Comment on Could the internet go offline? Inside the fragile system holding the modern world together
potatopotato@sh.itjust.works 5 days agoHarsh truth, the entire bandwidth of all the HF bands combined, not just the ham allocations, fully DC to ~30MHz, is smaller than a single mediocre home internet connection (per Shannon Hartley theorem). If even 0.1% of the world started using ham radios to do so much as send the bare minimum of ultra compact text messages to each other the entire spectrum would be clogged to the point of uselessness.
HF is great for very localized communications disruptions, but a nationwide or worldwide internet failure would not remotely be helped via HF.
henfredemars@infosec.pub 5 days ago
You’re not wrong there. This model doesn’t scale, but there are solutions to this that can help us rebuild. I participate in monthly exercises where we use a repeater system to relay messages in emergencies somewhat like how the telegraph system worked. In this way, we can re-use the limited bandwidth geographically. HF works at the current load but for higher bandwidth needs we can move to regional or even local repeater systems at higher frequencies and find that much more usable bandwidth becomes available.
In a total collapse situation we could start with HF, and slowly form new communities that can scale in much the same way that people scale to form social groups.