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New York City Neighbors Build Cheaper Way to Connect to Web

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Re: New York City Neighbors Build Cheaper Way to Connect to Web

#181
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does your connection maintain 5mbps/2mbps consistently? Or do you experience ups and downs in terms of speed?

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.

Re: New York City Neighbors Build Cheaper Way to Connect to Web

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's already illegal twice over. 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.

Alleged breach of a private contract is not "illegal." Please know what you're talking about before providing legal advice.

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

Re: New York City Neighbors Build Cheaper Way to Connect to Web

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's already illegal twice over. 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.

> Anyone "forwarding" packets from a connection to an ISP is almost certainly in breach of contract. 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 spec…

[deleted]

Re: New York City Neighbors Build Cheaper Way to Connect to Web

#184
post #169
post #93

Is there something like this for San Francisco?

https://www.monkeybrains.net/

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).

Re: New York City Neighbors Build Cheaper Way to Connect to Web

#185
Interesting. I wonder what equipment they're using for $110 that gets a high-bandwidth data signal over multiple city blocks without running afoul of the FCC's limits for broadcast power and signal strength. At certain frequencies those can be remarkably constraining, low enough you can easily exceed them with a twenty dollar wifi adapter and a ten dollar yagi antenna.

Re: New York City Neighbors Build Cheaper Way to Connect to Web

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds awesome. How do the payments work?

I explain it in some detail here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4EKbgShyLw 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.

Oh it’s so nice to see crypto being used for this!

Re: New York City Neighbors Build Cheaper Way to Connect to Web

#188

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…

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".

Re: New York City Neighbors Build Cheaper Way to Connect to Web

#189
post #66

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 current…

It is quite shameless, here is an awesome volunteer run basic service project, and this is a Blockchain rent-seeking VC startup.

Ironically I went back to the 2015 thread and found much the same "shameless plug", minus the Blockchain.

Re: New York City Neighbors Build Cheaper Way to Connect to Web

#190
post #66

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 current…

It is quite shameless, here is an awesome volunteer run basic service project, and this is a Blockchain rent-seeking VC startup. Ironically I went back to the 2015 thread and found much the same "shameless plug", minus the Blockchain.

Replacing few freeloader nodes in a volunteer network with a whole rent-seeking company. Pretty sad.
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