Transforming Connectivity
159 posts · Page 4what 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.
On Tuesday, the Althea validators finished a hard fork from altheatest3 to altheatest4.
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.
We launched the altheatest3 test blockchain. We'll be having a series of collaborative challenges for the validators.
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
Up to now, we've been running our networks on the Ethereum blockchain. The reality is that Ethereum simply isn't suitable for our use case. Ethereum's great for manual, medium or high value, sophisticated transactions...
What is a validator and what do I need? We're currently in the process of spinning up the Althea blockchain [https://blog.althea.net/launching-the-althea-blockchain/]. We are using Cosmos, a proof of stake blockchain framework. This post is for those who would like to help validate. A validator is sort of like a miner in a proof of stake blockchain. They don't need any special hardware or a large amount of power. Instead validators risk 'staked' tokens. A validator will lock up staking tokens an
Networks are made out of more than antennas and ethernet cables. They are homes and business - neighbors - connected to one another. These neighbors can also become relays, forwarding bandwidth to nearby homes and earning money. Althea organizers are project managers that spread the word and help coordinate installation, planning, and outreach. Community Outreach usually starts by establishing a social media presence. If you are planning a network primarily comprised of businesses, you may con
Over the last month, Althea organizers have been working to develop local partnerships and gain traction in their communities. Several organizers have chosen the “Altheahoods” approach to starting their networks, and have begun gathering pre-registration sign-ups prior to build out. Using social media and door-to-door canvassing, the hilltop organizers have gained traction at a brisk pace with 39 sign ups and several business have stepped forward to become relays or gateways there. In Newberg, O
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.
There's an amazing wireless technology that lets you download a high definition movie to your phone or computer in seconds. This technology can send gigabits of data over tens of miles in a tightly focused beam of millimeter-wave radio. It will replace outdated DSL and cable home internet with faster, cheaper alternatives and usher in a glorious age of VR, AI, and IOT. The tech What is this technology called? Is it 5G? No. That's just how good radio engineering is these days. All of these capa
The novelty of the Althea system [https://althea.org/how-it-works] is how it incentivizes a diverse group of partners within the network and automates their collaboration. Local organizers work together with home and business owners to host infrastructure that relays bandwidth throughout the community. This unique collaboration can give rise to a variety of different setups and economic models. In this post, I’m going to explore two frequently used economic models, and I encourage creativity in
It's June 2019 and today I'm going to install a new subscriber of our cooperative ISP in rural Oregon. This family had previously only access to 1Mbps wireless or an expensive 4Mbps DSL connection. This is not a new or isolated incident. I receive calls every day from people in my community that are desperate for broadband so they can access education, health care or work online. So, when the FCC posted the results of the Broadband Deployment Report [https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/29/fccs-broa
Cosmos is a project creating an "Internet of blockchains" which will be linked together through the IBC protocol. Unlike many blockchains, where your application will have to pay fees to some weird guys with rooms full of GPUs, on Cosmos, you build your own chain, and most tx fees can go to your blockchain's token holders, with validators charging 0-10% of tx fees for running the infrastructure. Building your own blockchain also gives you a lot of flexibility. If Bitcoin is a pocket calculator
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.
On a sunny day in the city of Los Mochis, Mexico, Althea organizer Raul, runs a speed test on an expensive 20Mbps connection. 20Mbps, which is not even considered broadband in the US, is about the fastest connection available in the city. Today, like most days here, the speedtest shows an underwhelming 1Mbps of download speed. Raul is here to change this - to bring real improvement to both the cost and speed of internet, starting in Los Mochis and growing to all of Mexico. Raul installing a Mi
We launched six new Altheahoods communities in early May. An Altheahood community is selected by an organizer as a potential deployment. Local organizers then work together with the Althea team to get people signed up and “pre-registered” prior to committing to a buildout. One of these organizers, Perri, had been struggling to find good internet access for her parent's 80 acre hazelnut farm and recognized that an Althea network might be the solution for her community of Newberg, Oregon. Perri a
Before the Red Medellin team brought in Althea's innovative technology, options for internet access were limited in Comuna 13, one of the sprawling urban communities on the hills surrounding Medellin Colombia. A few of the homes had low-speed DSL access, but most people relied on expensive cell data plans. Many of these data plans “zero rate”, or give free access to sites like Facebook and WhatsApp, while charging high prices for the rest of the web. This gives people a very narrow perception of
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.
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?
Taking a note from Google's rollout of their fiber networks, we are introducing the new Altheahoods program! This program supplies organizers with the marketing tools and internet presence to get end users signed up and on board prior to building out the network. This is a good tool to evaluate if an Althea network will be viable in your neighborhood, and requires very little investment to get started. Shoot us an email at hello@altheamesh.com if you are interested in bringing a faster, cheaper,
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
My trip to Colombia Entonces(enˈtonses/, [ẽn̪ˈt̪õnses]) — One of my favorite Spanish words. It means then or so. I like the cadence, how it fills the awkward space in a sentence and how it conveys a sense of time and place. My trip in Colombia was a journey through time and place, the logistics of project management — The first this, then that and the witnessing of a unique place at a unique time in history. How Medellin, a once violent place, has transformed itself and revitalized its economy
We were so busy building and growing I think we missed an update in February! We now have 23 users in Clatskanie [https://blog.althea.org/tales-from-the-field/], and several relays (a relay is a node that has a connecting antenna and an antenna that broadcasts to neighbors – relays make money by forwarding bandwidth). People in Clatskanie are now paying for their internet by loading Ethereum on to their routers [http://www.althea.org/top-up] using the Coinbase mobile app with a debit card and
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
