Comment by frigite | Hacker News Reader

Comment by frigite | Hacker News Reader

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This has already been going on as others have noted.

ISPs send email citing that X external organization representing Y media company says that you have been sharing Z content, then the ISP shuts off or redirects all web traffic from your location except that which is allowed to go to a webpage they specify in the email where you must acknowledge that you got their communication and will cease and desist. It is pretty Orwellian.

We all need to switch to mesh wifi internetworking as soon as possible. With some work, it could become a better solution than our current net, and there would be no monthly cost to an ISP, and no MPAA, RIAA, or government interference. Granted, there is value in rule of law and protection of adequate compensation for created works. But when Big Brother comes down on you and your neighbors, is that ok? These guys would have cuffed you for the cassette mixtape you made for your girlfriend in the 10th grade if they would have known about it. The longer you let the ISPs or the government rule the net, the less of a chance you will have to ever get it back.

I understand that you read about it on reddit, and they may have sounded quite confident and/or optimistic, but I assure you an internet based on wireless mesh and without ISPs would be completely unusable. Along with most ideas that sound anything like that. Whatever visions you have of a future pirate nirvana internet will have to include a bunch of pretty traditional looking fat pipes in the center of it all.

Actually, I didn't read about it on reddit, but thanks for thinking so highly of me. :) And there is no way it will ever get any significant traction as long as people dismiss it as lunacy immediately after it is mentioned.

People treated kids that programmed like socially disabled outcasts in the 1980s. Ten years later, many of those kids were making millions. Dialing into a BBS to communicate was a waste of time. Now almost every business has a Twitter account.

Mesh may seem stupid now, but when the current net gets locked down and turned into a "white" government-regulated net within the next 20 years, people are going to start connecting to the shadow "black" mesh net to share files. No, I'm not talking about mesh nets connected to our current net. I'm talking about a completely different internetwork. And if we wait too long, we won't be allowed to setup such a network, because it will be outlawed before it has a chance to flower.

I'm not saying there is a magic field of jellybeans that can replace our current net, although IPv6 may as well be that, as slow as it has been rolled out. But, to dismiss mesh as a crock is just plain lame.

It seems like you think wishful thinking is a replacement for actual engineering knowledge. The difference between your story and today is that in the 80's (and 70's) tons of real engineers were already using the internet, dialing plenty of BBS's, and already knew the Internet was going to be huge - and understood the science of how it would grow.

In contrast, the only people willing to suggest that a decentralized wireless mesh has the possibility of replacing the internet are people that haven't used one and have no rf background.

What about Open Mesh Project, Open Source Mesh, B.A.T.M.A.N., Roofnet, GNUnet, Dot-P2P, SMesh, Coova, Babel, SolarMESH, WING, Daihinia, P2P DNS, Digitata.org, Netsukuku, Tonika, We Rebuild, Freifunk, Athens Wireless Metropolitan, wlan ljubljana, The Darknet Plan, the connective, Meraki, Open Mesh, firetide, guifi.net, OLPC, Iridium constellation, Commotion Wireless Project, Serval, and IEEE 802.11s?

http://emergentbydesign.com/2011/02/11/16-projects-initiativ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network

You do understand the difference between proving a technology exists and is suitable for localized high latency low bandwidth communication and suggesting that it's suitable to replace tier 1 isps that handle terrabits of data traffic per second, right? No one has ever suggested that you can't run a relatively small, localized, and centrally managed mesh network - those have been in use for all sorts of purposes for quite some time. What you're being told is that those technologies don't scale to millions of users, long distances or high bandwidth/low latency applications.

It's perfectly fine that you don't know a lot about networking or network management. Just stop telling people how they can replace the internet when you really have no idea.

If you don't want your ISPs or others sniffing your traffic user encryption. If you don't want the RIAA telling your ISP that you're pirating music stop putting your computer on a global list of computers that are offering to serve popular.mp3. It's a pretty solved problem.

"It's perfectly fine that you don't know a lot about networking or network management."

I am not suggesting everyone can use mesh now and magically you no longer need an ISP. I am saying that is where we need to go. And I started off many years ago learning how to design and manage networks, getting certifications, wiring my business with cat3 then cat5, managing routers and switches, and then I moved onto something more interesting- now I just try to protect HN from morons.

I understand that you get your info from CNN, but a mesh network will work. See the research into ant colonies for more info. There was a headline today about a neutrino network that would transmit directly through the Earth, for true point-to-point communication.

I understand that you read about a "a neutrino network that would transmit directly through the Earth, for true point-to-point communication," but you obviously didn't read the paper. Here it is. http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.2847 It's a proof-of-principle. A stunning achievement, no doubt. But it's hardly a practical option for communication, "The link achieved a decoded data rate of 0.1 bits/sec with a bit error rate of 1% over a distance of 1.035 km, including 240 m of earth."

Ant colonies? WTF?

We all need to switch to mesh wifi internet working as soon as possible. With some work...

"Some" work? There are serious problems with scaling mesh networks. Private citizens are not going to replace the internet backbone with mesh networks. The best we could hope for are low bandwidth metro WAN. That said, this is something we should put in place ahead of time, so we can turn it on if the government ever wants to black out media and internet access.

As far as combating this latest outrage, how about additional widespread encryption, so all the traffic is effectively on a VPN? If keys are distributed via smartphone networks, it will be hard for the ISPs to do things like mount MITM attacks. Combine this with some honeypots -- as mentioned elsewhere, have people engaging in legal sharing and sue the ISPs when they interfere.

this is something we should put in place ahead of time, so we can turn it on if...

But people won't put it in place unless it provides some advantage immediately, which it doesn't.

But people won't put it in place unless it provides some advantage immediately, which it doesn't.

I know lots of people who are perfectly willing to design and assemble the hardware, just for the fun of it.

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