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.
Hence the U.S. government solution: create a law that gives a President the authority to shut down the Internet without judicial review.
As a network admin and computer programmer, you would have to get pretty tyrannical here in the U.S. to pull off something like that; since there's no way to get everyone to volunteer.
So, you can beat on your chest, call your congressman, cry foul, say 'see! I told you so', or all of the above. To put it simply, if the U.S. Government attempts to take down the Internet - it's on.
I'll let the reader figure out what 'ON' means.
At which point, we'll need a network up and running fast. My opinion: We are way beyond politics on this one.
Let's get to work, people.
The floor is open.
Easy, replace Democrats with Tea Party.
1. Dig out your old telephone modem and learn how to use it again.
2. Recruit ham radio operators.
3. Buy a satellite phone that has a built-in modem.
In the wake of the AZ shootings and the new tenor of disscussion in D.C., and around the nation, is Kill Switch really an appropriate term? /s
one small idea is to store numeric ip addresses for major websites, in case DNS servers get disabled (either by gov or by accident).
Even easier to shut down than the internet. Any communication which requires a third party medium is risky. After Egypt's actions I'm looking into ham radio equipment.
Long range it would be interesting to get wireless, self organizing network equipment which would act much more like the internet did originally when it was primarily seen as a decentralized communication method meant to survive a nuclear attack rather than a more efficient, but more centralized, network it has become. I had suggested that when Iran shut down their internet access when the Iranian government lost the voting but won the counting. I didn't expect that we might be the ones needing it.
Of course the network equipment's firmware would have to be open source to verify that no secret cutoff switch was built in.
Become a ham. No code test nowadays. Learn proper transmission practices. Get your friends to do so. Practice. Use FM handhelt tranceivers and private repeaters. Don’t let the Feds give away theham bands. SWL and ham radio are key survival skills.
Ham radio bulletin board software permits a variety of access mechanisms: HF, VHF, microwave, internet, dial up, etc. Good for communications amongst a small group.
The Winlink system allows you to connect by radio to foreign internet servers for email exchanges.
None of the above lets you “browse the net” as you can normally. I guess you could use dial up to an unaffected server but that would be slow and who knows what will happen to phone lines.
An internet kill switch is a really stupid idea, not just from a communications standpoint either. Just imagine the runs on banks for cash because debit cards no longer work. It would be like the trigger of the Great Depression all over again when Hoover slapped a tax on bank drafts.
Actually, I can’t think of a scenario where it would be necessary or even a good idea to cut off mass communications.
Congress needs to step in a explicitly forbid it.
Its unlikely this could ever be implemented in the USA.
Too many companies run their multi-site operations using the internet.
Google, MS, IBM, Intel would all grind to a halt.
One min after implementing it, Obama would hear from 2000 CEO’s.
The internet and facebook are Human Rights afterall.
The answer is straightforward:
1. Go local using Ubiquiti Networks gear. www.ubnt.com
2. Deport, shoot or hang all serial violators of their oath of office.
I’d call that a very ggod start.
The US has jurisdiction over the DNS root zone. We can really shut down the Internet. Well, not quite shut it down, but 99.9% of people would think it’s down for quite a while.
Shutting down the Internet on a national basis isn’t that difficult.....
Shutting down Level 3, MCI and AT&T will completely disrupt if not halt almost all internet, kill the primary and secondary DNS servers and all but a few intranets with private international conections will be down.
What’s the bandwidth for this?
I guess the cheapest is 2-m ham, but what would be the transmission speed for text?
You really don't need that capability for a robust network. What you need is an HF-Twitter system that can interconnect with telephone modem connected PCs. HF bandwidth is very limited but it should be able to support a modest Twitter-like messaging service. Of course you would need a robust mirroring system that is located safely out of the U.S. - a Usenet like system. In fact maybe Usenet would be the solution.
Shutting down the telephone system in the U.S. would be a very drastic step that seems unlikely to me.
Would they shut down the Internet? Yes they would and it would be very easy to do so. Just like they did in Egypt: a few calls to the ISPs and it's over. But taking the phone system down would take down the country. Not going to happen IMHO.
2 meter AX.25 packet is typically 1200 baud although you can go to 9600. These are what’s normally used for bulletin board systems (BBS).
So-called High Speed Multimedia (HSMM) uses adapted WiFi routers and has broadband capability.
So-called sound card modes with error correction like MT63 can go to 200 wpm and will work at any HF/VHF frequency.
The Winlink Winmor mode (HF) is slow but you can send an email of a couple hundred words in under 2 minutes.
This is out of my specialization, by the way...
Maybe you should contact Jim directly....
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