How Iran Switched Off the Internet
ft.comRelated:
90M people. 118 hours of silence. One nation erased from the internet
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46603910
What we know about Iran's Internet shutdown https://blog.cloudflare.com/iran-protests-internet-shutdown/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46602066)
Among a number of other posts previously getting into it
Partially related, but there was a DIUx RFS roughly 1-2 years ago around building a data mesh to reduce the impact of DDIL such as in this kind of situation.
isnt this basically meshtastic? Meshtastic isnt much good if you want to get out of your city, but for communicating with friends and family (or fellow activists) it seems like it would be pretty good. Someone should airdrop a few shipping containers of them in.
My understanding is the Meshtastic is trivial to DoS, so probably not much use in a practical application.
Hmm, on further reading I think you're right. That's an interesting problem: how do you ddos protect a distributed relay network without having to know or trust your neighbors?
So.. Satellites are the endgame? Mesh is only for close stuff, and unless everyone has rooted androids already with the apps, it can be shut down at any moment(like China did with Hong Kong and Apple).
If I play with ideas, maybe some people could set up antennas, but that is a huge project for hobbyists. Maybe the minority faction in a country could fund this.
Private cells or wireless mesh networks with satellite links to avoid government controlled networks. The problem is for a robust network you have to be prepared with gear ahead of time.
I could see capturing cell towers and replacing the network link with satellite to restore some network without controlling physical wires.
Mesh is inherently easy to track for the government though (even if we ignore DoS). You could analyze irregular RF patterns and target node operators. Wouldn't take long before people completely stop using them.
The goal is to have comms even if the government turns off their networks. Mesh networks or private cell networks do that. Some desire to get information out of Iran. Others just want to check in on loved ones. Anything is better than nothing.
Running comms during war is dangerous but it has to be done. I think the people I have seen asking how to communicate when the government turns of networks understand the risks.