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"Technology reveals the active relation of man to nature" - Karl Marx
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 No.18224

Hey comrades,

This article came up https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7e9y3/activists-are-designing-mesh-networks-to-deploy-during-civil-unrest about an open source mesh network (including the hardware made from easily accessible parts) to be used when governments shut down the internet. It seems the original project is dead, but I did manage to find this repo
https://0xacab.org/kirsa/mycelium-mesh-old/

I have (as of this moment) limited expertise in hardware and protocol programming but I have time and resources to delve into it and perhaps start it back up.

There's several things they mention in the description of the program, such as a lack of encryption, lack of peer to peer, how all messages are saved in nodes, etc. These strike me as someone with not too much knowhow, as bad design aspects.

I would like to dedicate this thread to trying to dig up more info on this project, and for people with more know how to chime in on what ought to be different, if you would restart as the sole dev(s) anyway, or pointers on where to start.

 No.18228

>lack of encryption
I haven't looked at any of the code, but the docs mention different types of encryption.

>lack of peer to peer

The network doesn't have any routing paths, so running a relay on a peer device shouldn't fuck with the network topology and work as a hack for p2p. It looks like relays need to be registered though. Maybe extend the protocol register for peer-bound relays to make them accept each others messages unconditionally.

>how all messages are saved in nodes

<Asynchronous: Messages should be cached in the network for users, in case they are offline or out of coverage area.
This seems to be the main reason for storing messages in nodes. Messages are to be encrypted and benign nodes won't retain any logs, yet leftover metadata would still be a liability in case of immediate seizure.

The transceiver type seems to be common enough https://www.hackster.io/pulsartronic/diy-smartphone-lora-connection-bde258

 No.18229

>>18228
><Asynchronous: Messages should be cached in the network for users, in case they are offline or out of coverage area.
Wouldn't this quickly clog up the storage? And doesn't this mean the network scales very badly if all messages need to be propagated and saved everywhere?

 No.18230

>>18229
Nah, data consists only of text. Plaintext is 1 byte per character, so most messages won't be larger than a couple of kilobytes, and it compresses very well.
>doesn't this mean the network scales very badly if all messages need to be propagated and saved everywhere
This can't be avoided without major gains in complexity and the network is probably not meant for fast high-volume traffic. IMO if the message was only broadcast over a few nodes yet, you could send an ACK from the peer to stop received messages from propagating.

 No.18235

meshnet is the perennial nerd trap

 No.18236

>>18235
why ?

 No.18237

>>18236
I've been through a couple of mesh hype cycles locally and nothing ever came of it. not that learning about this stuff isn't useful
I will also drop a warning here that LoRa is a proprietary waveform. it's been reverse engineered these days, but history shows building radio stuff on top of proprietary standards is risky. D-Star comes to mind

 No.18238

File: 1674321362409.jpg (390.44 KB, 1200x675, t2_shield.jpg)

>>18236
also the freedv.org folks have been working on a similar idea based around Raspberry Pi + RTL-SDR: https://www.rowetel.com/?p=7898 (parts 1-4 linked near the bottom)
finally there is NPR: http://www.newpacketradio.us/index.php?title=Main_Page and https://cdn.hackaday.io/files/1640927020512128/NPR_specification_v2.0.pdf

 No.18239

>>18237
LoRa seems nice, though it's meant for stuff like industrial-site sensors, that only produce sporadic communication traffic, and doesn't have to deal with a lot of network collisions. So i wonder if it would be suitable for a mesh-net. I don't really understand what "proprietary waveform" means, is this some kind of legal risk ?
There is no reason for cynicism about "mesh hype cycles", it's very difficult to figure something like this out, there's bound to be trial and error.

>>18238
thanks for the links, gonna check those out.

 No.18240

>>18239
> don't really understand what "proprietary waveform" means, is this some kind of legal risk ?
D-Star has the problem that it relies on a patented voice codec. IIRC the waveform (the actual on-air signal) used by LoRa is patented also
>There is no reason for cynicism about "mesh hype cycles"
true, maybe I'm just jaded
also check out https://m17project.org/

 No.20119

Bumping for interest

 No.20133

While I can applaud your interest, one of the best things to do may be to contribute to existing software , especially those that are established and don't have some of the problems you are mentioning here. A few established ones

CJDNS - https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns . Hyperboria is one of the larger communities of meshnets using this protocol.
guifi.net - Another meshnet node community. Not too familiar with this one personally.
https://wiki.freifunk.net/Kategorie:English - Freifunk has a lot of links to various types of tech, maps and other stuff involved in deploying meshnets.

Anyway that may be a good start.

 No.20141

File: 1686510629676-0.png (556.62 KB, 1080x2176, i2p.png)

File: 1686510629676-1.png (338.81 KB, 1080x1923, i2p1.png)

File: 1686510629676-2.png (316.05 KB, 1080x1878, i2p2.png)

>>20133
>cjdns
not everyone has ipv6
>existing and established projects
i2p then.
http://geti2p.net/
It's older than tor, actually anonymous, and it hides your IP properly. it seems to be the most mature alt-net project, out of zeronet, freenet, etc. No wonder glowies invented tor lol.

You don't even have to use the Java application either, someone has developed i2pd, a daemon version that can run on most popular types of devices and like tor it basically routes application network traffic through the i2p network.
http://geti2p.net/

 No.20143

>>20142
How is cjdns a meshnet but i2p isn't?

 No.20144

>>18224
what would be the point of this? I'm not being rhetorical or sarcastic, but "when governments shut down the internet." is an ambiguous use-case. this can mean at least three, very different things:
<when they brick phones near anti-riot police to stop people from recording the scenes and/or uploading them
<when they shut down the internet in localized areas to obstruct a particular protest
<when they shut down the internet in the entire country or region to impede organized action as a whole
I don't think (1) or (3) can be solved through meshnets, for various reasons. maybe (2) but I'm sure there are better options

the other obvious observation is that these problems that you mention (encryption, p2p) "live" in different layers, as does the main point of this project (the physical layer)

 No.20282

>>20144
(1) is a fantasy and (3) is the same as (2). The only thing a meshnet is physically incapable of doing is crossing oceans.

 No.20294

gnunet is interesting

 No.20306

>>20294
I've been waiting for their proposed physical layer replacement for Ethernet for…a decade now?

 No.20336

>>20282
>(1) is a fantasy
it already exists, I can't remember the exact euphemism they use, but here is for example a patent filled by apple
https://patents.google.com/patent/US8254902B2/en

>(3) is the same as (2)

>connecting two cities hundreds or thousands of kilometers apart is the same as connecting two adjacent neighborhoods
all the people working on these projects are as smart as you?

 No.20382

we're all agreed i2p is the best then. use it and expand the network.

 No.20383

So the nodes run on ESP32 microcontrollers? Why specifically this model? Because it's cheap?

 No.20384

>>20383
Oh, it already seems to be used a lot in the Internet of Things, and has built-in hardware acceleration for encryption

 No.20386

Also there seems to be a distinction between "peer nodes" (which connect to the end users) and "relay nodes" (which only interact with other nodes) in this mycelium mesh net structure. Are the ESP32's specifically used for the peer nodes and the LoRa transceivers specifically used for the relay nodes?
>>20144
Still, it seems like a fun hobby thing. Not sure why you needed to sage.

 No.20387

>>20306
What's wrong with Ethernet

 No.20554

>>20141
You're saying tor is Embrace, Extend, Extinguish?

 No.20571

Not really meshnet, but check out anonet which is kind of an overlay meshnet via the regular internet
http://anonet.org/
Installation guide: >>13438

 No.20574

>>20571
no point using all these meme nets, like anonet, freenet, zeronet, etc. anonet uses openvpn. lol. now that wireguard exists, they could at least use that if they need a VPN for the initial connections. This doesn't seem to mask your ip, because the nodes need the IP for openvpn to work.

i2p is more mature and anonymous.

 No.20575

>>20574
What's wrong with OpenVPN? Also anoNet wasn't designed to mask your IP, just provide a decentralized overlay network.

 No.20576

>>20575
>What's wrong with OpenVPN?
slow as fuck, lots of overhead, poor encryption, etc.
>Also anoNet wasn't designed to mask your IP, just provide a decentralized overlay network.
what's the point then? why have an overlay network? if the actual internet goes down, if it doesn't, then you've just added overhead to your network packets for no benefit.

 No.20581

>>20574
anonet has been around longer than you've been alive

 No.20585

File: 1687531844998.png (32.34 KB, 1080x472, 2005.png)

>>20581
lol no.
projecting?

 No.20810

>>20144
Phones near police reported not recording:
-Microwave weapons that stop electronics would not be it as that is not permanent.
-Backdoors are not responsive
-?

Phones near police don't upload:
Simple Jamming a mobile antenna running on battery with a giant antenna running on generator.

Stopping Internet in local areas:
1. If they stop it, they will also ban HAM radio for civilian use.
2. If they ban HAM radio (send, not receive), than no sense creating a mesh due to arrest risk.

Wide area Internet shutdown:
-They are loyal to money. They have to find a way to make money flow. Wide area shutdowns are only loyal outside of 9 to 5 M-F.

 No.20811

>>20810
A meshnet would only make sense during a time of war, when laws would be suspended or disregarded anyway.

 No.20821

>>20810
>If they ban HAM radio (send, not receive), than no sense creating a mesh due to arrest risk.
They don't have the means to enforce a ban on ad-hoc wifi and bluetooth even if they wanted. Imagine how many extremely tech-literate cops they would need running around with PDAs sniffing for packets to triangulate
>A meshnet would only make sense during a time of war
Meshnets are used commonly to share free internet or to connect remote areas without landline infrastructure, some of them are even sponsored by local government


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