TxtNet Browser – Browse the Web over SMS, No Wi-Fi/Mobile Data Needed
Hello all, This is my second year of working on a project[1] with the goal of browsing the web, on an Android smartphone, without reliance on Wi-Fi or mobile data. While this concept might seem aimless, my goal was to provide a way for people in areas with limited, expensive, or censored cellular internet access a way to view the web in a basic format. I finished work on a basic client-server model last year[2], and this year, I implemented a new pseudo-distributed peer-to-peer model that allows any TxtNet Browser user to use their own smartphone to run a background server service that…
What it does
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hello all, This is my second year of working on a project[1] with the goal of browsing the web, on an Android smartphone, without reliance on Wi-Fi or mobile data. While this concept might seem aimless, my goal was to provide a way for people in areas with limited, expensive, or censored cellular internet access a way to view the web in a basic format. I finished work on a basic client-server model last year[2], and this year, I implemented a new pseudo-distributed peer-to-peer model that allows any TxtNet Browser user to use their own smartphone to run a background server service that communicates via the user's own primary mobile number. The main advantage to this model over last year's use of the Twilio API is the fact that with an unlimited SMS plan from a consumer carrier, you will likely end up paying significantly less than the amount you would pay for Twilio credits (averaging about ~$0.50 per website). There's a lot going on with the stateless nature of SMS, GSM-7 encoding, and Brotli compression, so please ask any questions you might have! I've also started up a test server instance running on a +1 country code phone number, so feel free to test out the app with your own smartphone. Like mentioned in the GitHub repo, please be aware that I (necessarily) have access to every phone number and associated request that is sent. Of course, anyone can host their own server instance, and if you would like to share it, feel free to get in touch so I can add the number to the repo! Also, there are likely many bugs still lurking, so feel free to report those. [1] https://github.com/lukeaschenbrenner/TxtNet-Browser/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32905496
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