3 ms·

Where I live at least, nearly everyone has a wireless router, which hardware-wise should have no trouble talking to other wireless routers in nearby buildings.

by aij 13y ago

Where I live at least, nearly everyone has a wireless router, which hardware-wise should have no trouble talking to other wireless routers in nearby buildings. Often, there are even multiple wireless routers in the same building, which can't talk to each other except through the ISPs, which I find quite ridiculous. So, in urban areas of the US at least, it really is just a matter of software. Of course, a large scale wireless mesh network would probably be somewhat lacking in terms of performance, but we also still have wired connections to ISPs and could start setting up wired connections to each other. Peering with your neighbor (wirelessly or not) to share idle bandwidth shouldn't make things any slower than they already are... The problem of course is that everyone would have to use a compatible mesh protocol. There are several options for a mesh network protocol now, but I don't know of any that scales well while remaining decentralized. Even if someone did come up with a good protocol now, considering how long the switch to IPv6 has been taking, I wouldn't expect any switch away from IPv4 to happen very soon.

auvrw 13y ago
> So, in urban areas of the US at least, it really is just a matter of software. and, if you're really zealous about it, the firmware. there was a high-priority FSF project a while back for free wireless router firmware. that listing mentioned something called "orangemesh," which now appears to be on hold. what are some of the other options out there on the software side?
chriswarbo 13y ago
Unfortunately I've noticed a major obstacle to getting nearby hardware talking to each other: WPA. Seriously, why prevent people from using a network? If you're relying on WPA for security then you shouldn't be connecting to the Internet in the first place. The most common thing I hear when guests see that my WiFi is open is that people will 'steal the bandwidth', as if the local exchange will magically run faster if there are enough residences connected to it! Also, given the monopoly position of phone provider, getting everyone to throw more money at them for the privilege of having multiple overlapping, mutually-exclusive networks is not a good plan.

by aij 13y ago

auvrw 13y ago

> So, in urban areas of the US at least, it really is just a matter of software. and, if you're really zealous about it, the firmware. there was a high-priority FSF project a while back for free wireless router firmware. that listing mentioned something called "orangemesh," which now appears to be on hold. what are some of the other options out there on the software side?

chriswarbo 13y ago

Unfortunately I've noticed a major obstacle to getting nearby hardware talking to each other: WPA. Seriously, why prevent people from using a network? If you're relying on WPA for security then you shouldn't be connecting to the Internet in the first place. The most common thing I hear when guests see that my WiFi is open is that people will 'steal the bandwidth', as if the local exchange will magically run faster if there are enough residences connected to it! Also, given the monopoly position of phone provider, getting everyone to throw more money at them for the privilege of having multiple overlapping, mutually-exclusive networks is not a good plan.