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Tenshi Hinanawi edited this page Apr 30, 2012 · 1 revision

A Network by and for the people

What if there were ways for us to exist without anyone controlling the network or the websites we lurk around? What if I told you that you could use the same technology as torrenting to distribute websites irrespective of servers and that whole nonsense? What if I told you we could own the physical network? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netsukuku <<< this is better fuck the meshnet

Out with Telcoms, in with Mesh

No more AT&T, Comcast, or their likes controlling our interwebs. There exists a technology called mesh (802.11s wireless) which makes it possible. We can use the technology to make our power and communications autonomous, anonymous, ubiquitous, and free-to-access.

Mesh vs Fiber Optics

Right now, mesh can't beat fiber optics with its 5gbps speed. However, an opportunistic multiple input multiple output mesh network can get 100mbps over the air with around a 90% bandwidth efficiency over multiple hops with the ability to reconfigure each device in response to a downed node in under 50ms (a ping good enough for even shootan gaymes). Each mesh device in the network adds redundancy to the network making it more resilient to failure. More importantly, mesh can be deployed anywhere and everywhere for very little cost.

Mix and Match Technologies

You can combine this technology with solar panels to make a distributed network of electric power. Google is on it with mesh and the Smartgrid. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09dhjDcaT7g You can combine this technology with VOIP to make a true distributed telephony network. You can combine this technology with P2P software and grid computing to make a distributed processing network. You can combine this technology with P2P/P4P/DDNS to make a distributed website hosting network. You combine all that with open source software, firmware, and hardware, we can expect amazing advancements in just about everything we do.

Slowly but Surely

Anon, I am asking you to champion this idea. To share this information with people you think might be able to do something about it. Only a very small portion of us need to develop the technology for all of us to be able to benefit from it. The trick here is to start using the technology. If you use linux or mac and you have wireless, you already have the power to contribute to the mesh network. Get yourself one of these devices; you won't regret it. I figure at $20 per device we could build a network of 50 million of these devices in less than 5 years. It took the internet 4 years to reach 50 million people. iPods took 3 years. Facebook took 2 years. At first, this network won't be much. Maybe, you, your friends, and your neighbor sharing bandwidth wirelessly while still wired into your normal ISP, but the more people who join your network, the better your network becomes until one day the network becomes the Internet. Most of the work has already been done. For some of us. we have already begun the process, but it is far from a united front. Imagine the possibilities, anon? One unified net owned by the people, built by the people, for the people. 9gridchan.org started by the technolo/g/y board here - created a decentralized network using obscure software as and edn-run around restrictions on internet use, etc. Hasn't blown up to many users but it's been going on for 6-9 months now.

See Also

Where to start?

Research, tutorials, collaboration, cheap hardware.

Comments

Wel for starters, the most efficent system (homebrew hardware included) would nominally be HAM radio for it's long distance, but that presents other problems. Wheras on the internet encrypted traffic is considered innocent until proven guilty, by the current US radio rules, all encryption is illegal. Unlike the tubes, the airwaves are closely monitored, much like an IRC network, and the FCC is the sysadmin. However, the international body for HAM radio has remove it's cleartext principle from it's internal policy and the ARRL is petitioning for an FCC rule change, but until then and even after we still have to deal with a very different playing field. For now the only forseeable alternative is the so-called winnowing and chaffing scheme, which also comes with plausible deniability (some ass is sending random packets trying to confuse me!) Either way, existing standards are designed for small networks with little overlap, not the voice and data storm found at the HAM frequencies. Therefore, we will probably need to create our own specification to do this at any efficency.--Object id #182/216.118.68.193 23:47, 30 October 2010 (MDT) {{projects}} {{tools}}

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