Shameless plug: My company Althea (https://althea.net) is making router firmware that makes it easy to people to set up incentivized mesh networks in their communities. It allows routers to pay each other for bandwidth which means that everyone hosting a node earns money for the packets they forward.
We have 2 networks live, one in rural Oregon and one in Medellin, Colombia. Also, 4 more networks people are currently pre-registering subscribers for in their communities, for example https://althea.net/hilltop.
> It is quite shameless, here is an awesome volunteer run basic service project, and this is a Blockchain rent-seeking VC startup.
You're implying that there is something shameful with providing a market for connectivity which allows for people who can't afford to work for free to participate. What is shameful about this?
In any given mesh of peers, or for example the NYC mesh, suppose I am a mesh client with no ISP. How do I get internet without using another mesh client's ISP connection?
Edit: can't reply because rate limited or something. My point is that relying on good will doesn't scale.
I thought mesh is supposed to involve hopping from neighbor to neighbor - not everyone directly connected to an ISP. What is the difference then besides that it is volunteer-run with donated bandwidth?
While many neighbors could be connected directly to a traditional ISP, in a hilly/mountainous area, only a few nodes may be able to connect directly to an ISP, and this will connect indirectly accessible nodes to the Internet via only intermediary nodes. This is not theoretical - the test network in Oregon does this.
Why/how is it free? How much is it typically? Do all/most cities have "backhaul" easily available? Isn't backhaul owned by ISPs as well and basically like a fat pipe?
> Why/how is it free? How much is it typically? Do all/most cities have "backhaul" easily available? Isn't backhaul owned by ISPs as well and basically like a fat pipe?
Sometimes but not always, the Tier 2 internet market is acutally quite competitive and usually you can get fiber from a couple of providers within 50 miles of any location in the US (5 or less if it's reasonably populated). The problem of course is to be an ISP you have to deliver the traffic that last few miles.
This whole thing is further obfuscated by the fact that the entire infrastructure market is very human powered. Few providers provide public maps and in order to find these fiber connections you literally have to know the right people. The internet has automated everything but those people building and maintaining the backbone still need sales calls to tell you where they can connect and a bribe before you get a good price.
You can get connections suitable for backhaul pretty much anywhere as long as you are within reach, or prepared to pay for, a copper or fibre connection to an exchange. It just costs more.
I'm not up to date on prices.
Backhaul is 'just' another connection but without the same contractual restrictions as you'll usually find on normal subscriber connections.
You'll find it used in at least two different ways: as a synonym of transit to talk about a way for your ISP to connect to any other ISP via the provider they get it from, and as a means of having an access provider forward last mile traffic to one or more central locations.
But in both cases it just suggests that you have agreed with a provider to forward traffic for your users on your behalf.
NYC, among very few other places in the US, actually has some insanely good options for business grade (and priced) connectivity. (HFTs pay for very high speed connectivity.) As for why it's free to NYC mesh, I don't know. Pet project of an employee?
This isn’t APRS or amateur radio at all. The article doesn’t call out the band info, but if this is running over 2.4 or 5 GHz, it’s unlicensed spectrum and available for use by anyone.
If they were running over licensed spectrum, the FCC would have shut them down in the US.
Hams can run high power and high gain antennae with regular wifi gear, they call it HSMM. It doesn't sound like the mesh folks are doing that either, and even if they were, might it fall under part 15.23?
Breach of contract itself is not illegal, but depending on intent, it could be more than breach. If you enter into a contract with the intent to extract value without abiding by the agreed terms, then it can be considered fraud. Whether it is possible to prove, or worthwhile for that to be pursued by a prosecutor is circumstantial. IANAL
Couldn't this just be solved by simply encrypting all traffic similar to an onion router setup? Could also be solved by the users just using some sort of VPN which encrypts all traffic. How is the ISP suppose to know you're forwarding traffic?
Isn't there a liability issue here? If I join the network and someone were to use my node in the transmission of something like child porn, how are you so sure I wouldn't be pinched for it?
All yall talking about altruism but no one is really making internet faster and more affordable. This shit is revolutionary, and the system it sets up is going to be the backbone of a network of Co-ops in the next 10 years. A parallel economy is possible.
Our biggest test network is only ~50ish nodes. Simulations show we won't have issues until several thousand.
Babel has been very reliable and we haven't really made any changes beyond our extensions. The price extension probably isn't appropriate to upstream. I'll admit I've been remiss up-streaming the full path latency extension.
I had this exact idea a few years back. Great to see someone working on it! Brilliant! I could actually use this service at my work. Being able to pay 25 cents/gb on my mobile would be amazing, especially if it is really fast speeds.
Essentially we use Eth because we don't really need a 'cryptocurrency' as much as we need an api for cash where very small payments (10c) are practical. For reasons that I explain in the presentation the key simplifying assumption of low fee transactions makes a simple billing scheme (pay per forward) work.
As a network architect this seems pretty cool to me - incentivizing individual node/router operators. How is billing & payment reconciliation handled between parties?
We have 2 networks live, one in rural Oregon and one in Medellin, Colombia. Also, 4 more networks people are currently pre-registering subscribers for in their communities, for example https://althea.net/hilltop.