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Does anyone have any opinions on how this could grow to replace traditional ISPs? What's the difference between a mesh network and just putting a big WiMax ante

Does anyone have any opinions on how this could grow to replace traditional ISPs? What's the difference between a mesh network and just putting a big WiMax antenna up in my neighborhood and giving everyone free internet access?

joepie91_ 12y ago
The idea of a meshnet is that, as the name implies, it's a mesh. It usually involves intelligent rerouting over other peers if a previous route is no longer available. If you were to put up a big WiMax antenna, you are the single point of failure - you could spy on the traffic, you could banish specific clients, and if you were to disappear, everybody in your neighbourhood would be without internet. A mesh network allows none of these (in theory), because there is not one single point of control.
- superuser2 12y ago
  Mesh is a topology, not a belief system. A mesh network can still be administered by one entity who can monitor traffic, manage configuration, and restrict access to authorized users, but they would do so using a distributed system rather than the control panel of a single piece of equipment. It's different from what you describe in that a typical WiMax antenna setup mirrors the star topology typical with network switches. Clients are connected to a piece of infrastructure, which is in turn connected to a larger piece of infrastructure, and so on up the tree. In a mesh network, clients are connected to each other without using infrastructure as an intermediary. Every node relays traffic for its neighbors, and you reach distant points by hopping through many of your neighbors (or you don't, if they don't happen to currently be arranged in a way that facilitates that). A good mesh network system has intelligent routing algorithms that are some combination of fault-tolerant, efficient at finding the shortest path, equitable in distributing load, and designed well in terms of incentive structure (so that people do not freeload by acting as clients but not relays). If you are using a mesh network to reach the internet, you are still dependent on the nodes that route between the mesh network and an actual ISP, which presumably pay for the privilege and want to recoup costs somehow. However, it can be a decent way for a community to roll its own last-mile infrastructure, provided it can purchase wholesale transit somewhere within the mesh, and drive enough participation that there is sufficient capacity between you and the backhaul most of the time. The more interesting uses are for meshes that are not (mostly) about Internet access. There is experimental work on protocols for messaging and durable document storage/publication (think Wikipedia but without web servers) that work well on meshes, providing pretty good internet-like capabilities to areas where access to the actual Internet is impractical. (Some of this is embedded in OLPC/XO).
Kalium 12y ago
Mesh networks are suitable when all the computers you need to talk to are in a geographically contiguous area. As soon as you start needing to cross oceans or mountain ranges, you're likely to run off the edge of a mesh. So I don't anticipate meshes replacing traditional ISPs any time soon.
- chatmasta 12y ago
  Pure mesh networks will not take over ISP's. But what about a hybrid solution? Fat fiber pipe feeds wireless mesh. Run fiber from nearest datacenter to middle of town, build mesh network out from there. Crowdfunding SEC rules + neutrality ISP rules could very well open up an opportunity for crowdfunding municipal ISP's. Communities run their own mesh and rent fiber from an upstream transit probider.
  - Kalium 12y ago
    A mesh solution is workable, and possibly cheaper than a traditional deployment model. However, I can see significant drawbacks. It's likely to be less reliable, slower, and not well suited to anything requiring low latency. It's also likely to be more prone to congestion problems and will probably be more difficult to manage. So it's possible, but I don't think it's a good model for how most Americans are likely to be using their internet connections. Most of their use would likely be the mesh as transit to the uplink and then off to Facebook or Amazon or Netflix. I think the lesson is that meshes and traditional systems have different strengths and weaknesses. One isn't always a good substitute for the other.
    - chatmasta 12y ago
      How is this different than the current situation, other than one is wires, and one is wireless? ISP's still need to aggregate household cables into larger fiber before hitting the datacenter.
      - Kalium 12y ago
        A wireless ISP is designed around high-bandwidth uplinks to aggregate from each tower/AP to central points. A mesh doesn't have this topographical feature. (Other considerations: limited frequency bands) The difference, I think, is that the traditional layout works better for the common use case than a mesh does. A mesh with an uplink would be preferable in a scenario where a traditional system is too difficult or expensive to deploy, or where traffic is going to be generally internal. Oh, and where you have some kind of trust mechanism in place. A mesh with malicious nodes is potential havoc. Central authorities give you a chain of trust that mesh systems don't have. And no, doing away with that central trust for political reasons is generally not as good an idea as it sounds like. Managing trust without any central points is much more difficult and much easier for users to screw up.

joepie91_ 12y ago

The idea of a meshnet is that, as the name implies, it's a mesh. It usually involves intelligent rerouting over other peers if a previous route is no longer available. If you were to put up a big WiMax antenna, you are the single point of failure - you could spy on the traffic, you could banish specific clients, and if you were to disappear, everybody in your neighbourhood would be without internet. A mesh network allows none of these (in theory), because there is not one single point of control.

superuser2 12y ago
Mesh is a topology, not a belief system. A mesh network can still be administered by one entity who can monitor traffic, manage configuration, and restrict access to authorized users, but they would do so using a distributed system rather than the control panel of a single piece of equipment. It's different from what you describe in that a typical WiMax antenna setup mirrors the star topology typical with network switches. Clients are connected to a piece of infrastructure, which is in turn connected to a larger piece of infrastructure, and so on up the tree. In a mesh network, clients are connected to each other without using infrastructure as an intermediary. Every node relays traffic for its neighbors, and you reach distant points by hopping through many of your neighbors (or you don't, if they don't happen to currently be arranged in a way that facilitates that). A good mesh network system has intelligent routing algorithms that are some combination of fault-tolerant, efficient at finding the shortest path, equitable in distributing load, and designed well in terms of incentive structure (so that people do not freeload by acting as clients but not relays). If you are using a mesh network to reach the internet, you are still dependent on the nodes that route between the mesh network and an actual ISP, which presumably pay for the privilege and want to recoup costs somehow. However, it can be a decent way for a community to roll its own last-mile infrastructure, provided it can purchase wholesale transit somewhere within the mesh, and drive enough participation that there is sufficient capacity between you and the backhaul most of the time. The more interesting uses are for meshes that are not (mostly) about Internet access. There is experimental work on protocols for messaging and durable document storage/publication (think Wikipedia but without web servers) that work well on meshes, providing pretty good internet-like capabilities to areas where access to the actual Internet is impractical. (Some of this is embedded in OLPC/XO).

Kalium 12y ago

Mesh networks are suitable when all the computers you need to talk to are in a geographically contiguous area. As soon as you start needing to cross oceans or mountain ranges, you're likely to run off the edge of a mesh. So I don't anticipate meshes replacing traditional ISPs any time soon.

chatmasta 12y ago
Pure mesh networks will not take over ISP's. But what about a hybrid solution? Fat fiber pipe feeds wireless mesh. Run fiber from nearest datacenter to middle of town, build mesh network out from there. Crowdfunding SEC rules + neutrality ISP rules could very well open up an opportunity for crowdfunding municipal ISP's. Communities run their own mesh and rent fiber from an upstream transit probider.
- Kalium 12y ago
  A mesh solution is workable, and possibly cheaper than a traditional deployment model. However, I can see significant drawbacks. It's likely to be less reliable, slower, and not well suited to anything requiring low latency. It's also likely to be more prone to congestion problems and will probably be more difficult to manage. So it's possible, but I don't think it's a good model for how most Americans are likely to be using their internet connections. Most of their use would likely be the mesh as transit to the uplink and then off to Facebook or Amazon or Netflix. I think the lesson is that meshes and traditional systems have different strengths and weaknesses. One isn't always a good substitute for the other.
  - chatmasta 12y ago
    How is this different than the current situation, other than one is wires, and one is wireless? ISP's still need to aggregate household cables into larger fiber before hitting the datacenter.
    - Kalium 12y ago
      A wireless ISP is designed around high-bandwidth uplinks to aggregate from each tower/AP to central points. A mesh doesn't have this topographical feature. (Other considerations: limited frequency bands) The difference, I think, is that the traditional layout works better for the common use case than a mesh does. A mesh with an uplink would be preferable in a scenario where a traditional system is too difficult or expensive to deploy, or where traffic is going to be generally internal. Oh, and where you have some kind of trust mechanism in place. A mesh with malicious nodes is potential havoc. Central authorities give you a chain of trust that mesh systems don't have. And no, doing away with that central trust for political reasons is generally not as good an idea as it sounds like. Managing trust without any central points is much more difficult and much easier for users to screw up.