Ask HN: What's with the DIY state of the art long-range Wi-Fi?

What do you think of Yggdrasil to handle mesh routing? I know it has "flapping" issues (connecting and disconnecting the root node rapidly), though that was somewhat mitigated, and need to control the root (compute/"mine" a suitable key) first.

Ideally, we'd have Wi-Fi NAN (Wi-Fi Aware/Neighbour Awareness Network) on all devices (including routers, smartphones), discovering devices close by and allowing Yggdrasil to work on top. That's very recent though. I blame Apple keeping AWDL proprietary.

Some of that can probably be approached by connecting handsets to multiple networks at once (the chips usually support it, but I don't know about the OS).

In the end, in this case it's probably better to ask a local ISP for cooperation (ask for a part of their spectrum, and put 4G antennaes and local 4G to Wi-Fi APs). It can still be meshed together.

Someone else mentioned 802.11ah. This might be a better option for cheap hardware than normal wifi, which is quite hard to use beyond 1km reliably.

Existing point-to-point solutions would be even better but I am sure you (some other comments also point to this direction).

I also want to add that at low datarates like 0.1Mbps, you probably can't just bridge it to the internet and expect it to work well. You'll want to be careful about who and what access is allowed. 0.1Mbps is plenty for relaying messages point-to-point for multiple users, but even one user searching google or using slack will saturate it. A few users trying to load gmail will probably not work at all.

Just as a note: you can easily configure AREDN to not use non-ISM channels.

Regarding custom firmware: yeah, but it's really openwrt with some CGI scripts. If you're not trying to specifically join their preexisting networks, you can accomplish everything it does off of vanilla openwrt with not much effort. I think understanding what's actually going on under the hood in networking terms is valuable enough to skip the preconfiguration, though I guess that depends on the exact deployment case. If this isn't intended to be used militarily in any way and is just putting up infra in rear areas, maybe that doesn't matter.

This post ended up a bit more negative than I intended, so I should say that I have successfully used AREDN (or similarly configured openwrt) on Ubiquiti APs with yagis to do more or less what the OP is asking for, and it works pretty well. This is overall a good suggestion.

I think you will cover wider area cheaper by using Mikrotik p2p bridges rather than getting RPis involved.

it is but in the worse way possible.

They take and contribute nothing back. just a base to get up and running quick in their startup days.

Also most of their own pieces is just a awful api/shell that tries very hard to simulate the worse of cisco ios shell.