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NYC Mesh – community-owned network to replace your current internet connection

nycmesh.net

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Re: NYC Mesh – community-owned network to replace your current internet connection

#101

Post by cddotdotslash »

nerdponx wrote: post #32
fosco wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not like slack either. that being said, get involved and get them in Matrix or IRC, not too difficult to enact change I think people could get in on it with appropriate leadership! zulip looks interesting to me as well.

I have repeatedly offered to pay for hosting a standalone Matrix server for the Julia community, and so far been ignored. Seems like people just don't care. I think the best I can do at this point is set up my own server running Matrix (or Zulip, which I haven't really explored) and host my own bridge to ease the transition. It's the classic problem where, now that I actually have money to spend, I don't have free ti…

As much as you're trying to help, the truth is, small projects don't have the resources to do stuff like this. Now they have to devote time (probably someone's limited after work time) to bringing you onboard, getting you setup, etc. Then, you set everything up and let's say you disappear. Now they have this custom setup that only one person knows how to operate. At the end of the day, Slack works. They're already using it. No one has to get trained on new software. You don't need new accounts and passwords and admins and teams. The list goes on. This is a big issue with small projects - everyone wants to join and change some thing that's not part of the core mission.

Re: NYC Mesh – community-owned network to replace your current internet connection

#102

Post by jedahan »

hyperpallium wrote: post #76

What about a mesh that is not connected to the internet? These days, people use the internet like TV or radio: many consume, few produce. What about a " community " mesh, where e.g. a small town has websites, email, webservices, gaming hosts etc for shops, businesses, sporting, clubs, council, local news and social media for that town?

I've been working a bit on https://baculus.co which has some overlap with that use case. Super early hacking, mainly built on scuttlebutt and other services on rpi3s, all in backpacks.

Re: NYC Mesh – community-owned network to replace your current internet connection

#103

Post by jedahan »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #80

Are the organizers in this thread? I wonder if you folks were aware of cjdns, and if so why the decision not to use it? I've been thinking about setting up a cjdns-based mesh network in Philly but I don't think I have line-of-sight to any geeks.

Early (~3 years ago) NYCMesh used cjdns. I am not 100% sure of the reasons, but I think at the time cjdns had bad performance and was much harder to setup. I personally tried out cjdns recently and was pleasantly surprised with the ease of setup, though I still think hyperborea is having scaling issues and Guifi (the largest mesh) doesn't use it.

There is nothing stopping anyone on NYC Mesh to use cjdns, and some of us do run it for certain services.

Re: NYC Mesh – community-owned network to replace your current internet connection

#104

Post by gobengo »

Come by Sudo Mesh meetings at Omni Commons in Oakland on Tuesdays at 730 for https://peoplesopen.net/

Or keep an eye on major repos like the firmware: https://github.com/sudomesh/sudowrt-firmware

There are many places to help. Yes, writing code, but also hands-on stuff like mounting radios on peoples' roofs, grant writing, documentation, etc. Even things like establishing consistency across projects: https://github.com/sudomesh/bugs/issues/34

I've really enjoyed it so far this year as a way of practicing software production skills with other community members and non just inside the context of a for-profit startup.

A lot of pieces are far enough it would also make sense to set up meetups and meshes in SF and Peninsula as well.

Tuesdays. 730pm. Omni Common near Macarthur BART stop in Oakland. Come help!

Re: NYC Mesh – community-owned network to replace your current internet connection

#106

Post by toofy »

scottedtech wrote: post #105

Here's another project: https://www.rightmesh.io/how-it-works

With all due respect to this project, I’m sure it has a lot of great potential, however:

> Our patent pending switching technology ensures data integrity.

I personally have little interest in trading one network which is controlled by a few people for another which will just be controlled by different set of a few people. Even if it is powered by trendy blockchain or whatever.

I am incredibly excited by some of the meshnet work we are seeing, but any of these which are just seeking to position themselves as power brokers on our future communication systems really need to be left on the wayside.

We’ve already seen firsthand what happened when our first iteration was turned into a glorified shopping mall. I’d prefer that we avoid this fate with the second iteration.

Re: NYC Mesh – community-owned network to replace your current internet connection

#107

Post by voxadam »

komali2 wrote: post #15
LeoPanthera wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article: "The network connects directly to the internet backbone, so we do not rely on an ISP." Their peering policy: https://nycmesh.net/peering/

I don't understand what that means, "internet backbone?" Is that a physical location somewhere? I've read on the peering link, are they saying there's an "internet ethernet port" at 375 Pearl St, New York, NY that they plugged their whole mesh network into? Where's the ethernet cable go from there? I'm probably asking a bit too much here (how does internet work lol) but I don't understand how they've bypassed all ISP…

https://arstechnica.com/features/2008/09/peering-and-transit...

Re: NYC Mesh – community-owned network to replace your current internet connection

#108

Post by toast0 »

ucaetano wrote: post #96
fixthenet wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Josh from the Community Broadband Project here. Would be happy to answer any questions about our mission and progress in LA. I'm no regular, but we just got a bunch of traffic from Hacker News and I'm here to spread the gospel. NYC Mesh is doing very cool stuff--we wish them the best. We're in touch with a few other community ISPs who are growing organically in competition against big incumbent ISPs. It's inspiring.…

Hi Josh! Do you buy any transit at all or rely solely on peering? Who do you peer with, and how easy has it been to find peers, due to the huge asymmetry in traffic? Do you have any CDN caches deployed (GGC, Netflix, etc.)?

I'm not related, but any small ISP is going to need transit. Larger ISPs have pretty high requirements to peer, but random sites will be single homed in those networks; to say nothing of overseas sites.

But, most of the networks that provide the majority of the traffic have pretty open peering policies, and the LA area has a lot of places to peer, and peering places are also usually a reasonable place to get transit so... If you're seeing at least a few gbps from FAANG, they'll peer with you, if you're where they are, and all of them have PoPs in LA, because everyone is there (this is a little circular, LA was highly connected in the PTSN because of population size, and that lead to early internet exchanges and undersea cabling, which leads to more people wanting to be there and so on)

I'd imagine if they have the traffic to justify it, and the space to house it, they'd get the CDN caches. It's a pretty good win, peering is settlement free, but access to the peering point isn't free; keeping traffic from using your ingress capacity is nice (depending on your network architecture anyway)

Re: NYC Mesh – community-owned network to replace your current internet connection

#109

Post by amazon_not »

bikamonki wrote: post #94

"The network connects directly to the internet backbone, so we do not rely on an ISP." How does it work? Can anyone connect directly to the Internet backbone?

Anybody with enough money can connect to one or more IP transit providers ("the Internet backbone"). It will usually set you back a few thousand dollars per month.

Re: NYC Mesh – community-owned network to replace your current internet connection

#110

Post by vvpan »

grahamburger wrote: post #100

I run a website about starting and running small wireless ISPs here: https://startyourownisp.com We also have a matrix chat room here: https://riot.im/app/#/room/#startyourownisp:matrix.org Don't want to detract from NYC Mesh or the conversation at all just thought this could be interesting for some of the folks on the thread.

I have contemplated doing this for many years. I probably won't, but I am really excited about learning. Thanks!
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