Hello all
I am inspired by Wikipedia via
APRS topic and have an idea to share Fidonet echomail and some Usenet newsgroup over Outernet. It will be even better if people can request subscription via APRS/another uplinks. What is a weak points in my idea?
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The weak point is the uncontrollable amount of traffic that this causes. Of course the uplink station
can just cut off the feed for the rest of the day when some amount is reached, but it would then be
an incomplete feed. Also, it is unclear what file format you could use that users would be able to
conveniently handle in an environment like this. So you would probably require yet another viewer app.
I know this is an old topic but dialup fidonet/USENET/BBS and radio APRS services especially the APRS BBS and mailbox on the ISS are good examples of ultra low bandwidth but extremely useful data services.
If the rules were set to 160 character per message, a bounce message to people sending larger messages, and perhaps a maximum number of posts and mails per day/week/month/year period to limit bandwidth.
Combine with a SMS, APRS, OSCAR-APRS, email(with oversize bounce), or web gateway and a extremely valuable service to a person or remote community can be offered with them responding when they are in a location with or gain/borrow access to upstream telecommunications.
Delivering an updated alt maybe misc (and obviously trimmed to exclude /bin and other big data usegroups) but keeping at least a set aside othernet newsgroup as well as a mail feed encrypted or public plaintext would have been huge to me in the times that I had to live without any telecom beyond sometimes a pager and a 2m handheld.
Until othernet becomes so big that commercial sponsors and multiple transponders on several satellites come into use delivering limited short mail service and some form of usenet would be both an excellent use of the feed as well as drawing far more interest as it personalizes the experience despite being a broadcast and a very minimal percentage of the overall feed.
what about having the contents of the Othernet Content - Othernet | Discussions
broadcast over the feed. again filtering out all attachments.
or the General Othernet Discussions - Othernet | Discussions
also transmit the userguide and wiki along with some of the forum topics
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It is a good idea to have the archive of othernet discussion even for a passive reader but active othernet tech user, great for troubleshooting. In the olden days when it was still active for its initial discussion purpose usenet was exactly that; before HTTP it was an internet of all comments sections and newsgroups instead of websites. Of course there was also email and FTP; gopher too towards the end.
My thought was that issues important to the local operator of the dreamcatcher. For example,
- planned outages
- frequency / satellite / mode(type) changes
- instruction for over the air (ota) software changes
- availability of new hardware
All the announcements like these that are currently promulgated in the forums should be sent as content and stored on the dreamcatchers.
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Were Othernet to have happened 30 years ago, and like 3D printing the tech was already all there, we would all be using a newsgroup like perhaps alt.othernet and maybe a few sub-groups to discuss and coordinate specific aspects of the project. Other than being all text the discussions on Othernet forums minus the heart widgets etc work like old USENET newsgroups. These older protocols are just very good at minimizing bandwidth and dealing with long periods of lag and absence of connection.
NNTP(usenet) protocol is so good for this type of operation an intergalactic peer-to-peer hybrid with some fidonet-ness was featured as a way to deal with low bandwidth and sometimes years of network lag in the plot of Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky.