Hong Kong Protestors Using FireChat’s Mesh Network to Evade Censorship
For the past several days, Hong Kong has been filled with tens of thousands of people in what has been dubbed, The Umbrella Revolution. They are protesting for a fully democratic election process, and to prevent mainland China from learning of these protests, the government has blocked many major sites, and may even block the entire internet in Hong Kong and turn off all cell towers. However, the protestors are using an app called FireChat to communicate with one another, without needing an internet or cell connection. The app utilizes what is called a mesh network.
In a mesh network, each device acts as a node, and the edges are formed with some wireless communication (Bluetooth and Wi-Fi in the case of FireChat). In a traditional internet network, each node is connected to a gateway which controls the traffic. With a mesh network, each node can act as its own gateway with all other nodes within communication range. And so these networks can function without outside resources, which makes it much more difficult for the government to shut it down. If one node of the network is destroyed, it will not cause the whole network to crash as there are many paths between all of the nodes.
Currently this app has a range of only 200ft, so it is much more useful in large crowds such as in Hong Kong. Also, the network is not encrypted, so there is no way of private communications from one node, to another. However this app, and mesh networks do have many uses, and continue to improve. It has been used widely in Iraq because of internet shutdowns, and in many military situations. Mesh networks could be the way of the future, and in several years we may not need a cell or Wi-Fi connection to be able to communication with one another. There are currently several projects such as Project Byzantium (http://project-byzantium.org/) and Project Meshnet (https://projectmeshnet.org/), which are going even further an hope to connect all laptops and mobile devices in a global mesh network.
Sources:
1) http://www.technologyreview.com/news/531226/vast-grassroots-mobile-network-grows-at-center-of-hong-kong-protests/
2) http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/191118-hong-kong-protesters-turn-to-mesh-networks-to-evade-chinas-censorship
3) http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/131185-what-is-firechat-and-how-does-it-work-without-network-connectivity