet" traffic on a filesystem in their pocket. What do you mean?
replies(2): >>44290939 #>>44290973 #
2. __MatrixMan__ ◴[16 Jun 25 16:13 UTC] No.44290939[source]▶
Well "internet" gets quotes because if the source and the destination are disconnected when the message arrives then they're not on the internet.

It might look something like this: As you stand in line at the grocery store your device notices that a nearby device (the guy behind you) belongs to somebody who is trusted by one of your peers in the "gardening" topic. You're not a gardener, but your room mate is. So your device pulls a gardening related update from their device. Then as you head home with groceries your device is not connected to anything, it's just sitting in your pocket with a filesystem full of data. And then when you get home your roommate's device gets a notification about a reply to their question on a gardening related message board. That data came to them on your device. It traveled a few feet wirelessly at the grocery store, and a few feet wirelessly at home, but the majority of the transit was handled the slow way, by hitching a ride on a human who was traveling that way anyhow.

It would only work for small bits of latency tolerant data, and work best for information of broad interest (not so great for an encrypted email to a single party, pretty good for map tiles, open/closed hours, restaurant menus, etc). The simplest app to build on such a platform would be a sort of of distributed BBS. VoIP would be nearly impossible. But I think that small snippets of high latency text can get you pretty far.

replies(1): >>44291676 #
3. bmn__ ◴[16 Jun 25 16:18 UTC] No.44290973[source]▶
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet
4. hashstring ◴[16 Jun 25 17:45 UTC] No.44291676[source]▶
Interesting idea, thanks now I understand!