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AdmiralAsshat

For reference, a simple search for "Verizon" on ArsTechnica yields many similar articles.

On Verizon failing to meet its obligations to a city:

http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/06/verizon-ordered-to-f...

http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/06/22-years-after-veriz...

On Verizon letting their copper landline decay:

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/08/why-ve...

http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/07/verizon-let-us-insta...

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/09/verizon-union-see...

I really hate that they're the best service in my area, because I think they're scum. But then, I think all the major telcos are scum.

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> But then, I think all the major telcos are scum.

The solution is decentralization through mesh networks.

or we could you know, just have many ISP's instead of just a few big ones. Not that i'm against a different topology, but breaking them up is easier to ask for / implement.

Telco was no better when there were a bunch of baby bells

the baby bells were all monopolies, though.

The solution to this problem is extremely simple. Government runs the last mile fiber to EVERY home. Then* pull it back to a central location and let ISPs compete for service there where the barrier to entry isn't billions of dollars.

REAL competition.

I'm pretty sure I don't want all network connections going through government owned infrastructure.

I'm pretty sure the government can and does tap any line they want. If you think a private company owning the last mile somehow makes you more secure than if the government did, you're being extremely naive.

Well, I was less worried about the lines and more worried about the described centralized clearinghouses.

That said, although obviously the government can show up with guns wherever they want and tap whatever they want, I suspect the legal situation would be much different if we're looking at government-owned infrastructure vs. privately owned infrastructure.

Is it really?

If we can provide a mesh network that is as effective as older topologies but cheaper, the problem is solved, period.

If we break up ISPs into smaller ISPs, then we have to maintain that solution, as giant companies are constantly lobbying government to allow them to re-establish monopolistic practices. History tells us anti-monopolistic policies don't last. The split and re-merging of phone companies happened in under a decade. Glass-Steagall worked for a long time, but finally died.

I have no argument that there are major technical hurdles to clear before we can have mesh networks, but once those hurdles are cleared, the power is decentralized into the hands of individuals. Individuals can join together to force through legislation, but the power remains centralized in government, and maintaining that is extremely difficult.

To be clear, I give money to the EFF and I've called my congressmen on issues like net neutrality: I don't mean to downplay the importance of these efforts. But these are temporary solutions, workarounds to the problem, rather than solutions.

Mesh network QoS would almost certainly be worse.

Why is this getting so many down votes? What is wrong with mesh networks?

Personally, I would love to see some sort of decentralization.

Agreed, mesh networks are awesome and could be very interesting in this space.

I think the downvotes are because the poster basically handwaved a complex problem by saying that THE solution is mesh networks.

I'd be interested in trying it, and it might be great for otherwise-expensive "last-mile" situations, but...

I play video games, and I can't imagine what the latency would be like over a mesh network. So many hops, so many pieces of questionable cheap home hardware handling my data...

There is an interesting way to make this work, inspired by "skip-list" data structure. Suppose you sell network radio gear. You want your customers to have a tree network instead of a mesh network to reduce the number of hops. So sell a random distribution of stations: most customers get short-range stations. Some get longer range stations. Some lucky few get very long range high capacity stations.

You will end up with a random geographic distribution of radios with different capabilities. The number of network hops will be reduced because, as with skip lists, you find a path to high capacity station, then skip longs distances, then find the final recipient.

In practice this would be difficult to deploy (Can you legally give high power stations? What about RF safety of higher power stations?), but I think the idea is neat.

> I play video games, and I can't imagine what the latency would be like over a mesh network.

1. Neither can anyone, because we don't have examples of large-scale usage of mesh networks, and the amount of research that has gone into mesh networks is nowhere near as extensive as exists with ISPs. There's no reason to assume that mesh networks will always have higher latency, especially in places where i.e. Comcast is choking connections.

2. The small-scale mesh networks which already exist are demonstrably adequate for many, many use-cases. Mesh networks which handle text and image web browsing, email, instant messaging, are still extremely useful even if they have trouble handling streaming video and video games.

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