Anyone played with HaLow? (802.11ah) this is probably a little easier to get setup in an urban area to use as an alternative mesh network outside of the commercial internet. Be interesting to have Halow/standard wifi bridges distributed around a city so people could use their existing devices to participate in the alternative decentralised network. One that could keep working when the isp or network goes down
2025-06-05 · 11 months ago
11 Comments ↓
☀️ sbr [OP] · 2025-06-05 at 09:58:
— https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008797209976.html
These look pretty nifty, not the cheapest option but very useable.
🚀 stack · 2025-06-05 at 19:30:
Will people ever form a voluntary decentralized network?
I feel we were getting there in early days of wifi -- people left guest networks open, cities had public wifis... then everything went to ***T.
☀️ sbr [OP] · 2025-06-06 at 04:00:
Haven’t read all but lots of people thinking about this space
— https://github.com/moarpepes/awesome-mesh
🚲 halscode · 2025-06-07 at 14:47:
Especially in our rapidly changing climate, and all the adverse weather coming with it (like Helene!), there *are* lots of people becoming interested in mesh networks. I haven't heard of this particular technology, but I'm definitely interested! Thanks for posting this.
🐙 norayr · 2025-08-19 at 10:10:
stack, ithink in some areas there are meshtastic/meshcore communities. in my area there is a small community i discovered after my friend assembled the hardware and printed the case and gave me the device.
on halow, thank you for sharing, i read now a bit but i don't understand does it work like a mesh? or we need access points to be connected to?
🐙 norayr · 2025-08-19 at 10:11:
the disatvantage of lora hardware is that only one producer (semtec) is allowed to print the chips.
wifi is an open standard so many can.
🚀 stack · 2025-08-19 at 11:43:
That. Every time I hear about how these things are going to disrupt telcos a d google, I remember that it's another proprietary technology
☀️ sbr [OP] · 2025-08-19 at 13:17:
By chance I had the opportunity to use HaLow in anger. A neighbour moved into a property without internet so I lent them a HaLow client. Their house is about 1km walking though due to odd layout it’s only 100m as the crow flies. Still pretty happy getting 20Mb without clear line of sight, over several homes and trees.
Also it 802.11ah is an open WiFi spec, so doesn’t have the same issues as lora.
🐙 norayr · 2025-08-19 at 15:07:
does it work as mesh? or like regular wifi?
i guess we can use yggdrasil over it to become a mesh.
lora patent will expire one day, not sure when.
but for now wifi+yggdrasil feels understandable for me.
🚀 stack · 2025-08-19 at 15:12:
With patents you would usually make a modification in the last few years and patent that for another 20 years
☀️ sbr [OP] · 2025-08-19 at 17:05:
It supports 802.11s for mesh (think that’s the spec), so yes it does