"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 20, 2026 17:25 UTC (Tue) by NAR (subscriber, #1313)
In reply to: "SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services) by paulj
Parent article: A note for MXroute users

unless they turn off the Internet entirely

Iran has just done this. Don't underestimate a sufficiently desperate government...

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"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 21, 2026 13:28 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

As per up-thread, even with Internet shut-off, there's still packet radios in everyone's pocket for short-distance mesh networking, and LoRaWAN is also wide-spread and can't be banned cause it gets some use in industry and agriculture (e.g. for sensors). LWN has had stories before on Free Software systems to setup well-featured messaging systems on those short and mid range packet radio systems.

There is also a massive cost to shutting off the Internet. You can't be a modern country with no Internet. It won't stay shut off for long (as we're seeing in your example).

"SMTP has outlived its usefulness" (was: Forwarding services)

Posted Jan 22, 2026 17:42 UTC (Thu) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]

Turning off the internet is an option for a western government that doesn't care about the economy anymore.

Honestly, I think we've reached the point where if you completely shutdown the internet in a western country for more than a few days, people start starving. Setting up a mesh network is nowhere near anyone's top priority.