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Comment by kongqiu | Hacker News Reader

Would investing more in satellite-based infrastructure be one possible solution?

I doubt it. All it'd take to shut down a satellite is to take over the control room on the ground and transmit a "power down" command or something.

Perhaps a better approach is to work to decentralize as much of our existing infrastructure as possible. Eliminate DNS. Fundamentally change how routing occurs to become more organic. Etc. Non-trivial, to be sure, but possible, IMO, and I think it needs to happen.

The goal should be that any internet-enabled device can mesh with the internet from any other internet-enabled device. Example (contrived) would be my cell phone talking to your cell phone with bluetooth, your phone talking to your laptop with a wifi connection, and your laptop talking to another device via ethernet, etc... and that ultimately, packets flow and end points can find each other all without central routing tables or artificial hierarchies, etc.

Maybe we should create a site/wiki/working group/mailing list to discuss these issues. Otherwise it won't get talked about and never done because the corps definitely don't have incentive to do this.

You're talking about defending against the hypothetical and implausible situation where for some reason the US Government decides to turn off the internet.

I don't have any good ideas about what could possibly cause that to happen, but I'm pretty sure that if it does happen then things are sufficiently screwed up that a lack of internet access will be the least of your problems.

Though many see internet access as a luxury, it's not just a pornography delivery method. In Nazi Germany, I gather the one of the most difficult issues for underground groups was communications.

Communication and the access to information is a highly important issue, especially if hell breaks loose in your country.

So who has the incentive to do this?

The control room doesn't have to be in your country. It's tricky for anyone who isn't a superpower to remove a satelite owned and operated by another country.

Distributed DNS etc doesn't really help if all the cables in and out of your country run through one building and the government owns it.

You could erect the Mother of All Tin Foil Hats over the entire country.

"... Would investing more in satellite-based infrastructure be one possible solution? ..."

Old school HAM, AX.25 and Linux ~ http://tldp.org/HOWTO/AX25-HOWTO/

Yes, if you had a satellite internet modem connection, or satellite phone, you would not be cut off if the main isp was disconnected. However it's slow, like dialup, and expensive per minute.

Huh? If your satellite ISP was disconnected you would not be cut off? Are my preconceptions of how satellite internet works way off? I thought that you were bouncing off of the satellite to your ISP which then connected you to the internet.

Sorry, I mean if your local ISP was cut off, your satellite isp might not be. Eg if you were in Egypt now and the government cuts off all Egyptian isps, then you can still use your satellite phone to dial into your American isp. Satellite isps mean you could be on the different side of the planet from your iap

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