8 ms·

In Response to SOPA, Reddit Meshnet Project picks up steam

231 points by Wohlf 15y ago

darknetplan 15y ago
Come chat with us! http://darknetplan.org/webchat http://darknetplan.org/webchat
nextparadigms 15y ago
Can the Phantom protocol be combined with this somehow? http://code.google.com/p/phantom/ http://code.google.com/p/phantom/
- Wohlf 15y ago
  I like what I'm reading so far, this might be an excellent protocol to examine.
  - nextparadigms 15y ago
    He has been trying to make it extremely secure and anonymous, and all communications are end-to-end encrypted. To me it sounds like the ideal protocol for protection against censorship and spying on the users. However, I don't know how well it can be combined with a mesh network, especially one that wants to piggy back on the normal Internet, since this protocol is meant for a stand alone network. But perhaps it can be modified for that. It would probably be best to talk to the creator of the protocol about it directly and ask for his help.
Wohlf 15y ago
At this point, we're considering all contributions equally.
- cperciva 15y ago
  You may like the concept that all ideas are equally valid, but unfortunately reality disagrees.
  - noptotsch 15y ago
    Reality is defined what happens NOW in its complete context. That would be considering all ideas. Through considering, these ideas should indeed be equally. And what happens NOW in its complete context, what is considered suitable, valuable to oppose with is probably created in the future.
  - bobsoap 15y ago
    Consideration != equal treatment :)
blhack 15y ago
No offense to the "reddit meshnet project", but the last I checked (this could have changed) what they're proposing isn't possible with the team that they have right now. There are a couple of problems: 1) They don't have a solid hardware platform to work on, and the feeling I've gotten from talking to some of the people on /r/darknetplan is that they really don't have the proper understanding of wireless tech to make something like this happen. People are proposing cheap commodity wifi gear for this. While it's certainly possible to do a very high density area with that, it's certainly not feasible to cover an area like a city, at least not without a considerable investment, and an understanding that network performance is going to be abysmal. (And at that point, just use ham radio...) (Something like what they're proposing might work in an office, not so much in a neighborhood). So is a problem, but hypothetically you could just toss hardware at it until it went away. 2) It's the addressing, stupid. http://www.reddit.com/r/darknetplan/comments/m2nd5/its_the_addressing_stupid/ http://www.reddit.com/r/darknetplan/comments/m2nd5/its_the_a... I am definitely the last person to discourage people from "doing it wrong" (http://thingist.com/t/item/4372/ http://thingist.com/t/item/4372/ - http://thingist.com/t/item/19766/ http://thingist.com/t/item/19766/ - http://thingist.com/t/item/21434/ http://thingist.com/t/item/21434/), but people running this, prepare yourselves for the reality that you could fail.
- Locke1689 15y ago
  From what I heard in the IRC group when I was hanging out, the group is mostly made up of people who think it's a nice idea but have absolutely no idea what they're doing. My prediction is this movement fails flat on its face, as the people with the knowhow to develop the new protocols for this network are uninterested in joining a mass of lemmings who are more interested about what the project is going to be called than if it will work. Here's a fun issue: security and stability in BGP. As we've seen many, many times over BGP is a completely insecure protocol with persistant problems with blackhole and cyclical routes. Many people inside IRC have proposed BGP as the routing mechanism for the mesh network, but have no proposals on how to deal with a completely decentralized network of high latency connections.
  - noobface 15y ago
1010101111001 15y ago
I think it comes down to what the goals are. If the goal is to connect peer to peer with a small group of people you know in person and can trust, I see great potential. People congregate in small groups. Facebook friends, Skype contacts, etc. The advantage here is that third parties like Facebook, Microsoft and a gazillion advertisers are not involved. If it's small like that, it's doable as an overlay without using wireless as long as at least one person has a reachable IP and can act as the keeper of everyone else's address info. If the goal is to create some sort of www replacement that must scale to global internet sizes, where any stranger can connect, and where kids are allowed to do all the things they're not allowed to do legally on the www, I see big problems.
- wolfeater 15y ago
  Here is a distinction I've been trying to make clear over the past couple of days. While our "vision" of the absolute end goal sounds slightly more like the second, our actual goals are to produce the first. This is a much more realistic plan than our vision, and is what the project really aims to do. The vision just aims to bring everyone together about a set of issues that have been very much discussed in recent times.
- slowpoke 15y ago
  >and where kids are allowed to do all the things they're not allowed to do legally on the www, I see big problems. How in the seven hells is this a problem of the network protocol? Or any other technology, really? I seriously don't want to take this offtopic, but what you are describing is a problem of the parents/guardians first and foremost, and has absolutely nada to do with the technology we are discussing. Appeals to emotion like this and the sad truth that they work so well are the exact reason we need decentralized, censorship-resistant networks in the first place. To put it polemically: No, I don't want to "think of the children" because that's the job of their goddamn parents.
  - 1010101111001 15y ago
    Not protocols, but usage. Not emotion, but common sense. If Skype, a peer to peer network that uses a proprietary protocol and third party servers (neither of which is a prerequisite for a peer to peer network), was used primarily for file sharing over encrypted links, they would have some "big problems", as in "heavily funded lobbyists and plaintiffs", to deal with. These are the same "big problems" that are the driving force behind SOPA and consequently the same ones that have injected some steam into this reddit "think tank". SOPA has some interesting language where it refers to "or any successor protocol". Perhaps the next revision, or the next bill of this nature, will include language that refers to "any internetwork", present or future. How a peer to peer network is used and who uses it does make a difference in terms of its acceptance and survival, even if in theory it shouldn't.
trotsky 15y ago
It's too bad that the people who perennially propose adaptive mesh radios as some sort of decentralized alternative to public wired networks never consult anyone that has actually worked with mesh on any scale. If they did they'd quickly look for some other solution. I thought Greenberg was a real journalist, what's happened to fact checking?
- jaggederest 15y ago
  "If it wasn't for those damned laws of physics always screwing up my plans..." basically. Mesh networks have a pretty hard constraint of k/n^2 bandwidth total where k is an average node's bandwidth and n is the number of nodes. You quickly get down into the 'bytes per second' range.
  - saulrh 15y ago
    This interests me, but I can't find a paper - stuff like "mesh network bandwidth" simply don't work on scholar. Any chance of a citation?
    - Wohlf 15y ago
      I think this may be because no one has attempted it on a scale where it is essentially cripplingly slow.
    - wmf 15y ago
      Jinyang Li, Charles Blake, Douglas S. J. De Couto, Hu Imm Lee, and Robert Morris: Capacity of Ad Hoc Wireless Networks. Mobicom 2001. http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/papers/grid:mobicom01/ http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/papers/grid:mobicom01/ Summary: Throughput of a mesh asymptotically approaches 1/7th of the non-mesh link rate. This is using the 802.11 MAC, but recent softMAC chipsets could be run in a more mesh-optimized psuedo-802.11 protocol (that has not been invented yet AFIAK), so you might get performance as good as 1/4th.
      - marshray 15y ago
        1/7 or 1/4 is a lot better than k/n^2.
Pobe 15y ago
HN commentators, dreaming start-up, crushing starters.
- Wohlf 15y ago
  "Scumbag commentors" Reddit will love it.
- noptotsch 15y ago
  There is no real start up, yet. But its pillars are being built, yet. And actually delivering enough of option to be sure its start will be hard to neglect.
- VigUi7vv8G2 15y ago
  They're still in the dreaming phase.
CamperBob 15y ago
There may be ways to overcome the limitations of mesh networking, as outlined by many people here, but you will need to think outside the mesh, so to speak. It is probably best to think of the mesh as the "last mile" component rather than the backbone. One idea: a $5 laser pointer can be modulated at well over 100 Mbit/s. Everyone in an urban area who can see one side of a building can bounce laser beams off of it. (Data recovery and collision resolution are left as exercises...)
- 1010101111001 15y ago
  I read that Xerox did this between two of their buildings many years ago. Apparently it ran across some portion of a motorway and they had to turn if off occassionally. I've forgotten where I read this. Maybe someone else knows the full story.
  - impeachgod 15y ago
    Dealers of Lighting by Michael A. Hiltzik. It's a great book about the beginnings of Xerox PARC.
- _exec 15y ago
  I'm really interested in testing this idea, do you have any links / papers / online projects? All I can find on Google is audio-over-laser projects..
  - wmf 15y ago
    The keyword is "free space optical". http://ronja.twibright.com/ http://ronja.twibright.com/
- nl 15y ago
  Data recovery and collision resolution are left as exercises... I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain?
- Gmo 15y ago
  Problem with laser is fog ... In my student dorm, we used that to connect to the University network (which was a km or two across ...) We would not get any internet by foggy weather :) Actually, that was always something funny to say ... "We have internet by laser" then people would go "wow" ... and then you say "and it doesn't work when there is fog" and then suddenly, all the "wow" goes away :D
wmf 15y ago
The Occupiers are ahead of the Redditors, having actually bought and deployed some hardware, although that isn't saying much since both groups are writing manifestos instead of code. http://freenetworkfoundation.org/ http://freenetworkfoundation.org/ http://mashable.com/2011/11/14/how-occupy-wall-street-is-building-its-own-internet-video/ http://mashable.com/2011/11/14/how-occupy-wall-street-is-bui...
VigUi7vv8G2 15y ago
Wow, I was just in the IRC channel and people there are saying they don't want exit nodes because of "liability". Completely ridiculous.
- vidarh 15y ago
  Really? What is ridiculous about it? In the face of potential laws like SOPA which requires restrictions on routing traffic to certain destinations, it would seem that worrying about the potential liability of a network with exit nodes allowing traffic to the "regular" internet is exactly something one should worry about.
- tehgrunt 15y ago
  Actually, I was the one trying to bring that issue up. One can see the problem with exit nodes if you just look at Tor. Exit nodes on Tor are frequently served with DMCA notices and sometimes equipment seizures (in non-US countries). See https://www.torproject.org/eff/tor-legal-faq.html.en https://www.torproject.org/eff/tor-legal-faq.html.en for more information
4dr144n 15y ago
The problem has already been fixed. In South Africa, there is a mature, established private Wireless network spanning huge urban areas AND interconnecting them. It's based on cheap 5GHz hardware and directional antennae (mostly yagi). Details here http://www.ptawug.co.za/ http://www.ptawug.co.za/
- yread 15y ago
  There is a similar thing in the Czech republic http://mapa.czfree.net/#lat=50.025828752356176&lng=14.736785888671875&zoom=11&autofilter=1&type=k&aponly=1&bbonly=1&actlink=1&actnode=1&#38 http://mapa.czfree.net/#lat=50.025828752356176&lng=14.73...; CZ used to have 66% (200k in 2006) of all wireless end users in the EU
- skymt 15y ago
  The problem isn't how to create a large-scale wireless network. That's not simple, but it's been done. The problem is creating a large-scale, ad-hoc, mesh wireless network, without a central hub that can be shut down.
- mpcovcd 15y ago
  Wow, this is pretty amazing. The overall structure of the project, and the fact that part of it is funded through donations is striking. The coverage of the project is from what I can tell a very large area http://www.ptawug.co.za/content_list_5 http://www.ptawug.co.za/content_list_5
int3rnaut 15y ago
I'm against crazy government control as much as the next guy, but is creating a decentralized system in this manner really the answer to this problem? I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, I am just really curious. There seems to be a big decentralization movement in recent times (bitcoins!) but even as a person against the extremes of SOPA, I can at least appreciate the securities and benefits of a "traditional" governing body, no matter how ridiculous some members of government are--I'm just speaking as a not so tech savvy person, but to me one of the biggest psychological hurdles for a project like this is giving control to a group of people I am unfamiliar with--there is some sense of a rapport (even if there is some lack of trust) with the traditional government (just like with banks as I allude to bitcoins) that to me is a big obstacle for the meshnet growing to a degree where it becomes a true meshnet. Either way, I love the hustle, and admire the project immensely.
wladimir 15y ago
I haven't completely read the OP, But why isn't Openmesh ( http://www.open-mesh.org/ http://www.open-mesh.org/ previously B.A.T.M.A.N. ) mentioned anywhere in this thread yet? I like the fact that this is getting a lot of energy behind it, but the idea itself is not new. Please don't re-invent any wheels, time is too short for that.
bobsoap 15y ago
Even if this project isn't backed or supported by the "right" technically qualified people right now, I have no doubt that that will change as soon as the government-controlled internet becomes a noticeable reality. This is only the beginning. It will grow.
jebari 15y ago
Enthusiastic people with out technical knowledge are needed. First off a good idea with leadership can succeed in this area. The way to make mesh work which has not been tried has nothing to do with technology or any other comment issue found here. It has to do with how people get the internet right now. If you set up consumer sales side of your mesh project to look like any other ISP from the consumer perspective, i.e. you call up a number and a few hours or days later you have internet then it can work. Issues specific to mesh are you need to focus on islands, so you can only offer service in an ever growing area. As the mesh grows sales can grow until the islands merge. In the meantime, before islands merge you need to have access to old fashioned wire as well as after they merge. Ultimately its just another business model. It can work if deployed well.
samarudge 15y ago
Forgive my ineptitude, but how does this differ from 'The Deep Web' available on Tor minus the cable coming out of your house? While I agree SOPA is a terrible idea, internet censorship and having a central controlling organization (Or group of organizations) isn't such a bad thing. Look at Deep Web, it seems, to me, to be primarily used for illegal operations (drugs trade, child pornography and other nastys). The way I see it, this effort would be much better applied to resolving the issues we have with the current internet, reducing centralization and reliance on ISPs rather than "to shit with the working system lets start again". And that's not even touching the technical aspects, the internet as we know it still isn't anywhere near perfect (IPV4 as an example). Are they expecting this to happen overnight? Some of the greatest minds of the last few generations have worked to make the internet what it is now, if university's are "experimenting" with this stuff it's clearly a long way from a realistic option. That being said, wireless technologies are always improving. I'm sure the military already have some similar mesh based network (all be it on a smaller scale) far more advanced than anything we've seen (Assuming this since the majority of technological advances in communication originated from or were improved by the military). It's by no means a worthless project but I think the idea that in 6/12 months you can buy a box that gives you access to an un-modorated, unfiltered, private internet is a little ridiculous
agentultra 15y ago
Not only is the idea itself not unique; other hackers have been working on this for at least a decade with little practical success. It's hard enough covering a city with wifi let alone connecting a mesh network over the air. Rushkoff and others think it's just a matter of time... I remain skeptical. How many of the groups members have worked in telecommunications and understand how antennae work, how signal broadcasting and processing works, how OTA protocols are implemented, etc? You can't build the kind of robustness that we enjoy today out of commodity hardware. If you want a decentralized darknet, you'll probably have to dust off that 56k modem and get used to using fidonet again.
- wladimir 15y ago
  You can't build the kind of robustness that we enjoy today out of commodity hardware. And that's not needed either. The purpose is communicating with each other in cases that the government brought down or is heavily filtering the internet (like happens in Egypt, Libia, etc), or in case of a disaster. It doesn't have to be as fast, or robust as the internet. 56k is plenty enough if you just want to send messages or small photos. And in places no internet connectivity exists at all, it's better than nothing. We're just very, very spoiled.
  - agentultra 15y ago
    Amen.
  - 1010101111001 15y ago
    Perhaps it's worth considering that if a new network is extremely slow compared to the present "expensive name brand hardware"-powered internet then it might not attract as much attention from the "streaming premium content" crowd. They might just leave it alone. Who knows, by building such a network you might in the process prove that there's more value to an internet than simply as a new channel over which to sell branded entertainment and disseminate advertising. You might also show just how much can be done over a 56k link with a little creativity.
- charlieok 15y ago
ap22213 15y ago
These meshnet projects are interesting, and I wish them well. But... we (democratic republic countries) already have governmental structures that allow for changing laws. Let's just organize and change the laws. Aside from the industry-paid demagogues' rhetoric of 'STEALING' on the internet, we have to objectively think about this problem. We, the public, define the laws. We define what 'stealing' is. If a majority of the population is violating the so-called law, and it's hard to identify the specific victims of the law or even particular damages, then it's probably not a useful law anymore. Instead of jumping into a subversive massive campaign to overthrow the existing system, let's just use the tools that have been created to deal with these types of situations. The simple fact is that the Internet and digital content has dramatically changed the way that intellectual property works, and the laws haven't kept up.
- ap22213 15y ago
  Let's imagine that some big corporation invented a way to produce free energy, and at the same time, they also influenced current laws to ensure that their patents would never expire. Would we build all sorts of back-channel technological methods to use these patents anyway so that we may avoid jail and fines? Or, would we simply say, "hey - sorry the idea of 100 year patents just doesn't make sense any more. We're changing the law."
- rjbond3rd 15y ago
  I like your civic-minded approach. But isn't it a bit idealist while the laws are written by the lobbyists of entrenched multi-billion-dollar businesses? I sincerely hope that's not the case in your country but it's definitely the case in mine. It seems to me it's the (possibility of) technological circumvention itself which renders the laws outdated. If that's true, then the laws will always lag behind to the point of absurdity (as appears to be the case now). Suing grandmothers, software patents, suing farmers downwind of the pollen of patented plants, etc. Where's the hope of changing those laws which are backed by multi-billion-dollar industries until lobbyists and campaign contributions are banished from our law-making process?
  - nl 15y ago
charlieok 15y ago
I think what you want here is a device you can just plug in, and if it finds any neighbors it's in business. Home WiFi plus whatever kind of additional radio is best suited to join a "city mesh". So yeah, random people on reddit probably aren't going to come up with this anywhere close to as fast as a small team with just the right skills. Making and selling a great piece of idiot-proof hardware that does this sounds like a decent startup idea. And now that I've thought about it this much, I'm guessing there must already be some startups selling such a thing (anyone have firsthand knowledge?). What reddit brings to the table is a large number of interested participants. If a couple of those people live within range of me, the idea suddenly becomes one I might consider buying and plugging in now, today. So for that reason, I like this reddit group.
wcchandler 15y ago
This might not be a popular opinion, but as an individual who's capable of designing and implementing this, I'd rather vote in a politician who projects my ideals.
maeon3 15y ago
Eben moglen already has plans for freeing the internet from the tyranny of the few: http://m.zdnet.com/blog/networking/freedom-box-freeing-the-internet-one-server-at-a-time/698 http://m.zdnet.com/blog/networking/freedom-box-freeing-the-i...
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

231 points by Wohlf 15y ago

Come chat with us! http://darknetplan.org/webchat http://darknetplan.org/webchat

Can the Phantom protocol be combined with this somehow? http://code.google.com/p/phantom/ http://code.google.com/p/phantom/

Wohlf 15y ago
I like what I'm reading so far, this might be an excellent protocol to examine.
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  He has been trying to make it extremely secure and anonymous, and all communications are end-to-end encrypted. To me it sounds like the ideal protocol for protection against censorship and spying on the users. However, I don't know how well it can be combined with a mesh network, especially one that wants to piggy back on the normal Internet, since this protocol is meant for a stand alone network. But perhaps it can be modified for that. It would probably be best to talk to the creator of the protocol about it directly and ask for his help.

Wohlf 15y ago

At this point, we're considering all contributions equally.

cperciva 15y ago
You may like the concept that all ideas are equally valid, but unfortunately reality disagrees.
- noptotsch 15y ago
  Reality is defined what happens NOW in its complete context. That would be considering all ideas. Through considering, these ideas should indeed be equally. And what happens NOW in its complete context, what is considered suitable, valuable to oppose with is probably created in the future.
- bobsoap 15y ago
  Consideration != equal treatment :)

blhack 15y ago

No offense to the "reddit meshnet project", but the last I checked (this could have changed) what they're proposing isn't possible with the team that they have right now. There are a couple of problems: 1) They don't have a solid hardware platform to work on, and the feeling I've gotten from talking to some of the people on /r/darknetplan is that they really don't have the proper understanding of wireless tech to make something like this happen. People are proposing cheap commodity wifi gear for this. While it's certainly possible to do a very high density area with that, it's certainly not feasible to cover an area like a city, at least not without a considerable investment, and an understanding that network performance is going to be abysmal. (And at that point, just use ham radio...) (Something like what they're proposing might work in an office, not so much in a neighborhood). So is a problem, but hypothetically you could just toss hardware at it until it went away. 2) It's the addressing, stupid. http://www.reddit.com/r/darknetplan/comments/m2nd5/its_the_addressing_stupid/ http://www.reddit.com/r/darknetplan/comments/m2nd5/its_the_a... I am definitely the last person to discourage people from "doing it wrong" (http://thingist.com/t/item/4372/ http://thingist.com/t/item/4372/ - http://thingist.com/t/item/19766/ http://thingist.com/t/item/19766/ - http://thingist.com/t/item/21434/ http://thingist.com/t/item/21434/), but people running this, prepare yourselves for the reality that you could fail.

Locke1689 15y ago
From what I heard in the IRC group when I was hanging out, the group is mostly made up of people who think it's a nice idea but have absolutely no idea what they're doing. My prediction is this movement fails flat on its face, as the people with the knowhow to develop the new protocols for this network are uninterested in joining a mass of lemmings who are more interested about what the project is going to be called than if it will work. Here's a fun issue: security and stability in BGP. As we've seen many, many times over BGP is a completely insecure protocol with persistant problems with blackhole and cyclical routes. Many people inside IRC have proposed BGP as the routing mechanism for the mesh network, but have no proposals on how to deal with a completely decentralized network of high latency connections.
- noobface 15y ago

1010101111001 15y ago

I think it comes down to what the goals are. If the goal is to connect peer to peer with a small group of people you know in person and can trust, I see great potential. People congregate in small groups. Facebook friends, Skype contacts, etc. The advantage here is that third parties like Facebook, Microsoft and a gazillion advertisers are not involved. If it's small like that, it's doable as an overlay without using wireless as long as at least one person has a reachable IP and can act as the keeper of everyone else's address info. If the goal is to create some sort of www replacement that must scale to global internet sizes, where any stranger can connect, and where kids are allowed to do all the things they're not allowed to do legally on the www, I see big problems.

wolfeater 15y ago
Here is a distinction I've been trying to make clear over the past couple of days. While our "vision" of the absolute end goal sounds slightly more like the second, our actual goals are to produce the first. This is a much more realistic plan than our vision, and is what the project really aims to do. The vision just aims to bring everyone together about a set of issues that have been very much discussed in recent times.
slowpoke 15y ago
>and where kids are allowed to do all the things they're not allowed to do legally on the www, I see big problems. How in the seven hells is this a problem of the network protocol? Or any other technology, really? I seriously don't want to take this offtopic, but what you are describing is a problem of the parents/guardians first and foremost, and has absolutely nada to do with the technology we are discussing. Appeals to emotion like this and the sad truth that they work so well are the exact reason we need decentralized, censorship-resistant networks in the first place. To put it polemically: No, I don't want to "think of the children" because that's the job of their goddamn parents.
- 1010101111001 15y ago
  Not protocols, but usage. Not emotion, but common sense. If Skype, a peer to peer network that uses a proprietary protocol and third party servers (neither of which is a prerequisite for a peer to peer network), was used primarily for file sharing over encrypted links, they would have some "big problems", as in "heavily funded lobbyists and plaintiffs", to deal with. These are the same "big problems" that are the driving force behind SOPA and consequently the same ones that have injected some steam into this reddit "think tank". SOPA has some interesting language where it refers to "or any successor protocol". Perhaps the next revision, or the next bill of this nature, will include language that refers to "any internetwork", present or future. How a peer to peer network is used and who uses it does make a difference in terms of its acceptance and survival, even if in theory it shouldn't.

trotsky 15y ago

It's too bad that the people who perennially propose adaptive mesh radios as some sort of decentralized alternative to public wired networks never consult anyone that has actually worked with mesh on any scale. If they did they'd quickly look for some other solution. I thought Greenberg was a real journalist, what's happened to fact checking?

jaggederest 15y ago
"If it wasn't for those damned laws of physics always screwing up my plans..." basically. Mesh networks have a pretty hard constraint of k/n^2 bandwidth total where k is an average node's bandwidth and n is the number of nodes. You quickly get down into the 'bytes per second' range.
- saulrh 15y ago
  This interests me, but I can't find a paper - stuff like "mesh network bandwidth" simply don't work on scholar. Any chance of a citation?
  - Wohlf 15y ago
    I think this may be because no one has attempted it on a scale where it is essentially cripplingly slow.
  - wmf 15y ago
    Jinyang Li, Charles Blake, Douglas S. J. De Couto, Hu Imm Lee, and Robert Morris: Capacity of Ad Hoc Wireless Networks. Mobicom 2001. http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/papers/grid:mobicom01/ http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/papers/grid:mobicom01/ Summary: Throughput of a mesh asymptotically approaches 1/7th of the non-mesh link rate. This is using the 802.11 MAC, but recent softMAC chipsets could be run in a more mesh-optimized psuedo-802.11 protocol (that has not been invented yet AFIAK), so you might get performance as good as 1/4th.
    - marshray 15y ago
      1/7 or 1/4 is a lot better than k/n^2.

Pobe 15y ago

HN commentators, dreaming start-up, crushing starters.

Wohlf 15y ago
"Scumbag commentors" Reddit will love it.
noptotsch 15y ago
There is no real start up, yet. But its pillars are being built, yet. And actually delivering enough of option to be sure its start will be hard to neglect.
VigUi7vv8G2 15y ago
They're still in the dreaming phase.

CamperBob 15y ago

There may be ways to overcome the limitations of mesh networking, as outlined by many people here, but you will need to think outside the mesh, so to speak. It is probably best to think of the mesh as the "last mile" component rather than the backbone. One idea: a $5 laser pointer can be modulated at well over 100 Mbit/s. Everyone in an urban area who can see one side of a building can bounce laser beams off of it. (Data recovery and collision resolution are left as exercises...)

1010101111001 15y ago
I read that Xerox did this between two of their buildings many years ago. Apparently it ran across some portion of a motorway and they had to turn if off occassionally. I've forgotten where I read this. Maybe someone else knows the full story.
- impeachgod 15y ago
  Dealers of Lighting by Michael A. Hiltzik. It's a great book about the beginnings of Xerox PARC.
_exec 15y ago
I'm really interested in testing this idea, do you have any links / papers / online projects? All I can find on Google is audio-over-laser projects..
- wmf 15y ago
  The keyword is "free space optical". http://ronja.twibright.com/ http://ronja.twibright.com/
nl 15y ago
Data recovery and collision resolution are left as exercises... I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain?
Gmo 15y ago
Problem with laser is fog ... In my student dorm, we used that to connect to the University network (which was a km or two across ...) We would not get any internet by foggy weather :) Actually, that was always something funny to say ... "We have internet by laser" then people would go "wow" ... and then you say "and it doesn't work when there is fog" and then suddenly, all the "wow" goes away :D

wmf 15y ago

The Occupiers are ahead of the Redditors, having actually bought and deployed some hardware, although that isn't saying much since both groups are writing manifestos instead of code. http://freenetworkfoundation.org/ http://freenetworkfoundation.org/ http://mashable.com/2011/11/14/how-occupy-wall-street-is-building-its-own-internet-video/ http://mashable.com/2011/11/14/how-occupy-wall-street-is-bui...

VigUi7vv8G2 15y ago

Wow, I was just in the IRC channel and people there are saying they don't want exit nodes because of "liability". Completely ridiculous.

vidarh 15y ago
Really? What is ridiculous about it? In the face of potential laws like SOPA which requires restrictions on routing traffic to certain destinations, it would seem that worrying about the potential liability of a network with exit nodes allowing traffic to the "regular" internet is exactly something one should worry about.
tehgrunt 15y ago
Actually, I was the one trying to bring that issue up. One can see the problem with exit nodes if you just look at Tor. Exit nodes on Tor are frequently served with DMCA notices and sometimes equipment seizures (in non-US countries). See https://www.torproject.org/eff/tor-legal-faq.html.en https://www.torproject.org/eff/tor-legal-faq.html.en for more information

4dr144n 15y ago

The problem has already been fixed. In South Africa, there is a mature, established private Wireless network spanning huge urban areas AND interconnecting them. It's based on cheap 5GHz hardware and directional antennae (mostly yagi). Details here http://www.ptawug.co.za/ http://www.ptawug.co.za/

yread 15y ago
There is a similar thing in the Czech republic http://mapa.czfree.net/#lat=50.025828752356176&lng=14.736785888671875&zoom=11&autofilter=1&type=k&aponly=1&bbonly=1&actlink=1&actnode=1&#38 http://mapa.czfree.net/#lat=50.025828752356176&lng=14.73...; CZ used to have 66% (200k in 2006) of all wireless end users in the EU
skymt 15y ago
The problem isn't how to create a large-scale wireless network. That's not simple, but it's been done. The problem is creating a large-scale, ad-hoc, mesh wireless network, without a central hub that can be shut down.
mpcovcd 15y ago
Wow, this is pretty amazing. The overall structure of the project, and the fact that part of it is funded through donations is striking. The coverage of the project is from what I can tell a very large area http://www.ptawug.co.za/content_list_5 http://www.ptawug.co.za/content_list_5

int3rnaut 15y ago

I'm against crazy government control as much as the next guy, but is creating a decentralized system in this manner really the answer to this problem? I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, I am just really curious. There seems to be a big decentralization movement in recent times (bitcoins!) but even as a person against the extremes of SOPA, I can at least appreciate the securities and benefits of a "traditional" governing body, no matter how ridiculous some members of government are--I'm just speaking as a not so tech savvy person, but to me one of the biggest psychological hurdles for a project like this is giving control to a group of people I am unfamiliar with--there is some sense of a rapport (even if there is some lack of trust) with the traditional government (just like with banks as I allude to bitcoins) that to me is a big obstacle for the meshnet growing to a degree where it becomes a true meshnet. Either way, I love the hustle, and admire the project immensely.

wladimir 15y ago

I haven't completely read the OP, But why isn't Openmesh ( http://www.open-mesh.org/ http://www.open-mesh.org/ previously B.A.T.M.A.N. ) mentioned anywhere in this thread yet? I like the fact that this is getting a lot of energy behind it, but the idea itself is not new. Please don't re-invent any wheels, time is too short for that.

bobsoap 15y ago

Even if this project isn't backed or supported by the "right" technically qualified people right now, I have no doubt that that will change as soon as the government-controlled internet becomes a noticeable reality. This is only the beginning. It will grow.

jebari 15y ago

Enthusiastic people with out technical knowledge are needed. First off a good idea with leadership can succeed in this area. The way to make mesh work which has not been tried has nothing to do with technology or any other comment issue found here. It has to do with how people get the internet right now. If you set up consumer sales side of your mesh project to look like any other ISP from the consumer perspective, i.e. you call up a number and a few hours or days later you have internet then it can work. Issues specific to mesh are you need to focus on islands, so you can only offer service in an ever growing area. As the mesh grows sales can grow until the islands merge. In the meantime, before islands merge you need to have access to old fashioned wire as well as after they merge. Ultimately its just another business model. It can work if deployed well.

samarudge 15y ago

Forgive my ineptitude, but how does this differ from 'The Deep Web' available on Tor minus the cable coming out of your house? While I agree SOPA is a terrible idea, internet censorship and having a central controlling organization (Or group of organizations) isn't such a bad thing. Look at Deep Web, it seems, to me, to be primarily used for illegal operations (drugs trade, child pornography and other nastys). The way I see it, this effort would be much better applied to resolving the issues we have with the current internet, reducing centralization and reliance on ISPs rather than "to shit with the working system lets start again". And that's not even touching the technical aspects, the internet as we know it still isn't anywhere near perfect (IPV4 as an example). Are they expecting this to happen overnight? Some of the greatest minds of the last few generations have worked to make the internet what it is now, if university's are "experimenting" with this stuff it's clearly a long way from a realistic option. That being said, wireless technologies are always improving. I'm sure the military already have some similar mesh based network (all be it on a smaller scale) far more advanced than anything we've seen (Assuming this since the majority of technological advances in communication originated from or were improved by the military). It's by no means a worthless project but I think the idea that in 6/12 months you can buy a box that gives you access to an un-modorated, unfiltered, private internet is a little ridiculous

agentultra 15y ago

Not only is the idea itself not unique; other hackers have been working on this for at least a decade with little practical success. It's hard enough covering a city with wifi let alone connecting a mesh network over the air. Rushkoff and others think it's just a matter of time... I remain skeptical. How many of the groups members have worked in telecommunications and understand how antennae work, how signal broadcasting and processing works, how OTA protocols are implemented, etc? You can't build the kind of robustness that we enjoy today out of commodity hardware. If you want a decentralized darknet, you'll probably have to dust off that 56k modem and get used to using fidonet again.

wladimir 15y ago
You can't build the kind of robustness that we enjoy today out of commodity hardware. And that's not needed either. The purpose is communicating with each other in cases that the government brought down or is heavily filtering the internet (like happens in Egypt, Libia, etc), or in case of a disaster. It doesn't have to be as fast, or robust as the internet. 56k is plenty enough if you just want to send messages or small photos. And in places no internet connectivity exists at all, it's better than nothing. We're just very, very spoiled.
- agentultra 15y ago
  Amen.
- 1010101111001 15y ago
  Perhaps it's worth considering that if a new network is extremely slow compared to the present "expensive name brand hardware"-powered internet then it might not attract as much attention from the "streaming premium content" crowd. They might just leave it alone. Who knows, by building such a network you might in the process prove that there's more value to an internet than simply as a new channel over which to sell branded entertainment and disseminate advertising. You might also show just how much can be done over a 56k link with a little creativity.
charlieok 15y ago

ap22213 15y ago

These meshnet projects are interesting, and I wish them well. But... we (democratic republic countries) already have governmental structures that allow for changing laws. Let's just organize and change the laws. Aside from the industry-paid demagogues' rhetoric of 'STEALING' on the internet, we have to objectively think about this problem. We, the public, define the laws. We define what 'stealing' is. If a majority of the population is violating the so-called law, and it's hard to identify the specific victims of the law or even particular damages, then it's probably not a useful law anymore. Instead of jumping into a subversive massive campaign to overthrow the existing system, let's just use the tools that have been created to deal with these types of situations. The simple fact is that the Internet and digital content has dramatically changed the way that intellectual property works, and the laws haven't kept up.

ap22213 15y ago
Let's imagine that some big corporation invented a way to produce free energy, and at the same time, they also influenced current laws to ensure that their patents would never expire. Would we build all sorts of back-channel technological methods to use these patents anyway so that we may avoid jail and fines? Or, would we simply say, "hey - sorry the idea of 100 year patents just doesn't make sense any more. We're changing the law."
rjbond3rd 15y ago
I like your civic-minded approach. But isn't it a bit idealist while the laws are written by the lobbyists of entrenched multi-billion-dollar businesses? I sincerely hope that's not the case in your country but it's definitely the case in mine. It seems to me it's the (possibility of) technological circumvention itself which renders the laws outdated. If that's true, then the laws will always lag behind to the point of absurdity (as appears to be the case now). Suing grandmothers, software patents, suing farmers downwind of the pollen of patented plants, etc. Where's the hope of changing those laws which are backed by multi-billion-dollar industries until lobbyists and campaign contributions are banished from our law-making process?
- nl 15y ago

charlieok 15y ago

I think what you want here is a device you can just plug in, and if it finds any neighbors it's in business. Home WiFi plus whatever kind of additional radio is best suited to join a "city mesh". So yeah, random people on reddit probably aren't going to come up with this anywhere close to as fast as a small team with just the right skills. Making and selling a great piece of idiot-proof hardware that does this sounds like a decent startup idea. And now that I've thought about it this much, I'm guessing there must already be some startups selling such a thing (anyone have firsthand knowledge?). What reddit brings to the table is a large number of interested participants. If a couple of those people live within range of me, the idea suddenly becomes one I might consider buying and plugging in now, today. So for that reason, I like this reddit group.

wcchandler 15y ago

This might not be a popular opinion, but as an individual who's capable of designing and implementing this, I'd rather vote in a politician who projects my ideals.

maeon3 15y ago

Eben moglen already has plans for freeing the internet from the tyranny of the few: http://m.zdnet.com/blog/networking/freedom-box-freeing-the-internet-one-server-at-a-time/698 http://m.zdnet.com/blog/networking/freedom-box-freeing-the-i...

deleted 15y ago

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