It made me think: can a Lemmy instance be hosted on a local network.
Like if the global internet is down but we maintained a local network in the village. Can we use Lemmy or mastodon?
Maybe when we have a good weather we manage to connect to the next village, so can we connect to their instance at this moment ?
It is straightforward to run an isolated network with TCP/IP, DNS, and web servers. The hard part would be dealing with software that complains/fails if you're not using HTTPS.
In general, you would want an offline copy of the entire software stack (e.g. a Gentoo Linux mirror) so you can patch whatever problems you encounter.
You would have to run your own CA and get everyone to install your root cert on their devices. That what happens already with tech like smart cards and SSL inspection firewalls.
It's all about trusting the connection implicitly.
"Mate I dont trust you"
"Its okay, I have a certificate"
"This just says 'Trust me bro' and has your name at the bottom."
"If you still dont trust me, just call this guy, he will vouch for me!"
"This is your own phone number."
Yup! 😂
It would mpst likely come down to infrastructure maintenance capacity, so if we're tallking regional or sub-regional maybe. For example southern california probably has enough industrial capacity that so long as raw materials can be acquired maintence would be relatively simple. But if we're talking scattered individual townships without much intertown services then a BBS would probably be easier and more practical to maintain.
I don't need a social network in a village, I'll just step out of my house and yell.
Depends on how dense or spread out it is.
If it's dense and everything is in one place you might not need anything more than just going outside.
If it is spread out though you may want communication methods other than mail and if people already have the computers and existing infrastructure (many places have cables for network and phone lines) to set up a local network then that might be the best option.
It made me think: can a Lemmy instance be hosted on a local network.
Like if the global internet is down but we maintained a local network in the village. Can we use Lemmy or mastodon?
Maybe when we have a good weather we manage to connect to the next village, so can we connect to their instance at this moment ?
It is straightforward to run an isolated network with TCP/IP, DNS, and web servers. The hard part would be dealing with software that complains/fails if you're not using HTTPS.
In general, you would want an offline copy of the entire software stack (e.g. a Gentoo Linux mirror) so you can patch whatever problems you encounter.
You would have to run your own CA and get everyone to install your root cert on their devices. That what happens already with tech like smart cards and SSL inspection firewalls. It's all about trusting the connection implicitly.
"Mate I dont trust you"
"Its okay, I have a certificate"
"This just says 'Trust me bro' and has your name at the bottom."
"If you still dont trust me, just call this guy, he will vouch for me!"
"This is your own phone number."
Yup! 😂
It would mpst likely come down to infrastructure maintenance capacity, so if we're tallking regional or sub-regional maybe. For example southern california probably has enough industrial capacity that so long as raw materials can be acquired maintence would be relatively simple. But if we're talking scattered individual townships without much intertown services then a BBS would probably be easier and more practical to maintain.
I don't need a social network in a village, I'll just step out of my house and yell.
Depends on how dense or spread out it is. If it's dense and everything is in one place you might not need anything more than just going outside.
If it is spread out though you may want communication methods other than mail and if people already have the computers and existing infrastructure (many places have cables for network and phone lines) to set up a local network then that might be the best option.