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How a DIY Network Plans to Subvert Time Warner Cable's NYC Internet Monopoly

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

AndyTheAbsurd writes:

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: 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]

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  • (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.