User talk:Soumyajit
Welcome to P2P Foundation! We hope you will contribute much and well. You will probably want to read the help pages. Again, welcome and have fun! MIchel Bauwens (talk) 20:23, 7 September 2014 (UTC)
Elimination of Internet capitalism without spending a buck
Elimination of Internet capitalism without spending a buck
I have an informal way of communicating and that would be the tone of my article as well.As we all know now (after NSA scandal)Centralized communication networks are vulnerable to disruption as well as government control and monitoring and trust me people make billions abusing it.
After an earthquake crippled Haiti in 2010, killing and injuring hundreds of thousands and destroying the country’s
communication networks, Paul Gardner-Stephen found himself thinking about all the cell phones that had instantly become
useless. With cell towers out of commission across the country, they would be unable to operate. “If the software on the
phones was right,” he says, “they would keep working for at least localized communication, handset to handset.”
Gardner-Stephen, a research fellow at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, now leads a project that enables Android
phones to do just that. Serval, as the project is called, offers an app that allows nearby phones to link up using their
Wi-Fi connections, as long as they have been modified to disable the usual security restrictions. Voice calls, text
messages, file transfers, and more can take place between devices with the Serval app installed. Devices don’t need to be
in range of one another to communicate, as long as there are other devices running the app in between; data can hop
between any phones with Serval installed.
This approach, known as mesh networking. But the combination of relatively cheap smartphones and Wi-Fi routers with the progress made by open-source projects such as Serval means that creating and operating such networks is now becoming possible without specialist knowledge.
“We’re trying to dramatically increase the usability and take this out of the geekosphere,” says Sascha Meinrath, the
leader of a project called Commotion Wireless, which is developing several software packages that allow people to create
mesh networks using low-cost Internet and networking hardware, primarily Wi-Fi routers. The Commotion project is run by
the Open Technology Institute, an initiative of the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, DC.
Some communities in Washington, Brooklyn, and Detroit already have Wi-Fi-based mesh networks built on Commotion’s
technology. The networks offer free Internet access by extending the reach of free connections offered by community
centers; they also provide Web services and apps that function only within the local mesh.
After superstorm Sandy cut power to most of Red Hook, Brooklyn, the neighborhood’s mesh network demonstrated how the
technology could help recovery after natural disasters. A FEMA-provided satellite Internet link was connected to one part
of the Commotion-based network still operating, and a mesh-enabled Wi-Fi router was installed on the roof of an auto body
shop that also still had power. That made it possible for many residents and the local aid distribution point to use the
slow but badly needed satellite link.
News from the Middle East in recent years—and the U.S. in the past few weeks—has also raised awareness of the potential
for mesh networks to create communication networks independent of government oversight. Voice calls and text messages made
using phones on a Serval mesh network are strongly encrypted. Gardner-Stephen says that smartphones with Serval installed
could enable, say, protesters to keep reaping the benefits of those devices even if cellular networks are shut off.
“You could have someone taking pictures and video at a protest and sharing them immediately to the mesh,” he says. “Even
if that person’s phone is seized, the footage has already made it to 10 other phones in the area, and then to hundreds or
thousands more.” If one of those people had access to a satellite link, the world would soon know what had happened, he
says.
The Commotion project is also working on making its mesh software useful to people, such as political dissidents, for whom
conventional connectivity isn’t safe, and the project has received federal grants to support that work. “The State
Department and USAID are interested in protecting the free flow of information,” says Meinrath. “You could use a mesh to
route around surveillance and censorship.”
To that end, the Commotion team is adapting an encrypted chat program called Cryptocat so it can be used to communicate
securely across a local mesh network. Another adaptation aims at making it possible to route communications only through
trusted devices on a mesh network, in case an adversary has joined and is collecting traffic. However, Commotion’s
security features are far from complete, and the project prominently displays a warning label on its site to indicate its
current limitations.
The range of Wi-Fi poses a technical challenge for mesh networks. Tests by the Serval project indicate that for two phones
to communicate directly over a Wi-Fi mesh, they need to be within 100 meters of one another with a clear line of sight, or
about a room away if they’re linking through buildings.
Serval is currently testing a device called a mesh extender that can help networks based on its technology reach farther.
The device uses Wi-Fi to connect tens of nearby Serval devices to a long-range radio link. If extenders are mounted on the
roof, links between several of them should be able to stretch kilometers, says Gardner-Stephen. A crowdfunding campaign to
support development of a production version of his prototype will launch soon, and the New Zealand Red Cross is helping
test the current design.
Most efforts to develop mesh networking are focused on Google’s Android operating system because Apple’s mobile devices
are difficult to modify and relatively expensive. Android powers the majority of smartphones worldwide, dominating in the
places where poor infrastructure makes mesh networking especially valuable.
However, some mesh proponents say Google is unnecessarily hampering their efforts because it does not support the device-
to-device mode of Wi-Fi chips in its Android software (a complaint registered with Google as “Android bug #82”). That
means before a device can become an active part of a mesh network, a user must bypass Android’s security controls, or
“root” the device, by installing special software. Unrooted devices can use connectivity provided by a mesh network, but
they can’t help expand its coverage.
Both the Commotion and Serval projects have tried to get Google to change the policy, to no avail. Gardner-Stephen says
Google may believe that smartphone manufacturers and wireless carriers want it to resist. He adds that the company should
consider the contribution it could make to disaster response by allowing—if not explicitly promoting—the creation of mesh
networks. “Their policy is inhibiting this kind of humanitarian telecommunication,” he says.
Personally I have started working on similar technology as a Startup.Please feel free to extend your hand for help and support.
Thanks Soumyajit Mondal([email protected])
Mesh crypto payments
Could this mesh network, as a first application, contain cryptocurrency wallets (that might be partially validated in person like Bristol Pound and other semi-online currencies), so that you can contribute direct to devices in remote areas? In this case you'd only need one phone for each user of this currency, which could be a group, such as a decision making assembly in a project which then splits the cash amongst various work groups or individuals. Then they could then use it direct or exchange it for local currency. It would need the physical aspect of finding a community or possibility for forming one, with the right tech capabilities, and getting them to understand how to make the currency work. The money might come from crowdfunding/donation campaigns worldwide, or even just hard work from other phone owners. What if each bike in a delivery service had a qr code you could fund, donate to, or tip on a simple site.
For example there are Barcelona's expert urban waste recyclers who would benefit from a mesh network to do their work, and might then share crypto credits, but they can also get them used in African countries for example, so that local projects of their most trusted friends or local community there, can also benefit from being offline but linked up just so they can organise their work. There's currently a cooperative of recyclers called Cooperativa Integral Ca l'Africa, which includes legal waste collection as an objective but I'm not sure if they would be up for spending lots of time configuring mesh networks! :)