
'Anti-authority' tech rebels take on ISPs, connect NYC with cheap Wi-Fi - standeven
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/wifi-nyc-mesh-new-york-city-1.4617106
======
tlrobinson
There's an impressive amount of negativity in these comments. A community-run
mesh network? HN should be all over it, but it appears to have turned into a
bunch of network engineers telling us why they are very smart and it won't
work, or is "insignificant".

More power to you, NYC Mesh.

~~~
pavs
It's OK to be optimistic about something different. It's also ok to discuss
the reality, that's not necessarily negativity towards a project. Are we only
supposed to discuss one side of the argument and ignore reality just because
it makes us feel nice inside?

There are bazillion reasons that this is nothing more than a cute side project
that will fall on its face when its time to scale in any meaningful way.
Unless they have discovered a new technology they are not taking on ISPs by
any meaningful way. Especially in NYC.

There is a difference between, just "connecting to the internet" and having a
"reliable connectivity to the internet", the difference is a massive
investment in infrastructure. Wifi p2p mesh networks don't work on magic. They
are very unreliable and hard/impossible to scale to 100,000 users, let alone
millions of users. In some places, wifi p2p connection hardware actually costs
more money than a traditional wired network.

Mesh networks have been around for a while, technical and reliability aspect
of this is well understood within the networking industry. There is a reason
why it's not widely used, especially in cities. In remote areas, this kind of
network makes sense, if you don't have a choice or an alternative.

Don't brush of educated criticisms from people within the industry. I own an
ISP for 5+ years (mostly wired). I am not in US and I am not at all worried if
this kind of network comes in my country/area. We are not worried because we
have tried and deployed this kind of network in cities and they are extremely
unreliable and costs real money.

I also don't understand the "Anti-authority" angle of the argument, unless I
live in a different universe, they still have to get license/permit from the
local government to do this business (non-profit or not), they still have to
follow the same rules enforced by local and federal government when it comes
to log/customer information sharing to LEO. So not sure how they are Anti-
authority? Unless they mean anti-establishment?

~~~
hux_
Once upon a time the network, storage and data center guys thought
Facebook/YouTubes one to many broadcasting of content would never scale too.
Now they fall over themselves to work there.

~~~
pavs
They scaled by making a huge investment in their network. They didn't make a
fundamental new technical discovery that didn't exist before. They had money,
they threw money at the problem, as expected it worked. The problem was an
investment (which takes time), not technical.

[https://peering.google.com/#/](https://peering.google.com/#/)
[https://code.facebook.com/posts/565767133547005/steering-
oce...](https://code.facebook.com/posts/565767133547005/steering-oceans-of-
content-to-the-world/)

Any ISP (if big enough), can host their own Google, Akamai, Facebook, Netflix
nodes on their premise.

------
grahamburger
Shameless plug: I run a website that helps people do this kind of thing:
[https://startyourownisp.com](https://startyourownisp.com) (although it's free
and ad free, so not much of a plug really.)

Also have a matrix chatroom on this topic:
[https://riot.im/app/#/room/#startyourownisp:matrix.org](https://riot.im/app/#/room/#startyourownisp:matrix.org)

------
jessaustin
_The group also knows there will be growing pains as they challenge the status
quo and that it 's only a matter of time before the big ISPs take notice,
which could bring new challenges._

I'd like to imagine this would be competition on price and service. Sadly,
that won't be the case. They can expect everything from spurious CALEA
requirements to rooftop lease shenanigans to unwarranted radio interference
claims.

Eventually, though, this mesh model will take over the world, from both a
network perspective and a commercial one. We just have to squelch our
authoritarian impulse.

Of course, technical challenges may still exist, but those certainly don't
discredit the model.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
I don't think mesh makes sense from an economics perspective. The number of
edges scales O(n^2), where n is the number of people in the network. That's
not very efficient. Even if you think wireless internet is feasible in dense
urban areas (I think this is still an open question) it seems like a star
topology connected by wireless backhaul to fiber makes more sense. This scales
O(n).

~~~
teraflop
> The number of edges scales O(n^2), where n is the number of people in the
> network.

I don't see how this is true for any reasonable definition of "edge". It's
certainly not the case that every node directly communicates with every other
node; if they did, you wouldn't need a mesh.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
A mesh network is defined as a network where the nodes connect to as many
other nodes as possible. In the limit this is a complete graph with O(n^2)
edges. It's true that in practice you won't have a complete graph but it's
still less efficient than a more hierarchical, tree-like network structure.

~~~
MR4D
Am I missing something here?

Let me approach your math with a reasonable argument:

Assume a 1 sq mile area (1mi x 1mi).

Assume each node has a 50 yard diameter reach.

If you space a node every 50 yards, you will have 35 nodes on a side, for a
total of 1,225 total nodes.

Each node will only be able to physically connect to 3 other nodes on the
edges, and 4 other for interior nodes.

That means the node connectivity is only .00326 for an interior node.

The longest path is diagonal across the square. Given the 35 modes on a side,
and A^2 +B^2 = C^2, that means 35^2 = 35^2 = C^2. And c^2 = 2,450, meaning C =
50 (rounding up).

So I’m not sure how O^2 even applies in this example. Yes, it’s theoretically
a max, but theory >< the real world.

Is this not correct?

------
alexandercrohde
I really don't understand the HN reaction here. Why all the presumed
negativity? This is tech, the best encyclopedia in the world is built on
volunteer work and donations. A genius builds the de-facto version control
system on his own in 3 months for fun. 2 guys in a garage build revolutionize
search.

Certainly there are logistical differences between these things, but I don't
understand why one would assert with confidence that such a project (that
already seems to be working) couldn't work.

~~~
cabaalis
I love HN but there is a very healthy level of suspicion for developing
different ways of attacking already-solved problems. May not be the best
example but look at the comments on announcing Dropbox.

Doing > Wanting to do in nearly every instance. So to borrow from popular
culture, Just Do It, and Haters Gonna Hate.

~~~
alexandercrohde
Yeah, I just figured that a pro-anonymity, pro-startup, pro-charity, anti-
monopoly, anti-comcast community would see this as a win on all fronts.

At least that was my read on this community.

~~~
afarrell
My reading of the negativity in this thread isn't "here is why I am _opposed_
to your project" but rather "here is why your project seems like it will
fail". The latter isn't anti-startup or pro-comcast at all.

~~~
yardie
...but why The Facebook? We already have MySpace.

...but why Dropbox? We already have google drive/OneDrive/WebDAV.

...but why an Airbnb? We already have BnBs, hotels, and hostels.

~~~
afarrell
Which are all questions that the founders of Facebook, Dropbox, and Airbnb
needed to answer to be successful. Questions are a contribution.

------
jeffreyrogers
This stuff is cool and maybe useful in far-fetched scenarios, but it's not
going to replace ISPs anytime soon. Mesh networks don't make economic sense in
most circumstances.

Also, I'm guessing that users share the same IP address, which can cause
problems. Plus, if one user is doing something illegal and causes the
supernode to get shutdown then no one on the mesh network will have access to
the internet.

Addition: quotes like "The internet doesn't really cost you anything, it's
just the connection [that has a fee]... Nobody owns the internet, there's no
one to pay." Are shockingly naive. Who does he expects pays for the fiber that
runs across the country and along the ocean floor? The marginal cost of a new
user on the internet is effectively zero, but that doesn't say anything
important. The infrastructure that makes the internet work is enormously
expensive.

~~~
nycmesh
We are replacing ISPs in NYC for our members. This is now, not the future. The
main thing holding us back is scaling up the number of installs.

All networks, including us, add to this expensive infrastructure. The
difference with our infrastructure is it is owned and shared by members.

~~~
gowld
Sure thing. And I offer free WiFi access to all my household members,
houseguests, and next-door neighbors. The main thing holding me back is
scaling up the number of installs too. I'm hoping a billion dollars of
donations can square that away for me and my wider-area neighbor.

~~~
danShumway
I get that you're joking, but this is basically how public wifi works.

A bunch of businesses and nonprofits offer free wifi to their customers, and
over time you build up a big enough blanket that pretty much anybody can walk
into a coffee shop or library and check their email.

Tons of security risks, of course, but... I mean, I've used public wifi before
during personal emergencies, and I was pretty grateful it existed. If you're
gonna pick a comparison to be derisive with, maybe don't pick something that's
widely useful and appreciated?

Comcast has even turned this into a selling point (I think somewhat
unethically) by turning all of their customer access points into semi-public
routers for other customers. It actually seems to scale pretty well.

~~~
gowld
Comcast doesn't do it _for free_. That is financed by bill-paying customers

~~~
danShumway
Yes?

Comcast provides its wifi by allowing you to connect to any other customer's
router. (Roughly) a mesh network provides its wifi by allowing you to connect
to any of the other nodes within the mesh.

What's your point? Is the money/infrastructure less legitimate because it was
donated? Is the public wifi down at the library fundamentally worse because
its cost wasn't bundled into the price of a coffee?

Hardware is hardware. If it works, who cares where it came from?

------
badrabbit
This can work for small scale networks but it needs to be a paid service model
to scale it(at least for usable performance).

A spine/leaf arch would be great for this imo. The leaves can be local cells
of wifi networks. The spine can be operated by payment collecting individuals
that maintain a high speed(10g+) and low latency uplink to the internet and
network gear that can handle the traffic from the leaves. In spine leaf,
leaves connect to multiple spine nodes as well (don't have to worry about
spine operator reliability too much,could potentially load balance over spine)

That being said,I hope any modern wifi network assumes wifi encryption is not
reliable and instead implements a layer2 or 3 tunnel (macsec/.11ae and
wireguard respectively)

------
Zigurd
When you compare comments here a few themes emerge:

1\. The internet has been captured by the telcos, who operate the internet
like telcos have operated the circuit switched voice network.

2\. We are all overlooking the fact that smart radios make spectrum ownership
obsolete. That means that the potential of mesh wireless connectivity is
orders of magnitude larger than can be realized in current unlicensed
spectrum.

3\. The assumption that anyone is owed a business model in internet service is
going unquestioned. Of course it costs a lot of money to run the internet the
way the Bell System ran phones. But there are plausible alternatives, not all
of which are compatible with investor-owned near-monopoly "markets."

This is an economic tragedy and a case of local optimization holding a global
optimum hostage. ISPs are a sweet business, in a way that costs the rest of
the economy dearly. Kill the incumbents and reap an across the board boost in
GDP.

------
tlrobinson
This sounds neat. Is anyone working on something like it in the SF bay area? I
know there's Webpass and Monkeybrains, which are great, but I'd love to be
part of a community-owned, actual mesh network.

~~~
dannyobrien
There's the People's Open Network:
[https://peoplesopen.net/](https://peoplesopen.net/) co-ordinated by the
SudoRoom folks and the wider community.

------
inetsee
Can anyone comment on the utility of mesh networks in rural areas, where the
big ISPs say "Sorry, not interested", and the distances between potential
nodes is high? I have read articles in the past about hardware hackers setting
up systems to broadcast WiFi signals for exceptional distances. Could a system
of mesh networks provide rural America (or other countries) with low cost /
high speed internet service?

~~~
johnnyforeigner
In Catalunya we’ve had such a network for many years and it is specifically
used for providing connectivity to rural parts of the country. It’s called
Guifi.net and has over 30,000 nodes. I was surprised it wasn’t mentioned in
the article actually.

~~~
Paul-ish
It was mentioned.

> While there are mesh networks dotting the U.S., she says the best working
> example of what mesh technology can do is in Spain. Guifi.net has more than
> 34,000 nodes covering an area of roughly 50,000 square kilometres across the
> Catalonia region.

------
chiefalchemist
This is a great ideal. Sticking it to The Man is never a bad thing :) The
question seems to be one of level of service and reliability. Collectives (if
you will) can certainly work. But at this scale? And necessity?

The ultimate benefit, I would think, would be to cause downward price pressure
on the establishment ISPs. But wasn't that also Google Fiber's quest? Which we
know didn't last long. Profits or not, there is still a certain level of cost
to maintain sustainability of the model.

I hope I don't sound cynical. I honestly just curious and will to share my
thoughts out loud.

------
hop
Nice. Our 200+ unit condo building in Portland just got gigabit internet via
line of sight radio on the roof from another building with fiber.

This is a trend that will definitely take off and removes the huge barriers of
entry that laying cable requires. 1ms latency too.

~~~
tvchurch
I've got to know more about this. Who set it up? Local start up? Bored
engineers?

~~~
hop
Wave G. I think its a spin off a small isp.

------
tlrobinson
It looks like they use a lot of Ubiquiti gear, which I'm a fan of (at least as
a "prosumer", haven't used it professionally)

------
mapmap
I'm curious about the technology they are using. Is it an actual mesh network
or point-to-point wireless?

~~~
tlrobinson
Here's a map of their network:
[https://nycmesh.net/map/](https://nycmesh.net/map/) (uncheck everything
except "Link" to see the network)

~~~
dawiddutoit
Down here in South Africa we have a similar network. We have had quite shite
connections down here for so long that a mesh network was one of the few ways
to get a good connection. Link for our map of Cape Town.
[https://wind.ctwug.za.net/index.php/nodes](https://wind.ctwug.za.net/index.php/nodes)

------
EGreg
I love seeing the growth of mesh network.

“We don’t have any use cases that show how nice it can be if you have enough
users.”

They are going to need software. The supernodes are still a symptom of the
thinking that you need the signal to go to another stage in order to
communicate locally.

I think there should be more software that works on a local network, like
things used to work before broadband.

This is what I’m talking about:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI)

------
blhack
"Anti-authority" seems like a pretty good marketing campaign that WISPs have
figured out.

I mean: good for them.

------
walrus01
Actual ISP network engineer here: I'm sure these people are having fun and
all, but it's insignificant in the larger scheme of things.

(correction to original post: I did not at first see an ASN for them, or
announcements of their own IP space. They have an ASN and announce two /24s,
and peer at one physical location in metro NYC).

Real five nines network infrastructure takes significant capital investment.

This part is so much unadulerated bullshit:

""The internet doesn't really cost you anything, it's just the connection
[that has a fee]. So however you can get plugged in — then you're on the
internet. Nobody owns the internet, there's no one to pay.""

Actual, reliable internet costs real money, both in the salaries of people to
engineer and architect it, salaries for 24x7x365 clued-in NOC staff,
equipment, salaries and expenses for field technicians to build it. And that's
before you get into things like establishing colo at major IX points, serious
core routers that cost $15k each (do you really want to deploy something in
the year 2018 to take several full BGP tables that doesn't have a 4 million
FIB capacity?), etc. The Internet is a significant construction project at OSI
layer 1, whether you're putting PTP radios on rooftops, running aerial fiber,
or underground fiber. Otherwise you're just piggybacking on something that
another, larger entity has already built.

I give them an A for enthusiasm and effort. It just needs to be channeled the
right way so that they can figure out what it actually costs to run a reliable
ISP. I'm all in favor of new startup ISPs.

~~~
jimktrains2
> Actual ISP network engineer her

So then you must intimately understand the depth of the lies and anti-consumer
business practices that spur such networks.

> Real five nines network infrastructure takes significant capital investment.

5-9s is 5 minutes of downtime a year. I've never had a commercial, let alone
residential ISP hit that mark.

> Actual, reliable internet costs real money, both in the salaries of people
> to engineer and architect it, salaries for 24x7x365 clued-in NOC staff,
> equipment, salaries and expenses for field technicians to build it. ...

Going back to my first point, almost no one is unwilling to pay for their
internet connection.

They're unwilling to pay less to get TV service they have no use for and
internet than they are internet alone.

They're unwilling to look at the cost of network access in other countries and
be happy when comparing that to the cost of internet in a major, densely
populated area in the US.

They're unwilling to accept transfer caps and accept the lies they they help
the network by making people share when they know that transfer is irrelevant
and bandwidth is the limited commodity.

They're unwilling to accept lies of bandwidth speed that isn't attainable even
under the best of conditions.

They're unwilling to accept shady and underhanded business practices such as
random, "accidental" charges.

> It just needs to be channeled the right way so that they can figure out what
> it actually costs to run a reliable ISP. I'm all in favor of new startup
> ISPs.

However, as an "actual ISP network engineer", you must understand the (very
arguably unfair) regulatory issues that the big players have put in place to
make this impossible to do. Google failed at starting an ISP, and it's not
like they are tight on either cash or lawyers.

~~~
walrus01
Google did not fail at starting an ISP. They decided that the ROI for doing
individual residential home FTTH was not worth it, considering the cost per
house passed. Then they went and bought Webpass, which has a totally different
condo/apartment based business model, which has been wildly successful.

Starting a small ISP based out of extreme dissatisfaction with huge, evil
incumbents is something that I encourage any plucky upstart to do. If you
don't like Comcast, Charter, RCN, etc, if you have sufficient clue, go do it
yourself. Just don't try to do it with $20,000 and some good wishes, because
something with much deeper pockets like Webpass will come along and obliterate
you.

The point that I am rather bluntly trying to get across to these folks is that
if they're going to invest significant amounts of their personal
time/engineering resources into it (unpaid labor?), that they should treat it
like a serious business and not a nonprofit. Raise sufficient funds, somewhere
in the $500,000+ range to start, to build a network that actually does meet
five nines through sufficient diversity in topology and routing.

Compared to random YC companies that seem to raise $1m to $5m to do some
vaguely defined web2.0 SAAS thing, the amount of money that a group of people
need to raise to build the core of a serious ISP is not huge. Elsewhere in
this thread I threw out a figure like $750,000 in beginning CapEx if they're
serious. For some good reasons, however, it's easier to get $5m of series A
funding from a VC for a pure software development business than a wholly-
owned-facilities-based startup ISP.

Even if you completely ignore things like colocation costs, IP transit costs,
IX/peering costs, office rental, office utilities and overhead, running a
serious ISP with live, clued in humans watching the network takes a lot of
money per year for salaries.

3 to 5 NOC persons for 24x7x365 NOC phone coverage. At a certain point if you
peer with the big boy ASNs they will expect a live human to answer the phone
at 3am when something unusual happens in traffic between your mutual networks.
That live human needs to be somebody who has the equivalent of 'enable' on
your peering router and sufficient clue to wield it.

2 network engineering/architecture positions, multiply by expected fully
loaded yearly salary and benefits package for each person.

at least 2 field technicians

vehicles, vehicle insurance, tools for technicians

At NYC salaries? In a greenfield scenario, I could easily spend $900,000 a
year in just payroll and benefits, just to _begin to attempt_ to duplicate
what some other serious ISPs already have in place for manpower.

And again that is before you spend one dollar on equipment.

~~~
jimktrains2
> Google did not fail at starting an ISP. They decided that the ROI for doing
> individual residential home FTTH was not worth it, considering the cost per
> house passed.

~Kind of sounds like it failed.~ Apparently Google Fiber is starting to expand
again. I still think it serves as a good case against why the current climate
makes it near-impossible for a "plucky upstart [with vc funding]" to start a
large, traditional ISP.

> Starting a small ISP based out of extreme dissatisfaction with huge, evil
> incumbents is something that I encourage any plucky upstart to do. ... Just
> don't try to do it with $20,000 and some good wishes, because something with
> much deeper pockets like Webpass will come along and obliterate you.

You can't be a plucky upstart while simultaneously having pockets deep enough
to fend against the current major ISP players.

I'm not going to sit here and reply line-by-line to your post. The issue isn't
that people want a free network. The issue is that people are fed up with the
large ISPs and that the large ISPs have made it all-but-impossible to start an
ISP.

You seem to think that VC-sized money is the only thing people need to enter
the market. You're entirely wrong. Entrenched players have made it next-to-
impossible to compete in terms of capital and regulatory hurdles.

~~~
walrus01
> The issue is that people are fed up with the large ISPs and that the large
> ISPs have made it all-but-impossible to start an ISP.

that's the thing, they haven't. Not in the service territory this new
nonprofit is operating in. There's something like 14 different ISPs which
overlap service area with them in their part of New York City, _none of which_
are big nationwide Comcast or Centurylink sized entities.

What they're trying to do on a shoestring is on super hard mode, they've
picked the single most competitive market in the entire USA to try to compete
with independent, non-LEC, non-major-telco companies that _do_ have a few
million dollars to throw at their own facilities-based network infrastructure.

~~~
jimktrains2
NYC, and potentially a few other urban areas, have the capability to run fiber
easily.

I'm also just not sure why you're acting like this. You're being simply
dismissive of the project. There are many successful meshnets.

You've yet to give a specific complaint about this project and have simply
ranted about how they're just small, underfunded, and not a real ISP without
ever actually substantiating any of that or specifically what they're doing
wrong.

~~~
walrus01
NYC is actually the textbook example of most expensive places to run new
fiber, due to needs for nearly 100% underground, and extensive pre existing
utilities. I'm going to guess you've never been involved with an outside plant
fiber project.

~~~
stephengillie
With your knowledge of the subject, how would you suggest they overcome this
challenge?

Do they need to run their own fiber - is there a way they could rent fiber
space from an existing line? At least for a little while?

Don't be worried that a new player has entered the space; be worried that the
existing ones haven't improved the space. The total market space can be
increased by creating new connections, and someone has to do it.

~~~
nycmesh
There are about 10 fiber providers in the city. We've spoken to most of them.
It's pretty much impossible for us to lay fiber, so we have to lease it. We'd
like to eventually lease a fiber ring across the city so we can cut costs when
connecting multiple buildings. If you don't have a ring then you have to pay
for the run all the way back to a coloc.

~~~
stephengillie
That's a good start to having "your own" network, and then you can choose to
have packets traverse your network or the peering networks. You could shift
egress points around, based on cost and other factors as well. Each link you
add can multiply your routing options.

Get large enough, and you can start carrying other traffic too, and eventually
start buying/laying fiber. But you know this, it's probably part of your
business plan.

------
0xBA5ED
Well, it seems this idea has touched a few nerves. In this case, it may
indicate you're on the right track. Keep it up!

------
freeflight
Förderverein Freie Netzwerke e. V. has been doing this, rather successfully,
in Germany since 2003 [0]

Similar projects exist in Austria (FunkFeuer) and Switzerland (Openwireless).

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

~~~
nisa
There are several distributions for mesh-networks:

\- Gluon is the most popular:
[https://gluon.readthedocs.io](https://gluon.readthedocs.io) \- Libremesh is
more flexible: [https://libremesh.org/](https://libremesh.org/)

Like NYC Mesh both are based on OpenWRT.org a wonderful distribtion for
wireless devices from 4mb flash / 32mb memory up to 64bit x86 support.

------
throwaway932
'Anti-authority', even with scare quotes around it.

God forbids somebody uses the word "anarchist"...

~~~
jessaustin
Synonyms are fine. Those with knowledge know what's going on. Those with
prejudice can remain in the dark for a time.

------
stcredzero
Is there an inexpensive point to point technology that isn't hampered by rain?

~~~
jeffreyrogers
2.4 and 5 GHz aren't too affected by rain fade. And they're cheap.

~~~
mholt
I thought wifi couldn't go through water? (Or is rain just so sparse/diluted
that it doesn't really affect it?)

~~~
jeffreyrogers
I'm not sure about water, but rain doesn't have much effect at those
frequencies. At higher frequencies (e.g. 24GHz) rain can make the link
useless.

------
_bxg1
[Ron Paul voice] It's happeniiiiinnnnng

------
10065
NYC public housing has had rock bottom cost, high speed Internet for years.

Have to now do something with it.

------
notyourday
I'm in NYC. I know a few people who played with it. It barely works.

I'm all for this kind of tech solutions, but for crying out loud pretending
that this is a replacement for ISPs in NYC really discredits techies.

~~~
nycmesh
Our average speeds connecting to our supernodes is around 100Mbps. I'm not
sure what you are referring to.

~~~
gowld
What's the throughput?

~~~
et2o
What's the latency?

------
nickthemagicman
Hate to sound stupid but how does DNS work on a mesh?

~~~
nycmesh
We originally used the qMp/OpenWRT package that included mdns, which is a
version of zeroconf for the internal network. It isn't scaling so we now use
our own DNS server to resolve internal addresses on our 10/ network.

~~~
nickthemagicman
Mesh networks are going to be incredible when they're widespread!

It's truly superior to centralized control by ISPs/Governments and the world
will be grateful for this after this whole net neutrality debacle recently.

You guys are brilliant and doing an amazing job and I'm grateful people like
you guys exist!

Thank you for the response!

------
lbotos
Who's responsible when someone torrents copyrighted material through that
Internet exchange point?

"NYC Mesh will comply with all federal laws in the countries it operates,
however, as policy, no data is collected and therefore no data exists to
provide requestors."

This is cute, but if you aren't hunting down people abusing the mesh, the
whole connection to the internet will go away for a ToS violation.

~~~
jlgaddis
I've worked for an ISP for about six and a half years. In that time, I have
received I-don't-know-how-many e-mails about people torrenting and so on. I've
had one conversation with a Special Agent from DHS investigating credit card
fraud.

Over this same period, I have given out a customer's identifying information
_zero_ times (if more than 24 hours have passed, there is a _very small_
chance that I am able to identify the customer). In every instance, it was
"sorry, I am not able to identify the customer".

Zero is also the number of times I have heard anything from any of my
upstreams regarding any ToS violations or similar.

~~~
yazr
> if more than 24 hours have passed, there is a very > small chance that I am
> able to identify the customer

Hmm ??? Could u please explain.

I always assumed that all ISPs will store all DHCP (PPPoE? PPTP? IANANE)
allocations by IP & time.

~~~
jlgaddis
I'm sure that most do. Those records are kept for systems I manage as well,
but not for any longer than I need them.

------
peterwwillis
Mesh networks are too complicated to be reliable over a long term. They are
useful in disaster situations or places with no infrastructure. Project
Byzantium ([http://project-byzantium.org/faqs/](http://project-
byzantium.org/faqs/)) is a great way to quickly stand up a mesh network as a
temporary thing.

~~~
jimktrains2
> Mesh networks are too complicated to be reliable over a long term

I mean, this isn't true. I'm not even sure to begin. Perhaps specific points
instead of nebulous nonsense would help us better understand you.

~~~
peterwwillis
Sure. The protocols, the routing, the interference, backend and gear
maintenance, regulatory requirements, expense and complexity of multiple WAN
links, and ad hoc setup of said links in an uneven physical environment. To
say nothing of managing uneven customer load.

Running fiber is expensive but less complicated and less error prone. And
unless I missed something, there aren't any initiatives by big companies (that
obviously don't want extra expense and headache) to go mesh. Big ISPs use
their customer nodes as wifi hotspots but that is obviously not mesh.

~~~
jimktrains2
> Sure. The protocols, the routing, the interference, backend and gear
> maintenance, regulatory requirements, expense and complexity of multiple WAN
> links, and ad hoc setup of said links in an uneven physical environment. To
> say nothing of managing uneven customer load.

I think you have an overly narrow view of what meshnets can be.

