> But then, I think all the major telcos are scum.
The solution is decentralization through mesh networks.
The solution is decentralization through mesh networks.
REAL competition.
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.
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.
Personally, I would love to see some sort of decentralization.
I think the downvotes are because the poster basically handwaved a complex problem by saying that THE solution is mesh networks.
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...
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.
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.