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Mesh Networks

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Re: Mesh Networks

#21

Post by thejosh »

femto wrote: post #8
wepple wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There probably is or was. There was a surge in people doing wifi WAN style networks across whole cities, back when internet speeds were slow+expensive, and decent directional wifi antennas were available fairly inexpensively. I think low-cost high-speed internet largely killed the need for it: perhaps Prism has given us a nudge to start again?

No doubt there are may others, but the one that comes immediately to mind is Personal Telco: https://personaltelco.net/wiki

Perth, Australia - WAFreeNet - http://www.wafreenet.org/

Re: Mesh Networks

#23

Post by olefoo »

devx wrote: post #12

I hope this becomes a bigger trend, but if we're going to do this again , then I hope we do it right this time, and we make it as secure, as uncontrollable by governments, and as anonymous as possible (if you so make that decision on it). The US government/NSA is ruining the old Internet, so I hope the new one will be very resistant to such attempts in the future. I would watch out especially for hardware-level backd…

The TOR project has been doing some work on deterministic builds to deal with exactly that issue. https://blog.torproject.org/blog/deterministic-builds-part-o...

I never thought that the whole "trusting trust" essay would become a practical reality and an everyday danger that must be mitigated. But welcome to the 21st century. No flying cars, but lots of dystopian cyber punks eager to get in your business.

Re: Mesh Networks

#24

Post by mark_l_watson »

pcunite wrote: post #9
webmech wrote: post #4

We should definitely do this in america, God we need this!

This is awesome, however, municipalities have put fear into people wishing to do this over legal issues arising from what someone might do on your connection. Who is to blame when something illegal (mp3 download, etc) happens? That whole issue needs to be put to rest so we as a society can create our own Internet without fear of suppression.

+1 great point. I sometimes leave my wifi open (I live in a small town, if that means anything) but then I consider the legal implications and lock it up for a while. ...then repeat...

The best solution would be allowing people to risk free run grid networks (which would be, I think, very low bandwidth) and have communities also supply separtae low bandwidth Internet connected wifi for free. We would then use a paid for service for anything for more than text or other low bandwidth uses. No one would download large mp3s, watch Netflix, etc. from the very low bandwidth community wifi, and the separate grid network would be local and likely not have anything to attract "Imperial interest" (sorry about the Star Wars metaphor :-)

Local grid networks could be part of support for local libraries, community centers, etc.

Re: Mesh Networks

#25

Post by jurjenh »

While this is a great solution for places without easy last-mile connections, it seems to me this would still be vulnerable, as one compromised connection would essentially allow the same kind of snooping that we've got going on now.

Does anyone know whether this is so, or how to protect against snooping, as I would assume there is some implicit level of trust required for a network like this to stay secure.

Re: Mesh Networks

#28

Post by rhodey »

frisco wrote: post #20

I saw an article about this a little while ago. If anywhere in the world could support a wide scale mesh network, it would have to be the Bay Area. It would be a really cool experiment to blanket a part of the Valley in mesh wifi: I imagine it would be very doable to raise $100K and send 1,500 mesh routers to people in Palo Alto or SOMA. Open Mesh has some really cool low-cost ($50 - $75) hardware that seems to just…

A group of us are already well on the way in Oakland, stop by some time!

https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Mesh

Re: Mesh Networks

#29

Post by orblivion »

frisco wrote: post #20

I saw an article about this a little while ago. If anywhere in the world could support a wide scale mesh network, it would have to be the Bay Area. It would be a really cool experiment to blanket a part of the Valley in mesh wifi: I imagine it would be very doable to raise $100K and send 1,500 mesh routers to people in Palo Alto or SOMA. Open Mesh has some really cool low-cost ($50 - $75) hardware that seems to just…

There's a project started in the East Bay http://510pen.org/

Re: Mesh Networks

#30

Post by johnpmayer »

jurjenh wrote: post #25

While this is a great solution for places without easy last-mile connections, it seems to me this would still be vulnerable, as one compromised connection would essentially allow the same kind of snooping that we've got going on now. Does anyone know whether this is so, or how to protect against snooping, as I would assume there is some implicit level of trust required for a network like this to stay secure.

I think you'd need to add the following constraints.

- Non-compromised endpoint hardware - In-person public key exchange - Onion routing

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