Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

'Anti-authority' tech rebels take on ISPs, connect NYC with cheap Wi-Fi

cbc.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 237 posts

Re: 'Anti-authority' tech rebels take on ISPs, connect NYC with cheap Wi-Fi

#191

Post by nycmesh »

stephengillie wrote: post #185
walrus01 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYC is actually the textbook example of most expensive places to run new fiber, due to needs for nearly 100% underground, and extensive pre existing utilities. I'm going to guess you've never been involved with an outside plant fiber project.

With your knowledge of the subject, how would you suggest they overcome this challenge? Do they need to run their own fiber - is there a way they could rent fiber space from an existing line? At least for a little while? Don't be worried that a new player has entered the space; be worried that the existing ones haven't improved the space. The total market space can be increased by creating new connections, and someon…

There are about 10 fiber providers in the city. We've spoken to most of them. It's pretty much impossible for us to lay fiber, so we have to lease it. We'd like to eventually lease a fiber ring across the city so we can cut costs when connecting multiple buildings. If you don't have a ring then you have to pay for the run all the way back to a coloc.

Re: 'Anti-authority' tech rebels take on ISPs, connect NYC with cheap Wi-Fi

#192

Post by adrianN »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #82
walrus01 wrote: post #46

Actual ISP network engineer here: I'm sure these people are having fun and all, but it's insignificant in the larger scheme of things. (correction to original post: I did not at first see an ASN for them, or announcements of their own IP space. They have an ASN and announce two /24s, and peer at one physical location in metro NYC). Real five nines network infrastructure takes significant capital investment. This part…

> Actual ISP network engineer her So then you must intimately understand the depth of the lies and anti-consumer business practices that spur such networks. > Real five nines network infrastructure takes significant capital investment. 5-9s is 5 minutes of downtime a year. I've never had a commercial, let alone residential ISP hit that mark. > Actual, reliable internet costs real money, both in the salaries of people…

I'm no network engineer, but when you have a large network with lots of equipment, you want the individual components to have a couple more nines than the resulting network. Maybe that's what they meant.

Re: 'Anti-authority' tech rebels take on ISPs, connect NYC with cheap Wi-Fi

#193

Post by nycmesh »

bigiain wrote: post #168
nycmesh wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We get a lot of support from the NYC networking community, and we have a lot of friends at the NYNOG meetups. Everyone is very helpful and they also want the big ISPs to have some competition, so we get donations from quite a few people. Some also join our network and get nodes on their own roofs and help with other installs! DE-CIX is the biggest IXP and they measure their network in terabits/sec. It is not a big de…

So you're sharing a 1G connection between 600-ish users - all presumably on 802.11ac 450Mbps (or 1.3Gbps if they've got three-stream?) connections? How often do you see full saturation on that link? I'm guessing if all 600 of your users all tried to stream one stream of $TV-show-de-jour at once they'd barely get 16Mbps each? Can one user's home office full of Apple gear flood the bandwidth downloading a dozen Apple s…

Netflix standard streaming is 3Mbps, so even with your math (which isn't how bandwidth works) everyone is happy.

We've never come anywhere near saturating our gig connection. We monitor it. Each building is limited to their own rooftop connection which is an average 100Mbps, so they can't do more than that if they tried. The thing is not everyone is downloading a file at the same time, and streaming uses much less bandwidth than downloading. From Netflix site-

0.5 Megabits per second - Required broadband connection speed

1.5 Megabits per second - Recommended broadband connection speed

3.0 Megabits per second - Recommended for SD quality

5.0 Megabits per second - Recommended for HD quality

25 Megabits per second - Recommended for Ultra HD quality

Re: 'Anti-authority' tech rebels take on ISPs, connect NYC with cheap Wi-Fi

#194

Post by nycmesh »

smallnamespace wrote: post #123
danShumway wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At NYC salaries? In a greenfield scenario, I could easily spend $900,000 a year in just payroll and benefits I kind of don't understand what you're getting at here. They're a nonprofit. The majority of their work is coming from volunteers. They aren't paying New York salaries. This is like going to Linus and saying "You can't possibly expect Linux to be sustainable - do you have any idea how much money Microsoft pa…

> The majority of their work is coming from volunteers. > the difference is that people and companies donate their time/money because they want the project to succeed. And that volunteering time and energy are probably valuable then, especially if they can do the work of a real ISP. I think one real question to ask though is what is actually more efficient—donating volunteer time and energy to a nonprofit, or donatin…

Volunteers donate their time because they enjoy it. We have so many volunteers it is hard to keep track of them all. Obviously it is more efficient to use volunteers if there are enough. We are considering using contractors for some huge projects we are planning.

Re: 'Anti-authority' tech rebels take on ISPs, connect NYC with cheap Wi-Fi

#195

Post by dzonga »

walrus01 wrote: post #83
jimktrains2 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Actual ISP network engineer her So then you must intimately understand the depth of the lies and anti-consumer business practices that spur such networks. > Real five nines network infrastructure takes significant capital investment. 5-9s is 5 minutes of downtime a year. I've never had a commercial, let alone residential ISP hit that mark. > Actual, reliable internet costs real money, both in the salaries of people…

Google did not fail at starting an ISP. They decided that the ROI for doing individual residential home FTTH was not worth it, considering the cost per house passed. Then they went and bought Webpass, which has a totally different condo/apartment based business model, which has been wildly successful. Starting a small ISP based out of extreme dissatisfaction with huge, evil incumbents is something that I encourage an…

African Internet is really slow. Being a noob and knowing we can access the undersea cable. How would you go about building such a mesh network for an medium densely populate african city i.e 3+ million people ?

Re: 'Anti-authority' tech rebels take on ISPs, connect NYC with cheap Wi-Fi

#196

Post by nycmesh »

dboreham wrote: post #140
walrus01 wrote: post #46

Actual ISP network engineer here: I'm sure these people are having fun and all, but it's insignificant in the larger scheme of things. (correction to original post: I did not at first see an ASN for them, or announcements of their own IP space. They have an ASN and announce two /24s, and peer at one physical location in metro NYC). Real five nines network infrastructure takes significant capital investment. This part…

Agree the article is BS. Mesh networking is incompatible with QoS. So they can surely deliver crappy Internet cheaply. More than that? Nope. That'd need serious infrastructure such as licensed P2P, 60GHz short haul links, leased fiber. $$$$$ Oh, and they'd need peering: more $$$$$

Did you read any of our comments?

Re: 'Anti-authority' tech rebels take on ISPs, connect NYC with cheap Wi-Fi

#197

Post by kalleboo »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #145
lbotos wrote: post #12

Who's responsible when someone torrents copyrighted material through that Internet exchange point? "NYC Mesh will comply with all federal laws in the countries it operates, however, as policy, no data is collected and therefore no data exists to provide requestors." This is cute, but if you aren't hunting down people abusing the mesh, the whole connection to the internet will go away for a ToS violation.

The beauty of it is as it becomes popular people will start torrenting WITHIN the mesh network.

Brings back memories of using DC++ hubs on the university network

Re: 'Anti-authority' tech rebels take on ISPs, connect NYC with cheap Wi-Fi

#198

Post by isostatic »

notyourday wrote: post #37
isostatic wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why doesn't a startup run their own fibre? Are building owners that protective? Actually scratch that, I tried getting a 1 gig cross manhattan link. Cost more than 1g to London.

It depends on the location. If you are talking about downtown Manhattan you can get dark fiber between any major buildings for about $5k/mo. If you are not in a mojor building then Zayo would do it for about $20k build out worst case scenario + same $5k/mo, since Zayo touches a boatload of manholes. There was also Metro Optical but I dont know how large is their footprint. They are quite creative. But in general, go…

Yes, that sounds about right -- we pay about $4k for 1gig midtown-midtown

However GTT offered me 1gig from New York office to London Docklands for $2400! Under $2k for p2p to office in Washington DC.

If local internet is $500pcm , get two lines into the building for $1k/month, charge 50 people $30 a month and give them 1 gig and 25:1 contention ratio, plus the cost of dropping the fibre and a router, leaving $6k a year. It's not going to give you a full time job, but will give you some decent internet and a bit of pocket money to look after it.

Re: 'Anti-authority' tech rebels take on ISPs, connect NYC with cheap Wi-Fi

#200

Post by acct1771 »

pietroglyph wrote: post #158
nycmesh wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The public access point SSIDs are usually "-NYC Mesh-" or "nycmesh" followed by location.

How do you deal with malicious networks broadcasting under the same name? Do you use WPA2, or is data sent naked over the air?

How do you deal with someone making a Facebook with your first and last name?

Same answer.

Post reply on HN