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Comment by dstein | Hacker News Reader

For a mesh network like this to succeed there has to be a killer app built on the platform. And I'll tell you what it is -- a free wifi telecom network. A complete replacement for the telecom networks run by megacorps could be the technology disruption of the century.

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Like, say, http://fon.com?

Single company network requiring proprietary closed source routers? No use to me.

Hm, aren't they using Linux after all?

No, there's no mesh networking going on there, the devices would still require the internet. A voip mesh network would be independent and decentralized.

The http://villagetelco.org/mesh-potato/ on http://villagetelco.org/

Pimp pimp.

These guys are doing this for real, and their setup is getting pretty good. Based on BATMAN for their meshing.

Not to mention that Project Serval is coming along nicely, so your android devices can happily mesh with these nodes too...

Probably you're talking about http://guifi.net (only in Spain AFAIK). They've got more than 13k operating nodes in a completely 'independent of Internet' wifi network, but they also have gateways and proxies for Internet access.

You have a good point. Like I said in another comment here, I think there will be companies to thrive on this new type of network. I also believe that in the end, Wi-Fi is a disruptive technology to 3G/4G technologies, and once it's everywhere and, perhaps always-on, it will quickly become the defacto network connection for a lot of mobile users.

In a way it's already there, but I think it has 2 issues right now: battery life and not being on by default. Although, battery life for 4G connections is probably even worse than Wi-Fi.

I agree about the killer app, but was thinking of movie sharing instead, for mass appeal. Imagine if you could stream any DVD one of your neighbors has, for free.

Unfortunately everybody becomes your neighbour then

Two words: benevolent virus.

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