Gemini being text oriented makes it feel like it would work in a low
bandwidth application, but at the same time there is the fact it uses
TLS and I don't know how much overhead that introduces or how much more fragility it introduces to traffic between nodes than just transmitting plaintext (ala mercury protocol. Solderpunk's stripping Gemini down
further.) I'm not married to the idea of Gemini over LoRa, but I want
LoRa to be able to do more than just SMS style communicating, and while
there are BBS's that run over meshtastic (that even have mail
functionality and content synching between differing boards,) I feel
the more that can be done over loRa the more attractive it would be as
a sort of long link that stitches together high bandwidth islands of
more standard wifi. Yes I am aware that there is a 900mhz wifi
standard, and that does seem to provide a greater distance than
standard, but at the same time? What I have read (Could be wrong) puts
its max practical range at a few miles, vs LoRa realistically getting
ten to twenty miels on a good run, and a hundred or so if at the top
of a high point with good sight lines. Distances need to be bridged,
and the days of being able to piggyback off of the phone system, I
think, are long past.

Just ... staring at the problem that prevents a homespun alternitive to
the increasingly overly commercialized and now feeling outright hostile
web. Saving the web isn't something I feel I can do. Making a
decentralized thing that can endure? Maybe I can nudge people smarter
than me in a favorable direction.

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Andrew Singleton <singletona082@ctrl-c.club> wrote:

Gemini being text oriented makes it feel like it would work in a low bandwidth application,

As would Gopher, HTTP, NEX, Spartan, ... and lots of other alternatives.

but at the same time there is the fact it uses TLS and I don't know
how much overhead that introduces or how much more fragility it
introduces to traffic between nodes than just transmitting plaintext
(ala mercury protocol.

I saw examples of SSH over LoRa. So SSL/TLS seems to work.

Yes I am aware that there is a 900mhz wifi standard,

And there is LoRa-2.4G too, but I haven't read enough about that.

and that does seem to provide a greater distance than standard, but at
the same time? What I have read (Could be wrong) puts its max
practical range at a few miles, vs LoRa realistically getting ten to
twenty miels on a good run, and a hundred or so if at the top of a
high point with good sight lines.

Range Tests
https://meshtastic.org/docs/overview/range-tests/

Radio Settings
https://meshtastic.org/docs/overview/radio-settings/

Distances need to be bridged, and the days of being able to piggyback
off of the phone system, I think, are long past.

I see no way to get acceptable speed over long distances by legal means.

In some countries the regulations seem to allow transmitters strong
enough to bridge larger distances.

HERMES (High-frequency Emergency and Rural Multimedia Exchange System)
Code and documentation of the HERMES system communication
https://github.com/DigitalHERMES

We typically have flatrate landlines. Unluckily now mutated to VoIP,
but finding modems that use a modulation compatible with that still is
not impossible. Finding digital neighbours to connect to over them is
the bigger problem and so my modems just are sitting in their boxes.

Getting Dial-Up To Work Over VOIP Isn’t Always Easy
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/19/getting-dial-up-to-work-over-voip-isnt-always-easy/

A digital neighbour got 28.8k/s using an USB-Modem over a German VoIP
phone "line". I played with the same modems in 2021, but don't remember
the speed.
--
2. Hitchhiker 17: (110) "Careful with that hammer, sir," he said.
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On Sat, 18 Jan 2025 12:37:07 +0042
yeti <yeti@tilde.institute> wrote:

As would Gopher, HTTP, NEX, Spartan, ... and lots of other
alternatives.

I'd seen a guy use meshtastic to connect to a mystic bbs with the BBS
not having any sort of awareness of what was being used as the network
layer. So a lot is in theory possible, but what would best be served
over LoRa?

Mystic BBS over Meshtastic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uO3v8Ew_-vE

I know nomadnet is a thing, but it feels intentionally hostile to
anyone unwilling to command line. Mind you I think it's COOL, but at
the same time you aren't going to get mindshare off of 'here install
termux on your phone and then a keyboard with all the keys and then-'

nomadnet:
https://github.com/markqvist/nomadnet

I focused on gemini both because 'oh cool text first and at the
forefront protocol' combined with 'reflowable text and you arne't
having in line oddball events be it formatting or other' along with
'nothing style related is transmitted. presentation is entirely at the
user's end.' Andthe biggest reason: 'one Request. One Response.' No
chaining requests, there's no cookies, no Shennanagins that would cause connection bloat.

But i don't know if it's viable as a basis or if the moment you try
using it in a network where nodes shift and change round nothing can
link to anything that isn't on the same node.

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Andrew Singleton <singletona082@ctrl-c.club> wrote:

I'd seen a guy use meshtastic to connect to a mystic bbs with the BBS
not having any sort of awareness of what was being used as the network
layer. So a lot is in theory possible, but what would best be served
over LoRa?

Nothing?

You have a small packet size and transceivers that only get long range
by switching to very low baud rates. That additionally takes more
transmission time and the percentage of transmission time you are
allowed to use is regulated too in some countries. Here (EU, 868MHz) we
only may transmit at max 10% of the time, so 6 minutes per hour.

Mobile LoRa at 868MHz (so no roof antenna) and Long/Fast settings (which wouldn't even count as a an acceptable speed for a serial terminal)
barely manages to bridge 500m in spaces dense with buildings, a tester
claims and thinks that even were impressive.

Slower modulation probably can get a bit further, but you may end at
speeds of less than 100 bytes per second and slower means the 10% time
rule hits you even after less key presses.

Within some hundred meters around my home I can imagine LoRa or
Meshtastic being interesting to connect to my systems, but I gave up the
idea that this is fit for the job of talking to others over long
distance.

Additionally my two LoRa transceivers run unstable with the Meshtastic
software and I'm waiting for some time to pass and new releases to
appear.


Status quo so far:

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

:.(
--
I do not bite, I just want to play.
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