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I have tried posting this idea a couple of times before and have been roundly scolded, but oh well, here goes again. I think... that readers of this forum are i

I have tried posting this idea a couple of times before and have been roundly scolded, but oh well, here goes again. I think... that readers of this forum are ideally equipped to find a way around this problem. What I mean to say is that it is universally felt by everyone that they hate their broadband provider, phone company etc. Why can't we, the tech community come up with a competing technology? I know many have tried to do "open source" types of mesh wifi networks, but I think something more robust than that is needed. Everyone agrees current companies are leaving their customers unsatisfied, hence there must be an opportunity there for someone clever enough to come up with a good alternative.

warfangle 13y ago
I wonder if an automatic peering arrangement could be built on top of a mesh infrastructure, to give incentive for running more robust nodes (not just for in-network traffic, but for uplink to the internet at large).
- zw123456 13y ago
  Interesting. I was thinking about some of the open source implementations of LTE that have been posted here but maybe the wifi mesh approach needs tweaking. Also, from a business perspective, I think it would be cool if there was a way to make it sort of like a "co-op" so people who host hot spots or base stations would get some profit sharing or something?
  - triangleman 13y ago
    FON (https://corp.fon.com/en https://corp.fon.com/en) tried to make this work, I'm sure there were other attempts.
    - icebraining 13y ago
      It's not a mesh network, so it doesn't divorce itself from the last mile carriers.
  - zw123456 13y ago
    Very interesting, that is exactly what I was thinking about. I guess something like that would some how have to reach a critical mass.
hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
I guess the problem is that all of these (broadband provider, phone company) are regulated by the government. Once you have the government involved, forget about competition, the market won't fix. You have to fix politics.
- zw123456 13y ago
  Too bad there is not a tech way to work around them. Maybe using some kind of unlicensed wireless?
  - freeasinfree 13y ago
    There is, actually. They're called Wireless ISPs or WISPs. http://www.wispa.org/find-a-wisp http://www.wispa.org/find-a-wisp
- gametheoretic 13y ago
  Ah, but what is within reach of government regulation? Are they willing to, say, shoot down satellites?
wtallis 13y ago
It's not a technological problem. The technological barriers have been taken care of. Google Fiber exists and is awesome and affordable. The reasons we don't all have Google Fiber level of service are political: regulatory capture, monopolies and oligopolies, conflicts of interest, etc.
- zw123456 13y ago
  The problem with fiber I think is that a lot of communities are "trench weary" and don't want more fiber providers digging up the streets. I think Google gets around that by hyping that they are coming to town, which is smart, it gets the politicians to back them.
- alayne 13y ago
  It's only not a tech problem if every service has Google levels of server capacity and performance. Websites still regularly fall over when posted on aggregation sites.
  - dangrossman 13y ago
    They fall over because they're misconfigured (namely, default Apache config on a $5 VPS; works fine at low traffic, but throw some more at it and Apache spawns more processes than you have RAM, starving the DB and OS filesystem cache, then swapping to death), not because websites are bandwidth-limited.
    - alayne 13y ago
      I'm not just talking about simple static websites. Please, let's not pretend that upgrading everyone to fiber will be sufficient. You know better than that.
      - dangrossman 13y ago
        I don't know what systemic tech problem you think exists for web hosts. There's no lack of bandwidth on their side of the internet -- heck, if you excluded Netflix and YouTube, over 60% of last mile capacity in the country would be completely unused during peak hours. Those few sites, like video streaming services, that are bandwidth-limited also tie their revenue to consumption -- more bandwidth on the consumer end just widens their potential customer base.

warfangle 13y ago

I wonder if an automatic peering arrangement could be built on top of a mesh infrastructure, to give incentive for running more robust nodes (not just for in-network traffic, but for uplink to the internet at large).

zw123456 13y ago
Interesting. I was thinking about some of the open source implementations of LTE that have been posted here but maybe the wifi mesh approach needs tweaking. Also, from a business perspective, I think it would be cool if there was a way to make it sort of like a "co-op" so people who host hot spots or base stations would get some profit sharing or something?
- triangleman 13y ago
  FON (https://corp.fon.com/en https://corp.fon.com/en) tried to make this work, I'm sure there were other attempts.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    It's not a mesh network, so it doesn't divorce itself from the last mile carriers.
- zw123456 13y ago
  Very interesting, that is exactly what I was thinking about. I guess something like that would some how have to reach a critical mass.

hcarvalhoalves 13y ago

I guess the problem is that all of these (broadband provider, phone company) are regulated by the government. Once you have the government involved, forget about competition, the market won't fix. You have to fix politics.

zw123456 13y ago
Too bad there is not a tech way to work around them. Maybe using some kind of unlicensed wireless?
- freeasinfree 13y ago
  There is, actually. They're called Wireless ISPs or WISPs. http://www.wispa.org/find-a-wisp http://www.wispa.org/find-a-wisp
gametheoretic 13y ago
Ah, but what is within reach of government regulation? Are they willing to, say, shoot down satellites?

wtallis 13y ago

It's not a technological problem. The technological barriers have been taken care of. Google Fiber exists and is awesome and affordable. The reasons we don't all have Google Fiber level of service are political: regulatory capture, monopolies and oligopolies, conflicts of interest, etc.

zw123456 13y ago
The problem with fiber I think is that a lot of communities are "trench weary" and don't want more fiber providers digging up the streets. I think Google gets around that by hyping that they are coming to town, which is smart, it gets the politicians to back them.
alayne 13y ago
It's only not a tech problem if every service has Google levels of server capacity and performance. Websites still regularly fall over when posted on aggregation sites.
- dangrossman 13y ago
  They fall over because they're misconfigured (namely, default Apache config on a $5 VPS; works fine at low traffic, but throw some more at it and Apache spawns more processes than you have RAM, starving the DB and OS filesystem cache, then swapping to death), not because websites are bandwidth-limited.
  - alayne 13y ago
    I'm not just talking about simple static websites. Please, let's not pretend that upgrading everyone to fiber will be sufficient. You know better than that.
    - dangrossman 13y ago
      I don't know what systemic tech problem you think exists for web hosts. There's no lack of bandwidth on their side of the internet -- heck, if you excluded Netflix and YouTube, over 60% of last mile capacity in the country would be completely unused during peak hours. Those few sites, like video streaming services, that are bandwidth-limited also tie their revenue to consumption -- more bandwidth on the consumer end just widens their potential customer base.