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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 co

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.

leesalminen 7y ago
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.
- sq_ 7y ago
  Does your connection maintain 5mbps/2mbps consistently? Or do you experience ups and downs in terms of speed?
  - leesalminen 7y ago
    It’s mostly consistent except for 7-9PM weekdays. I set up some special QoS rules that I can toggle on/off on my LAN to make my phone feel decent enough during those hours...shh don’t tell my wife! ;)
    - sq_ 7y ago
      Ah, a classic home router admin move: "I'm gonna QoS all of your traffic into oblivion so that I can download my cat videos". More seriously, I'm impressed at that consistency. I've always heard that that type of connection tends to be iffy, so it's interesting to know that my preconceptions may have been wrong.
noir_lord 7y ago
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!.
IloveHN84 7y ago
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?
- rndgermandude 7y ago
  Some commercial b2b provider had fibers already in a village (or close enough). They had no interest in providing residential service, tho. I think that provider has since been bought by Cogent (or was it level3)? Also, I think my buddy oversubscribed the lines. And had some file sharing/fair use clause that customers needed to agree to and abide by. They didn't really do traffic shaping/DPI stuff, so once in a while they had to call or visit (when in the area anyway) the parents of some kid who just had discovered the wonders of bittorrent maxing out their allotted chunk of the bandwidth 24/7. So yes, they bought some "business internet" from that provider, quite a lot of it. Wasn't cheap, but wasn't too expensive as they got hat provider to see the reason in "either you quote us prices we can pay, and we both make some money, or you don't and then neither of us does".

leesalminen 7y ago

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.

sq_ 7y ago
Does your connection maintain 5mbps/2mbps consistently? Or do you experience ups and downs in terms of speed?
- leesalminen 7y ago
  It’s mostly consistent except for 7-9PM weekdays. I set up some special QoS rules that I can toggle on/off on my LAN to make my phone feel decent enough during those hours...shh don’t tell my wife! ;)
  - sq_ 7y ago
    Ah, a classic home router admin move: "I'm gonna QoS all of your traffic into oblivion so that I can download my cat videos". More seriously, I'm impressed at that consistency. I've always heard that that type of connection tends to be iffy, so it's interesting to know that my preconceptions may have been wrong.

noir_lord 7y ago

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!.

IloveHN84 7y ago

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?

rndgermandude 7y ago
Some commercial b2b provider had fibers already in a village (or close enough). They had no interest in providing residential service, tho. I think that provider has since been bought by Cogent (or was it level3)? Also, I think my buddy oversubscribed the lines. And had some file sharing/fair use clause that customers needed to agree to and abide by. They didn't really do traffic shaping/DPI stuff, so once in a while they had to call or visit (when in the area anyway) the parents of some kid who just had discovered the wonders of bittorrent maxing out their allotted chunk of the bandwidth 24/7. So yes, they bought some "business internet" from that provider, quite a lot of it. Wasn't cheap, but wasn't too expensive as they got hat provider to see the reason in "either you quote us prices we can pay, and we both make some money, or you don't and then neither of us does".