An off-grid internet (SHTF and right now)

[liberatedsystems]

> I'd be interested in seeing an article on any live deployments you have to see how it works and understand what we can use it for.
Currently the only publicly available deployment is the testnet, information about it is on the Reticulum project website. There's a lot of different sites on there, and people actively connected to it who you can chat with. I've used it a fair bit myself and it works well. The testnet is effectively a bunch of networks glued together over the internet. It's primarily internet based but I suspect some nodes are connected over radio in places.

There's a Greek guy who wrote an introduction to the project, which you can find here:
https://blog.erethon.com/blog/2023/05/19...reticulum/

He also made a network in athens, which you can find out about here:
https://f.erethon.com/mesh2023.pdf (see slide 28)

Basically, Reticulum is a tool to create networks for free communication. There are people in the UK involved in the project (myself included), but I know of nobody who operates any kind of connection outside a bloke in St. Helens.

> Technology wont be much use post SHTF, skills and knowledge will be.
I would like to object, I think communications would be incredibly useful in such a scenario. Think of a power cut for example, the radios I sell have batteries built in, which should last for some time before requiring a recharge. Your broadband connection will not be operating for the duration of the power cut. The cell towers will be down. But you can still communicate as long as your phone is charged, you have a radio and people in range. Of course you will need a power source, e.g. a generator or the like. But, I would say this could be very useful to some indeed.

To write a little more about radio, the devices I sell can communicate at up to 67kbps at the moment using the high-speed modem. That is more than adequate for sending texts, pictures, making calls, etc. I am unsure whether it would be rude to directly link to my store page here for you all to look at the specifications, but at the very least you can google my username and find my site from there

Here's another link of a guy using HF radio to connect to the testnet:
https://youtu.be/blwNVumLujc

(I should note that OFCOM prohibits encryption on HAM radio bands in the UK, but the bands that RNodes use are totally fine for encryption)