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  • Gemini over LoRa Possible?

    From Andrew Singleton@singletona082@ctrl-c.club to tilde.projects on Fri Jan 17 19:06:47 2025
    Gemini being text oriented makes it feel like it would work in a low
    bandwidth application, but at the same time there is the fact it uses
    TLS and I don't know how much overhead that introduces or how much more fragility it introduces to traffic between nodes than just transmitting plaintext (ala mercury protocol. Solderpunk's stripping Gemini down
    further.) I'm not married to the idea of Gemini over LoRa, but I want
    LoRa to be able to do more than just SMS style communicating, and while
    there are BBS's that run over meshtastic (that even have mail
    functionality and content synching between differing boards,) I feel
    the more that can be done over loRa the more attractive it would be as
    a sort of long link that stitches together high bandwidth islands of
    more standard wifi. Yes I am aware that there is a 900mhz wifi
    standard, and that does seem to provide a greater distance than
    standard, but at the same time? What I have read (Could be wrong) puts
    its max practical range at a few miles, vs LoRa realistically getting
    ten to twenty miels on a good run, and a hundred or so if at the top
    of a high point with good sight lines. Distances need to be bridged,
    and the days of being able to piggyback off of the phone system, I
    think, are long past.

    Just ... staring at the problem that prevents a homespun alternitive to
    the increasingly overly commercialized and now feeling outright hostile
    web. Saving the web isn't something I feel I can do. Making a
    decentralized thing that can endure? Maybe I can nudge people smarter
    than me in a favorable direction.

    --- Synchronet 3.20a-Linux NewsLink 1.2
  • From yeti@yeti@tilde.institute to tilde.projects on Sat Jan 18 12:37:07 2025
    Andrew Singleton <singletona082@ctrl-c.club> wrote:

    Gemini being text oriented makes it feel like it would work in a low bandwidth application,

    As would Gopher, HTTP, NEX, Spartan, ... and lots of other alternatives.

    but at the same time there is the fact it uses TLS and I don't know
    how much overhead that introduces or how much more fragility it
    introduces to traffic between nodes than just transmitting plaintext
    (ala mercury protocol.

    I saw examples of SSH over LoRa. So SSL/TLS seems to work.

    Yes I am aware that there is a 900mhz wifi standard,

    And there is LoRa-2.4G too, but I haven't read enough about that.

    and that does seem to provide a greater distance than standard, but at
    the same time? What I have read (Could be wrong) puts its max
    practical range at a few miles, vs LoRa realistically getting ten to
    twenty miels on a good run, and a hundred or so if at the top of a
    high point with good sight lines.

    Range Tests
    https://meshtastic.org/docs/overview/range-tests/

    Radio Settings
    https://meshtastic.org/docs/overview/radio-settings/

    Distances need to be bridged, and the days of being able to piggyback
    off of the phone system, I think, are long past.

    I see no way to get acceptable speed over long distances by legal means.

    In some countries the regulations seem to allow transmitters strong
    enough to bridge larger distances.

    HERMES (High-frequency Emergency and Rural Multimedia Exchange System)
    Code and documentation of the HERMES system communication
    https://github.com/DigitalHERMES

    We typically have flatrate landlines. Unluckily now mutated to VoIP,
    but finding modems that use a modulation compatible with that still is
    not impossible. Finding digital neighbours to connect to over them is
    the bigger problem and so my modems just are sitting in their boxes.

    Getting Dial-Up To Work Over VOIP Isn’t Always Easy
    https://hackaday.com/2024/12/19/getting-dial-up-to-work-over-voip-isnt-always-easy/

    A digital neighbour got 28.8k/s using an USB-Modem over a German VoIP
    phone "line". I played with the same modems in 2021, but don't remember
    the speed.
    --
    2. Hitchhiker 17: (110) "Careful with that hammer, sir," he said.
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  • From Andrew Singleton@singletona082@ctrl-c.club to tilde.projects on Sun Jan 26 12:51:49 2025
    On Sat, 18 Jan 2025 12:37:07 +0042
    yeti <yeti@tilde.institute> wrote:

    As would Gopher, HTTP, NEX, Spartan, ... and lots of other
    alternatives.

    I'd seen a guy use meshtastic to connect to a mystic bbs with the BBS
    not having any sort of awareness of what was being used as the network
    layer. So a lot is in theory possible, but what would best be served
    over LoRa?

    Mystic BBS over Meshtastic:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uO3v8Ew_-vE

    I know nomadnet is a thing, but it feels intentionally hostile to
    anyone unwilling to command line. Mind you I think it's COOL, but at
    the same time you aren't going to get mindshare off of 'here install
    termux on your phone and then a keyboard with all the keys and then-'

    nomadnet:
    https://github.com/markqvist/nomadnet

    I focused on gemini both because 'oh cool text first and at the
    forefront protocol' combined with 'reflowable text and you arne't
    having in line oddball events be it formatting or other' along with
    'nothing style related is transmitted. presentation is entirely at the
    user's end.' Andthe biggest reason: 'one Request. One Response.' No
    chaining requests, there's no cookies, no Shennanagins that would cause connection bloat.

    But i don't know if it's viable as a basis or if the moment you try
    using it in a network where nodes shift and change round nothing can
    link to anything that isn't on the same node.

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  • From yeti@yeti@tilde.institute to tilde.projects on Sun Jan 26 20:27:42 2025
    Andrew Singleton <singletona082@ctrl-c.club> wrote:

    I'd seen a guy use meshtastic to connect to a mystic bbs with the BBS
    not having any sort of awareness of what was being used as the network
    layer. So a lot is in theory possible, but what would best be served
    over LoRa?

    Nothing?

    You have a small packet size and transceivers that only get long range
    by switching to very low baud rates. That additionally takes more
    transmission time and the percentage of transmission time you are
    allowed to use is regulated too in some countries. Here (EU, 868MHz) we
    only may transmit at max 10% of the time, so 6 minutes per hour.

    Mobile LoRa at 868MHz (so no roof antenna) and Long/Fast settings (which wouldn't even count as a an acceptable speed for a serial terminal)
    barely manages to bridge 500m in spaces dense with buildings, a tester
    claims and thinks that even were impressive.

    Slower modulation probably can get a bit further, but you may end at
    speeds of less than 100 bytes per second and slower means the 10% time
    rule hits you even after less key presses.

    Within some hundred meters around my home I can imagine LoRa or
    Meshtastic being interesting to connect to my systems, but I gave up the
    idea that this is fit for the job of talking to others over long
    distance.

    Additionally my two LoRa transceivers run unstable with the Meshtastic
    software and I'm waiting for some time to pass and new releases to
    appear.


    Status quo so far:

    If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

    :.(
    --
    I do not bite, I just want to play.
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