
NYC Mesh – community-owned network to replace your current internet connection - tonyztan
https://nycmesh.net/
======
grahamburger
I run a website about starting and running small wireless ISPs here:
[https://startyourownisp.com](https://startyourownisp.com)

We also have a matrix chat room here:
[https://riot.im/app/#/room/#startyourownisp:matrix.org](https://riot.im/app/#/room/#startyourownisp:matrix.org)

Don't want to detract from NYC Mesh or the conversation at all just thought
this could be interesting for some of the folks on the thread.

~~~
vvpan
I have contemplated doing this for many years. I probably won't, but I am
really excited about learning. Thanks!

------
joshuamcginnis
There's a similar effort gaining traction in the Los Angeles area:
[https://www.communitybroadband.la/](https://www.communitybroadband.la/)

I've also noticed that local municipalities are getting into the ISP business.
Beverly Hills, for example, is currently deploying a city-owned/operated
fiber-backed ISP:
[http://www.beverlyhills.org/fiber](http://www.beverlyhills.org/fiber)

~~~
fixthenet
Josh from the Community Broadband Project here. Would be happy to answer any
questions about our mission and progress in LA. I'm no regular, but we just
got a bunch of traffic from Hacker News and I'm here to spread the gospel.

NYC Mesh is doing very cool stuff--we wish them the best. We're in touch with
a few other community ISPs who are growing organically in competition against
big incumbent ISPs. It's inspiring.

Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, and Culver City are all constructing municipal
fiber right now. In the case of at least WeHo and Culver, it's aimed primarily
at businesses. Some residents may see fiber offered by the incumbents, but we
did some math of those offerings and it was $133/mo for 1Gbps. It'd be more
helpful for the community if reasonable speeds were more affordable and
available, than only some wealthy neighborhoods getting fiber.

~~~
Timmah
I don't know if laying cable is one of your biggest challenges, but I assume
it would be along with right-of-way.

What do you think about the idea of using the sewer system to lay either fiber
or 10+gb copper? Before you think about how gross that is, consider the
advancements in drone robotics. You would need to devise a cable-laying robot
that could traverse the sewer via remote control. Mount fixtures to the top of
the pipes and string the cables through, connecting neighborhoods.

This would require convincing the city to lease you the right-of-way and put
up a bond to cover any repairs to damage caused by the cables. But it would
solve both the bandwidth problem and the "those are _our_ telephone poles!"
Problem. What do you think?

~~~
SECProto
Water utilities are (justifiably) very protective of their infrastructure.
Justifiable because of the extreme expense in closing a street, excavating,
and repairing anything that happens to their buried infrastructure. I've seen
the one in my city reject a stormwater pipe because of a couple small pieces
of crusher dust. I can't see them being positive towards the deliberate
installation of another biofilm-forming-surface inside their pipes. But YMMV
I'm only speaking from experience in my small neck of the woods!

~~~
Timmah
I don't disagree. I think that a full mitigation plan could help. For example
showing that fiber can be easily chopped up if a pipe clogged. Maybe biofilm
could be mitigated with an electric charge on a conductive outer sheath? I
can't see how a single cable or 2 would ever require digging into the street.

~~~
amazon_not
Even a single cable in the sewer can require digging up the street if the
cable causes an obstruction in the pipe.

------
leotravis10
CBC has a very good piece on NYC Mesh:
[http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/wifi-nyc-mesh-new-york-
cit...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/wifi-nyc-mesh-new-york-
city-1.4617106)

Also André Staltz's TEDx Talk that mentions it:
[https://youtu.be/UjfWAbGfPh0](https://youtu.be/UjfWAbGfPh0)

I really do hope this succeeds and takes off amid the likely scenario that
SCOTUS will eventually kill Net Neutrality for good in the next two years.
Things like this are the way to go if we want a bit more freedom in terms of
surfing the web.

~~~
ChristianBundy
You may enjoy: [https://staltz.com/a-plan-to-rescue-the-web-from-the-
interne...](https://staltz.com/a-plan-to-rescue-the-web-from-the-
internet.html)

Also, if you're curious about what that looks like today:
[https://scuttlebutt.nz](https://scuttlebutt.nz)

------
gobengo
Come by Sudo Mesh meetings at Omni Commons in Oakland on Tuesdays at 730 for
[https://peoplesopen.net/](https://peoplesopen.net/)

Or keep an eye on major repos like the firmware:
[https://github.com/sudomesh/sudowrt-
firmware](https://github.com/sudomesh/sudowrt-firmware)

There are _many_ places to help. Yes, writing code, but also hands-on stuff
like mounting radios on peoples' roofs, grant writing, documentation, etc.
Even things like establishing consistency across projects:
[https://github.com/sudomesh/bugs/issues/34](https://github.com/sudomesh/bugs/issues/34)

I've really enjoyed it so far this year as a way of practicing software
production skills with other community members and non just inside the context
of a for-profit startup.

A lot of pieces are far enough it would also make sense to set up meetups and
meshes in SF and Peninsula as well.

Tuesdays. 730pm. Omni Common near Macarthur BART stop in Oakland. Come help!

------
hyperpallium
What about a mesh that is not connected to the internet?

These days, people use the internet like TV or radio: many consume, few
produce.

What about a " _community_ " mesh, where e.g. a small town has websites,
email, webservices, gaming hosts etc for shops, businesses, sporting, clubs,
council, local news and social media for that town?

~~~
superkuh
That place still exists on the internet. The 90s are alive on Tor.

~~~
fosco
can you elaborate on this? would love to explore, but where exactly to start?

------
skip_region
So I have been toying with spooling one of these up for the past 6 months. I
live too far uptown to get line of sight for their supernode, but I do have
not 1, but three LinkNYC kiosks on my corner that offer gigabit for free.
Wanted to test out using their LinkNYC option. Was going to use wireguard as a
vpn backend on a router.

The only downside for me is that I need to "re-log in" to google once a month.
The wife would not be amused. Plus, we are currently paying for 200/20 for
about $45 from spectrum.

~~~
elahd
The re-logging in problem can be solved via script. Check for the captive
portal login page. If present, simulate clicking the log in button.

------
markn951
Stuff like this make me long to live in NYC. Only city in the US with the
density, technical expertise, and money for this kind of thing to happen.

~~~
komali2
I thought the same was true for the Bay Area, hence why I moved here. I was
genuinely surprised to find Google Fiber isn't even available, let alone any
mesh networks.

In all other aspects of technical expertise though it's blowing my previous
city, Houston, away. Companies open to candidates based on technical expertise
alone (rather than throwing non-B.S. degrees straight into the garbage), lots
of great meetups, lots of fellow geeks doing exciting work.

Actually, another thing that surprised me was lack of hacker spaces - Houston
seemed to have the same amount of them... one. The only major one I'm aware of
here is Noisebridge, same for Houston which has TX/RX.

edit: oh, apparently SF has quite a few more than I realized. So does Houston,
but not as many.

[https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/San_Francisco](https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/San_Francisco)
[https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/Houston](https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/Houston)

~~~
lyall
Monkeybrains ([https://www.monkeybrains.net/](https://www.monkeybrains.net/))
operates a mesh network in SF. They're not community owned but they are very
much a local business.

~~~
keerthiko
I wanted to like Monkeybrains but they were just too subpar for the
competition in terms of speed, reliability and flexibility. I switched to
sonic and get 1GBps fiber for barely $12/mo more than what I paid MB.

------
nerdponx
I've been wanting to get involved in this kind of thing for a while now. Shame
they use Slack, and not an open platform like Matrix or IRC, though!

~~~
fosco
I do not like slack either.

that being said, get involved and get them in Matrix or IRC, not too difficult
to enact change I think people could get in on it with appropriate leadership!

zulip looks interesting to me as well.

~~~
nerdponx
I have repeatedly offered to pay for hosting a standalone Matrix server for
the Julia community, and so far been ignored. Seems like people just don't
care.

I think the best I can do at this point is set up my own server running Matrix
(or Zulip, which I haven't really explored) and host my own bridge to ease the
transition. It's the classic problem where, now that I actually have money to
spend, I don't have free time or infinite energy for side-projects anymore.

~~~
cddotdotslash
As much as you're trying to help, the truth is, small projects don't have the
resources to do stuff like this. Now they have to devote time (probably
someone's limited after work time) to bringing you onboard, getting you setup,
etc. Then, you set everything up and let's say you disappear. Now they have
this custom setup that only one person knows how to operate. At the end of the
day, Slack works. They're already using it. No one has to get trained on new
software. You don't need new accounts and passwords and admins and teams. The
list goes on. This is a big issue with small projects - everyone wants to join
and change some thing that's not part of the core mission.

------
mightybyte
I was participating in NYC Mesh for awhile, but eventually I had to unplug
because I got notices from my ISP about copyright infringement and I didn't
want my internet access to get shut off. So sad. I really want this effort to
succeed.

~~~
ATsch
Freifunk, a somewhat similar German project solves this by using a mesh VPN to
tunnel traffic out.

~~~
benwilber0
why would i go through all this effort just to let some stranger torrent iron
man on my internet account

~~~
TaylorAlexander
Collective action can give all of us, including ourselves, more freedom. This
isn’t about torrents, it’s about the freedom to use the internet without
surveillance and monitoring of our every move.

~~~
wetpaws
Obligatory tragedy of commons reference

~~~
niek_pas
The tragedy of the commons is not a natural law.

~~~
aeorgnoieang
It might be kinda something like a natural law:

\- [Great Oxygenation Event -
Wikiwand]([https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Great_Oxygenation_Event](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Great_Oxygenation_Event))

------
fiatjaf
Have you seen [https://altheamesh.com/](https://altheamesh.com/)?

------
bogomipz
Does anyone know who NYCMesh peers with? From their FAQ:

"Are you an Internet Service Provider (ISP)? No, we are not an ISP, we are a
community that shares ownership of a network. Collectively we have our own
internet connection at our “supernode”. Also some of our members share their
own internet connections.

Our network peers with other networks at an internet exchange point and
provides access to the internet without traditional ISPs. We are a non-profit
project of the New York chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC-NY)."

~~~
sethhochberg
They publish their peering details and AS here:

[https://nycmesh.net/peering/](https://nycmesh.net/peering/)

~~~
bogomipz
Thanks. It's still not clear to me how MYCMesh users would be able to reach
the internet.

They state in their FAQ they are not an ISP which leaves me to believe they
don't buy transit from anyone.

But looking at that peering link there are only 122K prefixes being advertised
at DE-CIX NY and NYCMesh only peering with 14 other ASes there.

That would leave large parts of the internet unreachable. Perhaps Hurricane
Electric or one their other 14 peers at DE-CIX NY have agreed to be act as
transit AS for NYCMesh?

~~~
_m_a_t_t_
packet.net is main transit provider, and think there are a couple alternatives
now as well

~~~
bogomipz
Ah thats the bare metal cloud provider. They seem like a cool and interesting
company too. I'm glad to hear they're involved. Cheers.

------
PascLeRasc
I have a few naïve questions maybe someone can answer:

1 - Why aren't they recommending any of the newer routers like the Asus
RT-N66U/RT-AC68U? They're well supported by OpenWRT and more available.

2 - To start a similar service in another city, do you need fiber already to
be laid? For example, I'm in Pittsburgh and we don't have any fiber anywhere,
does that mean it'd be impossible to have a community mesh like this here?

3 - Is there a way to find the "internet backbone" building in your city?

~~~
colindean
Pittsburgh has a wireless community network,
[http://www.pittmesh.net](http://www.pittmesh.net), which is run by Meta Mesh
Wireless Communities, [https://www.metamesh.org](https://www.metamesh.org).
I'm involved!

MMWC doesn't have its own fiber but does have access to KINBER's PennREN fiber
network, a little-known gem in the commonwealth that happens to run down Fifth
Ave and a few other main roads in the city. We're working on rolling out
access to it. As we're a donations- and grant-funded non-profit, our rollout
will be slower than a commercial operation.

Pittsburgh has a lot of fiber running through it, but most of it is commercial
backbone fiber. One data center that I know of had 12 ISPs peering with it,
and that was in 2009. Only Verizon FiOS has executed a residential rollout in
the city, and you can read more about folks opinions on that in /r/pittsburgh.

I've passed this thread to the MMWC executive team for them to add more
detail!

~~~
PascLeRasc
Thank you so much! I'd love to get involved with PittMesh in any way I could.

------
dboreham
I think we had this before a few months ago. It is no different than any other
regional transit provider (in the case of their fiber loop) or wireless ISP.
You still have to pay for decent peering and you still have to deal with the
laws of physics and claude shannon when deploying wireless networks.

~~~
amazon_not
I recall the NYCmesh people having free bandwidth from an employer or sponsor.
That obviously helps. Not exactly scalable or replicable tho.

~~~
_m_a_t_t_
There was a donation of bandwidth for supernode 1, but the cost of that
bandwidth is insignificant relative to other costs. The current model is
scalable. Supernode 3 is launching in the next week or so and Supernode 4 will
be following it soon.

~~~
amazon_not
How are you covering costs?

------
sebleon
Cool initiative based on positive ideals. From a practical perspective, NYC
citizens have a number of good options for internet access; however, perhaps
learnings from this community project can be brought to more needy areas
outside the US.

~~~
newton10471
Do you live in NYC? I do, and I don't have at all what I'd call "a number of
good options" for internet access. In my area, there's two companies who
operate similar to a monopoly (Verizon and Optimum), and regularly raise
prices arbitrarily and often for no reason.

~~~
nategri
Having _two_ choices actually might put you well above average for the US.
Back when I was in Mountain View, CA (a few miles from Google HQ) it was
either Comcast or nothing and the irony was not lost on me.

~~~
komali2
AT&T had an offering when I lived in Mountain View that was so comically
terrible as to not realistically be an option at all.

~~~
fivefive55
This is still true as of last year. Comcast was the only viable option.

------
Latteland
I love the idea but how do you connect to the greater internet? What will
happen when you get a request to say what user was running on a certain day
talking to whatever, or handle NSLs?

~~~
LeoPanthera
From the article:

"The network connects directly to the internet backbone, so we do not rely on
an ISP."

Their peering policy:
[https://nycmesh.net/peering/](https://nycmesh.net/peering/)

~~~
komali2
I don't understand what that means, "internet backbone?"

Is that a physical location somewhere? I've read on the peering link, are they
saying there's an "internet ethernet port" at 375 Pearl St, New York, NY that
they plugged their whole mesh network into? Where's the ethernet cable go from
there?

I'm probably asking a bit too much here (how does internet work lol) but I
don't understand how they've bypassed all ISPs... I just figured Comcast,
being an ISP, also has a controlling stake in whatever means by which it gets
data across the pacific ocean or whatever.

~~~
cortesoft
I work for a CDN, but am not a networking expert. I will try to answer as best
I can:

Yes, it is a physical location. Often called 'an exchange', there is usually a
building in major cities that most networks connect together at. You rent from
the building owner, and they provide a 'drop' which is basically a cable you
can connect to your core router in your part of the datacenter you are renting
(your 'rack' or 'cage')

From that point, you set up BGP sessions with your 'peers', other networks you
have agreements with. Sometimes those agreements are for 'transit' (which
means you pay per bit sent across the wire, but you can send all your traffic
that way) or they are peers you don't pay (you might have other agreements,
like we only send this much traffic or that hte inbound and outbound traffic
has to match)

According to that peering link from the above poster, these guys will peer
with anyone. They basically want as many peers as possible, and are hoping
those peers agree to route as much of the internet as possible.

The way BGP works is that each side of the BGP session tells the other 'i will
accept and route traffic for these subnets', for example "i will accept
packets destined to any IP address in the 1.2.3.240/24 space" The /24 is what
is known as a CIDR, and is a way of writing "all the ips between 1.2.3.0 and
1.2.3.255", 256 IP addresses.

So if the core router on my side gets a packet from my network destined to
1.2.3.123, I could send that packet on to the peer who is advertising that
they will accept packets destined to 1.2.3.240/24\. You need to have a peer
for every IP address to be fully connected to the internet. If you don't, you
would normally pay for transit, which will route for all IPs.

~~~
mileycyrusXOXO
I just wanted to say thank you for explaining this. I've read about this
before, but I feel like something finally clicked when reading your comment.

~~~
mojomark
Don't worry, most people don't understand the physical infrastructure of the
internet. However, from my understanding, a direct connection to the internet
backbone is what gives tier q ISP's their God-like monopolizing power in a
given region (like Comcast in most parts of Baltimore city).

However, the backbone nodes require maintenance, so the fee to connect
directly is expensive. You can't simply move next to a backbone node and plug
in. I presume that backbone fee is the primary reason for the individual's fee
for hosting an NYCmesh node.

~~~
amazon_not
> However, from my understanding, a direct connection to the internet backbone
> is what gives tier q ISP's their God-like monopolizing power in a given
> region (like Comcast in most parts of Baltimore city).

No, the reason Comcast and other incumbents dominate is that they built out
the last mile infrastructure. The backbone costs are a minor expense.

------
presscast
Are there any similar initiatives in London?

Failing that, any Londoners who are interested in starting something like
this?

~~~
Rjevski
Not that I know of, and I don't see a major business-case for it. The UK ISP
market is much better than its US counterpart (we have no Comcast, for
starters) so I'm not sure there would be enough demand for a wireless ISP.

But if you have any ideas on how to make this profitable, I'm up for it. Email
in my profile.

~~~
minkiu
Correct me if I'm wrong, but ain't Relish
([https://www1.relish.net/](https://www1.relish.net/)) a WISP?

If you guys gather around to chat let me know, I might be interested in
participating as well.

~~~
Rjevski
They use LTE which doesn't really scale well and their reviews have been less
than stellar.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
Are the organizers in this thread? I wonder if you folks were aware of cjdns,
and if so why the decision not to use it? I've been thinking about setting up
a cjdns-based mesh network in Philly but I don't think I have line-of-sight to
any geeks.

~~~
jedahan
Early (~3 years ago) NYCMesh used cjdns. I am not 100% sure of the reasons,
but I think at the time cjdns had bad performance and was much harder to
setup. I personally tried out cjdns recently and was pleasantly surprised with
the ease of setup, though I still think hyperborea is having scaling issues
and Guifi (the largest mesh) doesn't use it.

There is nothing stopping anyone on NYC Mesh to use cjdns, and some of us do
run it for certain services.

~~~
Famicoman
Cjdns’ crypto is a known cpu bottleneck, meaning it isn’t well suited for soho
routers. Some of us mesh folks are squeezing power out of SBCs with great
results, but cjdns’ roadmap might have us seeing more performant operation
coming up :)

------
ctime
The bay area seems to have one such Mesh network, in Oakland:
[https://peoplesopen.net/](https://peoplesopen.net/)

It would be great to see something like this on the Peninsula

------
bikamonki
"The network connects directly to the internet backbone, so we do not rely on
an ISP."

How does it work? Can anyone connect directly to the Internet backbone?

~~~
_m_a_t_t_
I think that is just meant to be an approachable way of saying that NYC Mesh
peers on public internet exchanges

[https://nycmesh.net/peering/](https://nycmesh.net/peering/)

------
scottedtech
Here's another project:

[https://www.rightmesh.io/how-it-works](https://www.rightmesh.io/how-it-works)

~~~
toofy
With all due respect to this project, I’m sure it has a lot of great
potential, however:

> Our patent pending switching technology ensures data integrity.

I personally have little interest in trading one network which is controlled
by a few people for another which will just be controlled by different set of
a few people. Even if it is powered by trendy blockchain or whatever.

I am incredibly excited by some of the meshnet work we are seeing, but any of
these which are just seeking to position themselves as power brokers on our
future communication systems really need to be left on the wayside.

We’ve already seen firsthand what happened when our first iteration was turned
into a glorified shopping mall. I’d prefer that we avoid this fate with the
second iteration.

------
aero142
This doesn't seem to actually be a mesh network.

~~~
unethical_ban
Yes, it is, though the homepage doesn't seem to explain it well.

You can connect to their "supernodes" which are the backbone, that connect to
the Internet proper. You can also connect via other member nodes. So by my
understanding of the colloquial term "mesh" for wifi, it is.

I do take issue with their FAQ stating they're not an ISP. They are providing
Internet access to the public. They are an ISP, even if their structure and
methods are unconventional. Maybe they're avoiding the term due to legalese?

It's an interesting project. I wonder if something like that would work in
urban San Antonio... Hm!

~~~
phikai
Shout out to a fellow San Antonio local!

~~~
unethical_ban
Kai from Ultimate?

internet at cyberfoxfire com

------
neuromantik8086
Meh. I put more faith in our corporate overlords developing decent wireless
internet service via 5G over NYC Mesh really taking off.

------
ausjke
city-mesh movement started about 10 years ago, meraki etc are "hot" then, it
never went away and stayed relevant, but not as trendy as it used to be.

libremesh is based off openwrt, it needs a web-based dashboard, the firmware
seems solid, very interesting.

------
Endy
Is there any way to connect to this from the other side of the Hudson?

~~~
toomuchtodo
Pringles can.

~~~
fosco
not sure why this was downvoted, a Cantenna [0] was originally created with a
pringles can.

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

------
detaro
previously:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16978544](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16978544)
(230 comments)

------
miguelrochefort
Does it comply with Net Neutrality?

------
blairanderson
this seems freaking rad.

------
m1573rp34130dy
A big problem with meshnet sofar is that it goes against the status quo, and
it cut out the moneymakers and regulators, thus mesh nets have segment
distances limited to ethernet and repeaters as well as where does physical
infrastructure live? utility poles are owned by someone other than common
people, and a trench transect for fibre is limited by property concerns...we
need to develop a method of long hauling signals that wont be interfered with
and will not interfere physically with anyone else...optical linkage _works_
and has no palpable medium to be destroyed by hostile action. The bandwidth of
a line of sight laser is very high, so high that it doesnt need to operate
24-7-364.25 of the year...if two or more LOS linked supernodes cache each
other you win...if something gets in the way, point your LOS to a different
LOS caching peer...

~~~
nerdponx
How robust is something like a laser in the face of weather interference, like
rain or urban smog/haze?

~~~
ATsch
Not very. In the (admittedly old) setup I've seen, the total speed would drop
to 100s of kb/s when there was any fog.

~~~
m1573rp34130dy
its better to have it 50% of the time than 0% of the time... radio waves dont
do well in fog either... how would you run ethernet at a distance greater than
500 feet?

~~~
ATsch
Radio is much less susceptible to fog than light because of the lower
frequency.

Usually, at any large distances, you'd try to use fibre optic cables if at all
possible.

~~~
m1573rp34130dy
Unfortutnately i post too fast, and dont care about karma... I cant say ive
ever downvoted someone over meaningfuly criticical review... ...lower
frequency means lower bandwith...wifi frequencies have trouble bouncing around
in fog penetrating leaves or even a couple thickness of drywall this is why
submarines use ELF... where will you run your fibre optic? on the utility
poles, or buried in the ground? how do you connect to someone more than 500
feet from you using ethernet cable how do you mitigate vandalism or theft of
your fibre? if you have no connection at all that is inferior to a high
bandwith long haul between supernodes that cache each other and are uni
directional communicating thus minimizing evesdropping concerns...

~~~
pitaj
The best way to do it is probably laser+radio with additional fiber on high-
traffic routes. That way you normally have the bandwidth of laser and radio
combined, with slower "just radio" as a backup when there's bad weather, and
the fiber bandwidth for backbone connections.

~~~
m1573rp34130dy
sorry about the delay, im still posting too fast... ...we dont exactly have
permission to run our own hauls on corporate/municipal utility poles or trench
glass across private property or public R.OW.s radio spectrum is regulated and
off the shelf limited so as to minimize the common users ability to step on
licensed spectrum...so we have to go geurilla on the long haul...LOS links can
be pointed to a multitude of Tx/Rx stations not just one...this is
advantageous when the current environment is legislatively hostile...

