Off-grid networking

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gagabobo1997

gagabobo1997

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For discussion of methods of computer networking/communication that aren't connected to the Internet and ideally not connected to the grid.
Things like meshtastic
Fiber/ethernet shadow networks
Pirate radio stations
Long-distance wireless communication
Standard radio communication

Does anyone have experience managing a local communication network?
 
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I am putting together a guide I planned to post in the HAM thread for this very subject. Will be downloadable in plaintext, pdf and epub format.

Main subject will be off grid communications but will have a focus on alternative network infrastructure over radio mediums as well.
 
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HaLow networking is an amazing solution with a variety of applications. I suggest looking into it, for a good example I have linked a crowd source project that you can even purchase and setup yourself by Teledactics called HaloMax. It's all open source and fully moddable too so whatever your needs may be now, or in the future, you can be assured that this flexible networking solution can fit your needs.
 
I recommend 9front for setups where you have four or more devices available. Plan 9’s kernel has less lines than Lod of The Rings, after you understand the system & have SBC's or cheap old computers, you only need cables/antennas to create custom small-scale internets. The greatest advantage is you can have the network repurpose itself, so that if nodes go offline perhaps the streaming service gets saved to cold storage & shuts down, so that it can instead be used for critical communciations storage.
 
i dont understand the point of this thread, ip networking works the same if it is connected to the internet or not. the other items are more suited to the ham thread, not sure if there is a networking enthusiast thread on the site or not(i like me some routing), but if i was trying to build my own network i would use mikrotik routers and ubiquiti wireless gear (mikrotik wireless gear is not bad either).
 
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code123 said:
ip networking works the same if it is connected to the internet or not.
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Truly, this. You can build robust networks that don't talk out publicly using equipment that's 20 dollars, or equipment that's thousands of dollars. Old Cisco switches and routers tend to go for between 80 and 150 USD, but you'd have to learn the basics of their command system. Thankfully most of the system commands are simplified English. It's possible to use wireless access points to access internal resources from your phone or laptop too, but that opens you up to the vulnerabilities that Wi-Fi introduces.

edit: flow
 
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A note on meshtastic:
Good for sending simple commands or receiving alerts from things like water troughs, fees bins, and water basins.
It's also great for making a parallel texting and image sending network in situations where the local tower is overwhelmed and you just want easy line of site comms.
Just know there are probably easier ways to do anything, but it's a good skill builder and there are lots of fun printing projects with it. Plus a lot of HAM clubs and survivalist groups are using Meshtastic to build parallel networks for emergencies and sending memes to each other
 
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The newest meshtastic UI/efficiency update is huge, all we need is a waterproof T-Deck and/or cheap products with quality matching or exceeding cheap ham radios and i can see meshtastic really picking up steam.

WanderingFarmer said:
It's also great for making a parallel texting and image sending network in situations where the local tower is overwhelmed and you just want easy line of site comms.
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How do you send images? My understanding is that it's way too low bandwidth for that.
 
needforsneed said:
How do you send images? My understanding is that it's way too low bandwidth for that.
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Ya know, now I gotta check this. I thought you could put attachments in direct messages but I'll confirm that tonight.

Theres tons of cheap options there already. For the cost of a Baofeng UV-5R you can have a portable one with a multi-day battery life on it, so long as you off-load the display and GPS work to your phone. It's pretty popular in the HAM clubs around me. It's how I found it.
 
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I am a bit of a radio autist, in a SHTF situation, if I don't have my actual antenna built by then (my plan is to attach it to a tree at the highest part of my property, which is actually very high, you can see basically the entire surrounding area just standing on it),, then my secondary option is a kite antenna, it's cheap, fast to deploy, and works.

(this guy is annoying but this gets the point across)

Also remember to never count out the old reliable shortwave.

edit: oh I forgot to point out that with the proper protocol this could obviously be used to transmit data as well.
 
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Meshtastic is silly. That's all fine and dandy for nerds who like playing with toys, but it's not really "off-grid".

If you want something similar in a similar vein but with more flexibility (doesn't require special hardware, but can utilize it), and far better security, check out Reticulum and the LXMF apps built on it.

 
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NortelNutworks said:
Meshtastic is silly. That's all fine and dandy for nerds who like playing with toys, but it's not really "off-grid".

If you want something similar in a similar vein but with more flexibility (doesn't require special hardware, but can utilize it), and far better security, check out Reticulum and the LXMF apps built on it.

Click to expand...
Reticulum works from 5 bits per second to gigabit fiber speeds and is hardware agnostic, meaning that a network can be comprised of anything from Ham radios to ethernet switches. It also works over LoRa with the RNode firmware.


 
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NortelNutworks said:
Meshtastic is silly. That's all fine and dandy for nerds who like playing with toys, but it's not really "off-grid".
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Yeah because everyone is hooking all sorts of MQTT shit to it and piping to/from the internet, but in a SHTF-situation it's still a decent protocol and the fact that so many people have it running on a cheap piece of Chinese hardware is actually a huge benefit. There's a nice mix of HAM boomers and 16 year olds that saw a cool YouTube video in my "local mesh".
 
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Oat Milk Matcha Latte said:
Yeah because everyone is hooking all sorts of MQTT
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Reticulum solves this. The only drawback is right now the reference implementation is written in Python, but there is a stable Rust port and a C port in the works from the community.

With Reticulum, you can send a message from someone with a LoRa device, through a Ham radio over HF, through I2P, all the way to someone connected via an ethernet switch. The design is really ingenious and even if it the mainline implementation requires Python the concepts that are implemented really solve a lot of challenges that mesh systems like Meshtastic can't.

If you are familiar with BATMAN, imagine that on the next level.

Reticulum also implements perfect forward secrecy and has key ratcheting, (and reminder: this all works over a 300 bit per second connection)
 
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I'm taking the Meshtastic pill, but want to set this up in what appears to be a very non-standard way. I want to access the webclient of a Meshtastic node via browser over ethernet. I have a PoE switch in the garage for security cameras and a mast for an SDR. Ideally I'd put a Meshtastic node on top of the mast and power it via PoE. It would get great signal and I could do all the communication from the comfort of my desktop computer.

However, almost every Meshtastic appliance out there wants you to use your phone or connect to the device with bluetooth or it's own broadcast wifi. The only product I could find is this MQTT gateway. I dont really intend to use this for MQTT, just as a standard node or relay, but this has a PoE powered radio in a waterproof box. What I can't figure out is if this will acutally get a DHCP lease from my router and be accessible over ethernet. Does anybody have experience with this particular product or have suggestions to acomplish my preferred configuration?
 
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