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posted by martyb on Wednesday January 27 2016, @10:27AM   Printer-friendly
from the making-connections dept.

In a warehouse basement in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood late last year, a handful of self-taught network engineers gathered to casually discuss how they might make Time Warner Cable irrelevant in their lives.

Toppling—or at least subverting—a telecom monopoly is the dream of many an American, who are fed up with bait-and-switch advertising campaigns, arbitrary data caps, attacks on net neutrality, overzealous political lobbying, lackluster customer service, and passive-aggressive service cancellation experiences that are a common experience of simply being a broadband internet customer these days. The folks at NYC Mesh are actually doing something about it.

http://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/read/how-a-diy-network-plans-to-subvert-time-warner-cables-nyc-internet-monopoly


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  • (Score: 2) by Justin Case on Wednesday January 27 2016, @10:53AM

    by Justin Case (4239) on Wednesday January 27 2016, @10:53AM (#295219) Journal

    I have wanted this for a long time. Not just peer-to-peer endpoint file exchange, but actual peer-to-peer networking.

    The article mentions the drawback of needing a funnel onto the real Internet, because usually you're not sending a packet to your next-door neighbor. The solution seems to be an access point with a multi-mile range. Not sure that's still peer-to-peer.

    Anyway, however the details shake out, if it ends up working and letting little guys bypass the corporate-NSA chokehold, you can bet it will be illegal soon.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 27 2016, @11:13AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 27 2016, @11:13AM (#295225)

    The solution seems to be an access point with a multi-mile range.

    Really.....

    WiMAX as "a standards-based technology enabling the delivery of last mile wireless broadband access as an alternative to cable and DSL".

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX [wikipedia.org]

    Maybe you should have "want"ed WiMAX while it was still commercially available. Instead of letting it die, like you did.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by isostatic on Wednesday January 27 2016, @11:27AM

    by isostatic (365) on Wednesday January 27 2016, @11:27AM (#295229) Journal

    Wireless ISPs aren't exactly unknown. Feel free to set one up.

    http://m.theregister.co.uk/2003/02/27/become_a_wireless_isp/ [theregister.co.uk] From 13 years ago may interest you.

    The issue with hopping from AP to AP isn't the routing (just assign everyone a subnet and run a routing protocol), the issue is the massive latency, loss, and complete lack of privacy that would emerge.

    Most wisps will go for a single wireless hop, or have very well specified directional backbone links.

    What you're talking about has been trivial and cheap for over a decade

    Here's a similar idea in Cuba from more recently.
    http://m.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/26/secret_cuban_network_breaks_government_ban/ [theregister.co.uk]

    • (Score: 2) by richtopia on Wednesday January 27 2016, @05:06PM

      by richtopia (3160) on Wednesday January 27 2016, @05:06PM (#295411) Homepage Journal

      There has been a lot of work on this type of infrastructure, particularly in the developing world (cheaper to add towers than run copper).

      There are a number of mesh networking protocols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesh_networking [wikipedia.org] that are designed for this type of application. However the logistical issues are huge, and many projects are nitch or a work in progress.

      Here is a website dedicated to wireless networking in the developing world:
      http://wndw.net/ [wndw.net]

      • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday January 27 2016, @05:47PM

        by isostatic (365) on Wednesday January 27 2016, @05:47PM (#295430) Journal

        There has been a lot of work on this type of infrastructure, particularly in the developing world (cheaper to add towers than run copper).

        Nobody runs copper any more, it gets nicked.