| Title | Mesh Networking (as) Used by Hong Kong Protesters | |
| Date | Tuesday September 30 2014, @08:29AM | |
| Author | n1 | |
| Topic | ||
| from the social-networking dept. | ||
Gizmodo reports on the use of mesh network by the Hong Kong protesters:
Tens of thousands of protestors are gathering in Hong Kong's financial district to protest changes to election policy that would let a mainland Chinese committee vet the city's political candidates, and many use their phones to organize.
College students spearheaded the initial meetup, and this protest is appropriately tech-savvy. In addition to mainstream social networks like Facebook and Twitter, Hong Kong's activists are using iOS and Android app FireChat.
FireChat's parent company Open Garden reports 100,000 new users from Hong Kong within 22 hours, and 33,000 users on the app at once.
[...] FireChat helps people create what are known as "mesh networks." These connections go between devices, using a phone's hardware to link people in a daisy chain. Right now, FireChat can connect devices up to 200 feet apart. The geographic limit means the app is really only useful in crowds...
[...] Mesh networks are an especially resilient tool because there's no easy way for a government to shut them down. They can't just block cell reception or a site address. Destroying one part won't kill it unless you destroy each point of access; someone would have to turn off Bluetooth on every phone using FireChat to completely break the connection.
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printed from SoylentNews, Mesh Networking (as) Used by Hong Kong Protesters on 2024-04-19 20:33:20