Comment by ColanR | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ColanR | Hacker News Reader

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I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that the Internet is decentralized, and in a far more fault-tolerant fashion than the meshnet-of-the-day. The fact that anyone can fire up a server and make it accessible to anyone else on the Internet should be indicative of that.

Maybe what we mean when we say we want a 'decentralized internet' is implicitly, that we want the popular nodes of the Internet Graph to be decentralized. That would be nice.

But I think we could realize that right now, the Internet is comprised of a ton of competing protocols, and as long as there's a translation interface that enables cross-communication, the internet will remain decentralized. That's impressive resillience. Kudos to the designers.

It seems to me that what would actually bring the most benefit to the structure of the Internet would be long-range wireless communication. Basically, the ability to use HAM radio to bypass ISPs. That would bring about a sea change in how the Internet is structured.

Ham radio can't be used for commercial purposes nor can it carry encrypted content. Operators also have to be licensed which means all of their personal details are on file with the licensing government. If they're caught breaking the bounds of their license it will be revoked and they can personally face fines and even criminal charges.

Even if you got a bunch of hams to illegally carry general purpose Internet content the ham bands aren't exactly brimming with available bandwidth. Most packet radio below 30MHz (where you'll get your long range transmissions) is commonly 300bps. That's bits per second. Instead of risking hams go buy some cantennas and set up a WiFi mesh.

> Ham radio can't be used for commercial purposes nor can it carry encrypted content. Operators also have to be licensed which means all of their personal details are on file with the licensing government. If they're caught breaking the bounds of their license it will be revoked and they can personally face fines and even criminal charges.

I know that, it's what I was referring to when I was talking about the ability to use HAM radio. It's trivially easy to relay packets over HAM bands right now, given a transciever; the biggest thing preventing fairly wide-spread use is the legality.

> the ham bands aren't exactly brimming with available bandwidth

Even slow dialup speeds would be nice. I'm thinking of more-or-less direct internet connections between e.g. the US, Europe and Russia, or even just over a few hundred miles. Doesn't have to be fast; the ability to send anything at all over that distance in a direct connection would be an improvement. A wifi mesh can't do that.

Lay off the ham stuff. It's not and will never happen. Anything you suggest is just pirate transmissions so go suggest a totally illegal pirate wireless network with no power limits or band plan.

I think GP is saying that there would be a sea change IFF

1. there was legal unlicensed radio bandwidth for any radio services that had cognitive radio capabilities (constant frequency hopping, coordinating frequencies with other nodes after negotiating what frequencies, ensuring the radio bandwidth used is only using whitespace or can be empirically proven to not interfere with other radio transmissions)

2. HAM radio bands aren't touched. Some HAMers are grumpy enough about radio licensing dogma / vigilante radio spectrum law enforcement duty, no need to kick the hornets nest of telling them that not only are radio licensing rules changing from the paradigm introduced in the 30s (see point 1) but that it would remove some of their own dwindling radio bands as well.

Eh, it might. Would probably rejuvinate the field. There's a lot of advances in digital signal processing that could be applied to those bands. The limitation on encryption would have to be lifted first, and maybe the commercial limitation you mentioned, but that's likely the only thing that would have to be fixed. Overpowered transmissions aren't needed.

I don't get why you think I'm suggesting pirate transmissions.

How would these people using (HAM) radio links to provide Internet access be, in the long term, different from existing ISPs?

I don't think they necessarily would be - but they're another option, and they're harder to block since there isn't a cable to physically cut.

Who physically cuts provider fiber as a way to intentionally censor or sabotage the Internet?

Undersea cables get cut occasionally, fiber gets disconnected...s##t happens. I'm not even talking about anything intentional.

Edit. But to answer your question, some activists in the middle east have some stories to tell you. It doesn't have to be literally cut, state mandated filtering works too. Good luck jamming a HAM radio set.

Not sure if your last sentence is sarcasm or otherwise, but radio jamming is trivial for state actors if they really tried. It's been matter of fact since radio was invented and the cold war has plenty of episodes of broadcasts being jammed by both sides.

That's true. Didn't think that part through. Still, even in cases where there isn't overt jamming or filtering, it seems like the ability to set up direct, long-distance connections would make a big difference in how the internet is structured.

No need for luck jamming a ham radio operator. Even the most permissive ham licenses only allow a maximum of 1.5kW PEP with many bands limited to 200W. Ham bands also aren't very wide which means it would is trivial for a state actor to jam them.

But an unfriendly government doesn't even need to bother with jamming. A ham (or pirate operator) relaying Internet traffic over radio would be trivially easy to find. It's fairly easy to triangulate the location of a transmitter, especially one constantly keyed up. A government frowning on such activity would just triangulate the transmitter and go arrest the operator. An extremely unfriendly government would just blow up the station, operator and all.

If you want to make some decentralized network go buy some cantennas, leave hams out of it.

State mandated filtering will affect you regardless of physical medium. Running radio will not make it especially harder. If they want to get you, they'll either impose laws, or send people knocking down your door. They don't need to jam or cut anything.

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