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New York City Neighbors Build Cheaper Way to Connect to Web
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Eric_WVGG 7y agoVice had a good feature on this last month. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/paj8z8/a-diy-internet-network-has-drastically-expanded-its-coverage-in-nyc https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/paj8z8/a-diy-internet-net...
- tiles 7y agoAre there similar efforts to follow in other cities? e.g Boston, SF
- frostyj 7y agocommon networks: https://common.net/ https://common.net/
- cure 7y agoYeah, see https://massmesh.org https://massmesh.org for Boston.
- krastanov 7y agoIs the Boston one seeing any progress (admittedly its current incarnation is rather recent)? I am moving there soon and would love to join a mesh network, but from my (superficial) reading of their materials, they do not have yet any nodes you can connect to (as a person not owning roof access for a "super node").
- Karrot_Kream 7y agoSudomesh https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Mesh https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Mesh in Oakland
- derg 7y agoPhiladelphia: https://phillymesh.net/ https://phillymesh.net/
- na85 7y agoI believe Athens[0] was the first, or perhaps just a successful early effort. I remember being quite inspired when I read about it. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athens_Wireless_Metropolitan_Network https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athens_Wireless_Metropolitan...
- spzb 7y agoThere was Consume in the UK (predominantly London) from 2000. http://dek.spc.org/julian/consume/ http://dek.spc.org/julian/consume/
- thwythwy 7y agoComcast & AT&T cast SF's into oblivion: https://www.fastcompany.com/90319916/the-anti-competitive-forces-that-foil-speedy-affordable-broadband https://www.fastcompany.com/90319916/the-anti-competitive-fo...
- psim1 7y agoIf I understand it correctly, the two ways that incumbents are able to kill these efforts are through lower costs and through infrastructure restrictions. Emitting radio waves is both cheaper and lower-infrastructure than laying fiber. The question in my mind is whether the quality holds up.
- thwythwy 7y agoYou forgot pay the opposition party to demagogue. Lobbying has a higher ROI and they can keep treating internet service as a luxury good instead of a commodity.
- jnathsf 7y agoI led this project - it died with the late Mayor Ed Lee. An interim Mayor doesn’t have the political capital to lead something of this scale.
- welder 7y agoSudomesh - Oakland - https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Mesh https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Mesh Althea - Portland - https://althea.net https://althea.net Freifunk - Germany - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freifunk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freifunk Open Wireless - Global - https://openwireless.org https://openwireless.org
- CodexArcanum 7y agoI'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/ 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 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 7y agoHey there codexarcanum, 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 nolalawcorp@gmail.com and let's set up a meeting.
- 7y ago
- TheSoftwareGuy 7y agoCan anybody explain how this works? like on a technical level?
- umbs 7y agoI'm going through this now, but following links, perhaps, answers your Q. Mesh Design: https://docs.nycmesh.net/networking/mesh/ https://docs.nycmesh.net/networking/mesh/ Supernode Architecture: https://docs.nycmesh.net/networking/supernode-architecture/ https://docs.nycmesh.net/networking/supernode-architecture/
- na85 7y agoFrom 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.
- dustfinger 7y ago> and possibly also to the internet. That is an excellent point. Mesh nets may be vulnerable to being monitored over the internet. I have not read the article, but I hope these groups are building privacy into their protocol. I have wanted to build something like this for decade now. It is inspiring to hear about their success.
- na85 7y agoWell, if you're using TLS it shouldn't matter if someone is monitoring, right?
- dustfinger 7y agoDo these mesh networks support TLS? Even if they do support TLS, it might be possible for a node on the mesh to successfully carry out a SSL strip attack. Or aggregate leaked metadata from the requests that pass through it. I am not familiar with these mesh networks, there may be many lurking attack vectors if the creators are not particularly concerned with privacy / security.
- skataz 7y agoReminds me of this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athens_Wireless_Metropolitan_Network https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athens_Wireless_Metropolitan...
- maximente 7y agocan any Manhattan users here share their experiences? especially if more upper
- BrianNYC 7y agoWe haven't reached much past 14th St yet. We are working on some big projects uptown.
- stonejolt 7y agoThere is also https://freifunk.net/ https://freifunk.net/ for many major cities in germany
- rndgermandude 7y agoThere 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.
- leesalminen 7y agoMy 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.
- sq_ 7y agoDoes your connection maintain 5mbps/2mbps consistently? Or do you experience ups and downs in terms of speed?
- leesalminen 7y ago
- tathougies 7y agoWhile I am in favor of increasing competition among ISPs. I don't see how making it volunteer-based is actually good. All this does is take away presumably well-paying jobs from those who need them. IMO, a for-profit company developing a new mesh network would be more compelling. Not only would it provide local jobs, but it would also drive down the cost of internet for all. Somehow though, I feel this is a minority view.
- kovek 7y agoA for-profit company will drive profits for stockholders (and not necessarily the community or customers) which will also drive competition. Sure, it creates jobs but that’s not a for-profit company’s goal. I guess it is difficult to compete given laws and/or regulations, so running a new such company for-profit would be too difficult?
- tathougies 7y ago> Sure, it creates jobs but that’s not a for-profit company’s goal Well, of course. Giving away unlimited supplies of money without earning it is a privilege only the federal government has. Non-profit companies also cannot create money out of thin air. While non-profits can endeavor to create jobs as their primary mission, I have yet to see a non-profit that can actually create a job without first earning the money itself, whether through actually doing something or working to fundraise. > I guess it is difficult to compete given laws and/or regulations, so running a new such company for-profit would be too difficult? It doesn't even need to be for-profit. I suppose I should have clarified. It could be non-profit too. It's the all-volunteerness that I object to. The sorts of things done by volunteers here are actually jobs, that should be compensated. The receivers of the internet ought to be okay paying for it to pay for these people's livelihoods.
- untog 7y ago> The receivers of the internet ought to be okay paying for it They do pay for it. But there are not currently enough subscribers to make hiring someone worthwhile or affordable. Hopefully that will change in time.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y agoDamn, I wanna make something like this happen in Miami. I wonder how expensive a 10GB uplink from Terremark would set me back.
- buildbuildbuild 7y agoNYC Mesh survived on a gigabit uplink for a very long time. Go for it.
- newman8r 7y agoThere's a lot of good amateur radio mesh nets around as well - I'm in the process of setting up an antenna to join one in Orange County https://sites.google.com/site/orangecountymeshorganization/home https://sites.google.com/site/orangecountymeshorganization/h...
- kawfey 7y agoWe're also setting up an AREDN mesh in St. Louis, MO. Most of the fun for me is getting access to skyscrapers and installing and troubleshooting the network equipment and antennas. I'm not really sure what we're going to do with it once it's actually up. We might host a meet up on it via mumble every once in a while...post some files for hams to enjoy...but for me it's like, "cool, now what?"
- dylz 7y agoMumble uses TLS for everyone and every connection. Is this allowed per Part 97?
- d2mw 7y agoI'm curious about how these things are expected to scale.. 1000 subscribers, dedicated support person 5000, ??? 10000, ??? At some point these community efforts must grow back into a company again, right? And the cycle repeats
- phoe-krk 7y agoExcept that company doesn't own the infrastructure because it's decentralized. <Insert your favorite article about decentralized systems here.>
- boramalper 7y ago> At some point these community efforts must grow back into a company again, right? (a) Not necessarily, it might turn into a non-profit organisation, a cooperative, or something “akin”. (b) Nothing wrong with companies either. Although I (and many others) would prefer option (a), a fairer company that respects its customers’ needs and rights is very welcome!
- hadlock 7y agoProbably around the 1200-5000 mark you might start seeing market segmentation, and then a federation of local mesh networks' super hubs all sharing a dedicated backbone of some sort and cost sharing. Backbone and last mile always seem to get separated out pretty quickly as they're different businesses. Not all nonprofits need to scale to unicorn size.
- brenschluss 7y agoAs 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!
- portmanteaufu 7y agoHow was your onboarding experience? I'd love to join the mesh, but I'm pretty far from the supernodes. If you live in an apartment, did you have any issues running the wires into the building?
- mlrtime 7y agoI think this is the big hurdle or most people in Manhattan: To get connected to NYC Mesh, you’ll need a line of sight from your rooftop or balcony to one of our supernodes or hubs. Check our map to see if you're in the network coverage zone. And if you’re not yet in range, keep checking back as our network is always expanding, or volunteer to help us grow towards your neighborhood. So this means that if you are in a condo you can't use it?
- lancesells 7y agoHow is the connection? I checked with them a couple of months back and unfortunately my rooftop isn't in line of sight with any of the nodes. Really want to use it and say goodbye to Verizon.
- buildbuildbuild 7y agoIt depends on how many hops are between you and a supernode but 60-80mbit is typical. Check the map in a few months, I was in your situation then suddenly a node popped up a mile away.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- elektor 7y agoThere's a map of community-owned networks, more than 750 communities across the United States have embraced operating their own broadband network Map here: https://muninetworks.org/communitymap https://muninetworks.org/communitymap
- slabity 7y agoI've tried toggling every option on that map, but it comes up with no results. Is there something I'm missing?
- cr0sh 7y agoIt really bothers me to see nothing going on in the Phoenix, Arizona region, where I live. I'm planning on getting my Technicians HAM license sometime soon (I took one of the online practice tests "blind" and scored an 80 - so with some study it shouldn't be a problem). Maybe after that if I can find some like-minded people nearby...
- robocat 7y agoA HAM license doesn't help you: you cannot legally use the amateur radio bands to transmit an internet connection. I suspect the Amateur HAMmers would detect and enforce that: I imagine there are HAM goonsquads.
- dsd 7y agoI thought the rule was no encryption. They theoretically have an entire ip block available.
- ajosh 7y agoThe rules also prohibit commercial communications (i.e. pecuniary interest). There are some limited exceptions which depending on your use may be enough. That said, ham radio is a fun hobby regardless. If you are into IP stuff on ham radio, it's not too hard to get an ip on the ham IP block /8. Amateur radio does have a tradition of self enforcement which is part of my the FCC continues to grant privileges. People practice RDF for fun but I know people who have used to to find people intentionally interfering with other stations.
- hanniabu 7y agoThis is a great use case for crypto. You can earn by supporting the network and spend it to use the network. It helps the incentive layer. Those supporting the network can pay for support personnel as they grow, or there can be a network tax that goes towards this. You can also decentralize the support personnel by rewarding people that successfully answer tickets and offer a premium for when questions are answered within a certain amount of time. These questions and answers would also be stored on-chain on a sidechain.
- eeZah7Ux 7y ago"crypto" means cryptography, not cryptocurrencies. Please stop appropriating the word.
- woah 7y agoWe are doing exactly this with althea.net
- nz21 7y agoI've been reading https://althea.net/how-it-works https://althea.net/how-it-works and I don't quite understand one aspect: The article says there's a "backhaul" that connects the althea network to the internet. I understand this means the community will then need just one subscription to the internet, as opposed to n, so it's cheaper. But doesn't this mean that every user in the network will experience vastly slower connection than if they had their own internet subscription?
- woah 7y agoIt's a commercial subscription. The fact is, any residential ISP is selling the same connection to the internet to 20-100 subscribers. This is known as the oversale ratio. Since nobody is using the whole connection continuously, people experience the advertised speeds most of the time. The backhaul connections that ISPs resell (and that are sold into Althea networks) are usually around 10x the price of a residential connection with the same advertised speed. It's the difference between "it is technically possible for this connection to attain this bandwidth" and "you are guaranteed this bandwidth at all times"
- avodonosov 7y agoWhat 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.
- agent008t 7y agoIn 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.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago> 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 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-assist https://www.spectrum.com/browse/content/spectrum-internet-as...
- woah 7y agoShameless plug: My company Althea (https://althea.net 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 https://althea.net/hilltop.
- corndoge 7y agoHow's Babel treating you at scale? (What scale are you running anyway?) Are you upstreaming your changes?
- jkilpatr 7y agoOur biggest test network is only ~50ish nodes. Simulations show we won't have issues until several thousand. Babel has been very reliable and we haven't really made any changes beyond our extensions. The price extension probably isn't appropriate to upstream. I'll admit I've been remiss up-streaming the full path latency extension.
- 420codebro 7y agoAs a network architect this seems pretty cool to me - incentivizing individual node/router operators. How is billing & payment reconciliation handled between parties?
- jkilpatr 7y agoSee my presentation at NANOG 76 on that subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4EKbgShyLw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4EKbgShyLw
- chadwittman 7y agoLove the project! Why does my intuition suggest big ISPs are going to try to regulate this out of existence in the US. It's depressing.
- metafunctor 7y agoAloha NYC!
- dang 7y agoA month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20320212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20320212 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17861748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17861748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16978544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16978544 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10052261 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10052261
- CodeSheikh 7y agoI applaud Brian Hall's dedication to NYC Mesh.
- BrianNYC 7y agoThanks!
- mrhappyunhappy 7y agoI 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.
- unnouinceput 7y agoQuotes:"The Mesh maintains a “super node” antenna and 31 hubs throughout lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn that collectively serve about 350 residences."..."“Plus the people are nice,” she said. “It’s a great community.” Yeah, 350 is less then a block of customers for Comcast or Verizon. When only few people are involved everything is great, try to scale this bigger then you'll the real shit go down. It's human condition, individually we are smart, but when in large groups we're stupid.
- c3534l 7y agoDoes it need to be scaled up beyond a community of neighbors?
- dredmorbius 7y agoIf you want to offer this as an alternative to more than 0.004% of the population of New York City, yes. Either larger groups or more of them, or both.
- anigbrowl 7y agoYes, 350 people out of ~8 million means only ~0.00005% of New Yorkers have access to it.
- jotto 7y agosome context on the primary ISP in NYC: 1 year ago (2018-07-27) Spectrum got "kicked out of NYC": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17628906 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17628906 then in April 2019, managed to avoid getting kicked out by agreeing to expansion and paying a fine: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/04/charter-avoids-getting-kicked-out-of-new-york-agrees-to-new-merger-conditions/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/04/charter-avoids-g...
- josh2600 7y agoWho does the backhaul for these networks? If it's regular ISPs, aren't all of the participants just violating their ISP terms and conditions?
- thechut 7y agoNYC Mesh pays for a backhaul. I assume that this use is covered in the ToS, but it isn't just a normal residential internet connection. 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.
- josh2600 7y agoDo you know what band they broadcast on? Is it the innovation band?
- buildbuildbuild 7y agoMost people connect over Ubiquiti airMax AC, which is 5ghz. Large hubs connect using airFiber, typically 24ghz.
- buildbuildbuild 7y agoNYC 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/ https://www.nycmesh.net/blog/supernode-3-is-here/
- BrianNYC 7y agoDE-CIX is our donated IXP connection. We connect via peering and transit at an internet exchange point (IXP). We don't pay for an ISP connection.
- musicale 7y agoThis 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?
- wmf 7y agoYour 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.
- BrianNYC 7y agoYes, I don't think Verizon would peer with us, but we peer with some very large companies like Google, Apple, Akamai. The full list is here- https://www.nycmesh.net/peering https://www.nycmesh.net/peering
- buildbuildbuild 7y agoIX 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.
- _-david-_ 7y ago>$700/m Is that $700 a minute, month or something else?
- numbers 7y agoIs there something like this for San Francisco?
- jnathsf 7y agoThere is basic infrastructure for SF Mesh in place (200+ miles of municipal owned fiber + wireless nodes throughout the city). In fact I have one at my house pointed to a local public heath clinic (there are a number of non-profits and others who get free municipal mesh internet). There is def strong interest for this in SF - we held a community event and had over hundred people show up.
- carapace 7y agoThere was Meraki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_Meraki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_Meraki
- wmf 7y agohttps://www.monkeybrains.net/ https://www.monkeybrains.net/
- jquery 7y agoI can’t recommend them enough, I get 70/70 Mbps symmetric on average, going as high as 100/100+. I only wish they didn’t have a soft monthly data cap of 1.5TB. Only $25/month after the installation fee of a satellite on your dwelling. FTTH would be faster but San Francisco doesn’t seem that interested in wiring fiber to SFHs. The network doesn’t seem to have an issue with fog or rain (my home might be in a particularly good spot for it).
- jeffrogers 7y agoGuessing this violates many ISP ToS?
- sethhochberg 7y agoNYC Mesh is their own ISP, they aren't piggybacking onto consumer ISP connections.
- quickthrower2 7y agoWait, how can internet start from $66 in NYC of all places? Where a teeny bit of extra cable can get the connection to hundreds of other subscribers? I smell a rort.
- shados 7y agoDoesn't NYC have a Times Warner monopoly for internet? If so, that's why.
- mynameishere 7y agoDoesn't appear so. Haven't you seen this cool, allegedly-correct FCC tool: https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/#/location-summary?version=dec2017&lat=40.757846&lon=-73.978748&tech=acfosw&speed=25_3&vlat=40.75554214235714&vlon=-73.9790654494135&vzoom=13.093490849658636 https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/#/location-summary?version=dec2...
- shados 7y agoThats so cool! Learning about this made it worth being wrong.
- leesalminen 7y agoNot correct for my home address.
- srram 7y agoIf rain effects it, it is millimeter waves. Probably some kind of LMDS (point to multipoint) wireless network
- BrianNYC 7y agoMy quote was a bit out of context. I was talking about how if it rained my old Time Warner Cable ("Spectrum") connection would go down for a day. This is a known TWC problem in downtown Manhattan. NYC Mesh is having a different problem with very heavy rain where two of our high speed point-to-point connections (60GHz and 24GHz) will go down for like 20 minutes in very heavy rain. We're working on fixing this.
- spacecowboy17 7y agoWhat 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?
- mfkp 7y agoSure, 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.
- dahfizz 7y agoYou'd lose bandwidth and gain liability. Not a winning proposition.
- mattr47 7y agoNot an issue really for liability. https://openwireless.org/myths-legal.html https://openwireless.org/myths-legal.html
- dahfizz 7y agoYour link just makes me more comfident that I don't want to run an open WiFi network. Most of their defense is based on the assumption that you have all the same protections as a network operator. However, as the article points out, this has never been tested in court. So you might be fine, and you might go to jail, we don't know. And even if you do get network operator status, there are still legal notices and copyright systems you have to comply with. And thats all just copyright. That article doesn't deal with more serious online crimes. If the FBI finds someone downloading child porn from your network, you will be arrested. You will have to convince the police that it was someone else. Even if you don't end up with any serious penalties, that's a hell of a lot more hassle than I'm willing to put up with.
- spacecowboy17 7y agoSure, there is absolutely no upside for me personally to do this. There are only downsides for me, but I think they are limited: - My router lets me set the bandwidth limits for the guest network. I set it to 10Mbps down/1Mbps up which is unnoticeable. - My ISP has no data caps. - The laws here are not draconian It looks like this concept is super old: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/my_open_wireles.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/my_open_wirel... If you were a crook, would you use a random open wifi for your illegal stuff? Wouldn't you use Tor or some proxy on top of that?
- keithnz 7y agoI'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.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Seb-C 7y agoI love this idea and concept, and I hope it will work well and expand. But if such a concept were to work and expand to big cities, I wonder what will happen to people living outside big cities... While I don't know anything about the US market, I also wonder what is the motivation to make this project at home instead of mobile-based. Since we all have super-powerful computers in our pockets, it seems to me that we could have an easier similar solution using a smartphone mesh, especially in big and crowded cities?
- ohples 7y agoAre you talking about turning smartphones into mesh network routers? I would imagine this would kill your battery rather quickly. Also, it would probably require rooting the phone to install the necessary routing software. There are a whole host of other reasons but those two are the easiest to explain.
- flexie 7y agoWow! Is $66 really considered cheap internet these days? I pay around $14 monthly for 100 Mbps connection from a corporate internet provider (which typically gives me around 20 Mbps download and upload when I test). No installation fee and free equipment. Same internet, but from a different country. Is the internet connection in the NYC Mesh really that much faster?
- WC3w6pXxgGd 7y agoI just want to take the opportunity to point out this is the kind of stuff Net Neutrality regulations outlawed. With those regulations repealed, people are able to innovate again.
- Causality1 7y agoInteresting. I wonder what equipment they're using for $110 that gets a high-bandwidth data signal over multiple city blocks without running afoul of the FCC's limits for broadcast power and signal strength. At certain frequencies those can be remarkably constraining, low enough you can easily exceed them with a twenty dollar wifi adapter and a ten dollar yagi antenna.
- Doubl 7y agoI 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.
- known 7y agohttps://archive.is/kvDUb https://archive.is/kvDUb
- known 7y agoSimilar to https://www.liveport.com/ https://www.liveport.com/
- akrymski 7y agoThat's all great IF you live in a new building that has ethernet throughout. I live in central London where there's fiber on my street and yet I can only get ADSL @ max 8MB/s. I'd happily pay some office next door to share their gigabit fibre with me over wifi. Why hasn't anyone solved this?
- kennethh 7y agoAnyone know what hardware these Mesh networks use?