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   Tim Chambers (tchambers@indieweb.social)'s status on Saturday, 28-Feb-2026 22:28:32 JST Tim Chambers

   More evidence we need a form of mesh network peer to peer bridge to the open social web for time of internet blackouts. #iran

   • Embed this notice
     Ray McCarthy (raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie)'s status on Sunday, 01-Mar-2026 06:05:48 JST Ray McCarthy

     in reply to

     @tchambers
     That wouldn't work.

     Mesh networks are short range low-capacity wireless. They'll work well enough in a large premises, especially if a good percentage have ethernet or fibre, to allow WiFi roaming on multiple airpoints with one name.

     Iran also attempts to block satellite broadcast and Internet using a range of techniques.

     The mass market use either Mobile or cabled internet (various technologies) all of which are government controlled, or can be in every country.

   • Embed this notice
     Tim Chambers (tchambers@indieweb.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Mar-2026 06:06:28 JST Tim Chambers

     in reply to

     • Ray McCarthy

     @raymaccarthy I was thinking of something maybe Wi-Fi or Bluetooth enabled person to person even if phone to phone and that then would spill into the open social web when one of them hit a true open Internet….

   • Embed this notice
     Sharon Machlis (smach@masto.machlis.com)'s status on Sunday, 01-Mar-2026 08:07:26 JST Sharon Machlis

     in reply to

     @tchambers Amateur radio. It's not encrypted and not private, but I passed a lot of messages in and out of Sarajevo during the siege, and also shared info on what was going on from some ham operators there. It's possible to run TCP/IP over ham radio (I did it during the war) and relay signals until reaching a working backbone.
     Risky in hostile situations, should be low power & short transmissions.
     Meshtastic is interesting (I just bought a device) but not sure yet how reliable.

   • Embed this notice
     Tim Chambers (tchambers@indieweb.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Mar-2026 11:23:02 JST Tim Chambers

     in reply to

     • tjhowse

     Woza, looks like some one has done work on bridging this already.... kudos @tj

     https://indieweb.social/@brisbane_meshtastic@howse.social

     "This bot bridges Meshtastic traffic from the Brisbane area onto Mastodon! It's currently under development, so maybe unreliable or spammy.
     This bot is not official in any way. Its brain is here: https://github.com/tjhowse/meshtastic2mastodon and it was made by @tj
     Depends on: http://meshtastic.org/ https://wiki.mbug.com.au/"

   • Embed this notice
     Tim Chambers (tchambers@indieweb.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Mar-2026 11:49:43 JST Tim Chambers

     in reply to

     And cool demo of #reticulum chat app in action here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv-GbmlvPn4

   • Embed this notice
     J.R. Orci (orci@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Mar-2026 12:19:06 JST J.R. Orci

     in reply to

     @tchambers
     I just started to tinkering with reticulum this week. You on there too?

   • Embed this notice
     Tim Chambers (tchambers@indieweb.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Mar-2026 12:19:06 JST Tim Chambers

     in reply to

     • J.R. Orci

     @orci Not yet but if I am keeping my eyes open for easy ways to tinker and learn.

   • Embed this notice
     tjhowse (tj@howse.social)'s status on Sunday, 01-Mar-2026 22:02:03 JST tjhowse

     in reply to

     @tchambers No worries! I hope someone finds it useful. It'd need a little bit of work to make it more generally useful, currently it only listens for messages on channel zero, and the "ANZ" topic is hardcoded.

     I have vague plans to check out #meshcore sometime, and write a similar bridge. However I couldn't find any published protobuf definitions for meshcore, so it's on pause for now.