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Mesh networks: how to connect to the Internet without providers and censorship

By Roman Korolev 

telegra.ph

9 min

October 5, 2020

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How to contact other protesters on the streets if the authorities deliberately turn off the mobile network, is it possible to access the Internet without a provider, and what should a person do who does not want to be affected by SORM and similar programs? When massive protests erupt like those that started in Belarus, these questions become especially relevant, and the answer to them is the use of mesh networks.

Back in the early 90s, American scientists Charles Perkins and Chai Keon To began developing a new type of network access technology that used a direct wireless connection between users instead of the usual Internet infrastructure. These technologies are called "wireless ad hoc networks" or "wireless mesh networks". The power of computers and communication speed at that time were insufficient for anyone other than the military to be interested in mesh networks (the Pentagon was just looking for technologies for fast message transmission on the battlefield). Over time, however, they have become one of the most important tools for building a decentralized and non-government controlled Internet.

How do mesh networks work?

If an ordinary user is provided with access to the Internet by a provider, then in a mesh network, each of the gadgets connected to it becomes a provider for other devices or a mini-cellular station. A network connection is distributed via WiFi or Bluetooth from one gadget to all devices connected to the network (network nodes), and they, in turn, pass it on. It's like sharing WiFi from your phone or laptop using it as a hotspot, but in a mesh network, with every device connected to it, the internet gets faster and more accessible over a longer distance.

Photo: learn.g2.com

In this case, configuration is needed only at the stage of creating a network, and new devices will connect to it automatically. All nodes in the network are interconnected, and if one of them goes down, the network will not “collapse”, but will automatically find a new route for traffic transmission.

Mesh technologies can be used both to access the "regular" Internet, and to create, relatively speaking, a "local area" with an unlimited number of participants, where files are stored and sites accessible only to them are hosted. The easiest way to create a mesh network for an ordinary user is to use a special application for a smartphone.

“The main advantages of mesh networks are fast deployment, resistance to censorship and relative security from surveillance,” explains Ksenia Yermoshina, host of the Paris Birns telegram channel about crypto-anarchism, UX designer of the Delta.Chat secure messenger , PhD and researcher at the National research center of France. – Roughly speaking, mesh networks make you as independent from the state as possible. The authorities can do little with the local mesh network: except to physically cut off the power of the computers located in it or start jammers (“ jammers” ).”), which will prevent you from rebuilding the network via WiFi or Bluetooth. If you skillfully build your network, you can build encryption there, and due to the fact that you are your own provider, the same SORM will not apply to you. Another advantage in low cost: there are very cheap solutions for mesh networks, if desired, they can be configured on ordinary routers.

How to use them?

Mesh technologies become especially relevant when access to the “normal” Internet is difficult due to a natural disaster or is artificially limited by an authoritarian government to prevent protesters from coordinating on the streets (as is happening now in Belarus ) .

It is mesh networks that help out tens of thousands of activists during mass protests in Hong Kong, when the Chinese government blocks access to the network and removes information from public sites. During the days of the Umbrella Revolution , Firechat was the most popular app among the protesters, and Bridgefy took its place in 2019 . In two months, the number of app downloads increased by 4,000%. Bridgefy's developer George Rios told Forbes that the app creators see the same peaks in the download chart when an earthquake or hurricane occurs in the world.

Photo: evening-mail.ru

Bridgefy is based on Bluetooth technology, available for Android and iOs and works in 3 modes. In Person-to-Person mode, you can send a message to a person within 100 meters of you (the range is limited by Bluetooth capabilities). In Mesh mode, the devices of people nearby are used as communication nodes: the more there are, the farther the message can be transmitted. Finally, the Broadcast mode allows you to send a message to all users at the scene at once, even if they are not in your contact list.

However, in August 2020, a study was published by a group of specialists from the University of London , according to which the application is vulnerable to hacker attacks. Even with modest capabilities and skills, hackers, in their opinion, can deanonymize Bridgefy users, completely jam the network, decrypt and change sent messages.

- I used Bridgefy, it worked fine, but nothing but text can be sent there, - says Yermoshina. - For activists, this is very dangerous, because, especially if you are now in Belarus, in some place where there are active clashes, the most important thing for you is photographic documentation of what is happening. I’m not even talking about video anymore, but absolutely any messenger should support sending photos now. I think that Bridgefy should be treated as the last option when nothing else works at all.

Photo: Bridgefy

Another option for a secure messenger based on mesh technologies is the Briar application . If the Internet is down, Briar syncs via WiFi or Bluetooth, when the network becomes available - via Tor. Thus, in addition to the built-in end-to-end encryption, traffic is also protected by the Tor protocol.

No email or phone number is required to register with Briar. New contacts are added only during a personal meeting or by sending your friend an encrypted link, by clicking on which he can start chatting with you. The nickname under which you will appear in his notebook is up to you.

Content is stored encrypted on participants' devices without using cloud servers. In Briar, you can not only chat, but also create forums, as well as maintain your own microblog. The only catch that deprives this application of a noticeable part of the audience is that so far Briar is only available for Android.

Photo: YouTube

“Briar worked in Russia back in 2017, we tested it at rallies for freedom of the Internet in St. Petersburg, it covered at least part of Palace Square,” Yermoshina continues. – There were problems with the QR code and the ability to invite new members, but now they have solved it. Briar is now actively developing, they receive transparent funding from the TOR Project, they have good encryption and open source. I would advise the protesters to use the Briar app via Bluetooth to communicate.

How are mesh networks evolving?

Mesh networks are not only mobile and can cover entire cities and even regions. Probably the best-known example of this is the Guifi network , which spanned the Spanish regions of Valencia and Catalonia. The history of the network, which today includes more than 36,000 operating nodes and covers about 63,000 kilometers, began with the fact that local engineer Ramon Roca got tired of waiting for a local provider to bring Internet to the town of Gurb, where he lived, and installed a router on the very tall building of the settlement. To connect to the Guifi network, WiFi routers with modified firmware are now used.

The ambitious Yggdrasil project is in early access : a decentralized mesh network that runs on top of or in parallel with the “normal” internet. Yggdrasil is planned as a network that is extremely user-friendly: he does not have to understand network routing and configure anything on his own, everything should work right out of the box. It must be understood that Yggdrasil is difficult to seriously consider as a replacement for the Internet (simply because there is very little content on this network and it is created by a few enthusiasts), but if any government starts implementing plans to disconnect their country from the global network, it is quite she can become.

Photo: behance.net

In Russia, a decentralized Internet provider Medium existed for a short time , providing access services to Yggdrasil free of charge, but in November 2019, the founder of the project, Mikhail Podivilov, announced the closure of the project due to technical difficulties and his health problems.

In February 2020, the book Telecommunications Reclaimed: A hands-on guide to networking communities was published , combining the experience of well-known researchers and activists (one of whom is Ramon Roca) in building mesh networks. This guide takes a deep dive into the experience of Guifi, the German independent wireless networking movement Freifunk , the Battlemesh event , where enthusiasts from all over the world compete to see who can route mesh networks the best, and other popular projects.

“The creation of mesh networks has become easier and simpler over the years,” says Yermoshina. - To teach this to new users, special workshops are held or technically well-versed people come. For an advanced Linux user or a person with good network and computer administration skills, this is still not difficult, but there are even simpler solutions. This is, for example, the Greek project Mazi : it is designed for a non-technical audience and the documentation there is extremely simple. All it needs is an SD card (which installs the application image) and a Raspberry Pi (single board computer the size of a bank card) to which it connects. And also I would mention LibreRouter- this is a router that already has a program that allows you to deploy mesh networks. It also compares favorably with other routers in that it is made on a completely open source.

Raspberry Pi. Photo: 24gadget.ru

How are they trying to deal with them?

Given all of the above, it is not surprising that mesh networks have already begun to arouse unhealthy interest among Russian security officials. So, in March 2020, a lot appeared on the State Purchases website , the contractor of which was asked to “research architectural solutions and information and communication technologies used to deploy mesh networks.” To investigate, of course, not with good intentions, but to find out whether information prohibited in the Russian Federation is distributed in these networks, and to learn how to jam the traffic passing through them.

The government contractor was asked to study the topology of the most popular mesh networks such as Yggdrasill, cjDNS, Briar, SignalOffline and FireChat and develop ways to "degrade data transmission (to the point of complete degradation of the network)". The winner of the auction was the Federal Research Center Informatics and Management of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The amount that he received for the implementation of the project turned out to be small: a little more than 9 million rubles (however, so far we are talking only about the “first stage” of the study).

According to the head of Roskomsvoboda, Artem Kozlyuk, “these research works are carried out clearly as part of the implementation of the “sovereign Runet”. The center at Roskomnadzor wants to study specific technologies that are hard to block "on the forehead" or hacked, as they are cryptographically secure. <...> The desire to understand the principles of operation of anonymous and decentralized networks shows the installation received “from above” that blocking and deanonymization of users are taken under special control of the state and regular attempts will be made to penetrate our traffic and interfere with it.”

It is encouraging in this case that the attempts of the Russian authorities to fight the free Internet, as a rule, end in their crushing defeat: as happened, for example, with the recent attempt by Roskomnadzor to block the Telegram messenger.

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