17 ms·
Mesh Networks
- EGreg 13y agoThis is excellent! The Internet actually was supposed to be one InterNetwork of many. How is this different than a LAN though?
- rantanplan 13y agoThe Internet is an inter-network of many. Also the "L" in LAN, stands for "Local".
- webmech 13y agoWe should definitely do this in america, God we need this!
- wepple 13y agoThere probably is or was. There was a surge in people doing wifi WAN style networks across whole cities, back when internet speeds were slow+expensive, and decent directional wifi antennas were available fairly inexpensively. I think low-cost high-speed internet largely killed the need for it: perhaps Prism has given us a nudge to start again?
- pcunite 13y agoThis is awesome, however, municipalities have put fear into people wishing to do this over legal issues arising from what someone might do on your connection. Who is to blame when something illegal (mp3 download, etc) happens? That whole issue needs to be put to rest so we as a society can create our own Internet without fear of suppression.
- mark_l_watson 13y ago+1 great point. I sometimes leave my wifi open (I live in a small town, if that means anything) but then I consider the legal implications and lock it up for a while. ...then repeat... The best solution would be allowing people to risk free run grid networks (which would be, I think, very low bandwidth) and have communities also supply separtae low bandwidth Internet connected wifi for free. We would then use a paid for service for anything for more than text or other low bandwidth uses. No one would download large mp3s, watch Netflix, etc. from the very low bandwidth community wifi, and the separate grid network would be local and likely not have anything to attract "Imperial interest" (sorry about the Star Wars metaphor :-) Local grid networks could be part of support for local libraries, community centers, etc.
- krichman 13y agoHaving an open wifi should leave you free of any charges in the same way that an ISP is. Maybe it should be not culpable modulo keeping logs of everything for up to three months so that law enforcement can attempt to find anyone committing a crime once they have a warrant.
- fphhotchips 13y agoThis seems something like the Serval Project (http://www.servalproject.org/ http://www.servalproject.org/). Difference being that Serval is for mobile telecommunications meshes, rather than fixed(-ish) data connections.
- dil8 13y ago"To repurpose the famous A.J. Liebling statement, internet freedom is guaranteed only to those who own a connection. "And right now, you and me don't own the internet—we just rent the capacity to access it from the companies that do own it," Wilder says."
- mathattack 13y agoSeems a stretch to say its untouchable. A policeman. An always show up and ask you to attach some hardware to the machine.
- einhverfr 13y agoOr an antenna could just listen in on the signals.....
- devx 13y agoI hope this becomes a bigger trend, but if we're going to do this again, then I hope we do it right this time, and we make it as secure, as uncontrollable by governments, and as anonymous as possible (if you so make that decision on it). The US government/NSA is ruining the old Internet, so I hope the new one will be very resistant to such attempts in the future. I would watch out especially for hardware-level backdoors for such an Internet. If they can't spy on the network directly because it's P2P they will try to force either the OS vendors or the hardware vendors to implement backdoors and keyloggers for them. So at the very least the focus should be on open source operating systems with open source firmware (and possibly even open source hardware in the future). Such hardware should be given extreme preference for the mesh networks.
- pcunite 13y agoExcellent ...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- olefoo 13y agoThe TOR project has been doing some work on deterministic builds to deal with exactly that issue. https://blog.torproject.org/blog/deterministic-builds-part-one-cyberwar-and-global-compromise https://blog.torproject.org/blog/deterministic-builds-part-o... I never thought that the whole "trusting trust" essay would become a practical reality and an everyday danger that must be mitigated. But welcome to the 21st century. No flying cars, but lots of dystopian cyber punks eager to get in your business.
- sliverstorm 13y agoThe problem is making it anonymous, uncontrollabe, P2P, flies in the face with other aspects like performance. Wireless links simply do not have the capacity to afford 10,000 people the speeds they are accustomed to today.
- joshfraser 13y agoAnyone interested in getting a private mesh network set up in Silicon Valley? Seems like it would be a fun and educational project if nothing else.
- daurnimator 13y agoSimilar thing exists in Melbourne, Australia: http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/ http://www.melbournewireless.org.au/
- mafro 13y agoThanks for posting this. I'm in Melbourne and I had no idea..
- dil8 13y agoI'm in Melbourne too... started thinking about this while browsing reddit on the weekend, had no idea there was a group
- haydio 13y agoAs well as Perth, Western Australia: http://www.wafreenet.org/ http://www.wafreenet.org/
- nikatwork 13y agoThere used to be one in Brisbane in the mid 2000s (BrisMesh), but it seems to be dead now.
- femto 13y agoMost capital cities in Australia had a wireless mesh project during that era. wireless.org[1] was (and still is?) the toplevel website. Melbourne and Perth seem to be the only ones left with active nodes? Canberra (air.net) used to be strong. Sydney lives on in the form of a website[2] and nodedb[3], a world wide map of mesh network nodes, started by "evilbunny" (Duane Groth). The servers are still live, but the content is well out of date. The projects are dead, but all the infrastructure seems to still be there, if interest ever revives. [1] http://www.wireless.org.au/ http://www.wireless.org.au/ [1] http://www.sydneywireless.com/ http://www.sydneywireless.com/ [2] http://www.nodedb.com/ http://www.nodedb.com/
- mark_l_watson 13y agoI live in the mountains (Central Arizona) and I have garnered some interest of other people in my community to set up a local mesh network. Really good in emergencies (e.g., east coast during Hurricane Sandy).
- synchronise 13y agoWhat backbone protocol is largely used for these projects? I only ask because the range of even 802.11ac would be a limiting factor in these sorts of networks.
- sliverstorm 13y agoIn densely populated areas, WiFi can suffice due to the mesh topology.
- xradionut 13y agoReminds me of the packet networks that we hams used to build back in the BBS days. Most of the stations went off air with wide spread commercial internet service and operator turn over, but there's a renewed interest with newer, cheaper, radio gear come out. Also there's many cities with a first responders mesh network.
- lostapathy 13y agoThere's been a renewed interest in this lately among hams, actually. http://www.hsmm-mesh.org/ http://www.hsmm-mesh.org/ I'm a little disappointed, though, that at least local to me most of the interest centers around hacking the old WRT-54G rather than more modern and powerful gear.
- frisco 13y agoI saw an article about this a little while ago. If anywhere in the world could support a wide scale mesh network, it would have to be the Bay Area. It would be a really cool experiment to blanket a part of the Valley in mesh wifi: I imagine it would be very doable to raise $100K and send 1,500 mesh routers to people in Palo Alto or SOMA. Open Mesh has some really cool low-cost ($50 - $75) hardware that seems to just work: http://www.open-mesh.com/ http://www.open-mesh.com/. Some might be plugged into an upstream link, but if most were only powered on as relays it would still work.
- rhodey 13y agoA group of us are already well on the way in Oakland, stop by some time! https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Mesh https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Mesh
- bradgessler 13y agoAre there any plans to connect up to an SF mesh? I could see setting up some backbones across the bay, but I'm not sure what the technicalities are around this.
- bifrost 13y agoWiFi reflection across the bay and the fog is murder. It basically makes all but high-power links useless...
- orblivion 13y agoThere's a project started in the East Bay http://510pen.org/ http://510pen.org/
- zizee 13y agorhodey - you have been hellbanned. It looks like your first comment ever was modded down, and that was that. Lame. rhodey wrote: A group of us are already well on the way in Oakland, stop by some time! https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Mesh https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Mesh
- jurjenh 13y agoWhile this is a great solution for places without easy last-mile connections, it seems to me this would still be vulnerable, as one compromised connection would essentially allow the same kind of snooping that we've got going on now. Does anyone know whether this is so, or how to protect against snooping, as I would assume there is some implicit level of trust required for a network like this to stay secure.
- johnpmayer 13y agoI think you'd need to add the following constraints. - Non-compromised endpoint hardware - In-person public key exchange - Onion routing
- dchichkov 13y agoCreating non-compromised endpoint hardware is a bit of a problem. I'm actually not sure if it is possible, even in principle. Maybe if there was an open source/open hardware router which contained a chip with secure boot, into which you yourself could burn the public key, and then it would only allow the code signed by that key... Sounds too complicated to be user friendly. Besides, there is no way to verify that the hardware router that somebody considers to be secure was not replaced by an identically looking box that had been compromised :( .
- oscargrouch 13y agoA sort of invitation only controlled by social relations? not perfect but at least, misbehaving people can be trackable.. should be based in social connections and trust.. the old school policy
- vidarh 13y agoThat creates an active incentive to physically lean on people to roll up networks. cjdns works by requiring people to exchange keys with someone out of band to get access to their mesh, and to me that just seems as fundamentally defeating the purpose. Yes, that means you need to build a system where bad guys are hard to impossible to track down and throw off the mesh. The problem is if you create a system where misbehaving people are trackable, then good guys can be tracked too.
- scrollbar 13y agoA couple comments mentioned wanting to build this in the Bay Area. I've been wondering for awhile why there's not an active group here. Let's meet up to discuss more, how about a Google group to organize? https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/sf-meshnet https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/sf-meshnet
- genkaos 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guifi.net http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guifi.net
- gboudrias 13y agoWe've also got the same thing going on in Montreal :) http://wiki.reseaulibre.ca http://wiki.reseaulibre.ca (we're trying to figure out how to have a bilingual wiki...)
- zoom 13y agoMeshing has always been the end goal.
- rwhitman 13y agoI guess it makes sense that the future could be dominated by multiple, parallel internets of varying degrees of freedom. The corporate controlled internet we know today is just the mainstream realm of YouTube and email, while darker DIY internets pop up that are the realm of torrents, bitcoin and various hackery. Kind of seems obvious this would happen eventually
- sandGorgon 13y agoIm quite surprised that noone mentioned AirJaldi - which has to be some of the most pioneering work in this area, over some of the most inhospitable terrain. It was built to connect the Tibetan community in Dharmsala, India using modified, off the shelf hardware and custom software at some of the hardest mountainous terrain where such equipment can be deployed. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirJaldi
- chrisbolt 13y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirJaldi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirJaldi
- wyclif 13y agoSubmitted by me 2 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6266765 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6266765
- freifunk_berlin 13y agoThere is a huge community around wireless community networks in Germany. Checkout http://start.freifunk.net/ http://start.freifunk.net/ Don't miss the International Summit for Community Wireless Networks (http://2013.wirelesssummit.org/ http://2013.wirelesssummit.org/).
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- damian2000 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_netw...
- MichaelMoser123 13y agoDon't worry, if this idea gets adopted then they will quickly label it as a 'terrorist network' ; no problem.
- cLeEOGPw 13y agoBesides I think since it would be quite local networks, it could be easily jammed by few NSA stations in the area.
- devx 13y agoAm I crazy or did the URL of the submission change? I've never seen that done on HN before.
- nitrogen 13y agoI've seen it happen on rare occasion when the original submission was content-free blogspam.
- yuhong 13y agoAgain, the sudden title change of submissions suck.
- yuhong 13y agoUpdate: Thanks for changing it back.
- sigil 13y agoIf you live in Seattle and you're curious about mesh networking, I highly recommend checking out http://seattlewireless.net/ http://seattlewireless.net/ They've been at it since 2000, have various nodes throughout the city and some impressive long distance directional links. (Seattle's topography provides some interesting challenges.) When I lived there in about 2005 there were regular wireless hack nights. Find Matt Westervelt or Rob Flickenger.
- ck2 13y agoIf you wanted to start a mesh network in your town, is there advice on how to protect yourself from legal liability in case someone does something clearly illegal with it? Do mesh operators have the same "safe harbor" protections? What if the FBI shows up on your doorstep and says "give us access or go to prison" ?
- atmosx 13y agoAs of today I think not. Given the fact that MAN (metropolitan area networks - which is what these networks are) are way easier to monitor, because they are really small and into local police's reach (why call the feds anyway?). The only decent point here, related to privacy is that it's way better for people to control the network instead of a police state, but you can't really be anonymous in such small MANs.
- bluedino 13y agoWhat do you do if your ISP says 'shut it down'?
- wmf 13y agoThe mesh itself should probably be an ISP. For whatever reason I get the impression that ISPs give downstream ISPs much more benefit of the doubt than they give end customers.
- shaddi 13y agoIt seems like there's been another surge of interest of late in mesh networks. Last time this happened, I wrote up a piece explaining why mesh networks are really a poor solution for circumventing censorship: http://sha.ddih.org/2011/11/26/why-wireless-mesh-networks-wont-save-us-from-censorship http://sha.ddih.org/2011/11/26/why-wireless-mesh-networks-wo.... Since then, some of my colleagues and I at Berkeley wrote a more academic version of this blog post. The talk is available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doMYDmtzsTQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doMYDmtzsTQ and you can grab the paper too if you're interested: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~shaddi/papers/foci13.pdf http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~shaddi/papers/foci13.pdf. The short version is mesh networks have fundamental scaling limitations that make them a poor choice for building alternative infrastructures like the ones discussed in this article; for example, a result from 2000 showed that capacity available to each node in a mesh network actually decreases as the mesh grows. The other thing I'd note is that this article is referring to "mesh networks", when it really means "community networks": networks run by a community, regardless of whether the network is a mesh or not. I don't know about the Athens network in particular, but I know that the Freifunk and Guifi networks are rather hierarchically structured (i.e., are not true mesh networks). This is necessary for building a wireless network with reasonable performance due to the aforementioned fundamental scaling limitations of mesh networks. I love the enthusiasm of everyone working on mesh networks, but I think it's valuable to keep a critical perspective and not get carried away with that enthusiasm, if for no other reason than to stay honest about the technical challenges involved.
- deanclatworthy 13y agoI skimmed your paper, but I'm curious, based on your research into this area what an alternative would be to create private networks for citizens without laying out cable everywhere (which theoretically could also be tapped).
- einhverfr 13y agoAs opposed to wireless which doesn't have to be tapped (i.e. can just be listened in on with antennas)?
- antonios 13y agoI had been a member of the AWMN for some years. You can see a map of the nodes here: http://wind.awmn.net/?page=gmap http://wind.awmn.net/?page=gmap I remember AWMN had experienced a boost when the ADSL's were out but very expensive, so many people used to buy one and share it alltogether. It has come a long way since.
- lifeisstillgood 13y agoWhat caught me was the localism - stunning
- junto 13y agoCould someone build this into DD-WRT or Tomato and then build this on top of WIFI / WLAN? In a built-up conurbation, you have a high concentration of WIFI routers that have a short range but with such a large concentration, maybe it doesn't matter?
- knowaveragejoe 13y agoI'm surprised noone has linked to the FNF before. They seem to be one of the more organized mesh efforts in the US. http://thefnf.org http://thefnf.org
- gwu78 13y agohttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/world/12internet.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/world/12internet.html?page... For best UX, set your "Referrer:" header to google.com Also, I think Cisco paid over a billion for one mesh community network's project. I think a YC cofounder may have been involved in that project. Not sure. Its Cisco brand name is Meraki. It appears portable autonomous networks (i.e. no telco needed) are useful and valuable for many, diverse reasons. I posit that if you can build your "no telco required" network from affordable parts and can get it to work consistently, then it has value, irrespective of whatever "intended uses" for it you might have in mind. Of course, I could be wrong.
- wmf 13y agoAlso, I think Cisco paid over a billion for one mesh community network's project. Meraki was worth $1B because they almost completely pivoted away from mesh towards more conventional networking.
- gwu78 13y agoAlmost. If I build a better LAN, it might be used by companies with high maintenance corporate networks, or it might be used by high scoring gamers at LAN parties. The LAN technology does not fundamentally change, only the usage. However, your point is well taken. As far as buzzwords go, "mesh network" is not in the same league as "cloud computing". You will not see "mesh network" in Cisco's marketing. But was this really a "pivot"? Or is this a case of a use (corporate LAN) that differs from the original one (community LAN): what I would call an "unintended use". My idea of a "pivot" is something like when some young developers want to start a company that takes orders for food delivery over the web but then, after consulting with the older folks who would provide funding, decide instead to build a news commentary blog that functions like a forum. That sounds like more than a change of usage. It sounds like an entirely different program. But maybe not. Maybe the system they create for taking orders is more or less the same one they use for taking comments on news items. Anyway, it's an interesting story and regardless of how the stuff is being used now, it was originally used for creating "mesh networks", a type of portable network that could run with a telco. Now it is used, by Cisco customers, for creating "distributed networks".
- Carltonian 13y agoThere's just a lot that has to be rethought for mesh networks to work as "show up with an antenna and you're on the internet/ are the internet". IP layer, I'm looking at you. I remember being told about research being done on multi-core processing in the 70's, but no headway there could outpace the standard of shrinking the technology and increasing the clock rate. Now we may as well assume n-cores. It's my hope (because mesh networks sound way more democratized and just "seem" like the next logical way of scaling the internet) that antennas become cheaper at a faster rate than wired infrastructure (given the fairly inelastic cost of digging shit up) and mesh networks start to make sense.