aka gkaklas@{lemm{ings.world,y.{zip,world,ee}},programming.dev}

https://gkak.la/

aspe:keyoxide.org:CZQI42SE5HXWZCFPARIGCNK32A

  • 0 Posts
  • 45 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: January 2nd, 2025
  • gkak.laₛ@lemmy.ziptoMeshtastic@mander.xyz•Cross State CommunicationEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    What is “too far away”?

    Hmm, you’re right, I guess I don’t mean the distance of the link by itself, but rather the fact that the number of hops and the dependence on central (?) high-power long-range nodes limits how far a message can go

    While technically a mesh network, I’m not sure that with 3-7 hops it provides the benefits of one; in theory, just by being mesh it should be able to have a much larger (unlimited?) reach, just like the Internet.

    Instead, from what I understand, user nodes are recommended to not participate in the routing, = they are just clients, but by being “mesh” they would be expected to actively participate in the network.

    In this sense of “peer-to-peer”, we could say that my ISP is also a peer, and if it lost the connection to all other ISPs it could still continue working within the reach of its infrastructure, = my ISP is off-grid as well, and my connection to the ISP is independent since they own the fiber

    Instead, I think the focus should be on building a distributed mesh network that is resilient and can’t be taken down by the failure of a couple of nodes. Similarly, with the dependence on LoRa radios: if e.g. the import or usage specifically of LoRa™®© chips is banned, the nodes who chose to use alternative technologies would not be affected and the network could continue to operate normally

  • gkak.laₛ@lemmy.ziptoMeshtastic@mander.xyz•Cross State CommunicationEnglish
    3·
    3 months ago

    Hello, sorry for the random question, but I’m new and still trying to understand the benefits of joining the network and how it works

    What is the point of a network that:

    • Is off-the-grid but can’t connect nodes that are too far away
    • Is independent, but forces people to use LoRa which creates a dependence on LoRa-licensed radios
    • Is decentralized, but obviously needs few centralized higher power backbone nodes in order to function (e.g. in this case)
    • Is peer-to-peer, but from what I read it’s recommended to not have your node accessible at all times (or have it read-only?) in order to not have the TTL expire
    • Cannot connect remote networks together, but also can’t bridge them in some other way

    Is the main use case just connecting e.g. a couple of sensors on a remote farm a few kilometers away from your house, and have 2 neighbours relaying the messages to you along the way? 🤔 Why does that need a decentralized peer-to-peer network if it can just be done by simple repeaters?

  • gkak.laₛ@lemmy.ziptoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Are there any widely used mesh networking projects being used by people in apartments in cities?English
    3·
    3 months ago

    That’s not what my objection is about 😅 Of course low power consumption is important

    My point is about depending an independent peer-to-peer off-grid network on one specific technology

    E.g. imagine if TCP/IP, BGP, or HTTP were proprietary (instead of owned by standards organizations), and in order to connect to the Internet you would need to buy a network card that is licensed from the TCP/IP company! But since that’s not the case, people can connect to the Internet using any technology they want (Wi-Fi, Ethernet), but as long as their device uses TCP/IP, anyone can connect with anyone

    (PS maybe there is a better physical layer or routing example than the above 🤔 But I think the principle still stands)

  • gkak.laₛ@lemmy.ziptoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Are there any widely used mesh networking projects being used by people in apartments in cities?English
    1·
    3 months ago

    You don’t have to pay meshtastic any money

    They can still profit indirectly from providing services etc (which is fine)

    But even just the fact that in order to use the word “Meshtastic” ™®© I have to read https://meshtastic.org/docs/legal/licensing-and-trademark/ shows that it does not have “community” vibes but “Meshtastic™®© is ours and we’re just letting you use the source code etc for now” vibes

    Again, the fact that it is owned by someone means that the community (probably) does not have control over it, and one day we might need to fork the whole network and migrate every node

    there’s nothing they can do to stop you using it as you see fit

    If a specific radio is illegal, it’s easy to just find where it’s transmitting from and fine you; they already do this with pirate radio stations

    There is no way to be completely free of dependence on others

    But why be dependent on 2 companies instead of having the option to buy a radio from any company? Why is competition and diversity bad for an independent and off-grid network that we don’t want it to have a single point of failure? 🤔

    Not only it can make the network more resilient (which is supposed to be one of the goals), but it allows for experimentation and innovation in new technologies, which you can’t do if you’re locked into using LoRa™®©

    Why lock every user into a single technology just because some users want to have a long-lasting battery? (Which btw is probably important for very remote nodes and not the home and portable nodes that I think are more common).

  • gkak.laₛ@lemmy.ziptoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Are there any widely used mesh networking projects being used by people in apartments in cities?English
    5·
    3 months ago

    you’re going to want to buy some LoRa devices anyway

    Yes, but you’re not forced to; you can have nodes in your city that use any radio they want to communicate to each other, and e.g. your local hackerspace can have a node with multiple radios that bridges them to other nodes on the global network

    With Meshtastic™®©, if your country bans LoRa™®© radios you simply don’t have any other option, so the whole network is just done. With Reticulum or any other agnostic network they can’t ban all radio modules that can be used

    Reticulum is pretty much developed by a single person.

    Hmm that’s unfortunate, I didn’t know that 😕 But that’s a chicken-and-egg and network effect problem; we shouldn’t be “forced” (network effect) to use something that is not ideal just because more people use/develop it, otherwise we will never have a better alternative, because no one wants to develop it because no one is using it because no one wants to develop it

    At least for me, dedicating energy to build a Meshtastic™®© node would feel like I’m making something that profits LoRa™®© and Meshtastic LLC without trusting the “independence” of its every aspect. It transfers the dependence from the ISP that brings the wire to the home, to the companies that make Meshtastic™®© and LoRa™®©, but it’s still a dependence on one or two external companies instead of an independent community like I’ve seen with other local WMNs over the years

    (I don’t have the experience to say that Reticulum is the best option, but it’s the main agnostic network I’ve seen with the little search I’ve done; people reading this feel free to make suggestions! 💚)

  • gkak.laₛ@lemmy.ziptoSelfhosted@lemmy.world•Silent Storage Solutions for Homelab?English
    4·
    4 months ago

    Not OP, but at least for me when I tried it:

    There was no way to use or even just mount and migrate my existing storage (btrfs+LVM). LVM wasn’t even installed, and when I tried to install it, I got an error saying that apt was disabled on the system, which means I was basically locked out of doing anything more than what they allow you to do on your own hardware.

    It seems like it’s technically open source, but having all the vendor lock-in features and lack of control of a proprietary solution

    The only use case seems for it to be used as a black box appliance:

    • on a new system
    • with empty hard drives
    • only with ZFS
    • without having any control on your own system, except enabling samba etc and maybe installing the predefined Docker containers that they allow you from the web interface

    I knew it is supposed to be only an appliance, but with how much people recommended it, I didn’t thing it would be this closed of a system; I think I’ve read about people doing more things with even just their Synology hardware