[Berlin-wireless] Alternate radio internet network

[Julius Hamilton]

Thanks.

I read online Freifunk runs a “mesh network” which I guess is exactly what
I was looking for, so I’ll try to join that network.

Does anyone think a cell phone could correspond with the network in some
way?

Or do I need to buy a router?

Are there any very small or mobile ones?

Thanks very much,
Julius





On Mon 28. Mar 2022 at 01:26, Christian Hammel <hammel at gmx.de> wrote:

> > You might use the LORA Wan stuff …
>
> mmh. Probably not.
>
> 1.
> The LoRaWAN protocol does not cover meshing or peer to peer Networking.
> It is designed to use a central infrastructure (end-device --> gateway
> --> Internet --> packet broker (central server) and some more central
> elements --> user's application and vice versa) End-device -->
> end-device or end-device --> gateway --> end device ist not part of the
> protocol. Workarounds would probably fail because of the end to end
> encryption of the packets.
> For LoRa as a physical layer (without LoRaWAN) some p2p examples are known.
>
> 2.
> I have no idea, how to force answers within 0,1 s at the LoRaWAN level.
> If intended this would probably have to be implemented in the
> server-sided (user's-)application. In addition to that a particular
> amount of packet losses is always probable in the ISM band even when
> they were sent in the timing windwow. And (even worse): If you don't
> implement it in your device or in your application LoRaWAN does not ACK
> packets (workaround known) and the packet's payload is only some 40bytes
> (TTN) or less (Helium). Aditionally downstream messages are more
> restricted than upstream.
>
> 3.
> LoRa is not exactly "free": The chirp radio behind LoRa is IP-protected
> by semtech's patents.  The LoRaWAN standard is published but also owned
> by semtech or the LoRaWAN alliance, respectively. For using a specific
> network your packets must have a network ID in their headers in order to
> be accepted, forwarded or dismissed by the network operator's packet
> broker. A network ID for your own LoRaWAN-Network must be bought or
> leased for (much) money. Using other people's LoRaWAN networks (and
> their IDs) is for free but restricted by a a fair use policy (TTN) or
> costs transmission fees (Helium and other Cryptomining-IoT-Networks).
> In all cases LoRaWAN networks are far away from Freifunk's pico peering.
>
> 4.
> Are you aware of IoT networks like LoRaWAN, Sigfox and others beeing
> extremly narrow-banded? They are usually good for transferring some
> bytes like the readout of a thermometer and begin to reach their limits
> already with transferring characters. Depending on what is intended to
> do, 0,1 s response time might not be the biggest problem with these
> technologies.
>
>
>
>
> >> Because assuming I only need to design a protocol, I just need to
> >> create a web server of a certain kind. People can share the locations
> >> of their servers, exactly like a URL for HTTP, or an email address for
> >> IMAP. As long as it conforms to the “standards” in a way (I’m not sure
> >> how to enforce that, like a protocol in Swift or an interface in
> >> Java), it’s a valid server - just like a REST API I believe can be
> >> written in any language but it just respond to things like GET
> >> requests and so on.
> In a narrowband world you would make your device send it's
> GPS-Coordinates every some minutes or so to a database and fetch the
> coordinates from there via the internet and not adress the GPS-sensor of
> your device directly (whether with LoRaWAN or something alike or not) by
> GET requests. It's also safer because it avoids direct communication
> between third parties and your device.
>
> Christian
>
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