I wonder if it is possible to create an app for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets that allows to share their WiFi or G4/G5 bandwidth? I think it would be possible and very useful for people wanting cheap prepaid internet connections.
Let’s say if have no internet connection on my smartphone, and I want to do some instant messaging with a guy or girl on the other side of the world. I connect to phones and/or LoRa networks in the neighbourhood that are running nodes. I pay some Safecoins and receive bandwidth from the nodes. Now I have access to the safenet.
The beauty of this is that a node can buy bandwidth if it is short on bandwidth and then sell to users that want bandwidth. So, it’s actually spreading to the network (let’s call it spreading activation). In theory a couple of nodes can spread bandwidth through thousands of nodes, although the bandwidth per node would be very low.
This would be great because the messages would be encrypted locally, sent over multiple nodes (increasing privacy), and then the message ‘magically’ arrives at the recipient.
For this alone, I would hold safecoins
Not sure how this would be possible technically though. Things like symmetric and asymmetric keys come to mind. I think safenet supports both? Economically as I understand so far, the node receives tokens for the actual bandwidth shared. I think LoRa networks could be great for instant messaging or text messaging.
Limitations of the LoRa is around 200 bytes per chunk. Assuming 4 chunks (cryptographically most secure?) and 2 bytes per character, someone can type messages with a length of 400 characters, or 800 bytes per message.
I am wondering the use of this. With the number of free WiFi hotspots increasing and the increasing bandwidth allowances of the mobile network how long would this be needed? Also if I am at home or at a friend’s place then its likely to be free as well.
I guess what I am saying is the first step is to work out just how much this would be used. Where and by whom. Would it be cheaper to by blocks of data off a mobile provider than to use SAFEcoins?
How about developing countries and areas with a low population density? There aren’t too many WiFi or G4 hotspots there.
safenet would provide end2end message encryption.
safenet would provide an extra privacy layer I think.
It might be worth investigating for Safenet. How many safecoins would it cost to send 200 bytes?
LoRaWAN is being actively deployed in major cities to interact with IoT devices. [LoRaWAN scalability] Just one safenet-enabled LoRa device can cover an area of 15 km. So, less then ten devices can cover an entire city such as Amsterdam or Chicago. Using safenet to broadcast and spread the message to the recipient is safer (I would guess?) than using other platforms or public/private WiFi routers.
Imagine you have an IoT device such as a home server or a private mail server (Hillary Clinton :P). You don’t want the device to be hacked and any of the messages sent to it to be compromised. With shared-internet you can broadcast the encrypted message without having to worry it gets intercepted. I think an interception would show up in the datachain.
Vice versa, imagine you’re in the middle of the desert and your car with a tracking device gets stolen. The signal can be sent to a safenet-enabled LoRa network. You can buy some bandwidth anywhere within the safenetwork, and then share the location of your car with anyone you like. For instance, the police. Why buying bandwidth? There might not be WiFi in the desert or other internet connections. You would only need bandwidth sporadically such as in the case of theft.
Shared-internet over safenet:
Where: developing countries, areas with low population density, areas with insecure WiFi hotspots
Who: people who care about privacy, people who cannot afford an internet subscription, people who care about home safety, people who care about their smart device battery life, people who are on vacation in countries with high cybersecurity risk, people who don’t want to buy extra subscriptions for internet abroad, people who want to leech cheap of others unlimited bandwidth
Yeah, sure it could be done without safenet, but I think safenet is perfectly suited for shared-internet due to its nodal structure. Especially LoRa devices which can serve thousands of nodes can be very useful in sharing information across nodes.
You might be surprised. Many are providing mobile internet and WiFi to save the fixed infrastructure. Even in Australia the new shiny dull NBN is using WiFi for the rural towns to supply fast internet for those towns and regions. And they are providing sat for farming. Remember the towns and surrounds we are talking of are equivalent to UK counties or larger. One of my children lives in the outback (60 KM to nearest town of 20 houses and 2 hours to decent town) and still has mobile internet (4G).
Africa (at least some parts) are supplying mobile internet because of the low population areas.
I guess again I am saying that assuming these low population areas have little access to internet is actually the reversal we see in 1st world high population areas. Of course this doesn’t mean we should not try your idea, just be sure you know the conditions.
Also if an area has no internet then its unlikely your plan will work because there is no connection to the internet for SAFE to run over. Maybe in a Mesh network this idea would be great and the payment pays for the community’s internet high speed link(s)
I am only considering the devices utilising this are using SAFE clients/APPs. No use considering otherwise in my view
Try way less than 1 micro SAFEcoin.[quote=“Gus, post:3, topic:14511”]
LoRaWAN
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I think you will find that SAFE is too bandwidth intensive for the SAFE protocols. You are more likely to solve this by having a gateway APP between the LoRaWAN network and the SAFE network. The same really applies for IoT devices that don’t have the resources to run a client.
This has been discussed elsewhere under IoT and if the device can run a client then it will be able to send SAFE messages that are encrypted by the SAFE protocol (already exists) and only the designated receiver has the keys to decode the message. The benefits are
verifiable sender
only correct recipient can decode message even if message could be intercepted
The datachain is not needed and you simply assume that the packets between nodes/client are intercepted by the ABC’s or hackers. But of course this is useless to them for a very very long time to just decrypt one message, let alone all the traffic they capture.
Again this has been discussed and its unlikely that many will want to provide interfaces between SAFE and the internet. If the SAFE network works as advertised then the traditional internet will be flocking over to the SAFE network. Again how long would such a internet bridge/shared-internet be needed?
Thanks for enlightening me. You made some interesting points.
A select group of people do not like free WiFi spots, because they might be compromised. So you would always use a VPN, which costs money.
Some people only need bandwidth to occasionally send messages and emails. Nothing else. No video or audio streaming. They wouldn’t be bothered by paying a little bit extra to use a more secure and more eco-friendly protocol. At least I think sharing unused bandwidth is more eco-friendly, but I could be wrong there.
How long would this be needed? As long as there is demand for it. Though it is a niche market.
You said it yourself. Most places have internet available nowadays.
Otherwise mesh networks or LoRa networks can be alternatives.
If you put some chips in a smartphone it is possible to communicate via LoRaWan with a gateway app connecting to the Safenet. E.g. sending a simple message like “Hello world! Call an ambulance. I’m at GPS coor [12.34, 43.21]”
The benefit of LoRa is it can connect to thousands of nodes.
I’m not sure either. I think there would be demand for it. Could be useful for a very long time. Never intended the idea of bandwidth-sharing to be for high-speed and high-load data transfers. More for messaging and IoT communication.
Doesn’t have to be built on Safenet. Other platforms could work too (e.g. Ethereum).
I don’t think it’s too costly to implement.
User 1 sends three chunks of an encrypted message to user 2 and 3. (mesh bluetooth, LoRaWan)
The chunks are sent over ISP or not.
The chunks are sent over ISP-less Safenet or ISP-connected Safenet.
Recipient decrypts the message.
I don’t think the traditional internet is forever. It’s good to have flexibilty and achieve more decentralization. The development and popularity of p2p-sharing technology such as Apple’s AirDrop shows the direction we are heading imo.
I envision a future where the most-private part of the internet is held in our hands. Why use an ISP when you can connect to a decentralized internet directly? I think this will be possible if a billion of people adopt the technology that sustains decentralized internet. And yes internet speeds may be unreliable initially, but I’m mainly talking about instant messaging and IoT communication. Furthermore, technologies improve over time. In the year 2040 smartphones will have over 128 GB of RAM, TB’s of storage, and more and better connectivity solutions.
It’s how I envision decentralized computing will advance.
