How do we deal with an internet blackout?

[MoonShadow]

It could be worth reading up on borders and communication's, the introduction of radio must have given rise to methods of blocking it and I'd guess cables crossing borders have a lot or restrictions. Someone must have condensed all that into a paper without to many big words and there's a thread about that somewhere...

Doubt there's anything to prevent bouncing signals off the moon though.

Prevent it, no.  Interfere with it, yes.  The problem with a moonbounce is that it requires not just some high quality transmitters with highly directional dish antennas with accurate moon tracking gear, but due to the distance & scatter issues with a moonbounce, the receiving gear has to be pretty high end as well.  So it takes a relatively low power jammer to screw with that, or a high quality one also pointed at and tracking the moon.  If you turned up your transmission power high enough to overcome a moonbounced jammer signal, they would be able to identify your transmitter from orbital sats due to the signal leakage of your dish.

Normal shortwave is much simpler, and much more effective, IMHO.  The receiving gear is much cheaper, more widespread (outside of the United States) and the decoding gear is just a regular computer with a 16 bit soundcard.  Sure, it'd be difficult to transmit the full blockchain, or maybe even full blocks once they start really filling up, but both block headers and loose transaction data could be transmitted continuously up to a certain point.  The real beauty of the p2p network system is that not all the data must come from the same source.  If your broadcast only transmitted the last block header and the myrkle tree, smarter clients than are currently available could piece together full blocks by collecting the loose transaction data from other sources, and there will be other sources, evenif it's only the occasionally smuggled blockchain on a usb drive two days out of date.

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[MoonShadow]

Maybe the bittorrent download implementation could handle that kind of thing?

A torrent of the blockchain would do well, to a point.  The torrent file would have to be updated on a regular basis though.  Perhaps the magnet file is what you would broadcast occasionally on your transmitter.

 The SW radio (I'm guessing that's the same as CB)

Not even close.

 soundcard modem setups, would they be able to work over a wide band in stacked frequency ranges to allow either wider bandwidth or multiple connections depending on what signals are found?

Not multiple connections.  There really wouldn't be 'connections' per se.  There is the transmitting station and the listening stations, data flows one way, in a one-to-many format.  A computer using much wider bandwidth sound cards (64, 128 bit) can listen to a muc wider band of the radio specturm at once, and could receive data from two ajacent stations, but it can't tune to tow distinctly different channels at the same time; that would require two sondcards at least, likley two different shortwave recievers as well, unless you've got the skills to bypass the tuner an access the internal frequency of the reciever.  The bandwidth of the signal is limited by the transmitter gear, power requirements, and clear frequency bandwidth on a shortwave band.  Shortwave is a worldwide set of bands that most americans have no experience with, and they are crowded.

[MoonShadow]

Reading up on this atm, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_radio

Sounds like a stream of the data as it comes onto the chain would be fairly easy to set up and the more there are the more it could be trusted, would be a weak link though.

Packet radio is a crude form of wide area, time-division type mesh network.  Might be useful for relatively small areas, such as a medium sized city, but if the POTS system still works, regular phone modems would be better.  Hams don't really use packet much anymore.  Better systems are phase-shift keyed modes, such as PSK-31 and up.  PSK-125/250/500 are more robust, and generally has better range and practical throughput, than a 300 baud shortwave packet modem.  There are many other types of (software defined) soundcard modes to choose from, PSK was just the first in widespread use, and one of the simpliest to impliment.  Packet radio requires specially modifed modems, and specialized hardware is expensive.  Sound cards are not expensive anymore.  Hell, I can do PSK-31/63/125 audio conversions on my android cell phone.

Modern hams willing to invest that kind of money into specialized mode gear just tend to skip the packet modem and go for a full blown digital transciever with built-in software defined capabilities.  Much better capabilities and costs about the same.

EDIT:  Really, some of this gear is truely impressive.  If you've ever seen some of the modern digital transcievers that cops use in their cars these days, hams have had that kind of gear for over a decade now.  A commercially available digital radio with 'meshable' computer capablities, called D-STAR, makes anything that you've heard of so far look about as advanced as morse code.  A 50 mile, two hop, mesh connection while in a moving vehicle isn't even pushing the margins anymore.

[MoonShadow]

That sounds like a really nice setup all ready to go. Maybe a stupid question but are police surplus units available?

Well, yes.  To licensed hams.  But the D-STAR off-the-shelf transcievers are usually cheaper anyway.

[MoonShadow]

That's very advanced stuff, not fast but the features and extra software are impressive. Was pricing the homebrew options, GMSK modems are very cheap but couldn't find a price on Kenwood TKR-820's or equivalent. Any idea what sort of power consumption?

Power consumption varies considerablely due to a number of variables, but about 300 watts is your top end limit, practically speaking.  Range with that kind of digital gear is more limited by line of sight issues than anything else at greater than 50 watts peak-envelope power, and is somewhere in the range of 10-15 miles radius with a high mounted mobile antenna of decent quality, or up to about 30 miles on a roof mounted stationary antenna.

Again, shortwave bands make those ranges look like crap, but are bandwidth limited, crowded and noisy.  A shortwave setup using a near-vertical incidental skywave antenna (NVIS) has a range radius of about 300 miles in all directions, and PSK-31 can do this with a peak-envelope power rating of under 10 watts.  Slow as hell, though; but it scales up bandwidth almost linerally, so 50 watts PEP is about right for PSK-250 to that same range for a clear enough signal to be picked up with common quality shortwave listening gear.

[jgarzik]

This is turning into an interesting thread.  Although it is now lapsed, I was formerly a licensed ARRL amateur radio operator ("KB4UZB").

Here is a useful, cheap, realistic idea that would help bitcoin survive an Internet blackout:

Have multiple stations broadcast the best known bitcoin block header.

It is only 80 bytes of data, which on average changes every 10 minutes.  That should be feasible for packet radio and other low bandwidth communication streams.

Back in the late 1980s, the BBS days, I remember one FidoNet operator had access to a few unused, off-screen scanlines of a satellite TV channel broadcast all over the world.  If you bought or built a cheap decoder box, and already had a satellite dish, you could receive FidoNet file downloads via satellite.  You had no choice in what you received, of course -- it was whatever the FidoNet operator decided to send that day -- but it was a great alternate one-to-many broadcast mechanism.

One could broadcast the blockchain headers in the same manner, with extraneous satellite bandwidth.  (of course, that is an old trick and probably impossible these days due to tighter resource management)

[miscreanity]

A commercially available digital radio with 'meshable' computer capablities, called D-STAR, makes anything that you've heard of so far look about as advanced as morse code.  A 50 mile, two hop, mesh connection while in a moving vehicle isn't even pushing the margins anymore.

Has there been much progress on an open ABME codec replacement?

[hardcore-fs]

The Internet was invented precisely because it can not be blacked out. Though if you are talking about blacking out access to the Internet, then I guess that's a possibility. In that case, electronic bitcoin transaction will be impossible, though physical bitcoins can still be used as cash.

Nonsense!!!!!

War, is one example.

An example of what?

"The Internet was invented precisely because it can not be blacked out."

1. The internet was not invented for that reason.
2. "it can not be blacked out", war is an example of it being blacked out, either in part of in full.

Correct. The "Internet" was not created to avoid being blacked out. ArpaNet was invented to avoid being blacked out. The Internet was built upon ArpaNet though and serves the same function.

Also incorrect............. (wikipedia after verifying references)

"Although the ARPANET was designed to survive subordinate-network losses, the principal reason was that the switching nodes and network links were unreliable, even without any nuclear attacks. About the resource scarcity that spurred the creation of the ARPANET, Charles Herzfeld, ARPA Director (1965–1967), said:
The ARPANET was not started to create a Command and Control System that would survive a nuclear attack, as many now claim. To build such a system was, clearly, a major military need, but it was not ARPA's mission to do this; in fact, we would have been severely criticized had we tried. Rather, the ARPANET came out of our frustration that there were only a limited number of large, powerful research computers in the country, and that many research investigators, who should have access to them, were geographically separated from them.[13]"

lets face it, in the last 5 years an earthquake off Taiwan  and a few chinks in a fishing trawler,took down the  Asian side of the network for a few hours.

[Rassah]

Isn't short-wave the radio that can transmit around the world? When my grandpa was visiting USSR from Ukraine, he brought a shortwave radio with him, and was able to listen to his news stations from back home.

All of this reminds me of those "mysterious" numbers stations that the CIA used to transmit info to spies. I wonder if the same thing can be set up with Bitcoin, transmitting the most recent mined block around the world every ten minutes?

[jgarzik]

If you want to transmit whole blocks, you are looking at 1,000,000 bytes every 10 minutes.

[BkkCoins]

If you want to transmit whole blocks, you are looking at 1,000,000 bytes every 10 minutes.

Sounds like within reach of modem speeds but don't know if shortwave can handle that. Is compression useful or is it already compressed. If not already, it seems like it should crunch down quite a bit.

[paybitcoin]

A commercially available digital radio with 'meshable' computer capablities, called D-STAR, makes anything that you've heard of so far look about as advanced as morse code.  A 50 mile, two hop, mesh connection while in a moving vehicle isn't even pushing the margins anymore.

Has there been much progress on an open ABME codec replacement?

Codec2 http://codec2.org/ is the open replacement for AMBE. Sounds (literally) quite promising.

Transmitting the Bitcoin headers on HF would be fun... It seems like the ARRL should be pushing hams to invest in a long-distance mesh packet radio network; even if it was slow, it would provide an incredibly useful service when required. Think of a new generation the radio 'nets' and Field Day setups for that can operate automatically, 24/7. Maybe it would get more people into amateur radio as well. 

[MoonShadow]

Isn't short-wave the radio that can transmit around the world? When my grandpa was visiting USSR from Ukraine, he brought a shortwave radio with him, and was able to listen to his news stations from back home.

All of this reminds me of those "mysterious" numbers stations that the CIA used to transmit info to spies. I wonder if the same thing can be set up with Bitcoin, transmitting the most recent mined block around the world every ten minutes?

Yes, but keep in mind that your talking about transmitters in the 10's of kilowatts using commercial quality gear and very tall, low angle biased tower antennas.  In order to travel farther than 300 miles, the signal must be able to bounce off the F level of the ionosphere repeatedly without losing too much signal to be picked up by common receiver gear.  IMHO, start with a NVIS setup in order to get a good single bounce.  Keep in mind, a 300 mile radius is a lot of area.  If I did that in my home city near Louisville, Kentucky; using commonly available ham gear and a max PEP of 1500 watts, my signal should be clear from Chicago to Atlanta.  The same setup in Frankfort, Germany should be able to cover from Paris to Prague and Amsterdam, Munich, Berlin, Hamburg and maybe Milan.  It's not necessarily more cost effective to set up a full power shortwave station intended to wrap the planet compared to several well placed NVIS transmitters using gear at ham power levels.

[MoonShadow]

A commercially available digital radio with 'meshable' computer capablities, called D-STAR, makes anything that you've heard of so far look about as advanced as morse code.  A 50 mile, two hop, mesh connection while in a moving vehicle isn't even pushing the margins anymore.

Has there been much progress on an open ABME codec replacement?

Codec2 http://codec2.org/ is the open replacement for AMBE. Sounds (literally) quite promising.

Transmitting the Bitcoin headers on HF would be fun... It seems like the ARRL should be pushing hams to invest in a long-distance mesh packet radio network; even if it was slow, it would provide an incredibly useful service when required. Think of a new generation the radio 'nets' and Field Day setups for that can operate automatically, 24/7. Maybe it would get more people into amateur radio as well. 

"Automaticly" isn't really what ARRL is into promoting.

[MoonShadow]

If you want to transmit whole blocks, you are looking at 1,000,000 bytes every 10 minutes.

Sounds like within reach of modem speeds but don't know if shortwave can handle that. Is compression useful or is it already compressed. If not already, it seems like it should crunch down quite a bit.

Compression is not likely to be worth it, and can violate ham rules against encryption.

[BkkCoins]

The wiki page on D-Star is very interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-STAR

D-STAR transfers both voice and data via digital encoding over the 2 m (VHF), 70 cm (UHF), and 23 cm (1.2 GHz) amateur radio bands. There is also an interlinking radio system for creating links between systems in a local area on 10 GHz, which is valuable to allow emergency communications oriented networks to continue to link in the event of internet access failure or overload.

Radios providing DV data service within the low-speed voice protocol variant typically use an RS-232 or USB connection for low speed data (1200 bit/s), while the Icom ID-1 23 cm band radio offers a standard Ethernet connection for high speed (128 kbit/s) connections, to allow easy interfacing with computer equipment.

And the section on D-RATS.

What does an Icom ID-1 typically cost? (edit - According to google, around $1000 US)

[cbeast]

The Internet was invented precisely because it can not be blacked out. Though if you are talking about blacking out access to the Internet, then I guess that's a possibility. In that case, electronic bitcoin transaction will be impossible, though physical bitcoins can still be used as cash.

Nonsense!!!!!

War, is one example.

An example of what?

"The Internet was invented precisely because it can not be blacked out."

1. The internet was not invented for that reason.
2. "it can not be blacked out", war is an example of it being blacked out, either in part of in full.

Correct. The "Internet" was not created to avoid being blacked out. ArpaNet was invented to avoid being blacked out. The Internet was built upon ArpaNet though and serves the same function.

Also incorrect............. (wikipedia after verifying references)

"Although the ARPANET was designed to survive subordinate-network losses, the principal reason was that the switching nodes and network links were unreliable, even without any nuclear attacks. About the resource scarcity that spurred the creation of the ARPANET, Charles Herzfeld, ARPA Director (1965–1967), said:
The ARPANET was not started to create a Command and Control System that would survive a nuclear attack, as many now claim. To build such a system was, clearly, a major military need, but it was not ARPA's mission to do this; in fact, we would have been severely criticized had we tried. Rather, the ARPANET came out of our frustration that there were only a limited number of large, powerful research computers in the country, and that many research investigators, who should have access to them, were geographically separated from them.[13]"

lets face it, in the last 5 years an earthquake off Taiwan  and a few chinks in a fishing trawler,took down the  Asian side of the network for a few hours.

Well I never mentioned nuclear war. IIRC it was modelled after the original American colonies that could not be conquered easily by the British. Because each state had an independent militia, taking over one state had little affect on the overall campaign. I can't comment on the claim of a former director. It was built on the ideas of many brilliant people with many diverse ideas. I would not discount any claim as being partially true.

[paybitcoin]

A commercially available digital radio with 'meshable' computer capablities, called D-STAR, makes anything that you've heard of so far look about as advanced as morse code.  A 50 mile, two hop, mesh connection while in a moving vehicle isn't even pushing the margins anymore.

Has there been much progress on an open ABME codec replacement?

Codec2 http://codec2.org/ is the open replacement for AMBE. Sounds (literally) quite promising.

Transmitting the Bitcoin headers on HF would be fun... It seems like the ARRL should be pushing hams to invest in a long-distance mesh packet radio network; even if it was slow, it would provide an incredibly useful service when required. Think of a new generation the radio 'nets' and Field Day setups for that can operate automatically, 24/7. Maybe it would get more people into amateur radio as well. 

"Automaticly" isn't really what ARRL is into promoting.

True. I guess I meant in the sense that if it needed to run automatically in an emergency, there would already be a pool of knowledge, a reference implementation, and compatible nodes. Otherwise/normally it would just be for experiments and QSOs. Maybe upgrading APRS WIDE to a bigger mesh and a protocol that can operate globally would be a good start.

[novusordo]

I've been looking into running a Bitcoin node on the Hyperboria CJDNS network. The network currently runs on top of the Internet, but it is designed to not depend on any specific underlying network.

Of course, to do this correctly, we would need to get "bridge" nodes that connect to nodes on both the Internet and on CJDNS. Miners would need to connect to CJDNS if the Internet blacked out, but as long as there are bridge nodes between the networks, it would work without miners connected directly to the CJDNS network.

CJDNS is currently under heavy development. It's extremely interesting, very disruptive, and I highly recommend that you look into it if you're interested.

CJDNS Wiki page
Github page
CJDNS info site
Hyperboria website (the actual CJDNS network)
Project Meshnet

[Trader Steve]

From EconomicPolicyJournal - http://tinyurl.com/cyx8dl6:

Which Countries Are Most at Risk from Internet Disconnection

 Syria recently shut-off access to the internet in its country. This was fairly easy to do because only two firms provided internet service in the country.

James Cowie of renesys writes:

    The key to the Internet's survival is the Internet's decentralization — and it's not uniform across the world. In some countries, international access to data and telecommunications services is heavily regulated. There may be only one or two companies who hold official licenses to carry voice and Internet traffic to and from the outside world, and they are required by law to mediate access for everyone else.

    Under those circumstances, it's almost trivial for a government to issue an order that would take down the Internet....

    With good reason, most countries have gradually moved towards more diversity in their Internet infrastructure over the last decade. Sometimes that happens all by itself, as a side effect of economic growth and market forces, as many different companies move into the market and compete to provide the cheapest international Internet access to the citizenry...Here's a map of the world, with countries colored according to the Internet diversity at the international frontier. We did a census, from our own view of the global Internet routing table, of all the domestic providers in each country who have direct connections (visible in routing) to foreign providers.