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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, @11:40PM
I think the bandwidth usage can be solved with a "tit for tat" algorithm that throttles leeches.
Yes, I agree mobile devices as routers is kind of silly.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday December 20 2014, @01:22AM
I think the bandwidth usage can be solved with a "tit for tat" algorithm that throttles leeches.
But how would that work, exactly?
Lets say I got a solid internet connection so I share it on a neighborhood mesh.
I don't need bandwidth, I got bandwidth, so from my perspective, everything going through my router is leeching.
Best I can see is some method where uplink providers set a max bandwidth, and provide a means of
telling other uplink providers their max and their 10 second average current load.
All the uplinks are going to need a back channel to balance the load to take advantage of the multiple paths.
This seems to me to require some industrial grade router capability, so that connection requests somehow get handed
off to the least busy uplink.
I've written this type of load balancing for farms of application servers, but I was in control of that, and wouldn't expect that to work in a mesh. You'd kind of want to do that balancing in an mesh of its own, where uplinks and routes could come and go at will.
Sounds messy.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday December 20 2014, @01:32AM
Its good to know some people are working on this...
http://www.academia.edu/6405188/Load_Balancing_Techniques_for_Wireless_Mesh_Networks_A_Survey [academia.edu]
http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/tech-reports/2006-11.pdf [buffalo.edu]
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389128606003185 [sciencedirect.com]
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 20 2014, @06:47AM
Well, After that NSA revelations about QFIRE (compromising routers to "beat" real servers for packet injection), I did a bit of a thought experiment. What if you examined common router firmware for 0-day exploits/backdoors and networked a bunch of home routers (possibly after cracking default wireless passwords) without the user's knowledge?
1. Without careful firewalling, this would effectively reduce everybody's security by putting them on the same local network.
2. Assuming IPv6 is used, the ISP may get odd complaints that make no sense according to the trouble-shooting script when the connection drops about once per month.
a. Some major sites like Facebook and Google would "just work", while many smaller sites still solely on IPv4 would not
b. When the user tries by-passing the router and connecting to the modem directly, the Internet would drop out completely (during an outage)
3. Because everybody has bandwidth caps, it would be noticed if everybody got routed through one connection.
a. Every router in the mesh advertises as a (IPv6) gateway.
b. Every router in the mesh keeps track on how much ISP internet bandwidth is used by the mesh.
c. Every router keeps track of how much the mesh is used for Internet access by "local" clients (IE: clients the router owner expects)
d. The gateway adjusts it's advertised distance to the Internet to keep the two above numbers approximately equal (within a GB or so). For "local" clients, the ISP connection would be preferred unless many mesh users used up bandwidth. In the latter case, the mesh would be preferred for Internet access.
e. The last point in d. is a major security vulnerability if the rogue mesh is discovered (as is illustrated by the "Upsidedownternet" website.
The above does not address the case where you have a fat pipe you want to share (in a reasonably fair manner). The simplest way is require your users to authenticate to avoid the shaped queue. You may even be able to bill for (low latency) bandwidth used*. My current ISP, that actually allows sharing, does still prohibit reselling the connection. There may be legal reasons involving registering with the CRTC for this.
*I like the concept of net neutrality, but feel that people should be able to buy dedicated back-haul bandwidth at a premium (in 64kbps chunks). Anything you don't use is up for grabs for the bulk transfers of other users. That implies two things:
a. VOIP should work with 1 or 2 "channels" (if your router does proper QoS).
b. Each "channel" implies you are allowed to use about 16GB of bandwidth in a month. (No sudden jump in price at 300GB :P)
PS: I probably dropped enough information that I can be identified. I am AC because I am too lazy to generate yet another username/password pair.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 21 2014, @08:22AM
Well thought out. Have you considered joining the ORP1 project? http://orp1.com/ [orp1.com]