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In Response to SOPA, Reddit Meshnet Project picks up steam

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Re: In Response to SOPA, Reddit Meshnet Project picks up steam

#21

Post by femto »

wolfeater wrote: post #11
blhack wrote: post #5

No offense to the "reddit meshnet project", but the last I checked (this could have changed) what they're proposing isn't possible with the team that they have right now. There are a couple of problems: 1) They don't have a solid hardware platform to work on, and the feeling I've gotten from talking to some of the people on /r/darknetplan is that they really don't have the proper understanding of wireless tech to mak…

The problem we are definitely running into is that as a crowdsourced project, we have a lot of people who don't know what they're talking about. However, we have a small subset that do (myself not included, I'm more aiming to get the ball rolling than anything) and have been hard at work on the project. There is a lot more noise than signal right now, but that will change as a more solid technological platform for lo…

What about an native implementation of Freenet? Currently Freenet is an overlay network, on top of the Internet, but from my limited knowledge of Freenet, it doesn't have to be that way.

Re: In Response to SOPA, Reddit Meshnet Project picks up steam

#22

Post by trafficlight »

Wohlf wrote: post #16
trafficlight wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over 200K what?

Sorry, over 200 kilometers. I should have put km.

So is this like a true mesh network, or just a traditional wireless network. If it's a mesh network, do nodes have multiple point-to-point links. I assume they would over the larger than a few km distances you're talking about.

Re: In Response to SOPA, Reddit Meshnet Project picks up steam

#23

Post by Wohlf »

trafficlight wrote: post #22
Wohlf wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, over 200 kilometers. I should have put km.

So is this like a true mesh network, or just a traditional wireless network. If it's a mesh network, do nodes have multiple point-to-point links. I assume they would over the larger than a few km distances you're talking about.

We are in the early planning phase, but our intent is a true mesh.

Re: In Response to SOPA, Reddit Meshnet Project picks up steam

#24

Post by Wohlf »

femto wrote: post #21
wolfeater wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem we are definitely running into is that as a crowdsourced project, we have a lot of people who don't know what they're talking about. However, we have a small subset that do (myself not included, I'm more aiming to get the ball rolling than anything) and have been hard at work on the project. There is a lot more noise than signal right now, but that will change as a more solid technological platform for lo…

What about an native implementation of Freenet? Currently Freenet is an overlay network, on top of the Internet, but from my limited knowledge of Freenet, it doesn't have to be that way.

Freenet, i2p and Tor are good examples of what we are trying to do, but they are not quite what we want. Our end goal intent is a completely separate network with it own infrastructure.

Re: In Response to SOPA, Reddit Meshnet Project picks up steam

#25

Post by wmf »

saulrh wrote: post #15
jaggederest wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If it wasn't for those damned laws of physics always screwing up my plans..." basically. Mesh networks have a pretty hard constraint of k/n^2 bandwidth total where k is an average node's bandwidth and n is the number of nodes. You quickly get down into the 'bytes per second' range.

This interests me, but I can't find a paper - stuff like "mesh network bandwidth" simply don't work on scholar. Any chance of a citation?

Jinyang Li, Charles Blake, Douglas S. J. De Couto, Hu Imm Lee, and Robert Morris: Capacity of Ad Hoc Wireless Networks. Mobicom 2001. http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/papers/grid:mobicom01/

Summary: Throughput of a mesh asymptotically approaches 1/7th of the non-mesh link rate. This is using the 802.11 MAC, but recent softMAC chipsets could be run in a more mesh-optimized psuedo-802.11 protocol (that has not been invented yet AFIAK), so you might get performance as good as 1/4th.

Re: In Response to SOPA, Reddit Meshnet Project picks up steam

#26

Post by femto »

Wohlf wrote: post #24
femto wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about an native implementation of Freenet? Currently Freenet is an overlay network, on top of the Internet, but from my limited knowledge of Freenet, it doesn't have to be that way.

Freenet, i2p and Tor are good examples of what we are trying to do, but they are not quite what we want. Our end goal intent is a completely separate network with it own infrastructure.

What I meant by a native implementation is one with no underlying infrastructure. Freenet (protocol) would be running directly on the hardware. Set up a mesh of (media agnostic) point-to-point links and use the Freenet protocol to route traffic and turn them into a network. A big caveat is that Freenet might not scale as required.

One problem you are going to face if you stick to an IP based network is: who is going to administer the address space? The same is true of any centralised function. In the "glory" days of community WiFi networks, most fell by the wayside because of this issue.

Re: In Response to SOPA, Reddit Meshnet Project picks up steam

#27

Post by CamperBob »

There may be ways to overcome the limitations of mesh networking, as outlined by many people here, but you will need to think outside the mesh, so to speak. It is probably best to think of the mesh as the "last mile" component rather than the backbone.

One idea: a $5 laser pointer can be modulated at well over 100 Mbit/s. Everyone in an urban area who can see one side of a building can bounce laser beams off of it. (Data recovery and collision resolution are left as exercises...)

Re: In Response to SOPA, Reddit Meshnet Project picks up steam

#28

Post by nextparadigms »

Wohlf wrote: post #23
trafficlight wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is this like a true mesh network, or just a traditional wireless network. If it's a mesh network, do nodes have multiple point-to-point links. I assume they would over the larger than a few km distances you're talking about.

We are in the early planning phase, but our intent is a true mesh.

Hybrid network is fine for now, and maybe even desirable to get it off the ground and make it usable for most people. Just try making it work as well as possible with what technologies we have now, and as they improve in the next decade or so, it should become easier to achieve a true mesh network.

Take a look at Super Wifi for example, which should allow for greater distance between points: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Wi-Fi

Wi-fi 802.11ac should also help with that bandwidth problem, offering speeds up to 1 Gbps: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20030964-264.html

Re: In Response to SOPA, Reddit Meshnet Project picks up steam

#30

Post by marquis »

blhack wrote: post #5

No offense to the "reddit meshnet project", but the last I checked (this could have changed) what they're proposing isn't possible with the team that they have right now. There are a couple of problems: 1) They don't have a solid hardware platform to work on, and the feeling I've gotten from talking to some of the people on /r/darknetplan is that they really don't have the proper understanding of wireless tech to mak…

I've spent time on mesh networks for disaster recovery efforts, I consider myself fairly technical when it comes to wireless networks, and it's a damn hard problem to solve. Even with some great gear, things drop off the network all the time, electricity fluctuations cause issues, mobile devices forget what signal they are connected to.. but I applaud this effort at Reddit because it brings the idea into consciousness - the fact is that we need better kinds of Meraki/Ubiquti-type hardware and maybe some of these people will sit down and solve some of the hard problems (reading more of this thread shows that yes, there are problem solvers involved, I wish everyone the most success).

I'd also like to point out one thing: in the time I've spent thinking about how to get the mainstream to care enough to consider dropping their telco lines I've arrived at the conclusion that the core issue for that final push will be apps. We need true, decentralised apps (maybe like what Diaspora was intending to achieve, for example). Don't think you can build the infrastructure and people will come. You need the apps and a reason to get traction from non-technical people who couldn't care less if the government was reading their kitten emails.

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