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from the now-thats-social-networking dept.
Over at PandoDaily, Nanthaniel Mott writes, Are Peer-to-Peer Mesh Networks the Future of Internet Freedom?
"Open Garden has raised $10.8 million to create the next Internet. And as crazy as that sounds, thanks to the success of its FireChat peer-to-peer messaging service, it might just work.
Instead of sending messages through an Internet connection or cellphone network, FireChat uses the Bluetooth and WiFi radios on every smartphone to create its own “mesh network,” which can then transfer data between the networks’ members without requiring any external infrastructure.
That second Internet, or Internet Two or whatever it will be called, is likely to become increasingly popular in the coming years. Countries around the world have started to restrict Internet freedoms, whether it’s through laws requiring companies to keep data on domestic servers or via the imprisonment of people who use the Internet to share information the government doesn’t want them to share."
Are peer-to-peer mesh networks the future of internet freedom?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 19 2014, @11:19PM
Most ISPs prohibit you from doing that. The same with hosting (federated) servers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by buswolley on Friday December 19 2014, @11:26PM
They prohibit your from using your internet in such a way, they don't prohibit (and can't) from using tech (ie. wifi and bluetooth) to communicate to other devices. The idea of the mesh network is that it doesn't use the ISP at all.
subicular junctures
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 19 2014, @11:35PM
Mesh networking solves the "last mile" problem. You still need Internet access for inter-city access.
Thankfully, you can tunnel with cjdns or I2P.
It remains to be seen if Namecoin will become the standard for IP address-free host look-ups.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday December 20 2014, @12:11AM
Somebody somewhere has to connect it to the net.
Otherwise all you have is local coms. (For some extended value of Local).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by everdred on Saturday December 20 2014, @01:01AM
Not necessarily. You could theoretically link up your local networks, over long-distance wireless links, without using the legacy Internet.
Of course, you'd be creating another internet, but that's besides the point.
(Score: 2) by buswolley on Saturday December 20 2014, @01:36AM
Or the whole point
subicular junctures
(Score: 2) by edIII on Saturday December 20 2014, @06:15AM
It is the whole point.
We only need mesh networks because the ISPs will not treat us, or our packets, fairly and accordance with a dumb pipe. They are not entirely to blame. Anytime you have some form of centralized control (read: money flowing upward), you have a point of failure that government can make fail in 2 minutes with armed agents threatening people with language decided by Senators. As government has been wholly hijacked by corporate interests refuses to allow our packets safe passage in the principles of safety or greed.
Decentralized is incredibly attractive as it accomplishes the removal of those influences by rendering them impotent (or so it would seem). It's the people taking back their power, as the regulations controlling ISPs are clearly not conducive to freedom or fair expression. They screw us over.
Back to reality check. We may have enough purchasing power as citizens to loosely hook up and service small communities, and maybe even entire cities. It will *not* be as fast as normal, and because you need to work with the totality of the traffic to create intercity links. Regardless of how greedy and underhanded corporations have been, they aren't lying about the cost of laying long fiber runs across the country.
It's a forced relationship so the answer may be massive civil disobedience in the form of mesh network routers that tunnel all of their traffic. In short, we need MeshNet + DarkNet, or DarkMesh. The real question is how long will the ISPs play ball when their attempt at anti-Net Neutrality fails? Nobody has any money. This is the Great Depression. Endless arguments, debates, and papers showing how much less we make than our fathers 50 years before us. It's very much like ESPN smoking the crack pipe hard thinking they can raises prices above inflation, which has only worked by pushing onto credit cards.
Going to laugh my ass off when the entire industry makes no more money doing their bullshit, only makes less, and then watches in amazement as encrypted traffic (various implementations of Darknet technologies) doubles about every year.
Meshnets are a good idea, but they are dead on arrival for replacing the Internet unless we have honest and frank discussions about our incredible bandwidth needs for these runs connecting up cities.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 20 2014, @07:00PM
We may have enough purchasing power as citizens to loosely hook up and service small communities
There was a related item a while back (fiber).
German Village Expanding Self-Built Broadband Network [soylentnews.org]
The group hopes to connect 59 villages in the county by 2021
-- gewg_