I’m a massive networking nerd. I have literal stacks of old networking hardware, probably enough to connect a small town. It’s almost all used and some is damaged and I love the shit out of every scrap circuit board with those glorious ports.
I usually end up ranting about home networking on Lemmy, and the networking subreddits are generally the only reason I go back to that site every now and again.
I’ve become a wireless expert, and I regularly flex that knowledge at work. It always amazes me how bad some people’s wifi is and they just accept it, like, it do be like that sometimes… But it doesn’t have to be like that.
Because of this I often find myself ranting about what to do, or not do, when it comes to home networking projects. I always feel like this falls on deaf ears because I end up repeating the same or similar rants regularly.
My favorite so far was a factory that put a giant metal shipping container in the middle of the shop between the AP and where they were using the wifi and complained that they couldn’t understand why that part of the shop got no signal.
Maybe not unifi, but yeah, that’s definitely been an issue. One law office type location complained, and the wireless was located under sometimes desk in the corner of the office. There’s probably dozens of other examples I could tell, but yes. Absolutely.
It’s the reason I got into profiling/modeling of wireless signals, so I could accurately estimate optimal placement and recommend remediation for those situations. Just get a floor plan (or take a few measurements and generate a basic one), and play with the placement until things look good.
That’s a pretty good interest to have. Do you happen to have a write up of good networking solutions to use for homes? Most people probably just grab a router on sale or use the one provided by their Internet provider and use the default settings.
I’m sure that everyone has bottlenecks that they could fix, but most people just don’t have the knowledge base to figure it out.
It really really really depends on the situation. How big is the home, how fast is the internet, future plans, coverage needs, etc. And budget.
IMO, most people don’t spend an appropriate amount on their internet network. They’ll spend hundreds per month for internet service from an ISP, but refuse to spend more than $60 on a router to get it from the ISP modem to their $1000 phone. It doesn’t make sense, especially when you consider that it’s a one-time cost that will serve you for many years; the per month cost of owning it is less than a cup of coffee a month, even if you buy something that’s 10x more expensive. People are so resistant to it that is crazy.
Even at $100, you’re going to get what you pay for, better than the $60 router, but it’s going to fall short of anything that’s worth keeping for extended periods of time.
Right now my blind go to, when I don’t know anything about someone’s situation, is the ubiquiti UDR. It’s an all in one device, around $200, with a WiFi 6 access point built in, and four ethernet ports, all 1Gb and two of them have PoE. The limitation is the 1Gbps internet link so anyone with an ISP connection faster than 1Gbps should go with something else. Most don’t, so this is my recommendation.
The reason I recommend it is that you can add additional access points to it as needed with basically no additional spend (beyond the ap itself). With two PoE ports, you can add two aps without worrying about whether or not you have power injectors or anything. Adding a small network switch is easy on any of the other two ports if four isn’t enough for you, and ubiquiti has some pretty cheap, small switches for that.
The UDR comes with a built in network management device (otherwise known as a “cloud key” in unifi) which puts everything into a single interface. So the access points (both internal and add on), switches, etc are all managed from a single system that’s local, and has local sign in, and has a convenient cloud interface which is free to use, and has all the same functionality.
As a starting point, this is excellent. Because having just the UDR you can service a small apartment without any add-ons. If your needs grow, you can build out as needed. If your needs grow beyond the UDR, you can upgrade to the UDM/UDM pro (or similar) and keep using all the add-ons you’ve purchased. There’s room for growth, and ubiquiti has proven themselves to be rather adequate at providing networking for the home. Unless you get into some very advanced features, it should serve whatever needs you have both now and in the future.
My recommendations obviously change depending on the situation. One person I worked with recently, I recommended the UDM pro and a pair of access points, because his ISP connection was in his furnace room. The UDM doesn’t have any WiFi built in, and the furnace room is usually a nightmare to get wireless into or out of. The connection will suck. So being able to move his access points (of which he got a couple), out of that area and into more open spaces, was critical. In that case I gifted him a Dell power connect switch and used PoE injectors to power the access points. I was able to provide a very good, very reliable network for him without ongoing difficulty or issues (which was his primary concern). Before this he struggled with the wireless from his ISP modem, and it disconnected and had very poor signal throughout his home.
Since the initial set up, I’ve heard nothing but good things about it. He’s very happy with the system. His situation had some unique challenges, and we even ran ethernet vertically up to his second floor office through what used to be a chimney stack and that had been used to install a forced air duct for the second floor. So the space was only that forced air duct from the furnace. The cable(s) share that space with the air handling duct (but are run outside of the duct for safety), and he has gigabit ethernet jacks in his office to get a reliable connection for his professional systems in the office. He probably doesn’t need the Dell switch in the mix, but it gave him extra ports for use for later.
I’ve done dozens of custom recommendations for people. At this point I’m thinking of making a website to point people to that has all the information about home networking you could need, generalized enough to always be correct. I want to include sections on different manufacturers and why wifi kind of sucks, explanations of different technologies, their benefits, pros and cons, that kind of thing. Etc… All in one place so I can link people to it and they can learn as much or as little as they want; with pages like recommendations, all time stamped so you know what’s current or recent, and deep explainer pages of different technologies and how they work and what benefits and stuff that they have if you want to know more.
It’s a huge plan, and it will take me weeks or months to write it all out. I will need to find cheap web hosting for it and get some kind of UI/UX design going for it, and build the whole thing so I can update it without having to work too hard to start the new page entry. Maybe a wiki style? Idk. I’m thinking of calling it something along the lines of “WiFi sucks” or something related… Like wifisucks (dot) com or whatever. I’m sure I’ll need help with it, mainly in the UI/UX, but it’s something I’ve been considering doing for a while, just to handle these kinds of questions continually.
I have a blog about it, called untangle the tubes, IIRC, and I go on long, in-depth rants about stuff. But it’s highly disorganized and random.
Thanks for an absolute bang of a write up. Absolutely fantastic! I’ll have to research some of what you wrote because I don’t know what PoE injectors are or some of the other things. I certainly think you should create a wiki/blog related to this. It’s fantastic and unfortunately is way beyond the knowledge of most people. As you stated, most people are underutilizing their bandwidth because of bottlenecks and don’t even know it.
Thanks again for such an excellent write-up and I look forward to reading more from you in the future.
There’s a blog. Nobody reads it, but it exists. I want to translate everything into a wiki. But before I go to build the site, I want to hash out some of the write ups first so that I have a starting point.
Mainly just taking my blog posts and cleaning them up, adding some useful images and such… Links, etc. You know.
It’s one of far too many planned things I want to do.
Nice. I too have my share of older networking equipment. Mainly 3Com. I’ve grown fond of that brand and the quality of their devices (though not the quality of the supplied wall adapters).
I am by no means a wireless expert but would like to know how to expand my current wifi network into the garden.
3COM was picked up by HPE networking, which eventually became Aruba.
The last 3COM I worked with was a 48 port gigabit switch.
My collection is mainly Cisco stuff. Some of their early gigabit equipment and late FE stuff. Everything from ISR 1841 and even older 2600 router stuff, and 3750 stacking switches at 100mbps with and without poe, and a bunch of newer stuff too. I recently picked up a 3750X 48 port PoE, and a catalyst 4948.
I also have other vendors like HPE, juniper, even some of D-Link’s “enterprise” stuff (spoiler, it sucks). I have firewalls from Cisco, watchguard, sonicwall, etc.
I have wireless stuff too. Mainly Cisco, a couple of WLC 2504, with aironet 3602, 2802, a bunch of 1141 and 1142… A mix of other one-off versions.
Yeah. I have a bit of everything. From firewalls to switches to wireless to routers. Active in my network is a sonicwall 2650(? I believe), the Cisco 4948, and 3750X PoE, one of my WLC 2504’s and a pair of 2802i access points. I also built and run my brother’s network, which is almost entirely unifi, a UDM pro, enterprise 48 PoE switch and a few U6 pro access points. It works for him and it’s not so difficult to manage, so if he needs to update his WiFi password or something, he is able to do that.
I have a bunch of networking gear to sell, it’s semi recent stuff, all Cisco.
How would I go about selling it? Are those websites that buy old network gear in bulk any good?
I really don’t want to sell them individually on eBay
I don’t often (or ever) sell equipment. So unfortunately I may not be very helpful here.
I would suspect that the bulk gear shops are just going to individually list the items on eBay or something similar; if you want top dollar, you’ll need to sell them yourself on eBay. If you don’t care all that much, then hand them over to a highly rated bulk shop and let them do it for you.
If you have a list, I’m looking for a few pieces, and there’s others that I’d be interested in if I got them at a good price. We could work something out.
I’m also sure that there’s buy/sell communities and subreddits that you could try as well.
A short list of things I’m usually interested in is:
Catalyst switches, usually 3750 series, specifically anything PoE, but there’s other 3k/4k switches I’d like to get my hands on.
Aironet wireless, not the meraki stuff, that’s usually trash unless you have a contact and I don’t roll like that.
ISR G2 routers, usually the 19xx and 29xx series.
Anything newer than the ISR G2, like the Cisco 43xx routers and such.
I usually stay away from anything chassis based, it simply takes too much room and power compared to what I need and I get the same functionality in terms of commands and learning from smaller units, though they’re not as capable, they still function well enough for a lab/home use.
There’s other stuff I’d like to pick up, but that’s what I’m usually looking at… At least off the top of my head.
Hey thanks for the big writeup! Sorry it took me so long to get back to you.
It’s a bummer that Meraki stuff is less desirable, I just pulled it all out of the closet and it looks like that’s most of what I’ve got.
I’ve got two of the MR84, three of the MR36, a MS225-24P, some antennas for them, and three of some kind of IP phone CP-8841.
Is the Meraki stuff contract only?
My buddies boss gave him this stuff from the closet at work. Says he didn’t want or need it. Then he gave it to me 🤷♂️ I know my buddy didn’t steal it, but I’m hoping it’s not considered stolen or something? Because you have to have a contract? Idk maybe I’m overthinking it.
Basically, you can’t configure it without a license. They’re all cloud managed. Some stuff, like the access points will refuse to function if there’s no license, they just won’t turn on the radios, other stuff like their switches might pass packets in the last known configuration, but are otherwise not useful. Their firewalls I think also need a license to work.
I’m not 100% on this, since I’ve avoided it wherever possible. There’s sometimes a grace period where it will continue to work without a license (so you can renew it), but it’s usually fairly short, like a month at most. Maybe two if you’re lucky.
Without a license, you can’t add the units to the meraki dashboard, and you can’t manage them for configuration. It’s a pretty cruel policy if you ask me.
The IP phones are not tied to the same licensing, and I have a small fleet of the predecessor phones (mostly 7960/7965/7970). But the phones on their own won’t really do anything, and require a PBX of stone kind to connect to. You can establish a lightweight version of this with most ISR routers, known as Cisco “voice” aka CME (call manager express). The PBX will basically provision the phones and assign them an extension, and provide connections to a SIP line or an analog line using voice cards (or VIC/voice interface card). I have such a setup at home for the 7900 series phones I have.
I might be interested in the 8800 series phones you have, I’ve been meaning to upgrade my 7900s to the 8800 series, but I haven’t gotten around to even planning it. Right now my voice system is in pieces. It has been in pieces since I decommissioned the first iteration of it when we sold my late father’s home. That system ran on a Cisco ISR 2821 using CME and a SIP connection provided by VoIP.ms, as well as an analog voice line for my father’s legacy telephone connection. It allowed me to call my father at his desk, or call my brother in another room without trouble. We could all also call out on the analog or SIP lines from each phone as needed. Default routing for my father’s extension was to use the analog line (if it’s not in use already, otherwise fail over to the SIP), and ring only when the analog line was receiving a call. It made it easy for us to communicate across the house. After that I moved into an apartment with my significant other and didn’t really need anything so elaborate.
Now, I’m living in a multi-family home so the need to be able to call between rooms and such has become more relevant again, and I just haven’t had time to take on the project to fix communication between devices and the PBX… But it’s a desired option. So I’ll probably pick up some 8800’s eventually either way. The 7900’s still work, even with the ISR 2911 that I’m using now, but they’re a bit older and I’m getting concerned about reliability moving forward.
As for the meraki’s, you may want to check into whether or not you can reflash them with firmware that isn’t from Cisco. I know there was a nontrivial number of people who acquired similar products that wanted to use them without having a monthly fee from Cisco for the privilege. The last time I looked at it, they were working on ways to put different software on the devices so that they would at least function without a subscription. I’m not sure if that is continuing or if the efforts have been mostly abandoned. I wouldn’t suggest to use meraki in a business/production environment with custom firmware, but for home or lab use, I don’t see an issue with it. I just don’t have enough experience with meraki to know, and I’ve avoided working with the products whenever I can because of all of this.
Let me know if you want to discuss about the 8800s, and we can link up on matrix or signal or telegram or something to hammer out the details. It might be a good idea to push the transaction through eBay, using a private listing if possible, just to ensure all the details of the transaction are good, but that’s a matter to discuss later.
No pressure. If you want to keep them, by all means do so. I’m in no rush to buy anything right now; so this is entirely your option. If anything about it bothers you in any way, feel free to say no, or back out of the deal at any point. I have no expectations and I will hold no grudges.
In every case, good luck and have a wonderful day.
Hey thanks man I really appreciate all your detailed help, and offer to buy those phones.
I contacted one of those resellers, and they unsurprisingly weren’t interested in anything. I probably won’t try to put aftermarket firmware on them, I looked into it a bit and it seems it never really took off. Plus I live in an apartment. I’ll try to offload them on eBay or something.
I’m certainly interested in getting you these phones, I have no use for them, and it seems like you do haha. Whatever is a fair price for you is fine by me, I’m not looking to get rich. I’ll try to send you a PM, I don’t even know if Lemmy supports that.
You know HAM radio? It’s kinda interesting, because people can use it to talk to each other and it technically doesn’t require any infrastructure. But there are also repeaters in cities that can increase the range.
I’ve been wondering why people don’t try to do something similar with WiFi? Some kind of city-wide WiFi network with repeaters. It’s probably difficult and I’m not sure if it would have any practical use. But the advantage over HAM radio is that it’s encrypted and doesn’t require a license. I imagine that people could use it to chat with each other and share stuff without having to rely on social media or the internet.
I’m a qualified amateur operator. I can operate on any ham bands up to 190W EIRP if I recall my countries regulations correctly.
The issue with doing something like wifi on ham bands technical issues finding radio chips capable of signalling at such a high rate of speed, on bands that are able to be used by hams. There’s also the requirement for hams to identify themselves on air, and the general use of AM/FM and derivative technology on ham bands and general resistance to the OFDM used as the main signal encoding for WiFi. So finding an OFDM capable radio transmitter/receiver for use in… say, the 2m band (144Mhz … ish) is basically impossible, and there’s no way to identify. You would have to build a new protocol and standard from the ground up and use very modified or rare/expensive radio chips, and likely build the drivers/firmware for it entirely yourself. People with the required hardware, software, baseband, radio, and firmware experience that are hams who want a product like WiFi for ham radio channels is extraordinarily rare.
As for city-wide WiFi/mesh networks: it has been attempted, and has seen some limited success, but doesn’t scale well with the usual protocols. Routing protocols like BGP, OSPF and IS-IS are meant for much larger IP blocks being routed between interfaces. A wireless mesh system would use a single interface (one radio) for both send and receive, which most protocols don’t support, and each “hop” or station on the mesh would only be advertising a single IP (or an extremely small set of IPs) per participating node.
Most routing protocols assume that every node on an interface can talk to every other node on the same interface and thus there’s no need to repeat or relay messages from an interface to the same interface.
There’s also no standards that allow wifi to use multiple channels/frequencies for tx/rx, eg, send on 5.45 GHz, and receive on 5.65Ghz. it simply isn’t something that any WiFi chip is capable of. So full duplex isn’t possible right now.
The common wifi frequencies are also extremely power limited and on bands that are prone to interruption. In the wild, there’s plenty of things that can disrupt 2.4Ghz and 5/6Ghz transmissions. With the power limits, to go any significant distance, you need directional antennas that limit free space path loss so the signal travels further. In the case of wireless internet service providers (WISP, not to be confused with the mobile carriers), they generally use panel or dish antennas to extend the range.
For power output, at the high end, some bands allow for upwards of 5W of directional power, or 1W of omnidirectional power (in EIRP). On the low end, handheld ham radio units start at 5W of power, and can usually attenuate their transmitter to 1W or lower as an option. Household WiFi is usually around 0.1W of power per radio. Even cranking that up to the maximum legally allowed wattage won’t result in covering more than a few blocks of a city with a fairly poor signal overall; that signal is going to be fairly easily blocked, absorbed, reflected, or otherwise attenuated by just about everything, including, but not limited to the structure of your house.
Meanwhile, standing in my home with a 5W handheld transceiver operating on 70cm (440Mhz), I can hit a repeater that’s something like 10 miles away with a nearly perfect signal over FM, without assistance. OFDM signals would likely be scrambled beyond recognition at 2.4 or 5 GHz across that much of a gap, or even one that’s 1/10th as far, with only 1W of legal power, without using some kind of directional antenna or antenna array.
Don’t get me wrong, well configured wireless can go so far that you have to account for the curvature of the earth, but they’re always very very directional, using dish antennas or similar.
Don’t get me wrong, the ideas are great, but the challenges faced are enormous. It can quickly turn into a lifelong project to get something functional, and even then, there’s no guarantee that it will ever catch on as a product. The limitation for ham operators regarding encryption is problematic when it comes to data communication as well, since just about everything that’s data-driven on the internet implements SSL. Computers and systems expect encryption all over the place and bluntly, those messages cannot be sent over ham bands. There’s nuance to that regulation, at least in my country, but I won’t get into the fine print here.
Even so, there are some crude digital modes used by ham operators which are normally voice encoding or plain text encoding. Uses are limited on purpose. If you’re interested in longer distance emergency communications you could look into LoRA, which is relatively new.
There’s a lot more to say on this, but bluntly, I’ve said enough. It’s all interconnected, and I love it, but I’m just ranting now.
Thanks for a very detailed explanation! So it seems that this is almost impossible. Except for maybe a small part of a city.
The lack of encryption, privacy and anonymity in HAM radio would be an issue for me. Just like in mobile phones. But since you can use end-to-end encryption over WiFi (and some weaker, less useful encryption is used in mobile phones), maybe there are exceptions. I’ve heard of LoRA, but I wouldn’t want to use it, unless I’m allowed to encrypt the messages. It also seems that the message length is very limited, so using something like PGP might not always be possible.
Well, for basic WiFi to dramatically extend coverage, you would need to take a page from the WISP/mobile carrier playbook and set it up with semi directional panels, in a configuration that covers 365 degrees. Placing the units high up on a tower, angled down slightly, with their power levels as high as they can go.
Primarily using 2.4Ghz would provide better penetration of signals in the area, but there would also be more conflicts.
Still, as I’ve said, even in this configuration, you may get a few blocks of coverage at best… At least to a regular device with an Omni antenna, like a phone or laptop. The only way to extend any further would be to use directional antennas on both sides, which is what WISP companies do. In that case, you can generally transmit to anywhere in line of sight of the base antenna system. Being very high up vertically becomes a more significant factor since there’s plenty of buildings, trees, and other obstacles that are going to block the communication. As I mentioned, at extreme range, you’re going to contend with the curvature of the earth itself, so that’s something to bear in mind when going very very far with it.
Regulations allow for the public to use 2.4/5 GHz as well as 900mhz and, I believe, 430? MHz? There’s higher frequencies like 60Ghz, but at that wavelength, you start to see scattering and attenuation from atmospheric events like rain and fog. Those things still affect 2.4 & 5Ghz, but usually not significantly enough to cause a failure in the link. The ISM 5.8ghz band may be a good place to go for high speed data, but for simple (slow) data, 2.4 GHz will be more reliable.
The regulatory bodies that govern frequency use are fairly strict when it comes to what can be done without a license. The only way to guarantee that you can do pretty much whatever you want would be to request a frequency for your own uses from your local regulatory authority (in the US, it’s the FCC, in Canada it’s IC or industry Canada, other countries will have similar government organizations to manage the EM/RF airspace). With a license you may have power restrictions based on the area you intend to serve (they don’t want you blasting the signal so strongly that you encroach on other licensed people legally using their system in their area), but you should be free to use any mode (analog, digital, data, etc), with any level of encryption you want, and grant permission to anyone else to use the frequency in your designated area. This is how mobile providers operate, but usually they’re buying large bands of frequency ranges for use across the entirely of a state/province/country, so their pricing is well into six figures. It’s not cheap to get such licensing, likely well into the thousands per year, even for a modest area with a small frequency range. Additionally, your name goes on the license, and that’s usually made available to the public, though few ever actually look at that data, it is available nonetheless. You can otherwise anonymize the transmissions and encrypt the messages to your heart’s content. The challenge there is that everything that can transmit on those licensed bands is extremely expensive; since usually only businesses with direct need for such systems ever apply for a license like that. The only places I’ve known to use a licensed RF system have been physically large places, like airports (security, airlines etc.), large campus style institutions like universities and colleges, and parks services (even as small as water parks) many smaller businesses are illegally using FRS and GMRS for in-store communication; places like your local hardware store may do this. Larger franchise places are a mix of purpose built communication systems, like with the headsets commonly used by fast food restaurants, which are very short range and that is counterbalanced by the illegal use of residential systems like FRS for the same purpose.
Unlicensed residential communications like FRS are usually very short range and very power restricted, and the legislation (at least here) usually stipulates that they are only to be used for personal communication, not professional/business communication; so the use of such services in a commercial environment is illegal.
However, enforcement is usually not very strict, and businesses do it anyways, and likely don’t get punished for such abuse of those systems because nobody is enforcing the rules against it. Businesses know that enforcement is poor and often disregard the potential risks of using those services illegally.
I know ham operators are generally very adamant about people following the rules and I’ve heard many stories of individuals thinking they can just use ham bands without proper identification or qualifications without consequence, much the same way as businesses do with FRS, but licensed operators have and do, track down such use and report it, and that’s about the only time I’ve heard that people get punished for their illegal use of frequencies and bands… when it is reported directly to the FCC/IC/whomever is in charge of the allocations. The only instances of reports that I’ve heard are from ham operators and city services like fire departments when you illegally broadcast on their channels.
Most of the unlicensed frequencies are generally the wild west of radio, and all manner of strange and unusual happenings occur on those bands. It’s usually few and far between that you’ll experience it, but it happens and often, nobody has the skill or care, to bother reporting it. Nonetheless it is illegal to broadcast over the frequency power limits and the penalties for being caught are steep, up to and including jail time; so it’s not something I would ever endorse. Regardless, you have been warned. Check your local laws from your regulatory authority and ensure you are complying with laws before turning on any transmitter (listening to any/every frequency is generally not restricted, though, understanding the transmissions is usually an issue, especially with digital/encrypted communications on licensed frequencies). YMMV on this.
Regardless of all of that, if you wish to pursue an emergency or wide spread communications system for data, including encrypted data, I wish you the best of luck. I’m happy to lend a hand and experiment along with you if you desire it. I’ve always felt that exclusively relying on primary communication systems, like mobile phone systems and public switched telephone networks (things that otherwise rely on infrastructure) is an inherent weakness. I’m an IT person by day, with specialty in wireless and networking technologies, so you’ve struck a chord here. I’m very interested in any data communication that can be used during a primary infrastructure failure. Personally I experienced the full force of such a failure a few years back when one of the major telecommunications providers in my country had a significant/system wide communications break down for more than 24 hours. I was a mobile subscriber to their service, and for that day, I was unable to use any data services on my cellphone, nor make our receive any calls. It was a wake up call that if there’s a large scale failure of the system I relied on, then I would be dead in the water in terms of being able to get help in an emergency. At the time I didn’t have my ham license, and I was unable to even check and make sure my loved ones were okay while I was away from a working WiFi connection. At the time I was traveling to work, and while on the road I was entirely communications blind. Something I haven’t experienced for nearly 20 years. Unfortunately, I’m the only person in my family to have achieved my amateur qualification, but I can at least request that someone with a working connection call and talk to someone (over the radio), if such an event reoccurs. Having a method to communicate with them in the event of another such failure without requiring them to go through the amateur qualification would be something very desirable to me.
I was thinking about this WiFi idea, because I think it could be useful in case of an emergency. I think there should be services hosted inside of cities. I mean in their local networks. It could be local government websites and maybe things like a Lemmy instance where people could talk. Even stuff like Open Street Map could maybe be useful. So if the city was for some reason cut off from the internet and the mobile network, most people would still be able to communicate and have access to information. It would be like having a tiny backup of the internet (at least whatever is possible to self host). I think it’s a big oversight to only rely on the internet.
Something like this could maybe be also useful in countries with authoritative governments, which sometimes cut off internet access in the entire country. In the long term the government would probably find out and try to stop it, though.
But as you’ve explained, making something like this would require many people working together and ideally should probably be handled by a local government instead. It’s not something I plan on doing, it just seemed like a cool idea to think about.
I might try playing with LoRA for some other project some day, if I can legally use it without a license. But if I can’t encrypt the messages, then I would probably prefer to use WiFi (for short distances) instead.
In your case, to have emergency communications with your family, maybe CB radio or satellite phones would be a solution?
Much of the internet is both centralized and not. It was designed with redundancies in mind, so it can route around disconnections. The centralization part of it is that services like your ISP generally are very centralized to datacenters, so something “in city” may not be able to be accessed without the closest datacenter or internet exchange being online, each of which has multiple redundancies.
The only good way to do it would be over a city-wide public wifi that has all of the self-hosted information on the locally connected network. Only on that wifi network could you get access, since that system would be linked back to the internet/ISPs via the internet exchange or datacenter.
It would be an ambitious project. The AMPRnet is one such emergency wifi network. It requires a ham license but it’s all wifi based long distance communications. The ham license is for authorization to operate on the network, not a legal/technical requirement. They just won’t let non-hams connect.
People host all kinds of things on there, so it’s fairly robust overall.
As for emergency communications, in an actual emergency (risk to life and limb kind of deal) any person, whether qualified or not, has legal permission to use any radio they find. My family knows this. My concern is that they won’t know how to switch to a useful channel when such an emergency happens. I have several handheld radios, so there are a few around that they can grab. If I’m heading out of town with them, I try to bring a few, so if an emergency happens while we’re away, I can program and hand off a radio, and we can stay in contact if we need to split up at all during the emergency.
For everyday communications in a primary communications outage, we have some FRS radios which don’t require a license. They’re much shorter range, but would be useful to have in a pinch.
There’s a lot of decent options.
I’m actually looking into setting up a LoRA node, or something similar because there’s a spec that I came across for a mail detector IoT thing. It’s low power and uses LoRA. It should last several months on a fairly modest battery. It should be able to relay to us when mail is detected so we can go get it from the community mailbox thing when it is delivered. I should be able to tie it into our home automation stuff and just send out notifications when we need to go get it, or change the color of lights or something.
It will be my first step into this kind of thing, so I’ll see how it goes.
I haven’t heard of AMPRnet before. Sounds interesting.
As for emergency communications, in an actual emergency (risk to life and limb kind of deal) any person, whether qualified or not, has legal permission to use any radio they find.
I wasn’t sure about that, so that’s good to know!
Mail detector sounds like a perfect use for LoRA. But I suspect that there is no security by default and anyone would be able to send you such a message if they were mean :).
I’m a massive networking nerd. I have literal stacks of old networking hardware, probably enough to connect a small town. It’s almost all used and some is damaged and I love the shit out of every scrap circuit board with those glorious ports.
I usually end up ranting about home networking on Lemmy, and the networking subreddits are generally the only reason I go back to that site every now and again.
I’ve become a wireless expert, and I regularly flex that knowledge at work. It always amazes me how bad some people’s wifi is and they just accept it, like, it do be like that sometimes… But it doesn’t have to be like that.
Because of this I often find myself ranting about what to do, or not do, when it comes to home networking projects. I always feel like this falls on deaf ears because I end up repeating the same or similar rants regularly.
You ever seen a Unify AP just chilling on the floor under a desk in a commercial setting while people complain the WiFi is always slow?
Pain.
Or when they put it inside or behind a metal file cabinet and wonder why the wifi doesn’t work unless you’re right next to the file cabinet
My favorite so far was a factory that put a giant metal shipping container in the middle of the shop between the AP and where they were using the wifi and complained that they couldn’t understand why that part of the shop got no signal.
Maybe not unifi, but yeah, that’s definitely been an issue. One law office type location complained, and the wireless was located under sometimes desk in the corner of the office. There’s probably dozens of other examples I could tell, but yes. Absolutely.
It’s the reason I got into profiling/modeling of wireless signals, so I could accurately estimate optimal placement and recommend remediation for those situations. Just get a floor plan (or take a few measurements and generate a basic one), and play with the placement until things look good.
That’s a pretty good interest to have. Do you happen to have a write up of good networking solutions to use for homes? Most people probably just grab a router on sale or use the one provided by their Internet provider and use the default settings.
I’m sure that everyone has bottlenecks that they could fix, but most people just don’t have the knowledge base to figure it out.
It really really really depends on the situation. How big is the home, how fast is the internet, future plans, coverage needs, etc. And budget.
IMO, most people don’t spend an appropriate amount on their internet network. They’ll spend hundreds per month for internet service from an ISP, but refuse to spend more than $60 on a router to get it from the ISP modem to their $1000 phone. It doesn’t make sense, especially when you consider that it’s a one-time cost that will serve you for many years; the per month cost of owning it is less than a cup of coffee a month, even if you buy something that’s 10x more expensive. People are so resistant to it that is crazy.
Even at $100, you’re going to get what you pay for, better than the $60 router, but it’s going to fall short of anything that’s worth keeping for extended periods of time.
Right now my blind go to, when I don’t know anything about someone’s situation, is the ubiquiti UDR. It’s an all in one device, around $200, with a WiFi 6 access point built in, and four ethernet ports, all 1Gb and two of them have PoE. The limitation is the 1Gbps internet link so anyone with an ISP connection faster than 1Gbps should go with something else. Most don’t, so this is my recommendation.
The reason I recommend it is that you can add additional access points to it as needed with basically no additional spend (beyond the ap itself). With two PoE ports, you can add two aps without worrying about whether or not you have power injectors or anything. Adding a small network switch is easy on any of the other two ports if four isn’t enough for you, and ubiquiti has some pretty cheap, small switches for that.
The UDR comes with a built in network management device (otherwise known as a “cloud key” in unifi) which puts everything into a single interface. So the access points (both internal and add on), switches, etc are all managed from a single system that’s local, and has local sign in, and has a convenient cloud interface which is free to use, and has all the same functionality.
As a starting point, this is excellent. Because having just the UDR you can service a small apartment without any add-ons. If your needs grow, you can build out as needed. If your needs grow beyond the UDR, you can upgrade to the UDM/UDM pro (or similar) and keep using all the add-ons you’ve purchased. There’s room for growth, and ubiquiti has proven themselves to be rather adequate at providing networking for the home. Unless you get into some very advanced features, it should serve whatever needs you have both now and in the future.
My recommendations obviously change depending on the situation. One person I worked with recently, I recommended the UDM pro and a pair of access points, because his ISP connection was in his furnace room. The UDM doesn’t have any WiFi built in, and the furnace room is usually a nightmare to get wireless into or out of. The connection will suck. So being able to move his access points (of which he got a couple), out of that area and into more open spaces, was critical. In that case I gifted him a Dell power connect switch and used PoE injectors to power the access points. I was able to provide a very good, very reliable network for him without ongoing difficulty or issues (which was his primary concern). Before this he struggled with the wireless from his ISP modem, and it disconnected and had very poor signal throughout his home.
Since the initial set up, I’ve heard nothing but good things about it. He’s very happy with the system. His situation had some unique challenges, and we even ran ethernet vertically up to his second floor office through what used to be a chimney stack and that had been used to install a forced air duct for the second floor. So the space was only that forced air duct from the furnace. The cable(s) share that space with the air handling duct (but are run outside of the duct for safety), and he has gigabit ethernet jacks in his office to get a reliable connection for his professional systems in the office. He probably doesn’t need the Dell switch in the mix, but it gave him extra ports for use for later.
I’ve done dozens of custom recommendations for people. At this point I’m thinking of making a website to point people to that has all the information about home networking you could need, generalized enough to always be correct. I want to include sections on different manufacturers and why wifi kind of sucks, explanations of different technologies, their benefits, pros and cons, that kind of thing. Etc… All in one place so I can link people to it and they can learn as much or as little as they want; with pages like recommendations, all time stamped so you know what’s current or recent, and deep explainer pages of different technologies and how they work and what benefits and stuff that they have if you want to know more.
It’s a huge plan, and it will take me weeks or months to write it all out. I will need to find cheap web hosting for it and get some kind of UI/UX design going for it, and build the whole thing so I can update it without having to work too hard to start the new page entry. Maybe a wiki style? Idk. I’m thinking of calling it something along the lines of “WiFi sucks” or something related… Like wifisucks (dot) com or whatever. I’m sure I’ll need help with it, mainly in the UI/UX, but it’s something I’ve been considering doing for a while, just to handle these kinds of questions continually.
I have a blog about it, called untangle the tubes, IIRC, and I go on long, in-depth rants about stuff. But it’s highly disorganized and random.
Thanks for an absolute bang of a write up. Absolutely fantastic! I’ll have to research some of what you wrote because I don’t know what PoE injectors are or some of the other things. I certainly think you should create a wiki/blog related to this. It’s fantastic and unfortunately is way beyond the knowledge of most people. As you stated, most people are underutilizing their bandwidth because of bottlenecks and don’t even know it.
Thanks again for such an excellent write-up and I look forward to reading more from you in the future.
There’s a blog. Nobody reads it, but it exists. I want to translate everything into a wiki. But before I go to build the site, I want to hash out some of the write ups first so that I have a starting point.
Mainly just taking my blog posts and cleaning them up, adding some useful images and such… Links, etc. You know.
It’s one of far too many planned things I want to do.
Nice. I too have my share of older networking equipment. Mainly 3Com. I’ve grown fond of that brand and the quality of their devices (though not the quality of the supplied wall adapters).
I am by no means a wireless expert but would like to know how to expand my current wifi network into the garden.
3COM was picked up by HPE networking, which eventually became Aruba.
The last 3COM I worked with was a 48 port gigabit switch.
My collection is mainly Cisco stuff. Some of their early gigabit equipment and late FE stuff. Everything from ISR 1841 and even older 2600 router stuff, and 3750 stacking switches at 100mbps with and without poe, and a bunch of newer stuff too. I recently picked up a 3750X 48 port PoE, and a catalyst 4948.
I also have other vendors like HPE, juniper, even some of D-Link’s “enterprise” stuff (spoiler, it sucks). I have firewalls from Cisco, watchguard, sonicwall, etc.
I have wireless stuff too. Mainly Cisco, a couple of WLC 2504, with aironet 3602, 2802, a bunch of 1141 and 1142… A mix of other one-off versions.
Yeah. I have a bit of everything. From firewalls to switches to wireless to routers. Active in my network is a sonicwall 2650(? I believe), the Cisco 4948, and 3750X PoE, one of my WLC 2504’s and a pair of 2802i access points. I also built and run my brother’s network, which is almost entirely unifi, a UDM pro, enterprise 48 PoE switch and a few U6 pro access points. It works for him and it’s not so difficult to manage, so if he needs to update his WiFi password or something, he is able to do that.
I have a bunch of networking gear to sell, it’s semi recent stuff, all Cisco. How would I go about selling it? Are those websites that buy old network gear in bulk any good? I really don’t want to sell them individually on eBay
I don’t often (or ever) sell equipment. So unfortunately I may not be very helpful here.
I would suspect that the bulk gear shops are just going to individually list the items on eBay or something similar; if you want top dollar, you’ll need to sell them yourself on eBay. If you don’t care all that much, then hand them over to a highly rated bulk shop and let them do it for you.
If you have a list, I’m looking for a few pieces, and there’s others that I’d be interested in if I got them at a good price. We could work something out.
I’m also sure that there’s buy/sell communities and subreddits that you could try as well.
A short list of things I’m usually interested in is:
Catalyst switches, usually 3750 series, specifically anything PoE, but there’s other 3k/4k switches I’d like to get my hands on.
Aironet wireless, not the meraki stuff, that’s usually trash unless you have a contact and I don’t roll like that.
ISR G2 routers, usually the 19xx and 29xx series.
Anything newer than the ISR G2, like the Cisco 43xx routers and such.
I usually stay away from anything chassis based, it simply takes too much room and power compared to what I need and I get the same functionality in terms of commands and learning from smaller units, though they’re not as capable, they still function well enough for a lab/home use.
There’s other stuff I’d like to pick up, but that’s what I’m usually looking at… At least off the top of my head.
Hey thanks for the big writeup! Sorry it took me so long to get back to you.
It’s a bummer that Meraki stuff is less desirable, I just pulled it all out of the closet and it looks like that’s most of what I’ve got.
I’ve got two of the MR84, three of the MR36, a MS225-24P, some antennas for them, and three of some kind of IP phone CP-8841.
Is the Meraki stuff contract only? My buddies boss gave him this stuff from the closet at work. Says he didn’t want or need it. Then he gave it to me 🤷♂️ I know my buddy didn’t steal it, but I’m hoping it’s not considered stolen or something? Because you have to have a contract? Idk maybe I’m overthinking it.
Basically, you can’t configure it without a license. They’re all cloud managed. Some stuff, like the access points will refuse to function if there’s no license, they just won’t turn on the radios, other stuff like their switches might pass packets in the last known configuration, but are otherwise not useful. Their firewalls I think also need a license to work.
I’m not 100% on this, since I’ve avoided it wherever possible. There’s sometimes a grace period where it will continue to work without a license (so you can renew it), but it’s usually fairly short, like a month at most. Maybe two if you’re lucky.
Without a license, you can’t add the units to the meraki dashboard, and you can’t manage them for configuration. It’s a pretty cruel policy if you ask me.
The IP phones are not tied to the same licensing, and I have a small fleet of the predecessor phones (mostly 7960/7965/7970). But the phones on their own won’t really do anything, and require a PBX of stone kind to connect to. You can establish a lightweight version of this with most ISR routers, known as Cisco “voice” aka CME (call manager express). The PBX will basically provision the phones and assign them an extension, and provide connections to a SIP line or an analog line using voice cards (or VIC/voice interface card). I have such a setup at home for the 7900 series phones I have.
I might be interested in the 8800 series phones you have, I’ve been meaning to upgrade my 7900s to the 8800 series, but I haven’t gotten around to even planning it. Right now my voice system is in pieces. It has been in pieces since I decommissioned the first iteration of it when we sold my late father’s home. That system ran on a Cisco ISR 2821 using CME and a SIP connection provided by VoIP.ms, as well as an analog voice line for my father’s legacy telephone connection. It allowed me to call my father at his desk, or call my brother in another room without trouble. We could all also call out on the analog or SIP lines from each phone as needed. Default routing for my father’s extension was to use the analog line (if it’s not in use already, otherwise fail over to the SIP), and ring only when the analog line was receiving a call. It made it easy for us to communicate across the house. After that I moved into an apartment with my significant other and didn’t really need anything so elaborate.
Now, I’m living in a multi-family home so the need to be able to call between rooms and such has become more relevant again, and I just haven’t had time to take on the project to fix communication between devices and the PBX… But it’s a desired option. So I’ll probably pick up some 8800’s eventually either way. The 7900’s still work, even with the ISR 2911 that I’m using now, but they’re a bit older and I’m getting concerned about reliability moving forward.
As for the meraki’s, you may want to check into whether or not you can reflash them with firmware that isn’t from Cisco. I know there was a nontrivial number of people who acquired similar products that wanted to use them without having a monthly fee from Cisco for the privilege. The last time I looked at it, they were working on ways to put different software on the devices so that they would at least function without a subscription. I’m not sure if that is continuing or if the efforts have been mostly abandoned. I wouldn’t suggest to use meraki in a business/production environment with custom firmware, but for home or lab use, I don’t see an issue with it. I just don’t have enough experience with meraki to know, and I’ve avoided working with the products whenever I can because of all of this.
Let me know if you want to discuss about the 8800s, and we can link up on matrix or signal or telegram or something to hammer out the details. It might be a good idea to push the transaction through eBay, using a private listing if possible, just to ensure all the details of the transaction are good, but that’s a matter to discuss later.
No pressure. If you want to keep them, by all means do so. I’m in no rush to buy anything right now; so this is entirely your option. If anything about it bothers you in any way, feel free to say no, or back out of the deal at any point. I have no expectations and I will hold no grudges.
In every case, good luck and have a wonderful day.
Hey thanks man I really appreciate all your detailed help, and offer to buy those phones.
I contacted one of those resellers, and they unsurprisingly weren’t interested in anything. I probably won’t try to put aftermarket firmware on them, I looked into it a bit and it seems it never really took off. Plus I live in an apartment. I’ll try to offload them on eBay or something.
I’m certainly interested in getting you these phones, I have no use for them, and it seems like you do haha. Whatever is a fair price for you is fine by me, I’m not looking to get rich. I’ll try to send you a PM, I don’t even know if Lemmy supports that.
You know HAM radio? It’s kinda interesting, because people can use it to talk to each other and it technically doesn’t require any infrastructure. But there are also repeaters in cities that can increase the range.
I’ve been wondering why people don’t try to do something similar with WiFi? Some kind of city-wide WiFi network with repeaters. It’s probably difficult and I’m not sure if it would have any practical use. But the advantage over HAM radio is that it’s encrypted and doesn’t require a license. I imagine that people could use it to chat with each other and share stuff without having to rely on social media or the internet.
I’m a qualified amateur operator. I can operate on any ham bands up to 190W EIRP if I recall my countries regulations correctly.
The issue with doing something like wifi on ham bands technical issues finding radio chips capable of signalling at such a high rate of speed, on bands that are able to be used by hams. There’s also the requirement for hams to identify themselves on air, and the general use of AM/FM and derivative technology on ham bands and general resistance to the OFDM used as the main signal encoding for WiFi. So finding an OFDM capable radio transmitter/receiver for use in… say, the 2m band (144Mhz … ish) is basically impossible, and there’s no way to identify. You would have to build a new protocol and standard from the ground up and use very modified or rare/expensive radio chips, and likely build the drivers/firmware for it entirely yourself. People with the required hardware, software, baseband, radio, and firmware experience that are hams who want a product like WiFi for ham radio channels is extraordinarily rare.
As for city-wide WiFi/mesh networks: it has been attempted, and has seen some limited success, but doesn’t scale well with the usual protocols. Routing protocols like BGP, OSPF and IS-IS are meant for much larger IP blocks being routed between interfaces. A wireless mesh system would use a single interface (one radio) for both send and receive, which most protocols don’t support, and each “hop” or station on the mesh would only be advertising a single IP (or an extremely small set of IPs) per participating node.
Most routing protocols assume that every node on an interface can talk to every other node on the same interface and thus there’s no need to repeat or relay messages from an interface to the same interface.
There’s also no standards that allow wifi to use multiple channels/frequencies for tx/rx, eg, send on 5.45 GHz, and receive on 5.65Ghz. it simply isn’t something that any WiFi chip is capable of. So full duplex isn’t possible right now.
The common wifi frequencies are also extremely power limited and on bands that are prone to interruption. In the wild, there’s plenty of things that can disrupt 2.4Ghz and 5/6Ghz transmissions. With the power limits, to go any significant distance, you need directional antennas that limit free space path loss so the signal travels further. In the case of wireless internet service providers (WISP, not to be confused with the mobile carriers), they generally use panel or dish antennas to extend the range. For power output, at the high end, some bands allow for upwards of 5W of directional power, or 1W of omnidirectional power (in EIRP). On the low end, handheld ham radio units start at 5W of power, and can usually attenuate their transmitter to 1W or lower as an option. Household WiFi is usually around 0.1W of power per radio. Even cranking that up to the maximum legally allowed wattage won’t result in covering more than a few blocks of a city with a fairly poor signal overall; that signal is going to be fairly easily blocked, absorbed, reflected, or otherwise attenuated by just about everything, including, but not limited to the structure of your house.
Meanwhile, standing in my home with a 5W handheld transceiver operating on 70cm (440Mhz), I can hit a repeater that’s something like 10 miles away with a nearly perfect signal over FM, without assistance. OFDM signals would likely be scrambled beyond recognition at 2.4 or 5 GHz across that much of a gap, or even one that’s 1/10th as far, with only 1W of legal power, without using some kind of directional antenna or antenna array.
Don’t get me wrong, well configured wireless can go so far that you have to account for the curvature of the earth, but they’re always very very directional, using dish antennas or similar.
Don’t get me wrong, the ideas are great, but the challenges faced are enormous. It can quickly turn into a lifelong project to get something functional, and even then, there’s no guarantee that it will ever catch on as a product. The limitation for ham operators regarding encryption is problematic when it comes to data communication as well, since just about everything that’s data-driven on the internet implements SSL. Computers and systems expect encryption all over the place and bluntly, those messages cannot be sent over ham bands. There’s nuance to that regulation, at least in my country, but I won’t get into the fine print here.
Even so, there are some crude digital modes used by ham operators which are normally voice encoding or plain text encoding. Uses are limited on purpose. If you’re interested in longer distance emergency communications you could look into LoRA, which is relatively new.
There’s a lot more to say on this, but bluntly, I’ve said enough. It’s all interconnected, and I love it, but I’m just ranting now.
Thanks for a very detailed explanation! So it seems that this is almost impossible. Except for maybe a small part of a city.
The lack of encryption, privacy and anonymity in HAM radio would be an issue for me. Just like in mobile phones. But since you can use end-to-end encryption over WiFi (and some weaker, less useful encryption is used in mobile phones), maybe there are exceptions. I’ve heard of LoRA, but I wouldn’t want to use it, unless I’m allowed to encrypt the messages. It also seems that the message length is very limited, so using something like PGP might not always be possible.
Well, for basic WiFi to dramatically extend coverage, you would need to take a page from the WISP/mobile carrier playbook and set it up with semi directional panels, in a configuration that covers 365 degrees. Placing the units high up on a tower, angled down slightly, with their power levels as high as they can go.
Primarily using 2.4Ghz would provide better penetration of signals in the area, but there would also be more conflicts.
Still, as I’ve said, even in this configuration, you may get a few blocks of coverage at best… At least to a regular device with an Omni antenna, like a phone or laptop. The only way to extend any further would be to use directional antennas on both sides, which is what WISP companies do. In that case, you can generally transmit to anywhere in line of sight of the base antenna system. Being very high up vertically becomes a more significant factor since there’s plenty of buildings, trees, and other obstacles that are going to block the communication. As I mentioned, at extreme range, you’re going to contend with the curvature of the earth itself, so that’s something to bear in mind when going very very far with it.
Regulations allow for the public to use 2.4/5 GHz as well as 900mhz and, I believe, 430? MHz? There’s higher frequencies like 60Ghz, but at that wavelength, you start to see scattering and attenuation from atmospheric events like rain and fog. Those things still affect 2.4 & 5Ghz, but usually not significantly enough to cause a failure in the link. The ISM 5.8ghz band may be a good place to go for high speed data, but for simple (slow) data, 2.4 GHz will be more reliable.
The regulatory bodies that govern frequency use are fairly strict when it comes to what can be done without a license. The only way to guarantee that you can do pretty much whatever you want would be to request a frequency for your own uses from your local regulatory authority (in the US, it’s the FCC, in Canada it’s IC or industry Canada, other countries will have similar government organizations to manage the EM/RF airspace). With a license you may have power restrictions based on the area you intend to serve (they don’t want you blasting the signal so strongly that you encroach on other licensed people legally using their system in their area), but you should be free to use any mode (analog, digital, data, etc), with any level of encryption you want, and grant permission to anyone else to use the frequency in your designated area. This is how mobile providers operate, but usually they’re buying large bands of frequency ranges for use across the entirely of a state/province/country, so their pricing is well into six figures. It’s not cheap to get such licensing, likely well into the thousands per year, even for a modest area with a small frequency range. Additionally, your name goes on the license, and that’s usually made available to the public, though few ever actually look at that data, it is available nonetheless. You can otherwise anonymize the transmissions and encrypt the messages to your heart’s content. The challenge there is that everything that can transmit on those licensed bands is extremely expensive; since usually only businesses with direct need for such systems ever apply for a license like that. The only places I’ve known to use a licensed RF system have been physically large places, like airports (security, airlines etc.), large campus style institutions like universities and colleges, and parks services (even as small as water parks) many smaller businesses are illegally using FRS and GMRS for in-store communication; places like your local hardware store may do this. Larger franchise places are a mix of purpose built communication systems, like with the headsets commonly used by fast food restaurants, which are very short range and that is counterbalanced by the illegal use of residential systems like FRS for the same purpose.
Unlicensed residential communications like FRS are usually very short range and very power restricted, and the legislation (at least here) usually stipulates that they are only to be used for personal communication, not professional/business communication; so the use of such services in a commercial environment is illegal. However, enforcement is usually not very strict, and businesses do it anyways, and likely don’t get punished for such abuse of those systems because nobody is enforcing the rules against it. Businesses know that enforcement is poor and often disregard the potential risks of using those services illegally.
I know ham operators are generally very adamant about people following the rules and I’ve heard many stories of individuals thinking they can just use ham bands without proper identification or qualifications without consequence, much the same way as businesses do with FRS, but licensed operators have and do, track down such use and report it, and that’s about the only time I’ve heard that people get punished for their illegal use of frequencies and bands… when it is reported directly to the FCC/IC/whomever is in charge of the allocations. The only instances of reports that I’ve heard are from ham operators and city services like fire departments when you illegally broadcast on their channels.
Most of the unlicensed frequencies are generally the wild west of radio, and all manner of strange and unusual happenings occur on those bands. It’s usually few and far between that you’ll experience it, but it happens and often, nobody has the skill or care, to bother reporting it. Nonetheless it is illegal to broadcast over the frequency power limits and the penalties for being caught are steep, up to and including jail time; so it’s not something I would ever endorse. Regardless, you have been warned. Check your local laws from your regulatory authority and ensure you are complying with laws before turning on any transmitter (listening to any/every frequency is generally not restricted, though, understanding the transmissions is usually an issue, especially with digital/encrypted communications on licensed frequencies). YMMV on this.
Regardless of all of that, if you wish to pursue an emergency or wide spread communications system for data, including encrypted data, I wish you the best of luck. I’m happy to lend a hand and experiment along with you if you desire it. I’ve always felt that exclusively relying on primary communication systems, like mobile phone systems and public switched telephone networks (things that otherwise rely on infrastructure) is an inherent weakness. I’m an IT person by day, with specialty in wireless and networking technologies, so you’ve struck a chord here. I’m very interested in any data communication that can be used during a primary infrastructure failure. Personally I experienced the full force of such a failure a few years back when one of the major telecommunications providers in my country had a significant/system wide communications break down for more than 24 hours. I was a mobile subscriber to their service, and for that day, I was unable to use any data services on my cellphone, nor make our receive any calls. It was a wake up call that if there’s a large scale failure of the system I relied on, then I would be dead in the water in terms of being able to get help in an emergency. At the time I didn’t have my ham license, and I was unable to even check and make sure my loved ones were okay while I was away from a working WiFi connection. At the time I was traveling to work, and while on the road I was entirely communications blind. Something I haven’t experienced for nearly 20 years. Unfortunately, I’m the only person in my family to have achieved my amateur qualification, but I can at least request that someone with a working connection call and talk to someone (over the radio), if such an event reoccurs. Having a method to communicate with them in the event of another such failure without requiring them to go through the amateur qualification would be something very desirable to me.
I was thinking about this WiFi idea, because I think it could be useful in case of an emergency. I think there should be services hosted inside of cities. I mean in their local networks. It could be local government websites and maybe things like a Lemmy instance where people could talk. Even stuff like Open Street Map could maybe be useful. So if the city was for some reason cut off from the internet and the mobile network, most people would still be able to communicate and have access to information. It would be like having a tiny backup of the internet (at least whatever is possible to self host). I think it’s a big oversight to only rely on the internet.
Something like this could maybe be also useful in countries with authoritative governments, which sometimes cut off internet access in the entire country. In the long term the government would probably find out and try to stop it, though.
But as you’ve explained, making something like this would require many people working together and ideally should probably be handled by a local government instead. It’s not something I plan on doing, it just seemed like a cool idea to think about.
I might try playing with LoRA for some other project some day, if I can legally use it without a license. But if I can’t encrypt the messages, then I would probably prefer to use WiFi (for short distances) instead.
In your case, to have emergency communications with your family, maybe CB radio or satellite phones would be a solution?
Much of the internet is both centralized and not. It was designed with redundancies in mind, so it can route around disconnections. The centralization part of it is that services like your ISP generally are very centralized to datacenters, so something “in city” may not be able to be accessed without the closest datacenter or internet exchange being online, each of which has multiple redundancies.
The only good way to do it would be over a city-wide public wifi that has all of the self-hosted information on the locally connected network. Only on that wifi network could you get access, since that system would be linked back to the internet/ISPs via the internet exchange or datacenter.
It would be an ambitious project. The AMPRnet is one such emergency wifi network. It requires a ham license but it’s all wifi based long distance communications. The ham license is for authorization to operate on the network, not a legal/technical requirement. They just won’t let non-hams connect.
People host all kinds of things on there, so it’s fairly robust overall.
As for emergency communications, in an actual emergency (risk to life and limb kind of deal) any person, whether qualified or not, has legal permission to use any radio they find. My family knows this. My concern is that they won’t know how to switch to a useful channel when such an emergency happens. I have several handheld radios, so there are a few around that they can grab. If I’m heading out of town with them, I try to bring a few, so if an emergency happens while we’re away, I can program and hand off a radio, and we can stay in contact if we need to split up at all during the emergency.
For everyday communications in a primary communications outage, we have some FRS radios which don’t require a license. They’re much shorter range, but would be useful to have in a pinch.
There’s a lot of decent options.
I’m actually looking into setting up a LoRA node, or something similar because there’s a spec that I came across for a mail detector IoT thing. It’s low power and uses LoRA. It should last several months on a fairly modest battery. It should be able to relay to us when mail is detected so we can go get it from the community mailbox thing when it is delivered. I should be able to tie it into our home automation stuff and just send out notifications when we need to go get it, or change the color of lights or something.
It will be my first step into this kind of thing, so I’ll see how it goes.
I’m sure I’ll post about it at some point.
I haven’t heard of AMPRnet before. Sounds interesting.
I wasn’t sure about that, so that’s good to know!
Mail detector sounds like a perfect use for LoRA. But I suspect that there is no security by default and anyone would be able to send you such a message if they were mean :).
Generally with mail, someone could just trigger the detector too… Heh.