Justin Kilpatrick

Blockchain

Althea Development Update #74: Automated Xdai bridge

what we’ve done in this release is design a fully automated a bridge, the user merely has to deposit ETH and the router takes care of the rest. The money will be exchanged for DAI, then transferred across the cross-blockchain bridge to become Xdai.

debugging

Althea Development Update #73: For want of a transaction

A minute later when the gateway tried to validate that same payment again it chose the same failed node at random. It wouldn't get a third chance.

coding

Althea Development Update #72: Easy local Althea testnet

For this development cycle I've focused on building a more advanced and easier to run series of integration tests. As Althea matures the complexity of the average bug to track down, identify and test increases so to stay one step ahead our old integration tests needed an upgrade.

debugging

Althea Development Update #71: Transaction amnesia

As I slapped this solution together I got a bad feeling. What if the full node lied to us? I really couldn’t think of a situation in which it would but I just couldn’t shake it.

Ethereum

Althea Development Update #70: Dueling scripts

Put on your night time sunglasses because I have a tale from our cyberpunk future, or present as it may be. How a poorly coded smart contract disrupted an ISP in rural Oregon.

Decentralization

Althea Development Update #69: Decentralization without compromises

Althea has taken the same base software ISPs use and applied some modern advancements. In short we've stacked our advantages and minimized our overhead to such a degree that we come out even with centralized ISP performance.

bug-stories

Althea Development Update #68: Time is relative for computers too

This issue got me thinking about the relativity of time on the routers. Our billing algorithm made the assumption that everyone did billing computations every 5 seconds, what would happen when that didn't hold true?

Althea Development Update #67: Chasing ghosts in the machine

Once you design a distributed system to handle any one point of failure you don't stop having failures, they just get more complicated and interconnected. Beta 3 is finally rolling out, after several weeks of furious QA. Here are some example bugs. 1) Fixed a race condition where

Althea is about building infrastructure

When we talk about Althea's design often the first question comes down to 'why home internet'. Why do we focus on home networks when what people really want is cell data, just cheaper? Mobile data is the major driver of world internet adoption. The majority of

Mesh Networking

Althea Development Update #66: New dashboard, exit redundancy

Althea now supports multihomed exits, meaning a single exit can be run across multiple datacenters and bridged into the mesh like any other alternate route. The other major change is the creation of a 'low balance' mode.

Blockchain

Althea Development Update #65: The Quantum Leap

we released payments and then immediately set about doubling the size of our test network. In doing so we had raised the bar for the quality of our features and interfaces.

Althea Development Update #64: Beta 1 rollout, UI improvements, New blog platform

> Rolled out @AltheaOrg [https://twitter.com/AltheaOrg?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw] Beta 1 today in production. Members of the Clatskanie Co-op are loading up their routers with ethereum, which automatically pays my router for bandwidth. Exciting stuff! pic.twitter.com/uCUftWoDDG [https://t.co/uCUftWoDDG] — Deborah Simpier (@DeborahSimpier) January

DevOps

Outage report: 14-Jan–2019

Starting at 8pm Pacific time yesterday through 3am Pacific time today Althea’s exit servers were down. This is our first major (longer than a 15 minute) outage since June of 2018. The technical issue exposed is pretty minor, the real feedback here is about a series of failures in

Blockchain

Althea Development Update #63: Beta 1

Right now Beta 1 rc2 is churning it’s way through the build system Once this release passes QA in a couple of days we will have out first Althea build with feature complete routing and bandwidth payment. Beta 1 will be able to, dynamically route, buy , and sell bandwidth

Tech

Althea Development Update #62: Free tier design and the life of a packet

Since our last update bandwidth payments have been making their way down the stabilization pipeline we’re going to roll out Alpha 12 to…

Internet

Metered Bandwidth on Althea

In this post I’m going to explain Althea’s billing system and how it provides more transparency, choice, and control than the traditional…

Ethereum

Althea Development Update #61: Testnet bandwidth payments

Pragmatic bootstrapping

Blockchain

Althea Development Update #60: Teaching people to setup real gear

Globetrotting and training

Blockchain

Althea Development Update #59: Experiments in real world payments

Check out our new website Althea.org

Tech

Althea Development Update #58: Online Port toggling, more payments progress

Deborah and Jehan spent last week in Medellin Colombia helping to setup an Althea network there. You should read Deborah’s blog post about…

Rustlang

Althea Development Update #57: First transactions, DAO payments soon to follow

Update Summary

Raspberry Pi

Althea Development Update #56: Network Organization support

Update Summary

Blockchain

Althea Development Update #55: Network organizer features

I’m very happy to say that since our last update we’ve had about 8 devices be put into real world use without any of the failures/crashes…

Tech

Althea Development Update #54: Better networking management, moving on deployments

What’s new in Alpha 8

Tech

Althea Development Update #53: Timelines and building rock solid software

I’m happy to say that we’ve brought on board 3 new developers since our last update. We’ve also expanded the marketing team to add some…