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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

#151

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.

Isn't wi-fi really bad at handling mutiple users? Can't the how bad the latency will be.

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

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you live in NYC? I do, and I don't have at all what I'd call "a number of good options" for internet access. In my area, there's two companies who operate similar to a monopoly (Verizon and Optimum), and regularly raise prices arbitrarily and often for no reason.

Yeah... every apartment of mine has had exactly one option, TWC=>Spectrum (in Manhattan) or Optimum (in Brooklyn). I've lived in 4 apartments in 7 years and never once had a choice.

A lot of this may have to do with the building & management -- often times, the building's condo/coop board strikes an exclusivity deal with the ISPs and get a share of the revenue.

[I'm on a condo board]

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

#153
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if laying cable is one of your biggest challenges, but I assume it would be along with right-of-way. What do you think about the idea of using the sewer system to lay either fiber or 10+gb copper? Before you think about how gross that is, consider the advancements in drone robotics. You would need to devise a cable-laying robot that could traverse the sewer via remote control. Mount fixtures to the top o…

Water utilities are (justifiably) very protective of their infrastructure. Justifiable because of the extreme expense in closing a street, excavating, and repairing anything that happens to their buried infrastructure. I've seen the one in my city reject a stormwater pipe because of a couple small pieces of crusher dust. I can't see them being positive towards the deliberate installation of another biofilm-forming-su…

I don't disagree. I think that a full mitigation plan could help. For example showing that fiber can be easily chopped up if a pipe clogged. Maybe biofilm could be mitigated with an electric charge on a conductive outer sheath? I can't see how a single cable or 2 would ever require digging into the street.

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

#154

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.

Hi, I run Philly Mesh. You might be close to some other geeks, but if not you can always use cjdns' overlay ability :). Come chat if you’d like, https://phillymesh.net

Nice! I joined the #phillymesh channel earlier but it seems to be +m.

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

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for a CDN, but am not a networking expert. I will try to answer as best I can: Yes, it is a physical location. Often called 'an exchange', there is usually a building in major cities that most networks connect together at. You rent from the building owner, and they provide a 'drop' which is basically a cable you can connect to your core router in your part of the datacenter you are renting (your 'rack' or 'cag…

I just wanted to say thank you for explaining this. I've read about this before, but I feel like something finally clicked when reading your comment.

Glad I could help!

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

#156

Are there any similar initiatives in London? Failing that, any Londoners who are interested in starting something like this?

Not that I know of, and I don't see a major business-case for it. The UK ISP market is much better than its US counterpart (we have no Comcast, for starters) so I'm not sure there would be enough demand for a wireless ISP. But if you have any ideas on how to make this profitable, I'm up for it. Email in my profile.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but ain't Relish (https://www1.relish.net/) a WISP?

If you guys gather around to chat let me know, I might be interested in participating as well.

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

#157
post #137

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.…

I don't know if laying cable is one of your biggest challenges, but I assume it would be along with right-of-way. What do you think about the idea of using the sewer system to lay either fiber or 10+gb copper? Before you think about how gross that is, consider the advancements in drone robotics. You would need to devise a cable-laying robot that could traverse the sewer via remote control. Mount fixtures to the top o…

We're using fixed wireless. Advances in that technology have made high speed broadband feasible in areas with high wireless interference like LA. We believe wireless is the best path for what we're doing. It doesn't require interfacing with existing infrastructure anywhere but at the towers/APs, it deploys and redeploys quickly, and can provide competitive speeds and beyond.

More importantly, it gives us the freedom of building our own infrastructure, since access to public infrastructure is prohibitively expensive--by design, it seems.

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

#158

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.)?

Great tech questions. Right now, in our beta/test network, we're receiving DIA service to a remote server location and that's it. No peering, no CDNs. Our next steps are to increase the bandwidth of our DIA, since that's more cost effective at our current scale than we'd benefit by peering. The step after that is to swap that DIA for transport and then colocate in DTLA to find peers. CDN caches often require a minimum number of customers on network, something like 5000 for Netflix, if I recall, so we'll have to grow before we can take advantage of caching.

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

#159

I have a few naïve questions maybe someone can answer: 1 - Why aren't they recommending any of the newer routers like the Asus RT-N66U/RT-AC68U? They're well supported by OpenWRT and more available. 2 - To start a similar service in another city, do you need fiber already to be laid? For example, I'm in Pittsburgh and we don't have any fiber anywhere, does that mean it'd be impossible to have a community mesh like th…

Pittsburgh has a wireless community network, http://www.pittmesh.net , which is run by Meta Mesh Wireless Communities, https://www.metamesh.org . I'm involved! MMWC doesn't have its own fiber but does have access to KINBER's PennREN fiber network, a little-known gem in the commonwealth that happens to run down Fifth Ave and a few other main roads in the city. We're working on rolling out access to it. As we're a dona…

Thank you so much! I'd love to get involved with PittMesh in any way I could.

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

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for a CDN, but am not a networking expert. I will try to answer as best I can: Yes, it is a physical location. Often called 'an exchange', there is usually a building in major cities that most networks connect together at. You rent from the building owner, and they provide a 'drop' which is basically a cable you can connect to your core router in your part of the datacenter you are renting (your 'rack' or 'cag…

I just wanted to say thank you for explaining this. I've read about this before, but I feel like something finally clicked when reading your comment.

Don't worry, most people don't understand the physical infrastructure of the internet. However, from my understanding, a direct connection to the internet backbone is what gives tier q ISP's their God-like monopolizing power in a given region (like Comcast in most parts of Baltimore city).

However, the backbone nodes require maintenance, so the fee to connect directly is expensive. You can't simply move next to a backbone node and plug in. I presume that backbone fee is the primary reason for the individual's fee for hosting an NYCmesh node.

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