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Start your own Internet Resiliency Club

(bowshock.nl)
579 points todsacerdoti | 5 comments | 16 Jun 25 07:38 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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wao0uuno ◴[16 Jun 25 10:47 UTC] No.44288283[source]▶
I tested meshtastic in a major european city with pretty much 100% mesh coverage and its real life performance was quite underwhelming. Often I would receive messages that I could not reply to because of differences in antenna gain and crappy mesh performance. Public chat was either completely dead or flooded with test messages. Everything was super slow because the mesh can’t actually scale that well and craps out with more than a 100 nodes. Even medium fast channel would clog up fast. I would never depend on meshtastic during an emergency because it barely works even when nobody is using it. I think a public wifi mesh would be more worthwhile. Older used wifi routers are pretty much free and in unlimited supply. They use very little power. Everyone already has a compatible client device on their pocket. Sure the mesh would fail during a total blackout but at least it would be useful for something when the power is up.
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adrianN ◴[16 Jun 25 11:58 UTC] No.44288738[source]▶
Wifi routers use quite a lot of power for the area that they can cover. Ten watts or so for a hundred square meters is a lot of you want to cover a whole city.
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wao0uuno ◴[16 Jun 25 13:08 UTC] No.44289168[source]▶
Almost everyone has one of these running 24/7 already. Second one with an external antenna wouldn’t make much difference.
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Aachen ◴[16 Jun 25 14:49 UTC] No.44290122[source]▶
Everyone currently has electricity on demand
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1. wao0uuno ◴[16 Jun 25 15:44 UTC] No.44290682[source]▶
Ukrainian grid has been targeted by russian drone and missile strikes for years and it just keeps coming back. Longest downtime (according to a quick google search) was approximately 12 hours. Complete long term blackout in a big European city is very unlikely these days.
replies(1): >>44290935 #
2. pmontra ◴[16 Jun 25 16:13 UTC] No.44290935[source]▶
Long term as "days", yes. But all of Spain had a blackout for at least 12 hours a few weeks ago. Turin, Italy, had a 10 hours blackout yesterday.
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3. PokemonNoGo ◴[16 Jun 25 19:09 UTC] No.44292501[source]▶
Makes me more impressed by the Ukranians honestly! After Russia is banished they can teach the rest of Europe what resilience looks like in this area.
replies(1): >>44298511 #
4. anthk ◴[17 Jun 25 05:18 UTC] No.44295953[source]▶
Not all of Spain. A lot of areas had the power back in two hours, at least in the North.
5. immibis ◴[17 Jun 25 12:49 UTC] No.44298511{3}[source]▶
Organizations never prepare for a crisis until there is a crisis. It just doesn't happen. The cost of preparing for a crisis is always higher than the probability-weighted cost of the crisis itself, even if the potential impact is bankruptcy, because the probability is always so low. The only organizations that prepare for crises are those whose sole purpose is to prepare for crises.

Regulators can also impose certain preparedness obligations on organizations, like power grid black start capability (the government or system operator pays generators a monthly fee to have more expensive equipment that's capable of black-starting).