Is the Boston one seeing any progress (admittedly its current incarnation is rather recent)? I am moving there soon and would love to join a mesh network, but from my (superficial) reading of their materials, they do not have yet any nodes you can connect to (as a person not owning roof access for a "super node").
If I understand it correctly, the two ways that incumbents are able to kill these efforts are through lower costs and through infrastructure restrictions. Emitting radio waves is both cheaper and lower-infrastructure than laying fiber. The question in my mind is whether the quality holds up.
You forgot pay the opposition party to demagogue. Lobbying has a higher ROI and they can keep treating internet service as a luxury good instead of a commodity.
I've been very intrigued by their efforts for some time now. Last time I read about NYC Mesh, it sent me down a rabbit hole of research into mesh networks and what it takes to found an ISP. I'd love to replicate their efforts in NOLA, but the legal and technical hurdles are tricky!
When I had looked into it, these resources had been helpful for research:
Wireless Networking in the Developing world -- http://wndw.net/ -- A useful guidebook on the tech needed for large scale community mesh networks
Guifi.net -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guifi.net -- A huge wireless mesh in Spain, there's a linked economic report in the references that's very good but may be unavailable at the moment. It may have been, or be contained within, "The Cook Report on Internet Protocol" Volume XX1, No, 12 & XXII, No 1 March April 2013
ISSN 1071 - 6327. The report is very long and covers quite a bit of the social and technical challenges faced by Guifi.net
My partner and I are NOLA based programmers / lawyers who have been researching this matter for a few years. We own the domain nolamesh.net and would love to work with you to navigate the political / legal / business issues to deploy a similar network in the New Orleans metro area. Please reach out to us at nolalawcorp@gmail.com
and let's set up a meeting.
Just want to say thanks for that site, it has led to countless hours of reading and thinking and dreaming from me that may eventually turn into actual work!
The problem has always been that this networking technology can’t really be compared easily to wired networking, but consumers do. You adversely select for people who want reliability instead of speed, which is the opposite of what WISPs provide.
The main problem is organizing. Legal and technical problems are easy by comparison. I wrote a guide here for starting your own network- https://www.nycmesh.net/blog/how/
From their docs, it looks like they're deploying a series of neighborhood-scale mesh networks, each with at least one "supernode" which acts as gateway to other supernodes and the meshes behind them, and possibly also to the internet. All the supernodes themselves are meshed together as well, each with its own private ASN.
That is an excellent point. Mesh nets may be vulnerable to being monitored over the internet. I have not read the article, but I hope these groups are building privacy into their protocol.
I have wanted to build something like this for decade now. It is inspiring to hear about their success.
Do these mesh networks support TLS? Even if they do support TLS, it might be possible for a node on the mesh to successfully carry out a SSL strip attack. Or aggregate leaked metadata from the requests that pass through it. I am not familiar with these mesh networks, there may be many lurking attack vectors if the creators are not particularly concerned with privacy / security.
I wasn't making the assumption that their mesh was based on TCP. I should really just read the article and linked materials, but I am trying to ingore that temptation since I am supposed to be working :-P
By that line of reasoning it might be good etiquette to make assumptions about an article and the contents of an article provided that one does not include a disclaimer about not reading the article :-P
I did make the disclaimer that I have not read the article for the sake of transparency and humility. I probably will later this week, but the only spare time I have has been spent responding to this thread :-P
An application can be designed to communicate over more than one protocol. There is more than one transport protocol used on the internet. For example, the UDP protocol may be used for for P2P / mesh networks. Applications that support UDP may also support TCP. TLS runs "on top of some reliable transport protocol (e.g., TCP). UDP is not a reliable transport protocol. There are also transport protocols other than TCP / UDP [1].
Anyway, if you are making your own mesh that does not require you to have access to an ISP, then maybe you make that mesh over something other than IP. If you did use something other than IP, that would not prevent any of the nodes from including IP in their networking stack. In that scenario, a human user of the mesh might believe that they are completely off the grid / internet, but surprise, all their traffic or leaked metadata is actually being aggregated over the internet because one of the nodes is connected.
I mainly brought this up because it popped into my head and I thought it might make for an interesting discussion. Also, because I have thought about making a distributed mesh network that does not use IP where nodes communicate via HAM radio.
There were (maybe still are) tons of such mesh networks run by small commercial operators in Germany's rural areas, usually using directional radio to create connections between villages and then meshing all the wifi consumer routers to span wifi over the village. They did that/do that because the major commercial providers (i.e. Telekom) weren't exactly fast laying fiber to these villages.
A buddy of mine used to run such a network spanning 3 villages with about 400 customers a bunch of years back. I seem to remember one of the directional antennas was strategically placed in some church tower.
They ran this as a two people operation. Extreme weather also was a problem for them, and they essentially learned network design by trial and error, starting out as a fully bridged network where everybody was in the same 10.0.0.0/8, NATed to the outside. They fixed that later. Customers only got like 3-4MBit/s from this mesh, which wasn't exactly fast but not too shabby either back then, especially considering the only alternative those villagers had was ISDN speeds (128kbit/s max I think). No LTE yet either.
They weren't alone either. There was a huge number of such operators who shared knowledge etc.
Once he started negotiating with those villages to lay fiber and provide DSL service all of the sudden the Telekom started fibering up "his" villages.
My home internet in the Rocky Mountains, USA is delivered via mesh-WiFi provided by one of my neighbors. It's a really cool system actually- the towers are battery/solar operated and some can only be accessed via horseback. Covers ~500 homes.
5mbps down/2mbps up is what I get for $79/month, and I've learned to live with it. The only other option is satellite internet with restrictive usage caps. We used to have another competitor in the space but after big floods in 2013 they exited our area.
It’s mostly consistent except for 7-9PM weekdays. I set up some special QoS rules that I can toggle on/off on my LAN to make my phone feel decent enough during those hours...shh don’t tell my wife! ;)
Ah, a classic home router admin move: "I'm gonna QoS all of your traffic into oblivion so that I can download my cat videos".
More seriously, I'm impressed at that consistency. I've always heard that that type of connection tends to be iffy, so it's interesting to know that my preconceptions may have been wrong.
There was (might still be but I haven't looked since fiber went everywhere where I live) a local provider to me that use microwave links, it was at the time fast as hell compared to creaking ADSL but every time it rained it went south fast, I worked in a shared office building that used it for it's main links and it was a constant thorn in my side, I used to check the rainfall forecast to see if I'd have decent internet at the office!.
But how does it work with the internet connection? You need a massive incoming bandwidth (a 500/1000Mbps Internet connection form ISP?) To share it with others?
Some commercial b2b provider had fibers already in a village (or close enough). They had no interest in providing residential service, tho. I think that provider has since been bought by Cogent (or was it level3)?
Also, I think my buddy oversubscribed the lines. And had some file sharing/fair use clause that customers needed to agree to and abide by. They didn't really do traffic shaping/DPI stuff, so once in a while they had to call or visit (when in the area anyway) the parents of some kid who just had discovered the wonders of bittorrent maxing out their allotted chunk of the bandwidth 24/7.
So yes, they bought some "business internet" from that provider, quite a lot of it. Wasn't cheap, but wasn't too expensive as they got hat provider to see the reason in "either you quote us prices we can pay, and we both make some money, or you don't and then neither of us does".
While I am in favor of increasing competition among ISPs. I don't see how making it volunteer-based is actually good. All this does is take away presumably well-paying jobs from those who need them. IMO, a for-profit company developing a new mesh network would be more compelling. Not only would it provide local jobs, but it would also drive down the cost of internet for all. Somehow though, I feel this is a minority view.
A for-profit company will drive profits for stockholders (and not necessarily the community or customers) which will also drive competition. Sure, it creates jobs but that’s not a for-profit company’s goal. I guess it is difficult to compete given laws and/or regulations, so running a new such company for-profit would be too difficult?
> Sure, it creates jobs but that’s not a for-profit company’s goal
Well, of course. Giving away unlimited supplies of money without earning it is a privilege only the federal government has. Non-profit companies also cannot create money out of thin air. While non-profits can endeavor to create jobs as their primary mission, I have yet to see a non-profit that can actually create a job without first earning the money itself, whether through actually doing something or working to fundraise.
> I guess it is difficult to compete given laws and/or regulations, so running a new such company for-profit would be too difficult?
It doesn't even need to be for-profit. I suppose I should have clarified. It could be non-profit too. It's the all-volunteerness that I object to. The sorts of things done by volunteers here are actually jobs, that should be compensated. The receivers of the internet ought to be okay paying for it to pay for these people's livelihoods.
> The receivers of the internet ought to be okay paying for it
They do pay for it. But there are not currently enough subscribers to make hiring someone worthwhile or affordable. Hopefully that will change in time.
While I agree that paying people for their work is good, and that it would be cool if NYC Mesh grew into something that could provide workers with a good living, I see no need for it to become a for-profit company in order to do so.
At a certain scale they will hire from the same pool as the ISPs. Labor is never saved, it's just moved around. Cooperatives are always better than traditional for-profit companies because you dont have an executive class that does nothing but soak up value generated by the laborers.
At very worst, this sort of volunteer operation will not change the relationship the workers have with their labor and only change who's paying them to do it.
Cooperatives are for profit companies. I'm unsure why you think they're not or why they did not fall under my definition of 'for profit' company.
That being said. Cooperatives do have executive classes and they do soak up value from labor
Also traditional for profit companies would theoretically allow local stakeholders to reap profits but I do agree that due to unjust sec rules about accredited investors designed to protect the rich, this can not happen
Well ok, but I never implied (or meant to) that co-operatives aren't trying to generate profit for reasons that include less of that profit generation ending up in the hands of people who do less, at least in the co-ops im familiar with. They are more efficient than the predecessor organization style.
I definitely did imply that they had no executive class, though, which is wrong.
We're also setting up an AREDN mesh in St. Louis, MO. Most of the fun for me is getting access to skyscrapers and installing and troubleshooting the network equipment and antennas. I'm not really sure what we're going to do with it once it's actually up. We might host a meet up on it via mumble every once in a while...post some files for hams to enjoy...but for me it's like, "cool, now what?"
> At some point these community efforts must grow back into a company again, right?
(a) Not necessarily, it might turn into a non-profit organisation, a cooperative, or something “akin”.
(b) Nothing wrong with companies either. Although I (and many others) would prefer option (a), a fairer company that respects its customers’ needs and rights is very welcome!
Probably around the 1200-5000 mark you might start seeing market segmentation, and then a federation of local mesh networks' super hubs all sharing a dedicated backbone of some sort and cost sharing. Backbone and last mile always seem to get separated out pretty quickly as they're different businesses. Not all nonprofits need to scale to unicorn size.
As someone who is on NYC Mesh - it’s amazing. I can’t explain the feeling you can get of pointing an antenna at a distant building and getting a ping. So great!
How was your onboarding experience? I'd love to join the mesh, but I'm pretty far from the supernodes. If you live in an apartment, did you have any issues running the wires into the building?
I think this is the big hurdle or most people in Manhattan:
To get connected to NYC Mesh, you’ll need a line of sight from your rooftop or balcony to one of our supernodes or hubs. Check our map to see if you're in the network coverage zone. And if you’re not yet in range, keep checking back as our network is always expanding, or volunteer to help us grow towards your neighborhood.
So this means that if you are in a condo you can't use it?
How is the connection? I checked with them a couple of months back and unfortunately my rooftop isn't in line of sight with any of the nodes. Really want to use it and say goodbye to Verizon.
It depends on how many hops are between you and a supernode but 60-80mbit is typical. Check the map in a few months, I was in your situation then suddenly a node popped up a mile away.
It really bothers me to see nothing going on in the Phoenix, Arizona region, where I live.
I'm planning on getting my Technicians HAM license sometime soon (I took one of the online practice tests "blind" and scored an 80 - so with some study it shouldn't be a problem).
Maybe after that if I can find some like-minded people nearby...
The rules also prohibit commercial communications (i.e. pecuniary interest). There are some limited exceptions which depending on your use may be enough.
That said, ham radio is a fun hobby regardless. If you are into IP stuff on ham radio, it's not too hard to get an ip on the ham IP block /8.
Amateur radio does have a tradition of self enforcement which is part of my the FCC continues to grant privileges. People practice RDF for fun but I know people who have used to to find people intentionally interfering with other stations.
This is a great use case for crypto. You can earn by supporting the network and spend it to use the network. It helps the incentive layer. Those supporting the network can pay for support personnel as they grow, or there can be a network tax that goes towards this. You can also decentralize the support personnel by rewarding people that successfully answer tickets and offer a premium for when questions are answered within a certain amount of time. These questions and answers would also be stored on-chain on a sidechain.
The article says there's a "backhaul" that connects the althea network to the internet. I understand this means the community will then need just one subscription to the internet, as opposed to n, so it's cheaper. But doesn't this mean that every user in the network will experience vastly slower connection than if they had their own internet subscription?
It's a commercial subscription. The fact is, any residential ISP is selling the same connection to the internet to 20-100 subscribers. This is known as the oversale ratio. Since nobody is using the whole connection continuously, people experience the advertised speeds most of the time.
The backhaul connections that ISPs resell (and that are sold into Althea networks) are usually around 10x the price of a residential connection with the same advertised speed.
It's the difference between "it is technically possible for this connection to attain this bandwidth" and "you are guaranteed this bandwidth at all times"
thanks for clarifying! I was under the assumption that, in a normal setting where 'n' people have subscribed to an ISP, there would 'n' backhauls, one for each subscriber.
To be fair, reading your comment again, it doesn't make sense to me why the reselling price to Althea network is 10x the normal price.
I don't quite see why ISP's would treat a commerical subscription to an Althea network differently than a residential network.
Sure, if an ISP knows that the Althean network is trying to optimally squeeze the most out of the backhaul, then it makes sense to increase the price. But in that case, surely an Althea network would never "reveal" itself?
> With money you'd need accounts, auth for those accounts, somebody needs to manage those accounts, etc
Like... a bank? I mean, you're talking as if the infrastructure for paying someone money in return for providing you with a good or service is a wild west territory. It's, er, pretty well established.
Yes, but this way it can be decentralized along with the rest of the network, otherwise you need some central entity to manage these accounts and payments and you're back at square one where it basically becomes an ISP.
There's still some centralisation to a network like this whether you like it or not. The internet connection it uses has to be paid for somehow.
> you're back at square one where it basically becomes an ISP.
Well, a non-profit ISP, which is an important difference. The non-profit nature makes a much bigger difference to customers than the mesh nature of distribution does.
What is impressive here, that it's a "mesh" or that it's a volunteer for driven?
Years ago all Minsk was covered by volunteer maintained local ethernet networks, I was accessing internet through one. Today most of them are bought out by commercial providers, some turned into providers themselves.
In Russia it was the same. Because the existing infrastructure (i.e. phone lines) was so poor, back in early 2000s people were just connecting the apartment blocks in their communities with ethernet cables.
You could then pay for Internet traffic or enjoy local neighbourhood network resources for free. People would build local websites, chat rooms, message boards, fileshares, gaming. It was pretty good for the time and I was surprised to find that in the UK/US there had not been such a development, perhaps because of better pre-existing infrastructure.
> Spectrum said it also offers a slower $15-a-month connection to eligible low-income families and seniors.
For what it's worth, the plan is called "Every Day Low Price Internet", and there's no formal eligibility requirements. Spectrum doesn't advertise the plan, but you can see it listed at: https://www.spectrum.com/browse/content/ratecard.html
For $15 per month, I get 3 mb down / 1 mb up. The price never changes, there's no hidden fee, no bundle crap etc.
Even as a heavy internet user, I'm very satisfied. It's plenty fast enough for general web browsing, and I let larger downloads run overnight. I can't stream videos above 720p, but I can just wait for them to download in the background with youtube-dl. I also have a script that autodownloads new Youtube videos while I sleep.
Fios is available in my apartment, but for $50 more per month, it's not worth it. If I wasn't in a rental apartment I would seriously consider NYC Mesh, but I'm not. (I'd also be a bit concerned about latency.)
---
Edit: Actually, looking at the rate card again, the article was likely referring to "Spectrum Internet Assist", which is still $15 a month but offers 30 down / 4 up—but with eligibility requirements: https://www.spectrum.com/browse/content/spectrum-internet-as...
Shameless plug: My company Althea (https://althea.net) is making router firmware that makes it easy to people to set up incentivized mesh networks in their communities. It allows routers to pay each other for bandwidth which means that everyone hosting a node earns money for the packets they forward.
We have 2 networks live, one in rural Oregon and one in Medellin, Colombia. Also, 4 more networks people are currently pre-registering subscribers for in their communities, for example https://althea.net/hilltop.
As a network architect this seems pretty cool to me - incentivizing individual node/router operators. How is billing & payment reconciliation handled between parties?
In any given mesh of peers, or for example the NYC mesh, suppose I am a mesh client with no ISP. How do I get internet without using another mesh client's ISP connection?
Edit: can't reply because rate limited or something. My point is that relying on good will doesn't scale.
I thought mesh is supposed to involve hopping from neighbor to neighbor - not everyone directly connected to an ISP. What is the difference then besides that it is volunteer-run with donated bandwidth?
While many neighbors could be connected directly to a traditional ISP, in a hilly/mountainous area, only a few nodes may be able to connect directly to an ISP, and this will connect indirectly accessible nodes to the Internet via only intermediary nodes. This is not theoretical - the test network in Oregon does this.
Why/how is it free? How much is it typically? Do all/most cities have "backhaul" easily available? Isn't backhaul owned by ISPs as well and basically like a fat pipe?
NYC, among very few other places in the US, actually has some insanely good options for business grade (and priced) connectivity. (HFTs pay for very high speed connectivity.) As for why it's free to NYC mesh, I don't know. Pet project of an employee?
You can get connections suitable for backhaul pretty much anywhere as long as you are within reach, or prepared to pay for, a copper or fibre connection to an exchange. It just costs more.
I'm not up to date on prices.
Backhaul is 'just' another connection but without the same contractual restrictions as you'll usually find on normal subscriber connections.
You'll find it used in at least two different ways: as a synonym of transit to talk about a way for your ISP to connect to any other ISP via the provider they get it from, and as a means of having an access provider forward last mile traffic to one or more central locations.
But in both cases it just suggests that you have agreed with a provider to forward traffic for your users on your behalf.
> Why/how is it free? How much is it typically? Do all/most cities have "backhaul" easily available? Isn't backhaul owned by ISPs as well and basically like a fat pipe?
Sometimes but not always, the Tier 2 internet market is acutally quite competitive and usually you can get fiber from a couple of providers within 50 miles of any location in the US (5 or less if it's reasonably populated). The problem of course is to be an ISP you have to deliver the traffic that last few miles.
This whole thing is further obfuscated by the fact that the entire infrastructure market is very human powered. Few providers provide public maps and in order to find these fiber connections you literally have to know the right people. The internet has automated everything but those people building and maintaining the backbone still need sales calls to tell you where they can connect and a bribe before you get a good price.
This isn’t APRS or amateur radio at all. The article doesn’t call out the band info, but if this is running over 2.4 or 5 GHz, it’s unlicensed spectrum and available for use by anyone.
If they were running over licensed spectrum, the FCC would have shut them down in the US.
Hams can run high power and high gain antennae with regular wifi gear, they call it HSMM. It doesn't sound like the mesh folks are doing that either, and even if they were, might it fall under part 15.23?
Breach of contract itself is not illegal, but depending on intent, it could be more than breach. If you enter into a contract with the intent to extract value without abiding by the agreed terms, then it can be considered fraud. Whether it is possible to prove, or worthwhile for that to be pursued by a prosecutor is circumstantial. IANAL
Couldn't this just be solved by simply encrypting all traffic similar to an onion router setup? Could also be solved by the users just using some sort of VPN which encrypts all traffic. How is the ISP suppose to know you're forwarding traffic?
Essentially we use Eth because we don't really need a 'cryptocurrency' as much as we need an api for cash where very small payments (10c) are practical. For reasons that I explain in the presentation the key simplifying assumption of low fee transactions makes a simple billing scheme (pay per forward) work.
Our biggest test network is only ~50ish nodes. Simulations show we won't have issues until several thousand.
Babel has been very reliable and we haven't really made any changes beyond our extensions. The price extension probably isn't appropriate to upstream. I'll admit I've been remiss up-streaming the full path latency extension.
I had this exact idea a few years back. Great to see someone working on it! Brilliant! I could actually use this service at my work. Being able to pay 25 cents/gb on my mobile would be amazing, especially if it is really fast speeds.
> It is quite shameless, here is an awesome volunteer run basic service project, and this is a Blockchain rent-seeking VC startup.
You're implying that there is something shameful with providing a market for connectivity which allows for people who can't afford to work for free to participate. What is shameful about this?
Isn't there a liability issue here? If I join the network and someone were to use my node in the transmission of something like child porn, how are you so sure I wouldn't be pinched for it?
All yall talking about altruism but no one is really making internet faster and more affordable. This shit is revolutionary, and the system it sets up is going to be the backbone of a network of Co-ops in the next 10 years. A parallel economy is possible.
NYC Mesh volunteer here. We are our own ISP and operate with generously donated transit from multiple providers. Most recently Pilot Fiber donated a 40Gbit uplink to help us kick off our new Brooklyn PoP. https://www.nycmesh.net/blog/supernode-3-is-here/
This is interesting - it says that they are connected to an internet exchange point (IXP), which means presumably they are their own AS and don't pay for peering. It makes them basically a peer of Verizon, etc..
It's a bit of a reminder of what the internet actually is - a bunch of networks connected together. If you make your own network, negotiate or purchase a piece of the IPv6 address space, and convince someone to connect to you and exchange BGP routes then you are part of it.
I wonder how hard it is to join an IXP and how much it costs?
Your terminology is a little loose there. Generally large ISPs like Verizon will not peer with random small ISPs. Even if you're connected to an IXP you still have to pay for transit if you want to reach the whole Internet.
Yes, I don't think Verizon would peer with us, but we peer with some very large companies like Google, Apple, Akamai. The full list is here- https://www.nycmesh.net/peering
IX costs vary by region but in NYC you can expect around $700/m for a 10g port as a startup. Transit costs over an IX port are much higher than crossconnecting directly to a provider, but IX ports are convenient and save a lot of bandwidth cost if you’re good at building relationships.
The network engineering world is very different from software. Relationships are everything and the pricing very opaque. Often pricing and lists of “who is in the building” are even behind NDA. If you are an “eyeball network” (more downloads than uploads) your transit costs will be much cheaper if you know how to negotiate, for example.
There is basic infrastructure for SF Mesh in place (200+ miles of municipal owned fiber + wireless nodes throughout the city). In fact I have one at my house pointed to a local public heath clinic (there are a number of non-profits and others who get free municipal mesh internet). There is def strong interest for this in SF - we held a community event and had over hundred people show up.
I can’t recommend them enough, I get 70/70 Mbps symmetric on average, going as high as 100/100+. I only wish they didn’t have a soft monthly data cap of 1.5TB. Only $25/month after the installation fee of a satellite on your dwelling.
FTTH would be faster but San Francisco doesn’t seem that interested in wiring fiber to SFHs.
The network doesn’t seem to have an issue with fog or rain (my home might be in a particularly good spot for it).
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 242 ms ] thread[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athens_Wireless_Metropolitan...
Althea - Portland - https://althea.net
Freifunk - Germany - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freifunk
Open Wireless - Global - https://openwireless.org
When I had looked into it, these resources had been helpful for research:
Wireless Networking in the Developing world -- http://wndw.net/ -- A useful guidebook on the tech needed for large scale community mesh networks
Guifi.net -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guifi.net -- A huge wireless mesh in Spain, there's a linked economic report in the references that's very good but may be unavailable at the moment. It may have been, or be contained within, "The Cook Report on Internet Protocol" Volume XX1, No, 12 & XXII, No 1 March April 2013 ISSN 1071 - 6327. The report is very long and covers quite a bit of the social and technical challenges faced by Guifi.net
My partner and I are NOLA based programmers / lawyers who have been researching this matter for a few years. We own the domain nolamesh.net and would love to work with you to navigate the political / legal / business issues to deploy a similar network in the New Orleans metro area. Please reach out to us at nolalawcorp@gmail.com and let's set up a meeting.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16160394
That's impressive.
Mesh Design: https://docs.nycmesh.net/networking/mesh/
Supernode Architecture: https://docs.nycmesh.net/networking/supernode-architecture/
That is an excellent point. Mesh nets may be vulnerable to being monitored over the internet. I have not read the article, but I hope these groups are building privacy into their protocol.
I have wanted to build something like this for decade now. It is inspiring to hear about their success.
I did make the disclaimer that I have not read the article for the sake of transparency and humility. I probably will later this week, but the only spare time I have has been spent responding to this thread :-P
Anyway, if you are making your own mesh that does not require you to have access to an ISP, then maybe you make that mesh over something other than IP. If you did use something other than IP, that would not prevent any of the nodes from including IP in their networking stack. In that scenario, a human user of the mesh might believe that they are completely off the grid / internet, but surprise, all their traffic or leaked metadata is actually being aggregated over the internet because one of the nodes is connected.
I mainly brought this up because it popped into my head and I thought it might make for an interesting discussion. Also, because I have thought about making a distributed mesh network that does not use IP where nodes communicate via HAM radio.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_layer
A buddy of mine used to run such a network spanning 3 villages with about 400 customers a bunch of years back. I seem to remember one of the directional antennas was strategically placed in some church tower.
They ran this as a two people operation. Extreme weather also was a problem for them, and they essentially learned network design by trial and error, starting out as a fully bridged network where everybody was in the same 10.0.0.0/8, NATed to the outside. They fixed that later. Customers only got like 3-4MBit/s from this mesh, which wasn't exactly fast but not too shabby either back then, especially considering the only alternative those villagers had was ISDN speeds (128kbit/s max I think). No LTE yet either.
They weren't alone either. There was a huge number of such operators who shared knowledge etc.
Once he started negotiating with those villages to lay fiber and provide DSL service all of the sudden the Telekom started fibering up "his" villages.
5mbps down/2mbps up is what I get for $79/month, and I've learned to live with it. The only other option is satellite internet with restrictive usage caps. We used to have another competitor in the space but after big floods in 2013 they exited our area.
More seriously, I'm impressed at that consistency. I've always heard that that type of connection tends to be iffy, so it's interesting to know that my preconceptions may have been wrong.
Also, I think my buddy oversubscribed the lines. And had some file sharing/fair use clause that customers needed to agree to and abide by. They didn't really do traffic shaping/DPI stuff, so once in a while they had to call or visit (when in the area anyway) the parents of some kid who just had discovered the wonders of bittorrent maxing out their allotted chunk of the bandwidth 24/7.
So yes, they bought some "business internet" from that provider, quite a lot of it. Wasn't cheap, but wasn't too expensive as they got hat provider to see the reason in "either you quote us prices we can pay, and we both make some money, or you don't and then neither of us does".
Well, of course. Giving away unlimited supplies of money without earning it is a privilege only the federal government has. Non-profit companies also cannot create money out of thin air. While non-profits can endeavor to create jobs as their primary mission, I have yet to see a non-profit that can actually create a job without first earning the money itself, whether through actually doing something or working to fundraise.
> I guess it is difficult to compete given laws and/or regulations, so running a new such company for-profit would be too difficult?
It doesn't even need to be for-profit. I suppose I should have clarified. It could be non-profit too. It's the all-volunteerness that I object to. The sorts of things done by volunteers here are actually jobs, that should be compensated. The receivers of the internet ought to be okay paying for it to pay for these people's livelihoods.
They do pay for it. But there are not currently enough subscribers to make hiring someone worthwhile or affordable. Hopefully that will change in time.
Volunteer-based initiatives can turn into companies if they're successful. Hopefully that's the case here.
https://www.nycmesh.net/blog/march-2019-update/
I don't think they are threatening jobs at this point. I assume if it grows big, they will likely have to hire someone and pay them.
At very worst, this sort of volunteer operation will not change the relationship the workers have with their labor and only change who's paying them to do it.
That being said. Cooperatives do have executive classes and they do soak up value from labor
Also traditional for profit companies would theoretically allow local stakeholders to reap profits but I do agree that due to unjust sec rules about accredited investors designed to protect the rich, this can not happen
I definitely did imply that they had no executive class, though, which is wrong.
I wonder how expensive a 10GB uplink from Terremark would set me back.
1000 subscribers, dedicated support person
5000, ???
10000, ???
At some point these community efforts must grow back into a company again, right? And the cycle repeats
(a) Not necessarily, it might turn into a non-profit organisation, a cooperative, or something “akin”.
(b) Nothing wrong with companies either. Although I (and many others) would prefer option (a), a fairer company that respects its customers’ needs and rights is very welcome!
To get connected to NYC Mesh, you’ll need a line of sight from your rooftop or balcony to one of our supernodes or hubs. Check our map to see if you're in the network coverage zone. And if you’re not yet in range, keep checking back as our network is always expanding, or volunteer to help us grow towards your neighborhood.
So this means that if you are in a condo you can't use it?
Map here:
https://muninetworks.org/communitymap
I'm planning on getting my Technicians HAM license sometime soon (I took one of the online practice tests "blind" and scored an 80 - so with some study it shouldn't be a problem).
Maybe after that if I can find some like-minded people nearby...
I suspect the Amateur HAMmers would detect and enforce that: I imagine there are HAM goonsquads.
That said, ham radio is a fun hobby regardless. If you are into IP stuff on ham radio, it's not too hard to get an ip on the ham IP block /8.
Amateur radio does have a tradition of self enforcement which is part of my the FCC continues to grant privileges. People practice RDF for fun but I know people who have used to to find people intentionally interfering with other stations.
The article says there's a "backhaul" that connects the althea network to the internet. I understand this means the community will then need just one subscription to the internet, as opposed to n, so it's cheaper. But doesn't this mean that every user in the network will experience vastly slower connection than if they had their own internet subscription?
The backhaul connections that ISPs resell (and that are sold into Althea networks) are usually around 10x the price of a residential connection with the same advertised speed.
It's the difference between "it is technically possible for this connection to attain this bandwidth" and "you are guaranteed this bandwidth at all times"
Turns out that isn't quite the case...
I don't quite see why ISP's would treat a commerical subscription to an Althea network differently than a residential network.
Sure, if an ISP knows that the Althean network is trying to optimally squeeze the most out of the backhaul, then it makes sense to increase the price. But in that case, surely an Althea network would never "reveal" itself?
Like... a bank? I mean, you're talking as if the infrastructure for paying someone money in return for providing you with a good or service is a wild west territory. It's, er, pretty well established.
> you're back at square one where it basically becomes an ISP.
Well, a non-profit ISP, which is an important difference. The non-profit nature makes a much bigger difference to customers than the mesh nature of distribution does.
Years ago all Minsk was covered by volunteer maintained local ethernet networks, I was accessing internet through one. Today most of them are bought out by commercial providers, some turned into providers themselves.
You could then pay for Internet traffic or enjoy local neighbourhood network resources for free. People would build local websites, chat rooms, message boards, fileshares, gaming. It was pretty good for the time and I was surprised to find that in the UK/US there had not been such a development, perhaps because of better pre-existing infrastructure.
For what it's worth, the plan is called "Every Day Low Price Internet", and there's no formal eligibility requirements. Spectrum doesn't advertise the plan, but you can see it listed at: https://www.spectrum.com/browse/content/ratecard.html
For $15 per month, I get 3 mb down / 1 mb up. The price never changes, there's no hidden fee, no bundle crap etc.
Even as a heavy internet user, I'm very satisfied. It's plenty fast enough for general web browsing, and I let larger downloads run overnight. I can't stream videos above 720p, but I can just wait for them to download in the background with youtube-dl. I also have a script that autodownloads new Youtube videos while I sleep.
Fios is available in my apartment, but for $50 more per month, it's not worth it. If I wasn't in a rental apartment I would seriously consider NYC Mesh, but I'm not. (I'd also be a bit concerned about latency.)
---
Edit: Actually, looking at the rate card again, the article was likely referring to "Spectrum Internet Assist", which is still $15 a month but offers 30 down / 4 up—but with eligibility requirements: https://www.spectrum.com/browse/content/spectrum-internet-as...
We have 2 networks live, one in rural Oregon and one in Medellin, Colombia. Also, 4 more networks people are currently pre-registering subscribers for in their communities, for example https://althea.net/hilltop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4EKbgShyLw
Anyone "forwarding" packets from a connection to an ISP is almost certainly in breach of contract.
Amateur packet radio service regulations state that you may not use it for applications that are available over commercial services.
You can buy resaleable backhaul it's just a drag and expensive. NYC mesh gets free resaleable backhaul and it's a key thing for them.
> Amateur packet radio service regulations state that you may not use it for applications that are available over commercial services.
point to point long distance antennas on free spectrum are commercially usable and more than adequate https://www.ui.com/products/#airmax
I feel like this is the key differentiator between community mesh projects that succeed and those that don't.
At the end of the day, without backhaul you're just saturating a few donors' residential bandwidth.
Edit: can't reply because rate limited or something. My point is that relying on good will doesn't scale.
Why/how is it free? How much is it typically? Do all/most cities have "backhaul" easily available? Isn't backhaul owned by ISPs as well and basically like a fat pipe?
A barrage of questions, but I'm quite interested!
I'm not up to date on prices.
Backhaul is 'just' another connection but without the same contractual restrictions as you'll usually find on normal subscriber connections.
You'll find it used in at least two different ways: as a synonym of transit to talk about a way for your ISP to connect to any other ISP via the provider they get it from, and as a means of having an access provider forward last mile traffic to one or more central locations.
But in both cases it just suggests that you have agreed with a provider to forward traffic for your users on your behalf.
Sometimes but not always, the Tier 2 internet market is acutally quite competitive and usually you can get fiber from a couple of providers within 50 miles of any location in the US (5 or less if it's reasonably populated). The problem of course is to be an ISP you have to deliver the traffic that last few miles.
This whole thing is further obfuscated by the fact that the entire infrastructure market is very human powered. Few providers provide public maps and in order to find these fiber connections you literally have to know the right people. The internet has automated everything but those people building and maintaining the backbone still need sales calls to tell you where they can connect and a bribe before you get a good price.
If they were running over licensed spectrum, the FCC would have shut them down in the US.
2) They're using unlicensed spectrum, not amateur radio.
Please know what you're talking about before providing legal advice.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Essentially we use Eth because we don't really need a 'cryptocurrency' as much as we need an api for cash where very small payments (10c) are practical. For reasons that I explain in the presentation the key simplifying assumption of low fee transactions makes a simple billing scheme (pay per forward) work.
https://blog.althea.net/faster-cheaper-internet-in-medellin-...
Ask away as far as other questions go.
Babel has been very reliable and we haven't really made any changes beyond our extensions. The price extension probably isn't appropriate to upstream. I'll admit I've been remiss up-streaming the full path latency extension.
Ironically I went back to the 2015 thread and found much the same "shameless plug", minus the Blockchain.
You're implying that there is something shameful with providing a market for connectivity which allows for people who can't afford to work for free to participate. What is shameful about this?
2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17861748
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16978544
2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10052261
NYC Mesh pays for it through donations. Last I checked they were trying to setup a 501c3 to manage this, unsure of the status though.
It's a bit of a reminder of what the internet actually is - a bunch of networks connected together. If you make your own network, negotiate or purchase a piece of the IPv6 address space, and convince someone to connect to you and exchange BGP routes then you are part of it.
I wonder how hard it is to join an IXP and how much it costs?
The network engineering world is very different from software. Relationships are everything and the pricing very opaque. Often pricing and lists of “who is in the building” are even behind NDA. If you are an “eyeball network” (more downloads than uploads) your transit costs will be much cheaper if you know how to negotiate, for example.
Is that $700 a minute, month or something else?
FTTH would be faster but San Francisco doesn’t seem that interested in wiring fiber to SFHs.
The network doesn’t seem to have an issue with fog or rain (my home might be in a particularly good spot for it).