Slashdot Mirror
Project Byzantium: Zero To Ad-Hoc Mesh Network In 60 Seconds (Video)
Project Byzantium calls itself Ad-hoc wireless mesh networking for the zombie apocalypse. It's also potentially useful for less-thrilling emergencies, such as floods, earthquakes, and political uprisings (or getting everyone at the office their /. fix when the network goes down). The latest version debuted at the HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) conference in July, 2012. You can download your very own copy of Byzantium any time you like. Hopefully you will then burn a dozen or so CDs (it's compact enough that it doesn't need a DVD) for friends and neighbors, so that if you suddenly see zombies approaching and your regular ISP has already been overrun and isn't working, you can set up a wireless mesh network and coordinate your anti-zombie efforts. And you won't even need to use the command line. (slides and audio of their presentation)
My WiFi connection has trouble reaching the 2nd floor bedroom!
Why not simply flip your WiFi port from 'infrastructure' to 'ad-hoc'?
Ken
Is that what we look like to "regular" people? That looks like the 3 Musketeers of Virginity
Great! You can still check out Doomsday Pie and find out that you aren't the only one fighting off zombies as everyone will be tweeting the Zombie Apocalypse in real time.
www.DIYTVAntennas.com
Now make it work on an android phone.
so if there is a natural disaster i'm not supposed to worry about finding food, medical help and anything else to survive but immediately start surfing the internet?
and even if i did do this, only the naive morons will start advertising that they have food and are willing to share.
Calling your distro 'bath salts' is offensive. Connecting Linux and zombies is offensive and ridiculous. Wearing a pirate outfit is an outrage to free software.
Please get out of Linux, it's for serious people only.
You're getting funny!
this is a joke, because most wifi drivers for linux only ...
support the "client" mode, not even ad-hoc or master/infrastructure!
mesh network? im sooo excited, theoretically
so if there is a natural disaster i'm not supposed to worry about finding food, medical help and anything else to survive but immediately start surfing the internet?
Geez, get your priorities straight, you are supposed to have enough stockpiled what you need in your mom's basement to last for years already so you don't have to even go upstairs. Of course your first priority is to help maintain the integrity of the post-apocalypse Intertubes!
These guys did a very similar presentation on the project last weekend at FOSSCON, too [ http://fosscon.org/speakers ].
I think this is the kind of project that could use more eyes, and hands. Not just for the tech side, either - projects that have this kind of basic-underlying freedom philosophy, and are clearly seeking to enable distributed communication and computing are in everyone's interest, IMHO.
A computer without Microsoft is like ice cream without ketchup.
Is there a distribution of Tomato/DD-WRT/OpenWRT with this preinstalled?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Did the middle guy dress like a pirate at that convention too?
We're building a mesh network in Montreal, putting antennas on our roofs or windows. It's impressive what can be done with OpenWRT running babeld or babeld, and 100$ or less worth of hardware. Also a nice way to connect various free software hacking groups, and.. neighbours. http://wiki.reseaulibre.ca/
Check out also: http://freenetworkfoundation.org/
Vernor Vinge was my networking teacher at SDSU... He mentioned an idea in passing similar to this (around 1997ish), except that in his vision, the network would be explosively formed. Imagine that you could get these nodes down to the size of a quarter. maybe it had a solar cell + battery combo. You could fire off a missle or a shell over a field of battle, a low yield explosive would disperse these nodes over some area, and would automatically create a mesh network. I still think that the idea has merit, maybe somehow install Byzantium into a tiny embedded controllers, etc...
Obviously 802.11 doesn't scale in most non-urban environments (i.e. mountains or trees).
I've seen some references to some HAM's driving packet data up to 220Kbps in the early 90's. Anybody here familiar with how that worked? Most COTS HAM packet data seems to be stuck at 9600bps.
And, yes, I'm assuming the FCC has all been turned into zombies at that point.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I'd love it if the project's web site had a howto for installing the necessary components on my existing Linux distribution.
Why would I want to boot a LiveCD/LiveUSB if I already have a perfectly working Linux laptop with all my files and settings? Presumably once you're connected to the mesh network you'll want to be productive, whether it involves instant messaging, email, or whatever else you have set up and configured on your laptop.
This is only useful if you have an active power grid, no? Without commenting on a "DayZ" type zombie world, most natural disaster stricken areas do not have electricity for days/weeks.
Won't they just be able to find their way easier to good brains? Ones big and smart and nutritious enough to install Byzantium?
Giving away your presence and location can be a good or bad thing in tough times. During the next Zombie Apocalypse, make sure that your closest neighbor node is in range of your McMillan CS5 http://www.mcmillanusa.com/mcmillan-rifles-tactical-cs5.php.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
We need some hackers with a human touch.
This is only useful if you have an active power grid, no? Without commenting on a "DayZ" type zombie world, most natural disaster stricken areas do not have electricity for days/weeks.
A good job for solar panels!
I'm 2 blocks from my office which has DSL, but the house is in a different phone exchange and at the end of that run so no DSL available. I'm using open-mesh to get to my house. I go from an outdoor open-mesh on the office to non line of site outdoor unit out on a neighbor's barn. Then across a field to my house (I'm semi rural). I'm only getting around 3 meg of speed but it's better than the 22k modem option. This is with the default omni antenna on the open mesh gear. Nice equipment for less than 100 for an outdoor unit.
Of course if the zombies hit who's going to have power to be running these things?
Forget Zombies. One of the original reasons for this project is to deal with situations like Arab Spring where the local Government tries to cut off (limit, censor or track) network communications to crack down on those who dont like them. How do you get networking back to lots of people, especially those that are not supergeek linux kernel hackers? The project lets people setup primary mesh nodes that become gateways to network, and it also let non-mesh machines become leaf nodes to connect and gain some benefits. This is a terrific setup for improvised use at events - like an Occupy or Burning Man or your next hackathon. Very cool project - unfortunately the live boot cd I got at HOPE9 did not boot on my Macbook Pro. Alas I did not try it until a couple dayz later when I couldnt ask for help quickly. Shoulda tried it out at the con.
Who wants to talk to my neighbors. They'll be the ones to bring the Apocalypse.
The main benefit of electronic communications is that it works over long distances. Is it possible to include long-distance wireless links in the system/ Or more generally, can one add other links than WiFi? In a huge catastrophy, maybe some knowledgeable people could wire up some of the ISP's infrastructure with generators or solar panels. The use of Avahi for DNS (in the FAQ) suggests that it wouldn't scale beyond a neighbourhood or two, but maybe one could add advanced router nodes..
Another benefit of electronic technology is collaboration and information storage. Byzantium seems great for that, at least for a local group. Depending on the situation, there may be a need for high security, to restrict access to certain documents/wikis, and authentication, to know who one is talking to. That would be impossible to provide to provide to the ignorant "iPhone users" they keep going on about. Impossible at least for the leaf nodes without the Byzantium software (e.g. ARP spoofing), and very difficult for the router nodes as well.
Anyway, this is a very interesting package, because mesh networks need a high density of nodes, and this makes it easy to set up nodes.
Impressiveness is affected by time because it's subject to inflation.
I've easily connected to a ferry's access point from the top of a hill that was 5km away. That was with a cheap usb wifi card on a long usb cord dangling from my car's FM radio antenna. I have a 300 foot building to building 3 AP 802.11b/g client/repeater setup on channels 1 and 11 respectively at my cabin. This is with cheap dlinks and one wrt54G v6 which is the crappiest of the wrt54G's. And you get clear signal on a small island about 100 metres off shore. It is running right now so don't worry about inflation. Go try some of this stuff yourself; it is amazing what link distances are achievable with some planning and basic knowledge of antennas, Fresnel zones and line of sight.
The only thing I want to do with my neighbours is hollow out their skulls. I suppose I could blame it on a zombie then.
Immediately, no, but communication after a disaster is nothing to be sneezed at.
Communication is one of the components of long term survival. Id say within the top 5.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
How does this compare to existing ad-hoc WiFi mesh protocols such as B.A.T.M.A.N. / Open-Mesh, or some of the others listed at the bottom of the Wikipedia entry?
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
Scanned the site. Was turned off by the zombie apocalypse ref though I guess it is all in good fun and would help bring in enthusiastic hackers. However it says that due to inability_to_save_the_world they recognize and ignore the possibility of malicious nodes.
I was turned off by zombie reference because we really could have used this in eastern Japan (and Tokyo where I was) during the 2011 tsunami/earthquake. Mobile phones were out, we couldn't tell if people were alive or dead since infrastructure was wiped out. People had to take cars hundreds of km to go find out. People don't have satellite phones really. At one point I found I could skype to China and from there someone could call Japan.
In other words, zombie apocalypse is a good metaphor for total loss of infrastructure and conversion of your world. There is a Japanese manga called Survival, by Takao Saito the author of the famous sniper series Golgo 13. It shows the protagonist trying to save one or two people (who are in total panic mode) and himself (exhausted but logical) in wilderness and city, where everything is destroyed and people and animals have become rabid and murderous. Okay that didn't happen in Japan, at least it wasn't reported like the looting that wasn't reported.
In reality this kind of system would be good for natural disasters (tsunami, earthquake, flood, solar explosion, famine), insurrection (civil war, revolution, martial law, war and bombing) and situations when people just all go crazy (famine, disease outbreaks, religious fanatic outbreaks, zombie apocalypses). It should be obvious that whether the people going crazy and murderous are government, private individuals, or the undead, a Byzantium Mesh needs to be able to deal with malicious attackers and honeypots.
Also I think it would be good to work on a few other things:
1) a network-wide participatory web directory, perhaps using wiki or some other tool so people can announce services in a single location (I am not talking about announcing network capabilities via avahi, but humans announcing their presence and it automatically being registered in one place or I guess being copied to everyone)
2) a person to person messaging bbs so you can find out if someone is okay and message to them (IIRC the phone company tried to do this and it was overloaded and useless but good idea). Text is smartest but letting people record voice messages would be good too. Add a set of emergency messaging threads to this too, divided by arbitrarily defined territories. Then if you need emergency medical help maybe someone can get there.
3) a web site that allows people to ad hoc announce needs, things they can provide, and gather people into car pools or bases to deliver goods (I tried this in the 1995 earthquake in Kobe with a call center to be located at Tokyo U., which they refused to run since they were government run and the government could not decide anything). The first things to go and be needed are toilet paper, water, basic food, information and possibly iodine pills. Also you may have people including infirm or pregnant, and people gather in parks or emergency areas (until they figure out about the zombies or snipers). None of them know what to do and the police are not there. So it would be good to be able to announce bases where people can go, sit down, get things, meet family, etc. like schools.)
4) I would also note that satellite dishes and antennas can become missile targets so if you don't tell people about it, you could end up killing IRL your friendly hacker node owners and babeld gurus on the ground. Or say a warlord or drug-induced crazy police force wants to ruin your network, they could just shoot/lob grenades. So maybe it would be good to be able to manage this shit remotely and obscure it to some extent. Also not clear if the mesh can allow multiple people to provide Internet connectivity to the entire mesh, so perhaps shielded, bounced or landline connections could be priority selected and mesh owner could be alerted that it is okay to
Well done, this is just what the worlds needs, yet another wireless mesh network. Do not forget to write a LISP plugin for emacs to run the network.
The emergence is that the FCC gave away the Radio bandwidth and we are taxed to use it. We should have done this 20 years ago and the last mile problem would have been solved and our G4 access would be wide spread on everyone's roofs. Al Gore let this one slip by. Just shows what he invented was a corporation controlled Internet.
Why didn't we think of this before... Oh ya, we did. I do like the idea of nodes the size of a quarter and powered by a solar panel.
I saw an Interview of Richard Stallman last night. It was rebroadcast from a Russian Tv (RT). The Interviewer was clue less, but I can bet You will not wee that sort of thing on US TV. We in the US here, are like cows with corporate/government controlled computers and phones with built in holes and back doors all ready built in. Free software or ( Richard will shoot me for this ) or open source systems MUST replace all systems that are not open and free for the common man to fix the bugs. Computers are to serve us, little do we know computers are serving the corporations. The last mile of the network is a great place to start.
I think that ninux.org project do the same things....
wow i am really liking this i will be having fun with this for a while