#+KEYWORDS: freedombox, debian, beaglebone, red matrix, email, web server, home server, internet, censorship, surveillance, social network, irc, jabber
#+DESCRIPTION: Turn the Beaglebone Black into a personal communications server
The Freedombone Mesh is a wireless solution for autonomous or internet connected communication that can be rapidly deployed in temporary, emergency or post-disaster situations where internet access is unavailable or compromised.
Mesh networks are useful as a quick way to make a fully decentralised communications system which is not connected to or reliant upon the internet. Think festivals, hacker conferences, onboard ships at sea, disaster/war zones, small businesses who don't want the overhead of server maintenance, protests, remote areas of the world, temporary "digital blackouts", scientific expeditions and off-world space colonies.
If an internet connection is available then it can make use of that, but otherwise it can still work regardless of whether the internet exists. So it's not dependent upon ISPs and additional infrastructure other than USB drives isn't required.
Systems only need to be within wifi range of each other for the mesh to be created, so it can be an very convenient way to create a local communications network.
Like [[https://libremesh.org][LibreMesh]], this system uses a combination of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B.A.T.M.A.N.][batman-adv]] on network layer 2 and [[http://bmx6.net][BMX]] on layer 3. Routing protocols [[http://www.olsr.org][OLSR2]] and [[https://www.irif.fr/~jch/software/babel][Babel]] are also selectable.
