Start your own Internet Resiliency Club

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Scope of “Internet Resiliency”

  • Many see LoRa/Meshtastic as useful but very limited: essentially short text messaging with tiny bandwidth and high latency, not a real “replacement internet.”
  • Several argue the article is really about coordination between infrastructure professionals during catastrophic outages, not about keeping the whole public online.

LoRa / Meshtastic vs Alternatives

  • LoRa is praised for low power, low cost, license‑free use and multi‑km hops, but heavily criticized for:
    • Poor scalability (flood routing, collisions, congestion with > tens of nodes).
    • Fragility in dense cities and during crises when many people transmit.
    • Extremely low throughput (text only; voice/files unrealistic).
  • Meshcore is mentioned as a competitor, seen as more organized but with closed mobile apps and unclear goals.
  • Some recommend skipping LoRa entirely for serious work and using:
    • Ham radio + APRS (including via satellites), HamWAN, or microwave links.
    • Simple VHF/UHF handhelds with repeaters, which are considered more robust and flexible.

Licensing, Legality, and Practice

  • Strong debate over “no license needed in emergencies”:
    • One side insists rules allow emergency use without a license.
    • Others cite regulations showing those exceptions apply only to licensed amateur stations, not random unlicensed users.
  • Broad agreement that:
    • You don’t need a license to receive, and just receiving is already very valuable.
    • In a crisis, unpracticed, unlicensed users will likely cause harmful interference.
    • Getting a ham license and joining a local club greatly improves real‑world readiness.

Infrastructure, Power, and Local Mesh Ideas

  • Many emphasize that power is the real bottleneck. Extended blackouts quickly affect fuel, food, water, sewage and hospitals; electronics become secondary.
  • Suggestions:
    • Home labs, self‑hosting, and local mirrors (Wikipedia, maps, technical docs via Kiwix).
    • Rooftop WiFi meshes or community networks (e.g., Freifunk, HamNet, city‑scale microwave backbones) for higher‑bandwidth local resilience.
    • Solar + batteries for routers, fridges, and minimal infrastructure; some warn visible off‑grid setups could be targets in true societal collapse.

Starlink and Centralization

  • Starlink is seen as powerful for consumer‑level resilience, especially with “pauseable” roaming.
  • But many reject it as a primary resilience tool: centrally controlled, politically influenceable, and dependent on a single corporation.

Software, Protocols, and “Smaller Internets”

  • Critiques of Meshtastic’s routing and internet‑centric tooling (web flasher, online docs) lead to calls for:
    • Offline‑first tooling and documentation.
    • More scalable protocols like Reticulum, NNCP, Winlink, NNTP, and classic ham modes.
  • Some dream of a “smaller internet”: text‑heavy, low‑bandwidth protocols (Gopher, Gemini) and browser‑level offline caching to survive outages.