Posted on 01/31/2011 7:39:07 AM PST by jimjohn
I'll make this short and sweet: The great shock and outrage on both sides of the political aisle, is how a country shut down the internet in a few minutes. There are some that say these would be the sure signs of a dictatorship.
The Ubiquiti stuff with their AirOS software is very good and lets you do some interesting tricks with where your signal is on the channel. Picostation and Bullet are great products and you can operate part 15 (unlicensed) or part 97 (ham). Directional gain antenna and one of these units will only set you back about $150.
A printed copy of this list would probably be a good place to start.
If Obummer finds it prudent to shut down communications, we are already in deep pooh. All the talk about militia's and such will be pretty much total chaos. 200 million guns would be trained on their neighbors coming after your beans. The only real question is, would the police and military back the Constitution, or the Prez? Oath Keepers anyone?
If the government shuts down the internet, that is the suspending of the First Amendment.
It should quickly be followed by the exercising of the Second Amendment.
One way is for the wimpy republicans to come out swinging publicly on this while the iron is hot. Compare this to obama’s words to Egypt regarding the internet shut-down over there. Point out the hypocrisy loud and clear. Republicans need to speak out because the MSM isn’t going to do it for them. They are their own worst enemy.
BBS list
27 BBS systems.
lol
I can remember in the mid-90s when there were over 2000 BBS systems throughout the country.
==
If the government did pull the plug somehow on the Internet, dozens, hundreds of BBS systems would spring up overnight. The software still exists. The equipment still exists. FidoNet is still around.
Ah - another UBNT fan. Yeah, AirOS is very, very impressive. These guys have done some first-class work with that heavily hacked embedded Linux kernal of theirs. I suspect that we’ve only seen the beginning of what promises to be a very sophisticated distributed networking platform. The next big push will be more effective VLAN management and configuration - everyone wants it. Also, check out their AirControl product. I can monitor all of our sites in one app, distribute updates, sequester potential ‘problem’ units for observation and lots more. Very cool. I don’t directly manage our WAN infrastructure outside of our sit-to-site VPN links (most of it’s MPLS now), so I don’t see the SolarWinds alerts. But AirControl lets me see instantly when a site goes down, so those little radios are like canaries in a mineshaft.
Best of all - it’s amazingly cheap, but robust and reliable. I’ve got a bunch of sites using this gear for intra-plant datacom and networking, and in some pretty tough industrial environments. Haven’t had to replace one yet in the two years we’ve been running them.
Yep - look for the bottlenecks or focal points. That's where the kill switches will be. It's too easy.
But the militarp spread spectrum comm gear would still work .
An internet shutdown would be a sign of a tyrant taking control.
I’m way down toward the bottom of the learning curve as compared with you but I’ve seen a lot of good things about their products and I recently purchased some hardware and am getting familiar with AirOS. Question - are there any good basic books/tutorials on networking stuff? Most of what I see is incredibly dense.
It would be possible for small numbers of individuals in a country to stay connected amongst themselves to the international internet via satellite links, but these folks would already have to have their ground equipment installed and functioning, having the service in operation before the local national Internet was taken down, since communications would have been cut off to the extent that they couldn’t set up a new international satellite Internet access account and get it going.
Furthermore, the satellite operator’s ground equipment and international Internet tie-ins would all have to be outside the purview of the U.S., that is, located offshore in a country not willing to cooperate with the U.S. to turn off their own Internet services.
This wouldn’t be a bad thing for a well organized opposition (or pre-opposition) to have in place prior to an uprising (or other event) that might lead the national government to take down the communication infrastructure.
In the olden days it was sufficient for the government or opposition to control the TV and radio stations, but now it would be much more important during an uprising (or other event) to control the Internet, to either be able to turn it off if you were the government, or to keep connected if you were the opposition.
On the other hand, at this time, I don’t think the U.S. government could shutdown the civilian Internet because it is owned and operated by several private companies, and short of sending in the U.S. military to forceably take control, the Feds would have to try and seek court orders should said private companies not wish to cooperate.
Additionally, shutting down the U.S. Internet would bring the entire U.S. to a halt almost as effectively as if all electric power was shut off. Should the U.S. government succeed in shutting down the civilian Internet, the result would fundamentally be apocalyptic, most likely resulting in total chaos, including (but not limited to) large numbers of large armed confrontations amongst various segments of U.S. society as just-in-time commerce grinds to a halt, leaving most people without food, heat, water, medicine, light, fuel, transportation or information.
Quite frankly, I can’t imagine an event bad enough to warrant taking down the U.S. Internet such that the take down itself wouldn’t make the event far, far worse. It therefore makes you wonder what the Obammunists have in mind in even contemplating the power to do such a thing.
I also can’t believe such as action could ever be constitutional under the first amendment, given that in a just a few more years, the Internet will have subsumed the roles of the print press, radio, and television, since all of these are ultimately likely to travel on the Internet. Therefore, shutting down the entire Internet would be tantamount to not just limiting free speech, but stopping ALL speech altogether.
That seems to be the case. You might try a local community college for some basic network engineering courses. That'd be a good start nowadays, I think. What I know about network engineering comes from years of doing it. And reading those dense and convoluted manuals. Try cruising the Cisco site for a good example. You'l lalso find that most of the real power in device configuration occurs at the command line. Even though outfits like HP and Cisco offer nice, friendly web interfaces, the real work occurs at the CLI. I'm convinced thatit takes a special mindset to operate comfortably and efficinetly in those environments. Some have it, some don't.
You are correct, though - the telnet-only BBS list is much longer than the ones accepting dial-up. Many were formerly dial-up as well and could easily revert to that.
this requires a network without bottlenecks and focal points. Perhaps many distributed mobile data-handling nodes that have their own independent power source. Something like that would be as difficult to kill as a Soviet truck-mounted mobile ICBM...
of course, I dont know the first thing about network construction...
Funny, I’ve asked 3 or 4 networking pros the same question and I get a similar answer although the comm college idea I’ve not heard but it’s a great suggestion. I might do that.
I had a dial up Wildcat! BBS in the early 90s. It was fun to operate but I retired it when I set up a web site. Darn, I wish I still had the disks!
Understanding the TCP/IP stack and the way that it works is key. All else (well, almost all else) follows from that.
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