gsm sdr networks
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- > I'm having an idea, just researching it now
What if we could have some kind of internet provider that would provide more redundancy in routing traffic by adding the option of routing via mobile routers (e.g. phones)
This could be enabled with crypto-economics, pay per hop kind of model
in normal situations nobody would really want to use such a network, because it is slower
But the utility could rise fast once the internet is "shut down", as happened in Hong Kong some years ago, India and I think also in Iran atm (which is why Fati is interested in it)
The software can run on open source Android phones
So in a crisis situation maybe only few people would run it. So there will be a huge demand for traffic. It adds great value, because any message that can get out or in such an area can mean a lot. Due to the high demand, those people running the software initially can earn some good profit (motivating people to also run it in peace time). Additionally, there is a strong motive for people to spin up additional nodes, for profit motive but also to help the people in their geographic area
Want to have another nut to crack, Swarm level of difficulty ? xD
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network
It's probably very difficult, perhaps infeasible
Or other, specialized hardware must be deviced

- > > in normal situations nobody would really want to use such a network, because it is slower
- > if under normal situation an existence of a network has no incentive, then is its existence at all justified in the first place?
I did some search-engine activity and found "LTE Direct" earlier... some sort of LTE option of allowing mobile devices to talk to each other

- > > But the utility could rise fast once the internet is "shut down", as happened in Hong Kong some years ago, India and I think also in Iran atm (which is why Fati is interested in it)
- > It could also be so that if something like this happens, then the mesh network blows up because it can't handle the load...
Not sure at all if the phone hardware could be worked out to do this. Also routing efficiently would be very difficult because phones are moving in space, and you need geographically-aware routing since you _are_ trying to find the shortest physical path, unlike in swarm
tbh having a wifi-based mesh network might be more realistic, and it offers a more narrow band of ad-hoc solutions that could be done to make it work

- > Aha
Thanks for your thought
What do you think, is this a worthy rabbit hole to explore?

- > >What do you think, is this a worthy rabbit hole to explore?
- > Hmmm..... It might, but it might not
It probably needs a feasibility study, before anything else
But mesh networks aren't a new concept... Maybe a research on why they don't (or do) take off would be a good starting point.
Surely also there could be a segment to actually build the hardware + open source software that it could run on. Today if you wanna do such a thing you need to use OpenWRT and flash the router yourself, risk bricking it etc... its a cumbersome thing. I mean if you want to have anything more than just a bridged dumb wifi network which gives you basic IP routing. If you want to run other services on top of it, it gets much more difficult
Since you essentially have to run more software on the mesh hardware, issue OTA updates over the mesh network itself (so that you can roll out updates), etc.

- > Thx for your analysis yesterday. Interesting stuff, very complex
Iranian internet is down atm…

- > regarding what we spoke about in iran... found this http://openbts.org/
apparently you can spin up a GSM network with this... using an SDR device...
only problem is that iran is usually under export restrictions, but the SDR devices could be smuggled in...
the only thing then would be to somehow package it in a way that would allow a field setup easily. maybe even with some SBC or something like that
however this would be giving you GSM, not LTE. Which means data would be rather limited i believe
https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/getting-started-with/9781491924280/ch01.html
they say that in order to support call encryption you might need to use a custom sim though, but that's a problem to solve later... it is quite an interesting problem
still little data and little calls is probably better than no calls
and no data
it would still have significant downfalls, which could be amended... example is that if you rely on wifi towers with directional antennas to create the mesh network then you're probably susceptible to easy jamming of the frequencies involved, the internal network would have to be massively hardened because malicious actors could be easily onboarded and can troll the network
maybe paving improvised ethernet or fiber lines could solve this partially
anyway first step to doing any research is probably to get one of those SDRs if that's even on the list... and the research would take time i assume. unless the tutorials work completely out of the box, which i find hard to believe

- > Very interesting
To prevent bad actors, it could be some kind of gated community
So not publicly accessible
But invite-only
That would also prevent governments jamming it, because it could go largely unnoticed
General population then would still have no access to the internet, but I think it's crucial that at least some people will have access
such a setup would lower the demands for the network and make the design also easier
Very interesting. Good research
But I'm not sure if all of this is worth it if the resulting network is very limited

- > well... you have to start somewhere :)

- > Why don't we launch our own sattilites :D

- > lol

- > And don't you think that Wifi routes could somehow be repurposed?
That would have the advantage that a significant amount of hardware is already in place

- > rest was on a call...
the gist is:
do feasibility study/poc with a bladerf card
then if this goes through positively, start a DAO that could: (i) fund more research onto a solid setup with better range (ii) source SDR cards, program them and ship them to wherever needed (iii) fund guerrila research on open-sourcing LTE technology to run on SDR-like radio - the main problem with these proprietary telecom technologies is that they are under patent protection, however the DAO could disrupt that protection by paying whoever can leak the knowledge and open-source it, then just publish the open source knowledge somehow in a way that cannot be taken down.

some other links:
- https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/free-samples-good-quality-GSM-3G_62426702973.html?spm=a2700.galleryofferlist.normal_offer.d_title.7eaf6ae5gqTydl
- https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/GSM-wifi-2g-3g-4g-LTE_1600092120888.html?spm=a2700.galleryofferlist.normal_offer.d_title.7eaf6ae5gqTydl
- http://openbts.org/w/index.php?title=ProgrammingSIMcards
- http://openbts.org/w/index.php?title=BuildInstallRun
- https://www.blackhillsinfosec.com/intro-to-software-defined-radio-and-gsm-lte/
- http://openbts.org/get-the-code/
- https://www.rtl-sdr.com/tag/lte/
- https://www.astroradio.com/p/hackrf-one/
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