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Author Topic: Best way to communicate if internet down nation-wide.  (Read 1396 times)

W9FIB

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Re: Best way to communicate if internet down nation-wide.
« Reply #30 on: February 23, 2022, 11:43:05 AM »

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So yes, sometimes communicating half way around the planet is what is needed at the time.

So the next time we have an ice storm, the roads blocked by fallen trees, and the power out for several days, I'll just fire up the HF rig and ask some random ham in Poland or New Zealand to send supplies.   

Or maybe I should get on HF and "pass traffic" to Verizon (via Poland or New Zealand) to ask them to fix the internet so that I can call the power company to complain about the outage, and then order some bread, milk and toilet paper to be delivered via Instacart ?

.... or maybe it would make more sense to be prepared to be self-sufficient for long enough?

Rather snarky and does not match what I said. But that's ok...I will just consider the source. Rather naive and should be ridiculed greatly. Maybe even a laugh or two.
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73, Stan
Travelling the world one signal at a time.

K6BRN

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Re: Best way to communicate if internet down nation-wide.
« Reply #31 on: February 23, 2022, 05:25:56 PM »

So the next time we have an ice storm, the roads blocked by fallen trees, and the power out for several days, I'll just fire up the HF rig and ask some random ham in Poland or New Zealand to send supplies.   .... or maybe it would make more sense to be prepared to be self-sufficient for long enough?

Very cynical, Ron.  The simple fact is that in an emergency you use whatever you have - food, fuel and communications.  In the best cases, neighbors work together and share resources.  This is what we did in the East Coast blizzard of 1978.  For comms it was CB for local coordination (especially generator time and their gas supplies to run furnace oil burners and pumps) and HF for health and welfare messages that comforted a great many people inside and outside of the weather zone..

Since you live in North Carolina, which is nearly the storm damage capital of the USA, I'd think you've had some experience with that.

Total War is a different "emergency" - to paraphrase an old movie:  "... the only way to win is not to play..."  Too bad that's not universally understood.

Also - being "prepared" is relative - A weeks food, water and fuel is always a good idea.  But some people (and one of my ex-USAF friends) lives over a communications bunker he rebuilt and provisioned with a year's supplies, not to mention plenty of ammunition.

So ... How far have YOU gone?

Brian - K6BRN
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KB8VUL

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Re: Best way to communicate if internet down nation-wide.
« Reply #32 on: February 23, 2022, 08:47:14 PM »

Alright... I have to ask, since we are talking about trying to talk half way across the planet here...

Then why do stations in hard hit islands and small countries communicate outside their area?

Maybe pass news and disaster information outside the effected area.

Maybe to try to set up links with outside agencies to help provide supplies needed locally in the disaster area.

See the problem is most people in the USA seem to think EVERYONE has access to an infrastructure similar to that of large US cities. Rural areas in the US and many small countries do not. So they use ANY means to try to achieve some level of communication to get the help and supplies needed. Supplies may include equipment to get their broken infrastructure repaired so more conventional communications can be restored. And one of those means is to use HR.

So yes, sometimes communicating half way around the planet is what is needed at the time.

OK, I will give you that smaller countries WOULD indeed need some of communications.  I don't argue that point.
BUT...
The OP on this thread specifically stated an Internet outage across the country.  And with his call sign being what it is, he's obviously in the USA.
So we are NOT talking about small countries.  We are talking about the US / North America.

The statement of getting information to other unaffected area's.... he SPECIFICALLY stated this is a country wide Internet outage.  No place he mentioned in the US would be unaffected.

Then we get back to WHO would we be communicating with.  Since EVERYWHERE in the US is affected, you then have other countries. 
Sorry, hate to burst your hammie self importance bubble BUT, I ain't about to take it upon myself to contact OTHER SOVEREIGN NATIONS to ask for assistance.  That is the governments place and responsibility, not some guy that took an 80 question test that he memorized the answers to from a book from Gorden West. 
You see this is like passing traffic.  And in this case, since this is the EMCOMM area of the forum, we will call it EMERGENCY traffic. 
DETAILS MATTER.
SO since details matter, I will ask again.  WHAT DO YOU THINK IS SO IMPORTANT that you need to communicate to others in an EQUALLY EFFECTED area of a disaster like a country wide Internet outage that they are gonna give a rip about?  Because NOTHING at our level is of that importance level and even if you are passing traffic for a local government or state official, the other end of this conversation will be no doubt be taken under advisement and quickly dismissed due to it's actual lack of importance on the other end. 

There are some of us that lived through the 70's and even before that.  And there WAS NO INTERNET.  At least not what we have now. 
Back in those days it was ARPANET and the X.25 connections that tied big universities together. And can you believe it,, we survived without it.  You know the DARK AGES.  Before the enlightenment of Twitter, Instagram and even AOL.    But now we have wondrous thing like Internet forums about ham radio where we can get on the web and say dumb stuff. 

So HOW do you actually deal with it. 
Easy,,, well, relatively easy.   You find a big tower.  You build out a huge ARDEN network that connects 5 counties.  You build a back end of web services including messaging, email, video chat and a VoIP phone system.  You put in a big generator, battery plant, solar and wild power to feed the battery plant and figure that hardly NO ONE will bother to use it because it's not got a microphone and isn't on HF.  And that's not technically true either, because the WINLINK node is connected to HF packet to pass email. 
 
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W9FIB

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Re: Best way to communicate if internet down nation-wide.
« Reply #33 on: February 24, 2022, 04:51:52 AM »

The statement of getting information to other unaffected area's.... he SPECIFICALLY stated this is a country wide Internet outage.  No place he mentioned in the US would be unaffected.

As I stated before, in this thread, there is too much redundant infrastructure for the entire US internet to be down all at once. My comment was based on a question posed in a different part of the thread. The answer was geared to that question which I quoted.

My area is served by 1 fiber optic cable and extremely aged twisted pair. Cut the fiber optic cable and we have no communications without RF. Unless; you can find someone remotely with an old phone modem and who knows how to use it, without the benefit of communications. And I am in the US. Look it up if you don't believe me.

At least we will be getting solar electric farm in our county soon. At least during the day, we will have power locally if the grid goes down. Don't know how much storage capacity they will have, so I limited my comment to when there is sun light even if filtered by clouds. Again a comment based on other comments in this thread.
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73, Stan
Travelling the world one signal at a time.

AC2EU

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Re: Best way to communicate if internet down nation-wide.
« Reply #34 on: February 24, 2022, 09:51:41 AM »

Lets see what happens after the Russian sanctions are enforced (if they enforce them).

K6BRN

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Re: Best way to communicate if internet down nation-wide.
« Reply #35 on: February 24, 2022, 06:47:17 PM »

Lets see what happens after the Russian sanctions are enforced (if they enforce them).

The value of the Ruble has been dropping vs. the Dollar since the start of this affair,  The pain has already started.
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KB8VUL

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Re: Best way to communicate if internet down nation-wide.
« Reply #36 on: February 24, 2022, 08:23:47 PM »

The statement of getting information to other unaffected area's.... he SPECIFICALLY stated this is a country wide Internet outage.  No place he mentioned in the US would be unaffected.

As I stated before, in this thread, there is too much redundant infrastructure for the entire US internet to be down all at once. My comment was based on a question posed in a different part of the thread. The answer was geared to that question which I quoted.

My area is served by 1 fiber optic cable and extremely aged twisted pair. Cut the fiber optic cable and we have no communications without RF. Unless; you can find someone remotely with an old phone modem and who knows how to use it, without the benefit of communications. And I am in the US. Look it up if you don't believe me.

At least we will be getting solar electric farm in our county soon. At least during the day, we will have power locally if the grid goes down. Don't know how much storage capacity they will have, so I limited my comment to when there is sun light even if filtered by clouds. Again a comment based on other comments in this thread.

And with that situation you WILL have stuff to communicate.  I can see large chunks of the country being down for some reason or another.  We saw that with the bombing of the AT&T facility last year.  We saw it gain on Superbowl Sunday in Ohio and other states with some outage that took down phones, Internet and cable TV for a large number of folks.  With a situation like that communications outside the effected area will be important.  And we SHOULD be ready to provide assistance if something like that happens. 

My issue is this.  We need to look at out planning and preparedness based on what is actually possible, and if those things happen how we can as ham operators assist in those situations.   Part of that planning is figuring out what and how we WILL be called on to communicate.  When you go down the path of silly situations that either can't reasonably happen like a hurricane in Montana, it becomes a waste of time.  And with his scenario, the "what are we going to need to communicate and to who" becomes important.  The first part of who before we discuss what.  NVIS operations on HF for surrounding counties is going to be important.  Because those are people that are close enough to assist with supplies and situational awareness.  When you are trying to talk to someone 6 states away, none of that applies.  They are not going to be of any reasonable assistance and the situational awareness will be about pointless other than MAYBE weather fronts that are moving towards you.  Other than that... it's kind of pointless.  And at the point you are even discussing that sort of scenario, it's not being prepared,, it's wasting efforts and resources that could be put to better planning for an actual threat.  And if you have any actual training in disaster preparedness you KNOW this.  And if you are STILL trying to plan a solution for a problem there is no solution for, you are again a solution looking for a problem that can't ever really exist.  Which makes ham radio operators look dumb as a whole.
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WO7R

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Re: Best way to communicate if internet down nation-wide.
« Reply #37 on: February 24, 2022, 08:35:25 PM »

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Hacking is a much more likely cause than EMP. It happens nearly daily on a corporate or local basis. A foreign entity that wants to put us in our place may have means, motive and opportunity.  The technology is there.

Hacking, especially by nation states, is a serious matter.

However, their ability to take down "the internet" as a whole is laughable.

A lot of attacks are indistinguishable from things that are not attacks.

There is no "the" internet.  The internet is an interlocking collective.  Not a government run one, but a collective none the less.  There's no "head of the snake" to cut off, accordingly.

There are some backbones that, if taken down, could cause real trouble.  Back in maybe the '70s, it could have taken out the internet as a whole.

But, not in 2022.  Without a lot of advance planning the sheer demand for nearly infinite capacity and the nearly infinite directionality has caused a large, robust network to be built.  Absent EMP then not even the (very talented) nation-state cyber warriors could take down the whole internet.

If they could do so, they already would have.  In fact, it would have happened sometime this very week.

The most serious recent stuff is "ransomware" against critical infrastructure.  That's nasty stuff and we should fix it, company by company. 

But that is still orders of magnitude removed from taking down "the internet" in the United States.  We're talking thousands if not millions of computers and the networks that support them.

Moreover, the internet infrastructure, such as the backbones, have been targets of every damn attack that was remotely relevant to them for decades now.  Perhaps DNS services might still be attacked successfully.  They are a comparatively weak point.  But, to date, nobody has taken that service down nation-wide.  Not once.  Damn near every Fortune 500 company has had a serious incident.  But the general internet?  It tends overall to treat attacks as damage and route around them.  In a lot of cases, it takes no special code.  It might not even take any configuration adjustments.

Maybe someone will eventually figure out how to take it all down.  But, it's hard because, as a collective, there is not only no central "head of the snake", there isn't even a common operating system nor are the code levels all the same.  In fact, an interesting aspect of the internet is that you have to deal with someone else's infrastructure, routinely, that's 20 years out of date and then turn around and deal with the beta code from someone else.  Within milliseconds.
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W9FIB

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Re: Best way to communicate if internet down nation-wide.
« Reply #38 on: February 25, 2022, 04:37:56 AM »

And with that situation you WILL have stuff to communicate.  I can see large chunks of the country being down for some reason or another.  We saw that with the bombing of the AT&T facility last year.  We saw it gain on Superbowl Sunday in Ohio and other states with some outage that took down phones, Internet and cable TV for a large number of folks.  With a situation like that communications outside the effected area will be important.  And we SHOULD be ready to provide assistance if something like that happens. 

Right. So I will continue to work with our local ARES group and with local emergency government and local law enforcement to plan for and to supply any needed support, equipment, time, effort, and even a cup of coffee.

Like you said..."And we SHOULD be ready to provide assistance if something like that happens."
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73, Stan
Travelling the world one signal at a time.

WA3SKN

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Re: Best way to communicate if internet down nation-wide.
« Reply #39 on: February 25, 2022, 10:15:03 AM »

In a FULL emergency you can expect...
Land line phones will be down.
Cell phones will be down.
The internet will be down.
You will have no power.

So what are you planning to do?  I would start with power! How much do you need?  How long do you need it?

-Mike.
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AC7CW

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Re: Best way to communicate if internet down nation-wide.
« Reply #40 on: February 25, 2022, 10:29:27 AM »

I'm thinking a mobile 100 watt rig with a mobile antenna and a vertical antenna on the house or barn roof with coax connections such that can go to the mobile rig... A yage might not be rotatable in a power out situation. Rig Power won't be a problem so long as your vehicle runs. My vehicle of choice would be a 1970's International Travelall: No electronics, absolute tank-like build, can put 250 gallon container of propane in the back and convert the motor to run on it[my father in law had exactly that, put 400,000 miles on it]. That and a satphone should do it...
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KB8VUL

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Re: Best way to communicate if internet down nation-wide.
« Reply #41 on: February 25, 2022, 05:43:10 PM »

In a FULL emergency you can expect...
Land line phones will be down.
Cell phones will be down.
The internet will be down.
You will have no power.

So what are you planning to do?  I would start with power! How much do you need?  How long do you need it?

-Mike.

Said this earlier in the thread.

So HOW do you actually deal with it.
Easy,,, well, relatively easy.   You find a big tower.  You build out a huge ARDEN network that connects 5 counties.  You build a back end of web services including messaging, email, video chat and a VoIP phone system.  You put in a big generator, battery plant, solar and wild power to feed the battery plant and figure that hardly NO ONE will bother to use it because it's not got a microphone and isn't on HF.  And that's not technically true either, because the WINLINK node is connected to HF packet to pass email. 


Go look up my call on QRZ.  There are pictures of the tower. 
Tower hosts public safety tenants and ham stuff, so what is spelled out in the earlier reply exists.  Still finalizing the generator and the solar and wind stuff will be going up in the spring.  Charging the batteries with charger / power supplies right now.  Have a 12 and a 24 volt battery plant.  Getting ready to build out the 48 volt plant.  Once the 48 volt plant is in place the 12 and 24 volt systems will be reconfigured to add capacity to the 48 volt plant and I will be running buck converters to drop the 48 to 12 and 24 for the gear that needs those voltages.  The racks of radios in the photos of the site are all on the 12 volt plant as are the MTR and Quantar repeaters.  The solar will be tied to the 48 system as well.  It will also have a grid powered 300 amp rectifier system tied to it.  But the ARDEN system is also up and running and does connect to other ARDEN nodes across 5 counties in central Ohio.
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KC3TEC

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Re: Best way to communicate if internet down nation-wide.
« Reply #42 on: November 06, 2022, 01:10:38 PM »

Metal ammo cans placed on concrete or a grounded bench can shield your emergency radios from emp and moisture both.
Many semiconductors can also be stored in metal canistors inside an ammo box
Very good faraday cage protection..and lastly, the simpler a transceiver is the easier it is to repair and get on the air should it endure an emp pulse.

However the establishment of a sufficient network amateurs prepared in the same manner is important to vital communications.
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KB8VUL

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Re: Best way to communicate if internet down nation-wide.
« Reply #43 on: November 06, 2022, 08:37:30 PM »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse

Maybe someone should go read this and get some better understanding of the mechanics of an EMP befoer cramming all their radios in a ammo box or similar act to deal with the possibility of an EMP. 
Short version is HF radios that have large wire antenna's attached will suffer the greatest damage.  But simple surge suppressors will do a lot to protect that gear.  A radio on a shelf being effected by an EMP would require a distance to the point of the blast close enough that the radio being damaged is probably the least of your worries. 
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KC3TEC

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Re: Best way to communicate if internet down nation-wide.
« Reply #44 on: November 10, 2022, 04:58:32 PM »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse

Maybe someone should go read this and get some better understanding of the mechanics of an EMP befoer cramming all their radios in a ammo box or similar act to deal with the possibility of an EMP. 
Short version is HF radios that have large wire antenna's attached will suffer the greatest damage.  But simple surge suppressors will do a lot to protect that gear.  A radio on a shelf being effected by an EMP would require a distance to the point of the blast close enough that the radio being damaged is probably the least of your worries.

That is IF the antenna is attached.
Storing them in a grounded metal box  such as an ammo can , grounded metal clad fire safe is placing it in a farraday cage.
Typicall an emp will not permanently disable electronics, but only as long as the pulse lasts.
An emp bomb if its close enough to cause permanent damage to electronics will most likely be from the explosive instead of the emp pulse.
And if you happen to be that close your not going to be able to use the radio or the internet.
Radios damaged from emp? Not so much.
Computerized communications hardware wise again not so much.
But operations will be affected for a time until everything is reset.
And anyone who has restarted a computer( especially win hosed 10) knows it can take some time.
Its during that time frame that alternate destruction is possible from different sources.

Rural areas may be prepared for longer term than cities because its common to stock up on supplies rather than make multiple or daily trips to a market.
Communication wise however may only have one source ( land line phone)
Cell phone coverage is not a universal blanket.
So what else do they have to rely on?

If they happen to have amatuer radio
They do at least have a backup means to call for help if the phone system is out.

Not every disaster is about a nuclear emp.
There are many forms to consider.
Flooding, earthquake, forest fires, rolling blackouts, blizzards these are just natural ones that can affect communications networks.
Sabotage either physical or electronic can to varying degrees happen can also disrupt it.

The odds of the entire internet going down! Astronomically high.
Taking it out in a typical zone of a few towns.not so high.
Ive seen a tornado take out power and communications in a distance covering 3 neighboring towns.
So yes ham radios, frs, and cbs were all we had for a week.

You can be a skeptic all you want but until you've had to rely on something other than cellphones.
You wont know how good it is to have an alternate resource.
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