
The citizens of Detroit are building their own Internet - rmason
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a13819941/the-citizens-of-detriot-are-building-their-own-internet/
======
dpezely
in 1996, we created the Seattle Peoples' Internet by co-locating our equipment
at an upstart internet cafe in Belltown called Speakeasy.

The deal was that we paid for their most expensive monthly line item: the T1
circuit. We covered 100% of the T1 yet were allocated only 50% of the
bandwidth, if I recall. We recruited enough co-op members to cover that fee
before beginning and had a wait-list on Day One.

Our PortMaster was configured to monitor monthly bandwidth consumption per co-
op member. We accommodated spikes in traffic of individual members, but if the
aggregate went above some threshold, the co-op would pay more to Speakeasy.
The intent here was that our overage fees would help pay for a second T1.

We also had some co-location hosts in their rack, which was around the corner
from the coffee machine in those days.

Member fee schedule was proportional to type/speed of connection used and
anticipated usage. Beyond that, membership was at cost.

Internally, co-op members would resolve financial details among ourselves, and
we sent one payment check per month.

The agreement was fairly balanced. It allowed our members physical access to
reboot a piece of co-located equipment, but any maintenance required pulling
and removing the machine. (Again, rack was in tight quarters of a coffee
shop.)

Since this was mid-1990's, all members supplied their own pair of modems for
each side which were mostly 28.8 back then. I think one person was going with
ISDN, and maybe another had Telebit Trailblazer 56k.

I'd like to think that upon seeing how this was a benefit to the cafe's
financial statements that it gave Mike, Gretchen, Chris, et al the idea to
move into the larger ISP space for which they then became known.

~~~
elsurudo
Awesome. Did you guys host gave servers? Or perhaps co-op members? For some
reason I remember a lot of game servers with "Speakeasy" in the name – I think
this would have been Q2/Q3A/CS1.6 days

~~~
dpezely
SPI did not directly have game servers, but yes, at least one of our members
ran one. I don't recall if it was a MUD or something else.

Speakeasy also had other co-location hosts in the rack. If I recall, one was
for a design firm somehow connected to one of the owners. Maybe there was a
game server there, too.

For a bit more historical context on the Seattle Peoples' Internet, I slapped
this together: [https://play.org/articles/seattle-peoples-
internet](https://play.org/articles/seattle-peoples-internet)

------
gravypod
I'm glad that more people are now thinking of mesh, or radio-delivered,
internet.

I think there is a lot we can do (as programmers) to start supporting mesh-
network style Internets. We're at a critical point right now where distributed
systems research has turned up some decent consensus algorithms, where there's
now a (finally understood) need for a computer network run by the people who
use it, and where consumer radio/copper technology is fast enough to start
building out reasonably fast networks.

~~~
betterunix2
"We're at a critical point right now where distributed systems research has
turned up some decent consensus algorithms,"

Not by a long shot. We have proof of work and systems that rely on all parties
being known and identifiable, and not much else. Proof of work does not scale
and the need to identify all parties requires at least some centralization.
Beyond that, we also live in an age where the bulk of Internet traffic is
video, and thanks to the decades-long effort of the RIAA and MPAA, most video
distribution is centralized, so people demand high throughput; and the
widespread use of TCP also requires low latency. Mesh networks are still not
up to the task despite all the progress.

You want to support mesh networks? Great! I'm with you, but let's not oversell
the state of the art. Mesh networks are still experimental and without some
centralized coordination (which is a de facto ISP) the performance and
reliability really start to become questionable.

~~~
gravypod
High throughput is 'easy' to obtain if you don't mind high latency. The only
thing the internet is great at is reducing latency. Luckily for human scale
actions this is not a big problem.

Mesh networking technology is old at this point. Application layer software
that takes advantage of it's strong suits has yet to be developed. Though
there are many ideas of where to start.

As for what you have brought up. In my opinion many-replica content networks,
when combined with modern video compression technologies, could solve the
issue of video streaming from a no-master and high-latency system.

------
llamataboot
I helped set up a wireless mesh network in St Louis (though others were much
more instrumental than I was) - combined with building and giving out free
linux computers, we got hundreds of people online that wouldn't have been able
to otherwise (pre smartphones)

[http://gowasabi.net/](http://gowasabi.net/)

~~~
kiliantics
Awesome. Whether or not net neutrality goes under (more than it already has),
I hope we start seeing a lot more of this.

~~~
juliangoldsmith
I'd argue that this sort of project would solve the same problem that net
neutrality tries to.

The root problem is that if an ISP starts throttling content, a lot of
customers won't have another ISP they can switch to. Something like a mesh
network (high-latency, high-bandwidth) would be perfect for what most people
want (Netflix, Facebook, etc.). Mesh networks being widely available would
force ISPs to provide actual value to their customers.

------
analog31
There's an apartment tower near my house, and I've toyed with the idea of
renting space on their roof to set up a small local cooperative ISP. The
demise of net neutrality has caused this idea to bubble back up to the
surface. Of course I need to compute the business case -- how many neighbors
do I need to sign up, in order to make it attractive.

~~~
grahamburger
I've been doing stuff like this for a long time. I've thought about trying to
build a web app to help with estimating the costs of doing exactly this. Would
that be useful to you? I wouldn't charge for it, but it would help me get
motivated to do it if I knew someone might use it!

~~~
analog31
That would certainly be interesting. At present, I don't know squat about any
of this, except to imagine that I'd have to pay for some sort of super high
speed cable to the building, run it up to the roof, build some sort of radio
station up there.

Maintenance would be a chore, as mentioned in one of the other posts.

But an app that lets people begin to think about how this stuff works -- for
instance what the pieces consist of, might hit pay dirt if the whole net
neutrality thing gets nasty.

I've also thought about the idea of what people could do if they set up some
kind of mesh network in a higher density urban area -- for instance if they
could use it to bypass the ISP's while maybe also improving their security and
privacy.

~~~
grahamburger
Well y'all have me convinced! I'll get started and be sure to post here when I
have something presentable. In the meantime anyone interested drop me a line
at my email in my profile and I'll keep you posted. Would love to have some
outside perspective on what's important to include.

~~~
agumonkey
eager to see how it's doing, best of luck to all

------
TYPE_FASTER
Comcast or Verizon, I forget which, wanted $10k to add service to the building
I was working in a year or two ago.

We ended up going with NetBlazr
([http://www.netblazr.com](http://www.netblazr.com)). Worked pretty well.

I remain hopefully optimistic that other potential disruptors, like Starry or
municipal broadband, will unseat the incumbents.

------
coldcode
If it gets in the way of the local cable company/ISP, I imagine Michigan will
vote this is illegal. Money > citizens.

~~~
r00fus
Yes, MI is where GOP state appointed emergency managers override city and
county governments (mostly to the detriment of said localities)

~~~
mobilefriendly
This is common in many states when local governments go bankrupt.

------
cdancette
In France, there are some associative ISP working with volunteers in almost
every region, although they are quite small.

~~~
lucasverra
Could you provide a name/assos for north paris area ? I wish to provide a
couple of hours of my time

~~~
cdancette
Not sure if there are in your area, you can check on the FFDN site, which is
like a meta association : [https://www.ffdn.org/en/members-fdn-
federation](https://www.ffdn.org/en/members-fdn-federation)

The most famous is FDN ([http://www.fdn.fr/](http://www.fdn.fr/)) which is
covering the whole territory, and in the Paris area you have Franciliens.net
([http://www.franciliens.net/](http://www.franciliens.net/)).

------
derda
This has a lot of of similarities with the german Freifunk[0] initiative.
Although the philosophy is different. (They work as WISP and let people sign
up for the service. Freifunk distributes APs that anyone can plug into their
internet connection and provide Freifunk connectivity in their street. Anyone
can connect to it).

[0] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freifunk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freifunk)

------
ntoaen0934ntaeo
The original article that this one refers to, and which doesn't ask you to
accept malware[0].

[0] [https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/motherboard-dear-
future-p...](https://video.vice.com/en_us/video/motherboard-dear-future-
people-building-their-own-internet-detroit/59cebd5795073d0905939aeb)

------
EGreg
Now this is fantastic! I started a company to build a platform specifically
for local intranets like this to run social software. We should get in touch
and help their Apps program.

[https://qbix.com/communities](https://qbix.com/communities)

I am very happy to see communities building their own intranet software!

------
kennethh
What kind of equipment are they using for this? Is this something that is
affordable for testing out? I was thinking of trying something like this at my
cabin.

------
eighthnate
Didn't know you could be a citizen of detroit...

Why not just say detroiters?

~~~
chrisseaton
> Didn't know you could be a citizen of detroit...

What did you think 'citizen' means?

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/citizen](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/citizen)

> Why not just say detroiters?

Like many people I would guess, I know what a 'citizen' is, and I know what
'Detroit' is, but I wouldn't know what a 'detroiter' was.

For example if I wrote an article about 'Wollybacks building their own
internet' would you know what that meant? That's a name for people from where
I live.

~~~
eighthnate
> What did you think 'citizen' means?

A member of a state/nation. For example, I am an american citizen, not a new
york citizen. Citizen has historical etymological roots to ancient greece and
their city-state but the word has changed in meaning in modern times.

> Like many people I would guess, I know what a 'citizen' is

Apparently you don't if you think someone is a citizen of detroit. At least in
the US, we are citizens of the nation, not a city. I don't need to get visa or
permission to move from NYC to Detroit. I don't have to change citizenship if
I move from NYC to Detroit.

> but I wouldn't know what a 'detroiter' was.

So you don't know what a new yorker is?

> That's a name for people from where I live.

Detroit is one of the major cities of the US. Pretty sure everyone knows what
detroit is.

I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic here.

~~~
jonathantm
> So you don't know what a new yorker is?

I don't know what a "yorker" is, never mind a new one.

To be fair though, I'm guess you meant one of these two; either a "New Yorker"
(citizen of the state of New York), or a "New Yorker" (citizen of the city of
New York, New York).

Or would that second one be a "New York, New Yorker?"

\-------------------------------------------------------

For example:

The new new New Yorker was new to New York, New York. New New York is known
for it's saturation with new New Yorkers. Now I know that would be a bit
nuanced, but nevertheless I knew you as a new New Yorker of "The New New York"
(New York) would find it relevant. I just didn't know if you knew that yet.

\-------------------------------------------------------

Related...?

"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo"

"... is a grammatically correct sentence in American English, often presented
as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated
linguistic constructs through lexical ambiguity and the usage of homophony and
homonymy."

"More easily decoded, though semantically equivalent, would be:

Buffalo from Buffalo... whom other buffalo from Buffalo bully... [themselves]
bully buffalo from Buffalo."

([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffal...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo))

~~~
lokedhs
Or a new citizen of York, England.

~~~
tomcam
Or a citizen of one of the newer cities named York!
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York_(disambiguation)#Places](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York_\(disambiguation\)#Places)

