5 ms·

Net Neutrality: Time to Use Mesh Networks to Build Your Own Internet?

89 points by ohjeez 9y ago

tritium 9y ago
Before I start trusting random people running mesh nodes to provide me with internet service, I’ll need to see a clear demonstration of some kind of defensive posture for trusting traffic in such a situation. After all, I think some lessons have been taught by free, open wi-fi offered by cafes. Is SSL/TLS enough? Probably not for less technical people who can be socially engineered into trusting a malicious root CA because they just want internet. Is TOR worth anything? Oh, I still feel like it’s pretty laughable that exit nodes operate on an honor system of not snooping on plain-text traffic. From where does one summon the mental gymnastics necessary to go along with that? I’m not sure why I should just feel comfortable about letting any peer’s node handle my traffic. Feels like a handy-wavey “Brad & Chad” brogrammer move.
- ejanus 9y ago
  I think http://altheamesh.com http://altheamesh.com answers your concern as related to security. It uses wireguard,vpn, establish tunnels for packet flow .
  - tritium 9y ago
    VPN services still put us on the run, so to speak. As an optional, externalized behavior, those who choose to employ VPN tunneling will enjoy an additional layer that buys them some time, for some of their activity. But if one were trying to suggest that “it’s time to put mesh networks in play as this newer model, to assert greater control” then I’d like to see a technology that solves certain problems, instead of the same technology as ever, with all it’s existing, known problems, except now distributed and peer-oriented. I want to see the real problems solved, before I give everything away to peers. Otherwise unsophisticated peers can cause problems for me, just like an ISP. The difference being, most peers will be unprepared to exploit each other for a short amount of time, but then, as utilization saturates, and expertise grows, we’re back to square one.
  - fernly 9y ago
    Thank you for posting that. Unlike the top-linked article and the LibreMesh docs, the Althea site does a pretty good job of communicating what it intends to provide, making the useful distinction between user nodes, intermediate nodes, and gateway nodes and their different responsibilities. I'm dubious about the effectiveness of their plan to use escrowed cryptocoins to pay for bandwidth, but I was intrigued enough to sign up for email updates.
- Moeg 9y ago
  Do you know your isp? How about everyone else providing you the access to online content? I for one find no difference between random people and.. Random corporate people. Neither can/should be trusted, ever, this is why we have cryptographic means of keeping our business between us and the content provider, no one in between should be able to provide you with false content. Sadly this isn't perfect, but this technical challenge must be strived towards, no law can ever protect you as effectively as a good technical implementation.
  - tritium 9y ago
    The difference between random corporate people and random people is slim, and usually little more than the incentive of the paycheck as a token to turn a blind eye, and focus on a limited abstract task that lacks a value greater than the total potential paycheck offered, when the fruits of the task are taken in isolation. Depending on the organization, a business may or may not adhere to this sort of practice. And yes, it’s still people mystery meat, behind the veil of nearly any business.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  > After all, I think some lessons have been taught by free, open wi-fi offered by cafes. One lesson: Use TLS. > Is SSL/TLS enough? Probably not for less technical people who can be socially engineered into trusting a malicious root CA because they just want internet. Is super-secure-network enough? Probably not for less technical people who can be socially engineered into installing malware. > Is TOR worth anything? Oh, I still feel like it’s pretty laughable that exit nodes operate on an honor system of not snooping on plain-text traffic. What else would you suggest? > From where does one summon the mental gymnastics necessary to go along with that? From where does one summon the mental gymnastics necessary to come up with the idea that it would be Tor's job to prevent you from communicating however you want?
  - tritium 9y ago
    I see that you have your own opinions, and that you’re emotionally invested in them. The basic premise of your argument is that this is the best we can do for now, so that should be acceptable. Not unlike claiming “If you can’t create a painting better than The Mona Lisa yourself, you just have to admit that it’s your favorite painting.” My mind hasn’t been changed, especially by mere flak that lacks constructive arguments. People may disagree with me freely, but that doesn’t fix the holes I’ve pointed out in existing technology that mesh networks still leave open.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
      Your are shifting the burden of proof. It's not my job to refute unsubstantiated claims of yours, and failure to do so does not constitute a validation of your claims. You said that, for example, Tor could do things much better, but you didn't put forth any argument as to why you think that/how that could be done. I am not claiming that it's impossible, I am simply rejecting your unsubstantiated claim, and in particular your unsubstantiated criticism of the Tor project. Also, I strongly suspect that any ideas you have in mind have been considered and rejected by the Tor project for very good reasons ... but you'll have to show your actual ideas before I actually know. Also, it's a useless argument to posit an end user who is willing to do anything they are told by an untrusted third party as a useful threat model. There is nothing that will protect against that, and that includes established ISPs.
fernly 9y ago
I've just spent some time browsing this article and some of the sites it links to, and I have to say that they all are doing a _terrible_ job of communicating to both the general audience that might be supportive _users_ of a local mesh, and to the moderately technical audience that might be interested in actually helping create one. As a knowledgeable internet consumer, I come to it with the general question, "What would such a mesh network do for me?" to which the only answer seems to be, "It gives me the fascinating task of buying a router and flashing its firmware and writing its config file, all based on sketchy jargon-filled docs." Supposing I do that, and in the highly unlikely outcome that I don't screw it up, I will then have -- what, exactly? Besides a nonstandard router? Supposing there existed a libremesh network in my city. Not impossible. How would I know? Could I use it to access internet content? Another crucial question not answered is, how is a local mesh supposed in any way to be a circumvention of the traffic-shaping that we all fear the telecoms will do, now they aren't common carriers? Yeah, to the extent that a whole neighborhood is meshed up, you could have free and unfettered exchange of email and FTP among all your neighbors. Yippee. The content that an internet consumer really wants, and which occupies 99.9% of the bits she consumes, comes from the major sites that are out there on the backbone of the net. Ninety-nine percent of what the edge users of a mesh want to pull from their mesh connections originates far outside the neighborhood. And it has to enter the local mesh from an internet access point that is sourced by one of those big bad telecoms. A neighborhood mesh looks like a fine way for a neighborhood to organize block parties and garage sales, but it really is just a way to share access to some ports to the same un-neutral internet everyone else uses. Except you've added a random number of local wireless hops to every ping.
- im3w1l 9y ago
  Thanks for asking these important and under-asked questions!
- kevinqiu1 9y ago
  I am familiar with NYC mesh(https://nycmesh.net/faq/ https://nycmesh.net/faq/), one of the linked networks in the article, and it answers many of your questions. To answer your most salient question(about whether it provides internet connectivity) >We provide internet through peering at an internet exchange point. If you have line-of-sight to this “supernode” in downtown Manhattan you can have a fast, reliable connection with suitable hardware, and replace your ISP.
jscholes 9y ago
TL;DR: No, it isn't.
- __s 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
ishanjain28 9y ago
Hi, I have a question. If people try to build their own network, They'll have to connect to the existing internet at some point so they can access a website that is on the internet and not on their network, Right? So, How would they do it? Do you just ask some ISP for a high-speed connection? How does it work? I saw some videos about people in Detroit setting up their own network but they didn't show everything and their internet speed was quite low.
- atrus 9y ago
  https://startyourownisp.com/ https://startyourownisp.com/ There is a user on here who created/is creating a website that answers that, just in the context of starting a wireless ISP. But, to answer your question, you would buy a connection to the internet from a provider like Level 3, or Hurricane Electric or whoever.
  - ishanjain28 9y ago
    Thanks @atrus. That website is really nice.
NelsonMinar 9y ago
This post's packets are coming to you from a mesh network. From a fixed wireless ISP in Grass Valley, CA, and my packets are routed through at least one neighbor's house before hitting wire. A lot of rural America relies on WISPs like this because the telco duopoly has failed us. I'd much prefer wired service; it's faster, more reliable, and lower latency. But AT&T and Comcast refuse to run a wire an extra half mile and the FCC won't make them.
datenwolf 9y ago
I'm disappointed that Freifunk is not mentioned in that article https://freifunk.net/en/ https://freifunk.net/en/
bogomipz 9y ago
Mesh Networks might stop last mile ISPs from prioritizing traffic but eventually you access the internet via a transit provider and/or tier 1 ISP who are also not bound by net neutrality now. So mesh networking doesn't really solve the problem.

89 points by ohjeez 9y ago

Before I start trusting random people running mesh nodes to provide me with internet service, I’ll need to see a clear demonstration of some kind of defensive posture for trusting traffic in such a situation. After all, I think some lessons have been taught by free, open wi-fi offered by cafes. Is SSL/TLS enough? Probably not for less technical people who can be socially engineered into trusting a malicious root CA because they just want internet. Is TOR worth anything? Oh, I still feel like it’s pretty laughable that exit nodes operate on an honor system of not snooping on plain-text traffic. From where does one summon the mental gymnastics necessary to go along with that? I’m not sure why I should just feel comfortable about letting any peer’s node handle my traffic. Feels like a handy-wavey “Brad & Chad” brogrammer move.

ejanus 9y ago
I think http://altheamesh.com http://altheamesh.com answers your concern as related to security. It uses wireguard,vpn, establish tunnels for packet flow .
- tritium 9y ago
  VPN services still put us on the run, so to speak. As an optional, externalized behavior, those who choose to employ VPN tunneling will enjoy an additional layer that buys them some time, for some of their activity. But if one were trying to suggest that “it’s time to put mesh networks in play as this newer model, to assert greater control” then I’d like to see a technology that solves certain problems, instead of the same technology as ever, with all it’s existing, known problems, except now distributed and peer-oriented. I want to see the real problems solved, before I give everything away to peers. Otherwise unsophisticated peers can cause problems for me, just like an ISP. The difference being, most peers will be unprepared to exploit each other for a short amount of time, but then, as utilization saturates, and expertise grows, we’re back to square one.
- fernly 9y ago
  Thank you for posting that. Unlike the top-linked article and the LibreMesh docs, the Althea site does a pretty good job of communicating what it intends to provide, making the useful distinction between user nodes, intermediate nodes, and gateway nodes and their different responsibilities. I'm dubious about the effectiveness of their plan to use escrowed cryptocoins to pay for bandwidth, but I was intrigued enough to sign up for email updates.
Moeg 9y ago
Do you know your isp? How about everyone else providing you the access to online content? I for one find no difference between random people and.. Random corporate people. Neither can/should be trusted, ever, this is why we have cryptographic means of keeping our business between us and the content provider, no one in between should be able to provide you with false content. Sadly this isn't perfect, but this technical challenge must be strived towards, no law can ever protect you as effectively as a good technical implementation.
- tritium 9y ago
  The difference between random corporate people and random people is slim, and usually little more than the incentive of the paycheck as a token to turn a blind eye, and focus on a limited abstract task that lacks a value greater than the total potential paycheck offered, when the fruits of the task are taken in isolation. Depending on the organization, a business may or may not adhere to this sort of practice. And yes, it’s still people mystery meat, behind the veil of nearly any business.
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
> After all, I think some lessons have been taught by free, open wi-fi offered by cafes. One lesson: Use TLS. > Is SSL/TLS enough? Probably not for less technical people who can be socially engineered into trusting a malicious root CA because they just want internet. Is super-secure-network enough? Probably not for less technical people who can be socially engineered into installing malware. > Is TOR worth anything? Oh, I still feel like it’s pretty laughable that exit nodes operate on an honor system of not snooping on plain-text traffic. What else would you suggest? > From where does one summon the mental gymnastics necessary to go along with that? From where does one summon the mental gymnastics necessary to come up with the idea that it would be Tor's job to prevent you from communicating however you want?
- tritium 9y ago
  I see that you have your own opinions, and that you’re emotionally invested in them. The basic premise of your argument is that this is the best we can do for now, so that should be acceptable. Not unlike claiming “If you can’t create a painting better than The Mona Lisa yourself, you just have to admit that it’s your favorite painting.” My mind hasn’t been changed, especially by mere flak that lacks constructive arguments. People may disagree with me freely, but that doesn’t fix the holes I’ve pointed out in existing technology that mesh networks still leave open.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
    Your are shifting the burden of proof. It's not my job to refute unsubstantiated claims of yours, and failure to do so does not constitute a validation of your claims. You said that, for example, Tor could do things much better, but you didn't put forth any argument as to why you think that/how that could be done. I am not claiming that it's impossible, I am simply rejecting your unsubstantiated claim, and in particular your unsubstantiated criticism of the Tor project. Also, I strongly suspect that any ideas you have in mind have been considered and rejected by the Tor project for very good reasons ... but you'll have to show your actual ideas before I actually know. Also, it's a useless argument to posit an end user who is willing to do anything they are told by an untrusted third party as a useful threat model. There is nothing that will protect against that, and that includes established ISPs.

fernly 9y ago

I've just spent some time browsing this article and some of the sites it links to, and I have to say that they all are doing a _terrible_ job of communicating to both the general audience that might be supportive _users_ of a local mesh, and to the moderately technical audience that might be interested in actually helping create one. As a knowledgeable internet consumer, I come to it with the general question, "What would such a mesh network do for me?" to which the only answer seems to be, "It gives me the fascinating task of buying a router and flashing its firmware and writing its config file, all based on sketchy jargon-filled docs." Supposing I do that, and in the highly unlikely outcome that I don't screw it up, I will then have -- what, exactly? Besides a nonstandard router? Supposing there existed a libremesh network in my city. Not impossible. How would I know? Could I use it to access internet content? Another crucial question not answered is, how is a local mesh supposed in any way to be a circumvention of the traffic-shaping that we all fear the telecoms will do, now they aren't common carriers? Yeah, to the extent that a whole neighborhood is meshed up, you could have free and unfettered exchange of email and FTP among all your neighbors. Yippee. The content that an internet consumer really wants, and which occupies 99.9% of the bits she consumes, comes from the major sites that are out there on the backbone of the net. Ninety-nine percent of what the edge users of a mesh want to pull from their mesh connections originates far outside the neighborhood. And it has to enter the local mesh from an internet access point that is sourced by one of those big bad telecoms. A neighborhood mesh looks like a fine way for a neighborhood to organize block parties and garage sales, but it really is just a way to share access to some ports to the same un-neutral internet everyone else uses. Except you've added a random number of local wireless hops to every ping.

im3w1l 9y ago
Thanks for asking these important and under-asked questions!
kevinqiu1 9y ago
I am familiar with NYC mesh(https://nycmesh.net/faq/ https://nycmesh.net/faq/), one of the linked networks in the article, and it answers many of your questions. To answer your most salient question(about whether it provides internet connectivity) >We provide internet through peering at an internet exchange point. If you have line-of-sight to this “supernode” in downtown Manhattan you can have a fast, reliable connection with suitable hardware, and replace your ISP.

jscholes 9y ago

TL;DR: No, it isn't.

__s 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

ishanjain28 9y ago

Hi, I have a question. If people try to build their own network, They'll have to connect to the existing internet at some point so they can access a website that is on the internet and not on their network, Right? So, How would they do it? Do you just ask some ISP for a high-speed connection? How does it work? I saw some videos about people in Detroit setting up their own network but they didn't show everything and their internet speed was quite low.

atrus 9y ago
https://startyourownisp.com/ https://startyourownisp.com/ There is a user on here who created/is creating a website that answers that, just in the context of starting a wireless ISP. But, to answer your question, you would buy a connection to the internet from a provider like Level 3, or Hurricane Electric or whoever.
- ishanjain28 9y ago
  Thanks @atrus. That website is really nice.

NelsonMinar 9y ago

This post's packets are coming to you from a mesh network. From a fixed wireless ISP in Grass Valley, CA, and my packets are routed through at least one neighbor's house before hitting wire. A lot of rural America relies on WISPs like this because the telco duopoly has failed us. I'd much prefer wired service; it's faster, more reliable, and lower latency. But AT&T and Comcast refuse to run a wire an extra half mile and the FCC won't make them.

datenwolf 9y ago

I'm disappointed that Freifunk is not mentioned in that article https://freifunk.net/en/ https://freifunk.net/en/

bogomipz 9y ago

Mesh Networks might stop last mile ISPs from prioritizing traffic but eventually you access the internet via a transit provider and/or tier 1 ISP who are also not bound by net neutrality now. So mesh networking doesn't really solve the problem.