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M_bara • yesterday at 7:27 PM • 5 replies • view on HN

OTOH, third world or dictatorships won’t blink when it comes to turning off an entire country - example is Tanzania in the recent election.. are there solutions for communication when international links are cut? A lan like solution scaled to cities or an entire country that is disconnected from the rest of the world?


Replies

3RTB297 • today at 10:51 AM

To be fair, those are usually cases where the reason they turned off the internet is entirely unrelated to anyone doing something questionable, and more about personal political whims as security theater. As long as you keep the bribes flowing to the dictatorship, you aren't at risk of being shut down for what you're doing.

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Pifanjr • yesterday at 7:38 PM

You can receive data over radio waves, which would be pretty hard to block country-wide I think. Sending data would be a bit trickier without being caught.

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setopt • yesterday at 8:10 PM

> are there solutions for communication when international links are cut?

How far can you scale wireless mesh nets?

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teiferer • yesterday at 8:46 PM

> are there solutions for communication when international links are cut

There are, but currently the most promising one is under control of a very rich and very politically opinionated person who is not afraid to use that power in any way he pleases.

A truly distributed version (with multiple tech stacks, ownership and control) would be the real solution but I don't see any way this could ever manifest.

brightball • yesterday at 7:37 PM

This is essentially the case for Starlink

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