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Start your own Internet Resiliency Club

(bowshock.nl)
579 points todsacerdoti | 2 comments | 16 Jun 25 07:38 UTC | HN request time: 1.164s | source
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__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.

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1. roguecoder ◴[16 Jun 25 17:23 UTC] No.44291504[source]▶
America is sprawling, unfortunately. That kind of approach would work in cities, but would be much less effective where people aren't taking the bus or even being around other people on a daily basis.

The advantage of something that can reach 6 miles is that it could cover suburbia and rural areas with ~20-40 acre plots relatively effectively.

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2. __MatrixMan__ ◴[16 Jun 25 18:56 UTC] No.44292383[source]▶
Yeah it's not ideal for sparse populations but I think you could get a lot of coverage by just running a node with a solar panel wherever your mailbox is and also having your mail driver put a node in their vehicle.

Really the thing I'm trying to push back against is the idea that the entire path between them must be connected all at once in order for two parties to communicate. If we design for short range, partition-tolerant, pocket-to-pocket background gossip, then that same protocol will work just fine if you attach specialty radio hardware and give it miles worth of range, and you've still got the fallback ready for cases where all you have is consumer grade hardware.

On the other hand, if you design for persistent connectivity and then try to use it in an intermittently-connected context, you're going to have a much worse time.