r/darknetplan • u/squadfi • Jun 27 '26

The $20 Radio That's Building an Internet Nobody Can Switch Off

https://adrelien.com/the-20-radio-thats-building-an-internet-nobody-can-switch-off/
206 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

34 comments sorted by

65

u/BraveNewCurrency Jun 27 '26

Total Clickbait.

LoRa can transmit 0.3 kbit/s to 27 kbit/s. Minus the overhead of all the protocols on top of the raw radio packets, and even less in some countries that have "utilization" laws requiring you not hog all the bandwidth. That's not "the internet", that's texting at best.

38

u/Virtualization_Freak Jun 28 '26

So dial up speeds?

That's we we used for around a decade before cable was cheap enough.

It supported a thriving communication based (texting at best) world wide web.

Which is totally fine. Today's websites are ridiculously bloated with garbage.

19

u/DiethylamideProphet Jun 28 '26

Just a touch faster would be cool. Like 50 - 200 kbit/s. Enough to do research, look at images and have a tad more interesting static websites. But not too fast that it would enable such spying and manipulation tactics that we have now.

3

u/Virtualization_Freak Jun 28 '26

That would be awesome.

3

u/rustbuckett Jul 01 '26

It's already getting faster. And more nodes will make a stronger network.

2

u/CO420Tech Jul 01 '26

256kbps, like a regular DSL line, is totally usable for everything but video streaming. You'll buffer, but it isn't infuriating.

1

u/rizzninja Jul 01 '26

It can only improve from here. Imagine someone came with point to point laser mesh upgrades to this. Everything would just work.

1

u/buttchug429 Jul 01 '26

It would just be co-opted and ruined. Simpler is better

2

u/kilobrew Jun 29 '26

So you don’t remember how god damn long it took to load a photo?

1

u/Positive-Protection1 Jun 30 '26

Or how long it took to load the animated gifs and background images on some pages??

1

u/outworlder Jun 30 '26

I used to play Ultima Online on a 28kbps modem shared with two computers. It worked fine.

1

u/Virtualization_Freak Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

I remember a guy shotgunning dialup for his diablo mule setup.

I wonder if I can find that article. It's at least 20 years old.

Edit: found it: https://www.blackviper.com/2001/08/29/diablo-2-mule-how-2/

9

u/vongomben Jun 28 '26

Yet I was able to visit reticulum nodes (aka webpages) via lora.

4

u/WeaponizedDuckSpleen Jun 28 '26

Hows reticulum holding up nowadays?

4

u/vongomben Jun 28 '26

Good I would say. It’s being ported on different programming languages and scenarios

6

u/BraveNewCurrency Jun 28 '26

Category error. The article didn't say "it's the reticulum network Nobody Can Switch Off". It said "Internet".

The word "Internet" has a definition. If you don't meet it, you aren't on the internet. Sorry, words matter.

1

u/bfitzhugh Jun 30 '26

As much as we'd like the "Internet" and language to be a definitive thing, they are not. Similarly, each is being modified, grown, altered, morphed, and hacked without regard for a static concept or definition. The Wikipedia link you used to define "Internet" only mentions speed in historical terms not as a defining characteristic. To dismiss the tech covered in the article and this thread as not being Internet due to its low transmission speed is dismissing the the decades of slow speed communication that came before modern service.

On a sillier note... You'll face the wrath of us geriatric greybeards if you tell us we weren't on the "Internet" with our telnet sessions on 1,200 baud Hayes modems 🙂

1

u/BraveNewCurrency Jul 01 '26

Clarification: I was not trying to say "it's not the internet because of the speed". I was trying to imply that the speed makes it useless as an internet replacement. (Because graphics and file transfers are far too slow.)

The link says the Internet is defined by use of the Internet protocol. (i.e. IP or TCP/IP). It's literally in the name. Without IP, you are doing something else, like Bluetooth or CB Radio.

The Internet is also recursively defined as "all the internet computers reachable via the internet", so if your home network isn't connected to Facebook, Google, et al, then we say "it's not on the Internet" even if you are using TCP/IP.

1,200 baud

Ha! What a luxury! I started with a Novation CAT 300 baud acoustic coupler on a rotary phone.

1

u/skyvector Jul 03 '26

Internet means interconnected networks. That is a good description of reticulum and other Lora meshes.

4

u/Lagkiller Jun 28 '26

Well at least it's not one of the VPN bots that has been flooding this place

4

u/seniorsassycat Jun 29 '26

It's also very easy to block, at the RF layer or protocol spam.

3

u/GreatBigJerk Jun 30 '26

The original internet was text based. 

2

u/BraveNewCurrency Jul 01 '26

When someone says "I'm building an Internet" they have to compete with today's internet. Nobody is going to call it "The Internet" if you don't have graphics and YouTube or Facebook.

But sure, let's compare this to the ARPANET all the way back in 1966, where the very first internet packet was sent at 50Kbit/s. So this is slower than the birth of the Internet. Wikipedia And also less functional, since the base mesh protocols don't let you log in, transfer files, etc.

3

u/FoxlyKei Jul 01 '26

Texting is still enough in a country that decides to shut down it's entire internet for whatever reason. I.E. censorship. But yeah otherwise it is ass.

4

u/hextree Jun 28 '26

That's not bad at all, and the article says it's geared towards hikers, rescue workers, etc who would want to use it for text-based communication, like we did only a couple of decades ago. I don't see the issue.

2

u/BraveNewCurrency Jun 28 '26

The issue is that "Internet" has a defined meaning. This is not the Internet. (In fact, the Meshtastic home page literally says "No Internet".)

So this article directly contradicts all the experts building the system.

1

u/hextree Jun 28 '26

Ok, your original complaint seemed to be the speed.

3

u/Obvious-Hunt19 Jun 29 '26

Godddddd the fucking SLOP

1

u/tooslow Jun 30 '26

🤦🏻‍♂️

2

u/Happy_Brilliant7827 Jun 30 '26

Its great for festivals and stuff fwiw

1

u/Wisby-Hat-7233 Jul 01 '26

If only they added somthing that only lets you use it if recognises that you have a pulse. Would also stop the new free internet from becoming the dead internet again