How to run a city-wide wireless network from a drawer

https://www.thingsquare.com/blog/articles/iot-mesh-large-scale-testing/

by adunk • 4 years ago

207 52 4 years ago

thingsquare.com

qprofyeh• 4 years ago

Off-topic: I find the 360-degree drone shot totally amazing. Is there a place where I can find more?

ck2• 4 years ago

It appears to be from a collection from this photographer:

https://www.pexels.com/photo/aerial-view-of-city-during-nigh...

coinspin• 4 years ago

This sounds like one of those tools that was built internally that could spin out to be it's own project/startup. It's such a clever and easy way to solve their problems.

jotm• 4 years ago

Is this something you can get paid for, as in a job?

ja27• 4 years ago

In the field, devices are far away from each other. So they will only be able to hear the devices that are next to it.

And I'm out. Mesh networkers really should spend a bit of time re-learning all the lessons from decades of ham radio packet networks.

anony23• 4 years ago

Do you have any suggested content for someone who is starting from 0?

schrectacular2• 4 years ago

I'm not a HAM guy - would you care to distill the lesson that they are ignoring? I infer that, by definition, this is not a mesh, but more of a train. And I further infer that a single node falling out would break the chain and split the "mesh". But I'm just guessing.

emteycz• 4 years ago

What stops a node from redirecting traffic to another nearby node in case of failure/timeout?

myself248• 4 years ago

I think both the statement and the criticism are oversimplifications.

It sounds like the criticism hints at the hidden node problem. (Briefly: One of the largest problems in wireless networking. A and B can hear each other, B and C can hear each other, but A and C can't. So when C wants to talk to B, how does it know if A is already transmitting and B's receiver is already listening? In large networks this gets hugely important.)

But it sounds like the simulation is already maximally pessimistic about it -- there's no RF attenuation in the drawer, so all the devices occupy the radio channel whenever they're transmitting. So I would imagine that software that works well in this case, would probably also do decently in the real world. (As opposed to software tested on a naively-simplified network of RF cabling and attenuators, which would not model the hidden node problem's complexities very well.)

So, while the real world will surely be more complex than they hint at in their sentence, I think the simulation drawer is also better than you hint at in yours.

There are nuances, of course, and frankly there are RF network simulators they could be using, but I think the presented MAC-filter approach is not terrible.

adunk2• 4 years ago

OP of the article here. You are absolutely correct. The statement in the article is very much a simplification: in the real world, wireless communication is tricky. Not only are there issues such as the hidden node problem (and the exposed node problem, for that matter), but it also changes over time.

It is possible to take these issues into consideration, but as you say, that requires a very different infrastructure than what this article is talking about. The way we do it at Thingsquare is to use a software-based simulator where we can both emulate the software on the devices and have full control of the simulated radio medium - if we need it. Sometimes using RF attenuators and/or cabling is useful.

In the end, what it comes down to that each tool has one or more use cases where it shines, but there is no one tool that fits all.

jimmaswell2• 4 years ago

Someone somewhere must have their device connected to the internet right? Is this just to benefit the one in a thousand with no wifi?

detaro3• 4 years ago

What gave you the impression this is for end-user internet access?

jimmaswell2• 4 years ago

The page really isn't clear but I assumed it was for IoT devices like a coffee maker. If all the coffee makers talk to each other, great, but someone has to connect to the internet at some point. I'm clearly missing some context here.

delabay8• 4 years ago

What's OPs view of helium network? It basically solved the issue of network deployment for LoRaWAN. It covers the vast majority of American population centers, Western Europe, and soon south america and APAC.

merlinscholz• 4 years ago

Do you have a link for that? I can only find Blockchain stuff under that name

extra88• 4 years ago

I think that's what they're referring to, www.helium.com.

"Mining HNT with Hotspots is done via radio technology, not expensive or wasteful GPUs. … Hotspots work together to form a new global wireless network and undertake ‘Proof-of-Coverage’."

"Tokens & Data Credits: The network uses two units of exchange: HNT, a new cryptocurrency, and Data Credits. Proof-of-Coverage: Our novel proof-of-work algorithm enables Hotspots to be rewarded trustlessly. Helium LongFi: LongFi combines the low-power, long-range LoRaWAN wireless protocol with the Helium Blockchain."

I get the impression is it's to create a cryptocurrency motivation for providing good network coverage. I don't get how it works but assume, like all things involving blockchain, there are externalities or unintended effects that make it not a good solution.

ALittleLight2• 4 years ago

I would be curious to read about use cases from people who use the helium network as a network. When I previously looked online all the information I saw was about people setting up the miners and didn't see anything about what using the network is actually like.

I was disappointed to see that the network seems intended for transmitting very small amounts of data. For example, by my messing around with their calculator, transmitting a gigabyte of information would cost ~400 dollars.

delabay8• 4 years ago

Lora is for low data rates, such as sensors, location trackers, IoT applications. If your town has a Starbucks, you most likely have coverage right now.

The network gets global utilization processing about 40M packets a day. Not big in terms of dollar $ yet, but people are indeed using it. Definitely nobody is suggesting you watch YouTube or even send emails with it.

adunk2• 4 years ago

OP here. I think Helium(*) is super interesting. They are building an access network for LoRa by using crypto coins to incentivize people to deploy base stations. You essentially get crypto coins for every packet that passes through your own base station. And anyone who wants to use the network pay for access using crypto coins.

The idea is that if you are designing and selling a product, say, a dog collar, you can build Helium(*) capabilities into your product by including a LoRa chip in it. Your customers can then use the Helium(*) network to communicate with the dog collar, for example to locate a missing dog. The fees for this service then flows to the people that have deployed the base stations that facilitate this communication.

To me, this seems like a great way both to build an access network and to get people invested in (and excited in) the process. There are now also a bunch of companies who are taking advantage of this network for their products.

(What we at Thingsquare is doing, and what is discussed in the article, is a little different from what Helium(*) is doing. We are providing a single-purpose network for one system/product, such as a street lighting system. That entire system is connected using its own mesh network, and that mesh network is typically not used for anything but that product's communication needs.)

*: Helium recently changed their name to Nova Labs but I'm not sure exactly how that will effect the naming of the Helium network: https://blog.helium.com/elevating-the-helium-network-with-ne...

thepasswordis• 4 years ago

I think many people don't realize the scale of the helium network. It is absolutely massive, and people are also using it.

https://explorer.helium.com/

Zoom in on your neighborhood and look at the number of nodes.

Here's my small town in Northern Maine: https://explorer.helium.com/hotspots/hex/882b1a06a5fffff

There are three hotspots available for a relatively obscure IoT network. Not only that, if you look at the data tab on these, they're actually getting use. Really cool.

xyst• 4 years ago

MAC address filtering comes with its own downsides. For one, it’s very easy to spoof. So you can act as a node in the mesh network if you copy the MAC address of a known node.

Implications: elevated access within mesh network, capturing traffic between clients and the mesh network, localized disruption of mesh network due to unstable connection caused by duplicate MAC addresses on a single network

tenacious_tuna• 4 years ago

It doesn't sound like they're using MAC filtering for Real Security (TM), just to emulate device visibility in the lab.

detaro3• 4 years ago

All that is entirely irrelevant for what they are describing in the post.

zackmorris• 4 years ago

I did a quick search to see if mesh networks have gone mainstream yet:

https://futureprepping.com/mobile-phone-mesh-networks/

The radio dongles are superfluous and I can't think of any engineering reason why all cell phones can't just communicate with others nearby already. Maybe not for cellular voice and data, but certainly for something akin to AppleTalk back in the 80s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleTalk

When I got to college in 1995, all of the Macs were on the campus-wide LAN and lots of Mac users had their public folders shared. There were tons of apps and games and even little personal BBS-style areas where people posted stories and you could share files to their drop box. It was all free and open and frictionless and stands out vividly in my mind as a vision of what we thought the internet was going to be.

If we had that, it would be trivial to run something like IPFS to bypass the ISPs, even without paid cellular service. Then anyone could connect through their tunnel provider of choice and bypass any privacy concerns. The speed would be proportional to the number of nodes, so many thousands of times faster than internet today is, or ever can be.

With the debates around net neutrality and the cost of streaming, it's like we've forgotten that the only cost of the internet could be the electricity required to run a cell phone.

dopidopHN2• 4 years ago

My bet is on LoRa being shipped with flagship phones.

Vladimof2• 4 years ago

An open alternative to LoRa would be nice...

https://revspace.nl/DecodingLora

thrashh• 4 years ago

The electricity required is precisely the problem why we don’t do it.

And it’s not so much the power that it requires but that the extremely low energy density of lithium batteries means we have to minimize power usage as much as possible.

contingencies4• 4 years ago

I see no reason why mesh networking should need a huge amount more power than traditional mobile data. If we take the assumption that the vast majority of potential mesh members are unwanted (ie. you are not running a 'fully open' mesh network) then you can trivially ignore data that does not match an originator to which you have pre-approved listening. Similar to ethernet MAC filtering, I believe this is how implementation works in silicon. And indeed this seems to be the case. https://docs.kernel.org/driver-api/80211/mac80211.html?highl...

If you were relaying a lot of traffic for approved peers, then sure you are going to have a higher power profile. However, if you are doing this on an ongoing basis you are probably not battery-constrained (eg. you are connected to a larger power supply such as a vehicle, etc.) and you are potentially talking lower signal strength and closer peers. So it's really an application-specific concern.

godelski• 4 years ago

I think if someone could build and demonstrate a cheap node that could be set up and run things like matrix and post it to HN that it could take off more. I think a lot of people know about mesh networks but have no idea how to set one up, legality, and can afford it (put me in this camp). But if it's something that is straightforward and you could cheaply deploy all around the city, then I think people would start putting them up.

guessbest• 4 years ago

This used to be pretty common until applications like Napster took the usecase for p2p to mainstream for copyright music filesharing. Then p2p got a lot more scrutiny. Also, since it is hard to create a search index for wireless devices that may be offline, the mesh network becomes a bit of a darknet.

Vladimof2• 4 years ago

The radio dongles are superfluous and I can't think of any engineering reason why all cell phones can't just communicate with others nearby already.

Google is not willing to allow ad-hoc wifi (at least last time I checked).

contingencies4• 4 years ago

Traditionally in the US, carriers own customers and mobile device manufacturers distribute through them. Many customers lease-to-own handsets on 'plans', with DRM in-handset to ensure the customer can't easily leave the 'deal'. However, Apple began to change this status quo by launching the iPhone and demanding customer ownership. Carriers derive revenues from customer network use. Any carrier that sees a major push toward dropping them is not going to be happy. But it will happen, eventually. But not if Android fails to support it. We desperately need better firmware. Everyone is locked in. There is no better time for an open phone...

If you try to ban the future, it will just happen elsewhere. - Paul Graham (2017)

joshspankit• 4 years ago

You’ve just outlined a lot of reasons why we don’t:

1) Filesharing went from “harmless, only a few geeks do it” to “theft on a level that will put ‘us’ out of business”

1a) Media companies and device makers merged which means that device makers are now beholden to the copyright regime. Previously they argued “we just make tools, we can’t be responsible for how people use them” but we’ve lost those allies.

2) Openly sharing folders by default was great when everyone knew what they were doing, but the public now recognizes that there are real consequences when people don’t know what they are doing. From being “exposed as an imposer” (harmless and common imposter syndrome) to all manner of life/death consequences. It’s a whole different landscape.

3) No protocol is secure forever. Having all devices communicate with each other means that it’s only a matter of (usually a short) time before people can view other people’s personal information, and that leads right to point 2.

4) Similar to point 1, service providers have deals with device manufacturers and those providers don’t want people to be able to bypass them. They even write terms of service that say you’re not allowed to share with your neighbours so that even in the densest cities they can charge all 500 households that are within wifi range of each other though that creates a worse experience as the signals clobber each other.

Uptrenda• 4 years ago

Wow, what a cool service. It would be fascinating to see what could be done if you bought a lot of plugin devices and then just gave them out to neighbors.

kragen• 4 years ago

Note that Adam Dunkels, who wrote this writeup and posted it here, is one of the most accomplished embedded programmers in the world; if you've done TCP/IP on a computer without an OS in the last ten years, you probably used his lwIP stack. What you might not know is that lwIP was originally written for his free-software operating system Contiki, which can run working web browsers not only on a Commodore 64 but even a Commodore PET.

A city-sized IPv6 mesh network built out of handheld-sized devices was science fiction 25 years ago. Metricom's Ricochet showed it was possible, without the IPv6, about 23 years ago. And after decades of resistance and sandbagging from regulators, Thingsquare is finally making it happen in real life.

How to run a city-wide wireless network from a drawer

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