Tech refugee

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[–][deleted] 6 insightful - 3 fun6 insightful - 2 fun7 insightful - 3 fun -  (3 children)

So I've got two routers that will run DD-WRT, which I hear is good for that, but due to burnout I've never sat down and spent the time learning how that works and getting it running. After work or trying to learn some new stupid framework that's worse than the problems it was supposed to fix I don't feel like working on pet projects, which was the whole point of learning all this stuff but by the time I'm free to work on them I hate computers in general and don't want to think about them.

What I did do that may be a little relevant is set up a raspberry pi as a web server hooked to it's own wifi router with no external internet and host a simple stol'd from github PHP 'chat' site that's accessible from phones or computers within the wifi's range. With a couple mesh routers in the mix, I think it would work for what you are talking about. I'll report back if I ever get of my lazy butt and plug 'em 'n boot 'em.

But this is what got me interested in radio and ham. You can run a router and a pi on a little solar panel and battery bank or generator, but in a grid down situation, what would you actually need to post to the mesh net when your mesh is just a router at your next three neighbor's houses? I mean, I know in some far-flung locations today there are mesh networks spreading a single internet gateway over a village or whatever, but outside of sharing a precious single working connection to the outside, there's not much use for a mesh net unless it covers a large enough area to be better than simply going to your neighbor's house or you're constantly monitoring for 'updates' from other users, which will burn critical power. So the mesh only works where you've got enough power for each router node and every device accessing it, or you get 'holes' in the mesh.

Now I'm not knocking it because like I said, I haven't tried it yet. I still intend to eventually. But a cheap (I mean cheap, UV-5Rs are like $30) radio will get you 5-10 miles of voice comms, or much further with working repeaters, with far less power consumption compared to an always-running mesh net ( I assume, I haven't done any math on that). I think that in an emergency of the scale that brings downs telephone and cellular for any amount of time, a radio will be not only more useful, but also more practical than a mesh.

[–]yetanotherone_sigh 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

MeshNet has major problems that haven't ever been solved. I've been following it since the early days. You have trunking problems between major far-flung cities. I live in the Western CONUS and my major city (30 miles from here) is over 150 miles from the next major city. Even if you could get the neighborhoods interconnected, you'd never get the cities interconnected. You need long distance microwave trunking and extreme high bandwidth, which requires point-to-point microwave dishes, multiple tower hops, and FCC licenses. No way is Joe Sixpack ham radio operator going to do that for free. Those dishes are HUGE. The equipment investment would be very large (hundreds of thousands of dollars per 40-mile hop) and the licenses are not just available to anyone. The spectrum is very crunched up and in use already.

My plan for the off-grid cabin is going to be Starlink, once they get a semi-portable unit that doesn't use 250 watts.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Thank you so much for this response. I've always thought meshes were interesting but the logistics involved in anything larger than a college campus or small town WAN just grow exponentially. Scaling up is near impossible, I may try to set up a mesh in my neighborhood with the neighbors I know, but it would just be for kicks if anything.

I have a friend who just got approved to be the first Starlink tester in our area, I'll try to remember to report back when he get's his gear installed. I really don't know what all is involved, I guess some kind of DirectTV style dish?

[–]yetanotherone_sigh 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

That's the idea. It looks like a small UFO on a stick. You point it at the open sky and you get internet out the cable. The first consumer version they have out draws too much power for off-grid use (on the order of 250W). If they can get it down to half that or lower, it'd be good for all kinds of uses such as people living in RVs, etc.