Quote from: pooya87 on Today at 03:16:11 AM

Quote from: 20kevin20 on October 10, 2021, 10:15:58 PM

ham radios

The problem is range, it is too short. According to google it is between 3 to 28 kilometres (2 to 18 miles).
Besides any "disastrous event" could take out radio towers too making any kind of longer distance communication impossible.

Quote from: 20kevin20 on October 10, 2021, 10:15:58 PM

There were some kind of radios that you could transmit over a range of up to .. 200 miles (or kms) as well?

I believe they use the towers (as booster) which is basically a middle man.

It is possible to transmit thousands of kilometers without boosters of any kind; I don't know that something like this is even used much in ham radio. Usually, HF signals can be bounced at the ionosphere and travel around the whole globe without any need of something like that.

Quote from: 20kevin20 on Today at 04:28:43 AM

Quote from: n0nce on October 10, 2021, 11:20:30 PM

It's certainly possible to build and I'm very interested in the topic. One feasible way is to create a 2.4GHz mesh network using directional antennas. It should be possible by repurposing 2.4GHz routers with a custom firmware and attaching directional / parabolic antennas to them, of course positioned outside. The ranges as far as I know are around 10-20km, so you'd need a few people in every city running one such thing to get a good coverage. That's why I say mesh network.

Here's an unrelated video that shows what off-the-shelf hardware can do in the 2.4GHz band:
https://youtu.be/15JmpVAuzZY

Interesting. Wouldn't it be possible for such a device specifically for BTC & messaging (perhaps messaging on blockchain) to be produced en masse with a very low cost (<$100, perhaps even <$50)? With Ledger's success, I can only imagine how insane it'd be to have a massive mesh network like that specifically run for Bitcoin. The only issue I see is, if people don't get incentivized for using the mesh network, they will probably not keep them up-and-running 24/7. In the event of blackouts that would likely change, but still.

Yes, everyone can just buy one such antenna for around $50 and an existing router with custom firmare & build a mesh network. They need UPS though for it to make any sense in a blackout so it will be a bit more than $100 and a good firmware + lots and lots of participants. Keep in mind there are only around ~10.000 BTC nodes worldwide. You'd need more than that in each country to have a working mesh net.

Quote from: 20kevin20 on Today at 04:28:43 AM

What about a mesh device with a built-in lincense-requiring radio transmitter/receiver? As far as I know, during disasters ham radio licenses for example are not necessary anymore. Not sure if massive blackouts or power cuts trigger this as well.

Ham radio laws are very tight. I don't think a blackout immediately allows you to use ham radio. Furthermore, in the stress of a real disaster, nobody wants to first sit down and setup their ham mesh Bitcoin node stuff. It has to be up and running before, be all configured and connected beforehand, realistically. And that's 100% not allowed without ham license on ham radio frequencies. (like HF bands which cover larger distances)

Quote from: 20kevin20 on Today at 04:28:43 AM

I think cash would still work, unless people stop trusting fiat at all due to the likely extremely high sudden price changes (black markets & barter) and due to the loss of purchasing power. And if that happens but Bitcoin can still be used, then I think it's a winning situation for BTC. The point isn't selling it for fiat but rather using it as a currency instead.

I agree, it would be sick to have another independent and more resilient network in general; not just for Bitcoin. But if it's pushed and mainly used for Bitcoin, it would surely help BTC reputation Cheesy

Quote from: BlackHatCoiner on Today at 06:22:17 AM

Everything is built to operate online; the whole world moves (and has already moved) their businesses to the internet. There are stores which only exist in the internet. Part of the education system is done from distance. The communication etc. Saying that one of the problems Bitcoin will face is this kind of disastrous event is trembling the least.

Lots of other events will occur in such scenario which will affect the economy much worse.

I very much agree with this; however, IF Bitcoin could show that it works even when literally everything else doesn't, would be a quite sick feat! However, I don't think it's a downside for Bitcoin that it's (right now) fully reliant on internet; since everything else is as well. So it's kind of a level playing field.

Quote from: aliashraf on Today at 11:20:10 AM

I'd suggest such a mesh based approach using mobile devices as a default topology even for day-to-day low bandwidth use cases and not just extreme conditions.

There are multiple research studies on this topic already; especially a few years back, when Android was more open :sigh: Roll Eyes

and it was possible to do cool things with its 2.4GHz antenna easily. Not sure what's the state of the art right now, but I haven't heard much about it since. The biggest issue is that it requires even more participants than if using home routers and directional antennas (which is the best idea for me so far).

Quote from: DaveF on Today at 11:31:02 AM

As for satellite, with starlink coming online and kuiper a few years off and there was another one whos name I don't remember although they will be controlled by big corporate entities there should be enough different ones out there to keep prices low and bandwidth up.

Unfortunately, satellite internet is a quite bad idea in general, for a variety of reasons. A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon this video, which points out lots of serious issues with Starlink and the whole idea in general. In short, it makes very little sense for the majority of people, in fact the technology can't even feasibly serve as many people as Musk claims and thus it never will. It is and will stay a niche market due to price and technological reasons (max. base stations per satellite, satellites need to be replaced from time to time => more cost etc).
DEBUNKING STARLINK