New York City Neighbors Build Cheaper Way to Connect to Web

Post by sq_ » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 7:00 PM UTC

leesalminen wrote: post #27

rndgermandude wrote: post #20

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 ru…

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 anoth…

Post by na85 » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 7:05 PM UTC

dustfinger wrote: post #19

na85 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> and possibly also to the internet. 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.

Post by phoe-krk » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 7:10 PM UTC

d2mw wrote: post #34

I'm curious about how these things are expected to scale.. 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

Post by brenschluss » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 7:12 PM UTC

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 06, 2019, 7:17 PM UTC

CodexArcanum wrote: post #8

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/…