
Cuban youth build secret computer network despite Wi-Fi ban - markmassie
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CB_CUBA_SECRET_NETWORK?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
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chris_overseas
I stayed in a casa particular in Baracoa, Cuba, a couple of years ago. The
owner had an illegal Internet connection that was beamed down via a Pringles
can style setup from a tourist hotel on top of a nearby hill (apparently fancy
tourist hotels there often have unrestricted Internet). He would lose his
connection for a day or two each month when the setup had to be removed and
hidden from the local inspector. I can't remember exactly how much he said he
was paying but it was a lot even by Western standards, something like
US$200/month, and the performance was pretty awful.

~~~
mikeash
Interesting story. Do you happen to know what he did with his internet access?
Look at pictures of cats and argue with strangers like the rest of us?

~~~
chris_overseas
Heh... he was one of the many doctors in Cuba and had been fortunate enough to
travel to a couple of countries to work, so he'd had a bit of a taste of the
outside world. As far as I could tell he mostly used the Internet to keep
informed on what was really going on in the world, without the censorship or
propaganda that affected the local news sources. Based on some of the things
he said I suspected he was very active politically though I didn't feel it was
wise or fair to question him about that, as much as I wanted to.

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NovaS1X
I love reading these kinds of stories so much. To me, this is the essence of a
hacker and the spirit of people who are simply passionate about technology and
the belief of freedom of information.

It feels cyberpunk and innovative. I can just feel the character of this
network and the interesting people who've built it. These are the technology
types that I love talking with, these are the passionate ones who are
passionate even when it's not convenient.

It takes an honest and faithful heart to do these things, and I find that
beautiful.

~~~
irremediable
What a lovely tribute. I hesitate to bother you, but would you mind sharing
some other examples of such "technology types" that you know about?

~~~
nsxwolf
FYI: I downvoted you because your reply seemed to be a weirdly hostile
response to an innocent comment.

~~~
TrevorJ
Huh, I read it as pretty much the opposite.

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hyperbovine
Almost seven years ago, I opened up my MacBook in downtown Havana and was
shocked to find dozens of wi-fi networks appearing up. This makes so much more
sense now.

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brianbreslin
the chinese could have been selling the cubans Wuawei gear for YEARS. That
stuff is comparable to US stuff from cisco or whomever. So the argument that
US restrictions inhibited their net access is pure propaganda. Is there a
fiber link to cuba from anywhere else in the Caribbean ? I know the NAP of
Americas link in Miami goes around cuba.

so assuming the US eases restrictions, how fast could a true blanketing of the
country or at least Havana occur with modern grade Wifi gear? Can solar be
used to supplement the poor electrical infrastructure?

~~~
leke
I think it's a case of the leaders restricting the web to its citizens. They
have it, but you need to be special to get it.

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c0decracker
This reminds me of neighborhood networks of late 90s in post-Soviet era
countries like Belarus and Ukraine that were created for somewhat different
reasons but for pretty much exactly the same purpose. One time we used ancient
ARCNet over the regular TV coax cable with whopping 2.5mbit throughput on a
good day.

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secfirstmd
Wonder are they using any of the open source tools for mesh networking like
Commotion Wireless

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blueskin_
Why does Cuba still have oppressive policies such as banning internet access
if they want the US to stop enforcing sanctions on them? Seems the change
should be both ways to me. Such a shame that each seems to want the other to
act first, when if we put them both in a room and told them they'd have to
come to an agreement before they could be let out, the embargo and oppressive
policies would both be over in hours.

~~~
nykwana
>Why does Cuba still have oppressive policies

Oppressive policies like hosting America's 21st century concentration camps at
Gitmo?

~~~
blueskin_
Also true, although Obama shares the blame for having promised to close it
down and not doing so.

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hectorxp
Some insights:

My guess is this network is something the government have under control, and
they are just experimenting to see how people behave in a connected
environment.

I worked as freelancer in Cuba for over 10 years, so having internet was top
priority for me. I started while studying in the univ, stealing professor's
accounts who had internet access, some friends were separated from the
university when got caught, fortunately I made it through. After graduated the
real "illegal activities" began, met a friend of a friend who was selling
"legal" internet dialup connections (56bkit/s) 120 hours a month for $160
(yes! dollars), "legal" meaning: foreigners students in cuba are allowed to
have internet from their rentals, so someone inside the telecommunication
company (only one in cuba ETECSA) created one of these accounts for you.
Eventually this guy was caught too, and my hunt for connectivity started once
again. A bug on an government controlled intranet allowed you to navigate
(only HTTP no HTTPS) if you happened to know a magic query string, hmmm need
outside help, talked to a friend outside cuba who had a hosting to put a
tunnel/proxy on port 80, this didn't last long either, next option, a guy in a
government company was selling internet (illegal dialup, but only at 33kb/s
for technical reasons), this was "technically" 24h, but you shouldn't used on
working hours for obvious reasons, $250/month, for the first time I was able
to download something greater than 50MB without resume. Oh!! HTTP 1.1 what a
relief!! websites serving files without resume don't know the pain they cause
to us. Well, all sorts of these stories happened until I found the "GUY", this
guy had internet via satellite, he paid the subscription to HugeNET through a
third party. He built a wifi network with APs and some handmade antennas, but
to join to his network you needed to have an potent AP at least 50 ft from the
ground and be located nearby one of his APs. After managing the infrastructure
I finally had a decent internet connection, at a minimal cost $150. At some
point HugeNET cancelled all the connections in cuba, and happiness ended. The
bright side of the lack of internet in cuba is that you really need to focus
and learn the hard way, there's no way you can see a youtube video, skype,
play games, or load endless facebook pages; every time you have an error, the
answer is not two google/stackoverflow clicks away. You need to learn about
everything, from communication protocols, to how the browser's cache works, to
repair your own computer. No technical support, no skype, no G3/4 on your
phone, nothing, just 56kbit/s max 5~6h a day, and a hard drive full of pirated
books.

There are a lot of people freelancing in cuba, so if at some point you had
outsourced some work and your provider disappear for a couple of days, don't
be so hard at them, they might be fighting harder than you think to deliver.

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yuhong
I wonder if the recent changes in exporting from Cuba will change things.

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justizin
This is so completely out of Cory Doctorow's "Little Brother". Brilliant book,
highly suggest reading.

Goes to show how accurate his estimation of what censored youth will do was.

~~~
zhemao
Except for the fact that it has the tacit approval of the authorities and is
monitored by volunteers for pornography or political discussions. The Xnet
system in "Little Brother" was feasible because it was working on top of a
well-established existing infrastructure. A system like Snet could not operate
in defiance of the authorities because it could easily be dismantled by taking
down the key links and arresting the operators.

~~~
justizin
They're definitely different, I forget _all_ the technical details of Xnet,
having last read the book a couple years ago, I was mostly talking about the
show of human ingenuity.

Xnet was certainly "informally monitored", though.

~~~
justizin
Wow, pretty shitty that I was downvoted for this comment, when I personally
upvoted the one before it.

#discourse

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grobinson
Researchers at MIT built an 802.11 mesh network some years back. All it would
take would be one or two gateway nodes in the middle of the mesh and you would
have Internet at a tolerable speed. It would also save having to lay cables
over your neighbours.

[http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~srini/15-744/papers/roofnet-
mobicom05...](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~srini/15-744/papers/roofnet-
mobicom05.pdf)

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dharma1
what's the best hardware to go for an el cheapo mesh network with decent range
these days? tp-link with openwrt? ubiquiti?

~~~
hultner
Well I have no experience actually setting up this but some high power
routers/access points with high gain antennas would probably be preferable (at
least if both sides use comparable hardware). I don't know how well the
software stands up from software such as Amped Wireless equipment but they'd
probably be a good from an hardware standpoint. But it might be cheaper jam
wifi-cards in the already available computers and running local software.

I once needed internet access from an server with no physical network access,
however I had an friend living across the hall (quite thick concrete and brick
walls but hardwood doors). That time I were rather successful running two
cheapo PCI wifi-cards with external antennas I had laying around. Used lagg
interfaces (link aggregation in failover mode) in FreeBSD and got a workable
remote terminal session over mosh. It wasn't optimal but it certainly worked.

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pekk
And what if it turned out that the State Dept. was helping to bankroll this?
It would be consistent with things the US has been caught doing in Cuba just
in the last few years.

Would this change our opinion of it?

~~~
jrochkind1
I am fairly confident the State Dept is helping to bankroll it one way or
another.

It still sounds like super neat tech. I wish we had more technical details.
Presumably it's mesh networking of some kind?

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teen
I wonder if we can access it from outside Cuba? It would be cool to poke
around.

~~~
zhemao
The article says it is not allowed to connect to the larger internet, so you
can't access it from outside Cuba.

~~~
technomancy
It also says they're using it to play WoW, so I wouldn't trust the technical
details.

~~~
fragmede
Good thing it's impossible to run a private server for WoW since Blizzard sued
everyone out of existence, and there's no way to find so-called 'illegal'
software on the internet.

~~~
technomancy
Huh, I keep forgetting how old WoW is... I just assumed they'd have the
ability to block third-party servers.

I love the irony of Cubans asserting their software freedom against a US
corporation.

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funkdobiest
This is really cool, my home wifi network is called SNet.

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Nicholas_C
Fantastic read.

I wonder how hard it is to acquire a computer in Cuba.

~~~
quickvi
Extremely easy in the black market if you have the money. This is the cuban
eBay: [http://www.revolico.com](http://www.revolico.com). It is sometimes
cheaper than in USA in absolute prices, but of course, this is a lot of money
for most normal people.

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beamform3e8cow
not legal advice; no endorsement of any 'illegal activities' JUST TECHNICAL.
the problem is running an ethernet cable over the roof of a bystander.

a.) spray open wifi all over could be a 'security risk' b.) WIFI beamforming
or point to point and a directed beam. using also a potatato chip pringles can
is a possible solution.

c,) for those engineers, for engineers are disappearing from the USA; why
bother studying technical subjects?

lightning and electrical wires on top of the roof?

d.) it does not seem to BE SECRET SECRET

e.) air gaps may be ok. every two hours fast bicycle ride and the solid state
drive. Obviously only transfer diffs via rsync or whatever protocol.

beamforming with central nodes?

