Blockchain
DeFi enabled Ethereum bridge for Cosmos
DeFi investment is just another set of rules and automation for the bridge. Not a giant leap in technology, but instead, of perspective.
hardware
Hardware hacking is good for business
Routers are, for all their specific quirks, just computers. Like your desktop, phone, or a server.
compilers
Althea Development Update #83: Rust static binaries and OpenWRT
A four car pileup of complex codebases, starting with static binary building on Rust.
Althea Development Update #82: Direct router deposit with Wyre!
With the new Beta 11 release users can now use the Wyre widget to buy and send funds directly to their router. We've been dreaming about a system like this for a very long time. While Wyre pay isn't available in every state or region where it is available users won't have to navigate Coinbase any longer. The process of buying and then withdrawing to the router was essentailly our largest usability barrier. I'm really looking forward to seeing this in production over the next few weeks. Bugf
abuja
Althea Development Update #81: Phone client Beta 0 and the many fixes of router Beta 11
Without further delay, here is the Althea for Android app. You will need to use it with Beta 11 RC6 or later of the Althea router firmware. You can find a list of supported routers here.
Althea Development Update #80: Phone client networking, MCD upgrade
Happy new year everyone! Since my last blog post [https://blog.althea.net/althea-development-update-79/] I've managed to implement the alternate network design I proposed. Phone client design proposed in update #79, now implemented and functionalThe major hudles where as follows. 1. Turns out Ipv6 multicast sockets need to be rebound on all network change events AND on a timer in order to work consistently. 2. Getting Android to route your app over WiFi networks that aren't detected to
Althea Development Update #79: Things Android won't let you do
Android devices as IPv6 mesh network participants Recently we've been working on a phone client for Althea [https://blog.althea.net/althea-development-update-78-building-a-phone-client/]. Our first design was to have every phone as a Babel node, advertising it's own routes and generally functioning independently. It turns out Android will let you do this, but only in a very specific way that's not useful to us. Hopefully someone else finds the knowledge useful. The restrictions 1. Android d
Android
Althea Development Update #78: Building a phone client
It would be great for people to be able to buy a connection directly via their phone. You can’t really compete on price with something people already own.
debugging
Althea Development Update #77: Hiding in plain sight
Since our last update I’ve encountered a couple of bugs where the problem had been hiding in plain sight. In one case for weeks and another for a year or more. Discovering root causes long term subtle bugs is both satisfying and important to create a better product.
latency
Althea Development Update #76: Automatic connection tuning
Now we're exploring that we can do with multihomed users and connections
latency
Althea Development Update #75: Chasing latency
We apply latency control judiciously throughout at every Althea node in the network, with the ultimate goal of fairly allocating bandwidth at any given bottleneck.
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. You can now easily download and run a local Althea testnet through a series of highly instrumented tests with a single command. Running the tests in one easy step First have docker installed and running. Then run th
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 the Linux kernel won't assign fe80 local ips to interfaces despite completing the 'network' boot step. This occurs for no more than one in several dozen reboot cycles. 2) Fixed a bug where after about two years pow
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 the world's internet users have a mobile connection [https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/01/mobile-internet-use-passes-desktop-for-the-first-time-study-finds/] . So why isn't Althea focused on providing mobile internet? The short answer is t
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 23, 2019 [https://twitter.com/DeborahSimpier/status/1087895771502891008?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw] The last couple of weeks have been busy, we're at about 50% Bet
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 our incident recovery procedure. Primary Causes: * Incorrect configuration of per process file descriptor limits on the exits * Recovery failure of some client devices Failures in incident response procedure: *
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 with production Ethereum. Everything described in our original demo video, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyFEYEcHJyA&t=2s] but ready for use as the primary ISP for the households and businesses of our test networks. There