
Decentralized internet is planned for Dubai, courtesy of startup Moeco - bl4derunner
https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/15/pied-pipers-decentralized-internet-is-planned-for-dubai-courtesy-of-startup-moeco/
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vidarh
The big challenge, as far as I can tell, is that the typical end user
equipment just generally is not suitable. You e.g. want equipment with longer
operating distance, and able to bridge multiple networks for example.

My home wifi barely stretches 50m down the road (yes I know they mention
Bluetooth, but bluetooth is even worse in this respect). Meanwhile you can get
outdoor wifi repeaters within the allowable output in the 5GHz channels in the
UK with ranges in the 1km-2km range that are still cheap, and directional
microwave equipment with theoretical ranges in the 100km range (major limit
there is going to be height - beyond a few km, the curvature of the earth
becomes a major hassle unless you can go higher gain).

Without that kind of distance, you need massive penetration to be able to
connect users at all, even if you aim to pass data over the open net as soon
as you get data to a node that is connected.

I live on a relatively high density London road, and I can typically see maybe
10 networks at any one time when travelling between home and my local train
station for example. There'll be multiple devices on each, but with that kind
of visibility it'll take a large proportion of users signing up to a service
like this before you even start getting any big benefits from it.

I do believe peer-to-peer setups can make sense for this, but unless our
smartphones gets massive upgrades in terms of antennas etc., I think building
something around higher gain outdoor wifi will be more likely to be viable.

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tudorw
I've no issue with what you describe, I will question whether a high density
London road may not be representative, anecdotally a foreign guest commented
that he was amused by my concept of a busy place, he remarked that even in the
busiest places in London his personal space was respected in a way he would
not expect in his local village. Peer to peer has loads of potential, I can
imagine a combination approach that makes the best of all available spectrum
and falls back to a paid access tier if things get bad, this is an interesting
area of technology as investment and innovation is less likely to come from
the incumbent.

~~~
vidarh
Even with 10x the density, you'd need very penetration to be able to create a
mesh.

I do agree that peer to peer has potential, but I think as I mentioned it has
more potential as a "house to house" than "person to person" thing _unless_ it
gets adopted by one of the major mobile networks and pushed very aggressively
(e.g. either made compulsory or pushed hard with discounts).

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fiatjaf
Amazing idea, it seems they're implementing Pieter Hintjens'
[https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/edgenet](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/edgenet)

But why a blockchain? How can you even have a blockchain if everything is
asynchronous and decentralized?

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nine_k
You will have the blockchain _slowly_.

Frankly, I don't see much use in blockchains besides _public_ verifiable high-
importance transactions where a significant number of parties does not trust
each other, and some may be actively subversive. That is, a public ledger.

For less public cases, mere encryption could suffice, which is much faster.
Most communications are between only two parties; they can check each other's
key fingerprint via phone or a third party they both trust, if they even
bother.

~~~
fiatjaf
You'll have a blockchain, but the outstanding majority of blocks will be
orphans and thus lost and invalid. Lots of promises will be broken.

You'll only know a transaction was confirmed after many months -- and before
you get a confirmed transaction you may have to issue the same transaction
hundreds of times.

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lykr0n
Sounds cool, but slow. Bluetooth and/or Blockchain are not synonymous with
speed.

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reallymental
Besides being slow, the local telcos don't even allow VoiP protocols, how will
this pass through

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mxuribe
I'm not sure i understand the benefits of blockchain here...though if they can
pull off the mesh aspect of this, then that's really awesome. I wonder though,
if the constant "peer hopping" (via bluetooth) won't drain the batteries of
mobiles? Then again, if a mesh-like network takes off, maybe antennas can be
tuned not to "catch" signals from far off cell towers but rather the next
closest mobile...which might require less power? This is not my expertise, so
will defer to other experts...Well, i'll say that the idea sounded cool on the
Silicon Vallet show, and it still sounds cool in real life...assuming they can
pull it off.

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mtgx
> Here’s the pitch: Remember that scene in the Silicon Valley HBO satire where
> they try to create a new Internet by connecting-up Smartphones using
> Bluetooth? Yes. I know. But these guys are actually doing it.

I guess this author hasn't heard of FireChat, and others like it:

[https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/20/firechat-for-ios-is-a-
hype...](https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/20/firechat-for-ios-is-a-hyper-local-
anonymous-chat-network-that-doesnt-need-an-internet-connection/)

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rovek
> non-decentralized

Is there a difference between centralised and non-decentralised?

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cantrip
Just the author not fully understanding what he's writing about.

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kbumsik
I don't know much about Blockchain but what is the benefit of using blockchain
for Bluetooth LE network or IoT? If we care about security aren't higher level
protocols doing that? AFAIK one of the biggest challenges in IoT field is to
reduce network overhead and latency because constrained wireless networks like
BLE are slow and not reliable. Doesn't blockchain significantly violate that?

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lykr0n
I'm not sure how blockchain would fit into the picture? Maybe more of a
buzzword soup than actual plans, or blockchain as in mesh network.

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abol3z
As I understand, the blockchain is used to track transactions between network
providers and users (providers sell network access to users' devices).

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mavendependency
LoRa is infinitely more reliable.

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danschumann
What about phone battery life?

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cortesoft
Aren’t all internets decentralized?

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sidzpah
Today's internet is more like "equal participation welcome", the
decentralization being talked about in the article is at the ISPs level.
Rather than having to choose from a few incompetent and monopolistic internet
connectivity providers, decentralization would individuals to share wifi
hotspots and create a mesh to which you can connect to. Ideally, this would
allow people to get rid of blood sucking ISPs and would not be affected by the
recent net neutrality disaster or any more of such but practically creating
reliable high-speed user-participated decentralized ISPs haven't been
possible, but might soon be.

~~~
cortesoft
Right, but at some point you are going to have to connect to an exchange if
you want to access the rest of the internet. How are you going to pay for that
connection?

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prophesi
IPFS and FileCoin, to the rescue!

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Quarrelsome
Call me crazy but if we have this then e-voting becomes easier to do because
locality is more inbuilt to the system making fraud harder because you can
more easily tie voting to geography/gps. i.e. in an internet based system the
votes can come from anywhere but in a system based in the physical world it
might be possible to track the votes to a geographic location and if 10k votes
come from a building site you can verify those votes are fraudulent as opposed
to a massive block of flats.

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Jhsto
I think that is unlikely. A vote is tied to a person, not a location. That
said, I think voting system like Estonia's, where you have a cryptographic key
on your ID, is the only correct way to do e-voting.

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Quarrelsome
you're still thinking old system. In new system geography is fine because
elections are cheap and you can do them weekly/daily. Fraud matters much less
because you can't do much damage in a day/week as opposed to the sort of terms
we have today. You can also temporarily back to the last known good recent
from a particular quadrant/zone. What matters is long-term, persistent fraud
and this can be audited against using geography and plausibility.

Sure a tourist can vote in one week but their vote is gone the next week after
they fly home. It would be a new paradigm so try not to use the mindset of the
old system where elections are expensive and results long-term.

