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 currently pre-registering subscribers for in their communities, for example https://althea.net/hilltop.
I've been very intrigued by their efforts for some time now. Last time I read about NYC Mesh, it sent me down a rabbit hole of research into mesh networks and what it takes to found an ISP. I'd love to replicate their efforts in NOLA, but the legal and technical hurdles are tricky!
When I had looked into it, these resources had been helpful for research:
Wireless Networking in the Developing world -- http://wndw.net/ -- A useful guidebook on the tech needed for large scale community mesh networks
Guifi.net -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guifi.net -- A huge wireless mesh in Spain, there's a linked economic report in the references that's very good but may be unavailable at the moment. It may have been, or be contained within, "The Cook Report on Internet Protocol" Volume XX1, No, 12 & XXII, No 1 March April 2013
ISSN 1071 - 6327. The report is very long and covers quite a bit of the social and technical challenges faced by Guifi.net
My partner and I are NOLA based programmers / lawyers who have been researching this matter for a few years. We own the domain nolamesh.net and would love to work with you to navigate the political / legal / business issues to deploy a similar network in the New Orleans metro area. Please reach out to us at [email protected]
and let's set up a meeting.
The main problem is organizing. Legal and technical problems are easy by comparison. I wrote a guide here for starting your own network- https://www.nycmesh.net/blog/how/
The problem has always been that this networking technology can’t really be compared easily to wired networking, but consumers do. You adversely select for people who want reliability instead of speed, which is the opposite of what WISPs provide.
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 run such a network spanning 3 villages with about 400 customers a bunch of years back. I seem to remember one of the directional antennas was strategically placed in some church tower.
They ran this as a two people operation. Extreme weather also was a problem for them, and they essentially learned network design by trial and error, starting out as a fully bridged network where everybody was in the same 10.0.0.0/8, NATed to the outside. They fixed that later. Customers only got like 3-4MBit/s from this mesh, which wasn't exactly fast but not too shabby either back then, especially considering the only alternative those villagers had was ISDN speeds (128kbit/s max I think). No LTE yet either.
They weren't alone either. There was a huge number of such operators who shared knowledge etc.
Once he started negotiating with those villages to lay fiber and provide DSL service all of the sudden the Telekom started fibering up "his" villages.
My home internet in the Rocky Mountains, USA is delivered via mesh-WiFi provided by one of my neighbors. It's a really cool system actually- the towers are battery/solar operated and some can only be accessed via horseback. Covers ~500 homes.
5mbps down/2mbps up is what I get for $79/month, and I've learned to live with it. The only other option is satellite internet with restrictive usage caps. We used to have another competitor in the space but after big floods in 2013 they exited our area.
There was (might still be but I haven't looked since fiber went everywhere where I live) a local provider to me that use microwave links, it was at the time fast as hell compared to creaking ADSL but every time it rained it went south fast, I worked in a shared office building that used it for it's main links and it was a constant thorn in my side, I used to check the rainfall forecast to see if I'd have decent internet at the office!.
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?
As someone who is on NYC Mesh - it’s amazing. I can’t explain the feeling you can get of pointing an antenna at a distant building and getting a ping. So great!
NYC Mesh volunteer here. We are our own ISP and operate with generously donated transit from multiple providers. Most recently Pilot Fiber donated a 40Gbit uplink to help us kick off our new Brooklyn PoP. https://www.nycmesh.net/blog/supernode-3-is-here/
What is impressive here, that it's a "mesh" or that it's a volunteer for driven?
Years ago all Minsk was covered by volunteer maintained local ethernet networks, I was accessing internet through one. Today most of them are bought out by commercial providers, some turned into providers themselves.
In Russia it was the same. Because the existing infrastructure (i.e. phone lines) was so poor, back in early 2000s people were just connecting the apartment blocks in their communities with ethernet cables.
You could then pay for Internet traffic or enjoy local neighbourhood network resources for free. People would build local websites, chat rooms, message boards, fileshares, gaming. It was pretty good for the time and I was surprised to find that in the UK/US there had not been such a development, perhaps because of better pre-existing infrastructure.
I'm kindda surprised internet affordability is even a blip on the radar in NY compared to housing affordability. Though I'm 100% supportive of the philosophical basis on creating the network.
I live in a peripheral area of Europe and this is how we get our internet since 12 years from a co-op. Our speed is lower 10 Mb download and a lot less upload but it's good enough.
From their docs, it looks like they're deploying a series of neighborhood-scale mesh networks, each with at least one "supernode" which acts as gateway to other supernodes and the meshes behind them, and possibly also to the internet. All the supernodes themselves are meshed together as well, each with its own private ASN.
This is interesting - it says that they are connected to an internet exchange point (IXP), which means presumably they are their own AS and don't pay for peering. It makes them basically a peer of Verizon, etc..
It's a bit of a reminder of what the internet actually is - a bunch of networks connected together. If you make your own network, negotiate or purchase a piece of the IPv6 address space, and convince someone to connect to you and exchange BGP routes then you are part of it.
I wonder how hard it is to join an IXP and how much it costs?
IX costs vary by region but in NYC you can expect around $700/m for a 10g port as a startup. Transit costs over an IX port are much higher than crossconnecting directly to a provider, but IX ports are convenient and save a lot of bandwidth cost if you’re good at building relationships.
The network engineering world is very different from software. Relationships are everything and the pricing very opaque. Often pricing and lists of “who is in the building” are even behind NDA. If you are an “eyeball network” (more downloads than uploads) your transit costs will be much cheaper if you know how to negotiate, for example.
Your terminology is a little loose there. Generally large ISPs like Verizon will not peer with random small ISPs. Even if you're connected to an IXP you still have to pay for transit if you want to reach the whole Internet.
> Spectrum said it also offers a slower $15-a-month connection to eligible low-income families and seniors.
For what it's worth, the plan is called "Every Day Low Price Internet", and there's no formal eligibility requirements. Spectrum doesn't advertise the plan, but you can see it listed at: https://www.spectrum.com/browse/content/ratecard.html
For $15 per month, I get 3 mb down / 1 mb up. The price never changes, there's no hidden fee, no bundle crap etc.
Even as a heavy internet user, I'm very satisfied. It's plenty fast enough for general web browsing, and I let larger downloads run overnight. I can't stream videos above 720p, but I can just wait for them to download in the background with youtube-dl. I also have a script that autodownloads new Youtube videos while I sleep.
Fios is available in my apartment, but for $50 more per month, it's not worth it. If I wasn't in a rental apartment I would seriously consider NYC Mesh, but I'm not. (I'd also be a bit concerned about latency.)
---
Edit: Actually, looking at the rate card again, the article was likely referring to "Spectrum Internet Assist", which is still $15 a month but offers 30 down / 4 up—but with eligibility requirements: https://www.spectrum.com/browse/content/spectrum-internet-as...
I worked as an IT tech in a school district with 9 buildings, each connected by directional antenna. The speed wasn't great but certainly usable enough, even for video. This was back in 2000 and the guy maintaining the network learned it all on his own as far as I can tell. Weather was a problem for the network as outages were fairly common. We had an outside tech who would come out to fix the radios once in a while. Overall it got the job done, but eventually the district ponied up for a fiber connection to at least a few of the larger buildings. I helped lay new wiring for most of the buildings.
What if every household enabled an open "guest" SSID on their Wifi router? Wouldn't it have a huge positive impact of giving access to people who can't afford mobile data or home internet?
Like the old somewhat-tongue-in-cheek "Linksys Community Network Project".
The idea was roughly this:
Such a large portion of wifi equipment sold at the time had the SSID "Linksys" and no password. So everyone's devices had a saved setting to connect to that, even if we later configured our networks differently.
Therefore it's super convenient if you just call your guest network that. When you actually have guests over, chances are good that their devices will automatically use your wifi with zero hassles whatsoever.
(Also implied but unspoken: The existence of this craptastic webpage explaining the Linksys Community Network Project is plausible deniability if you get caught using someone else's open wifi that they shared out of ignorance rather than because they read this page and agreed with it.)
Sure, but then you have random people doing illegal things on your network and it gets linked back to you. Also, most of the major ISPs are implementing data caps, so I wouldn't want to get overage charges because someone used all my data.
[+] [-] woah|6 years ago|reply
We have 2 networks live, one in rural Oregon and one in Medellin, Colombia. Also, 4 more networks people are currently pre-registering subscribers for in their communities, for example https://althea.net/hilltop.
[+] [-] CodexArcanum|6 years ago|reply
When I had looked into it, these resources had been helpful for research:
Wireless Networking in the Developing world -- http://wndw.net/ -- A useful guidebook on the tech needed for large scale community mesh networks
Guifi.net -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guifi.net -- A huge wireless mesh in Spain, there's a linked economic report in the references that's very good but may be unavailable at the moment. It may have been, or be contained within, "The Cook Report on Internet Protocol" Volume XX1, No, 12 & XXII, No 1 March April 2013 ISSN 1071 - 6327. The report is very long and covers quite a bit of the social and technical challenges faced by Guifi.net
[+] [-] SouljaSlim504|6 years ago|reply
My partner and I are NOLA based programmers / lawyers who have been researching this matter for a few years. We own the domain nolamesh.net and would love to work with you to navigate the political / legal / business issues to deploy a similar network in the New Orleans metro area. Please reach out to us at [email protected] and let's set up a meeting.
[+] [-] timerol|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BrianNYC|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] doctorpangloss|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snvzz|6 years ago|reply
That's impressive.
[+] [-] rndgermandude|6 years ago|reply
A buddy of mine used to run such a network spanning 3 villages with about 400 customers a bunch of years back. I seem to remember one of the directional antennas was strategically placed in some church tower.
They ran this as a two people operation. Extreme weather also was a problem for them, and they essentially learned network design by trial and error, starting out as a fully bridged network where everybody was in the same 10.0.0.0/8, NATed to the outside. They fixed that later. Customers only got like 3-4MBit/s from this mesh, which wasn't exactly fast but not too shabby either back then, especially considering the only alternative those villagers had was ISDN speeds (128kbit/s max I think). No LTE yet either.
They weren't alone either. There was a huge number of such operators who shared knowledge etc.
Once he started negotiating with those villages to lay fiber and provide DSL service all of the sudden the Telekom started fibering up "his" villages.
[+] [-] leesalminen|6 years ago|reply
5mbps down/2mbps up is what I get for $79/month, and I've learned to live with it. The only other option is satellite internet with restrictive usage caps. We used to have another competitor in the space but after big floods in 2013 they exited our area.
[+] [-] noir_lord|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IloveHN84|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brenschluss|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|6 years ago|reply
2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17861748
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16978544
2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10052261
[+] [-] CodeSheikh|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elektor|6 years ago|reply
Map here:
https://muninetworks.org/communitymap
[+] [-] Eric_WVGG|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josh2600|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buildbuildbuild|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thechut|6 years ago|reply
NYC Mesh pays for it through donations. Last I checked they were trying to setup a 501c3 to manage this, unsure of the status though.
[+] [-] BrianNYC|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avodonosov|6 years ago|reply
Years ago all Minsk was covered by volunteer maintained local ethernet networks, I was accessing internet through one. Today most of them are bought out by commercial providers, some turned into providers themselves.
[+] [-] agent008t|6 years ago|reply
You could then pay for Internet traffic or enjoy local neighbourhood network resources for free. People would build local websites, chat rooms, message boards, fileshares, gaming. It was pretty good for the time and I was surprised to find that in the UK/US there had not been such a development, perhaps because of better pre-existing infrastructure.
[+] [-] tiles|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thwythwy|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] welder|6 years ago|reply
Althea - Portland - https://althea.net
Freifunk - Germany - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freifunk
Open Wireless - Global - https://openwireless.org
[+] [-] Karrot_Kream|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] derg|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cure|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] na85|6 years ago|reply
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athens_Wireless_Metropolitan...
[+] [-] frostyj|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keithnz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stonejolt|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newman8r|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Doubl|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheSoftwareGuy|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] na85|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] umbs|6 years ago|reply
Mesh Design: https://docs.nycmesh.net/networking/mesh/
Supernode Architecture: https://docs.nycmesh.net/networking/supernode-architecture/
[+] [-] woah|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] musicale|6 years ago|reply
It's a bit of a reminder of what the internet actually is - a bunch of networks connected together. If you make your own network, negotiate or purchase a piece of the IPv6 address space, and convince someone to connect to you and exchange BGP routes then you are part of it.
I wonder how hard it is to join an IXP and how much it costs?
[+] [-] buildbuildbuild|6 years ago|reply
The network engineering world is very different from software. Relationships are everything and the pricing very opaque. Often pricing and lists of “who is in the building” are even behind NDA. If you are an “eyeball network” (more downloads than uploads) your transit costs will be much cheaper if you know how to negotiate, for example.
[+] [-] wmf|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BrianNYC|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Wowfunhappy|6 years ago|reply
For what it's worth, the plan is called "Every Day Low Price Internet", and there's no formal eligibility requirements. Spectrum doesn't advertise the plan, but you can see it listed at: https://www.spectrum.com/browse/content/ratecard.html
For $15 per month, I get 3 mb down / 1 mb up. The price never changes, there's no hidden fee, no bundle crap etc.
Even as a heavy internet user, I'm very satisfied. It's plenty fast enough for general web browsing, and I let larger downloads run overnight. I can't stream videos above 720p, but I can just wait for them to download in the background with youtube-dl. I also have a script that autodownloads new Youtube videos while I sleep.
Fios is available in my apartment, but for $50 more per month, it's not worth it. If I wasn't in a rental apartment I would seriously consider NYC Mesh, but I'm not. (I'd also be a bit concerned about latency.)
---
Edit: Actually, looking at the rate card again, the article was likely referring to "Spectrum Internet Assist", which is still $15 a month but offers 30 down / 4 up—but with eligibility requirements: https://www.spectrum.com/browse/content/spectrum-internet-as...
[+] [-] mrhappyunhappy|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skataz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spacecowboy17|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] myself248|6 years ago|reply
The idea was roughly this:
Such a large portion of wifi equipment sold at the time had the SSID "Linksys" and no password. So everyone's devices had a saved setting to connect to that, even if we later configured our networks differently.
Therefore it's super convenient if you just call your guest network that. When you actually have guests over, chances are good that their devices will automatically use your wifi with zero hassles whatsoever.
(Also implied but unspoken: The existence of this craptastic webpage explaining the Linksys Community Network Project is plausible deniability if you get caught using someone else's open wifi that they shared out of ignorance rather than because they read this page and agreed with it.)
Ah! Of course! https://web.archive.org/web/20030402170927/http://www.linksy...
[+] [-] mfkp|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dahfizz|6 years ago|reply