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Do We Still Need Telcos (and ISPs)?
eraserewind asks: "Are telecom providers and ISPs going to continue to be necessary in the future? Why are we all paying subscriptions for communicating? What I want is a global extremely-high-speed ad-hoc wireless data & voice network, where the only entry cost is a mobile phone (or newtork card or whatever). Devices communicate peer to peer, or routed via other people's idle devices. Remember there is no subscriptions, so don't expect to piggy-back on someone's paid for DSL bandwidth. What are the technological barriers? What kind of protocols would you need? What hardware advances? How would you solve problems of geographic isolation? Are there theoretical, political or economic reasons it couldn't work?"
Yeah, I want everything for free too. Give me a break.
--
"What do you want me to do? Whack a guy? Off a guy? Whack off a guy? Cause I'm married."
And there never will be.
is global nirvana. It just might solve world hunger, end all wars, and bring us as a species to the 'next level'. I can't wait. spffff in my wet dreams!
1;
I. Cringely had a great article a while back about rolling your own DSL. All you need is a copper pair into your domicile. Good luck getting it though
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
" Are there theoretical, political or economic reasons it couldn't work?"
Uhhhh, as long as the equipment to transmit wirelessly and the electricity to power out isn't free (not counting the multitude of people to roll it out and support it), you're always going to be paying something.
Hard to believe that a question devoid of basic Economics 101 would appear on Slashdot.
So, you want everybody to be restricted by the low-bandwith links common for last-mile today, no fast websites, and non-robust routing?
I don't think you understand the value of redundant OC48 backbones, BGP4 and IS-IS routing, and colocated servers on gigE links.
Your ad-hoc networks would be OK for MAN's (Metropolitan Area Networks), but are simply unusable for anykind of backbone.
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
All you have to do is convince all of the companies involved (bandwidth owners, hardware manufacturers, administrators, etc.) to work for free and you'll be all set.
Seriously. Every part of the chain costs money. Eventually somebody is going to be putting money from their pocket into somebody elses so unless you want to pay $10,000 for a network card and have the network card companies pass everybody's share along, you're going to have to pay a subscription of some sort.
The big problem with this is, that without some "authority" moderating use of the "common" bandwidth, manufacturers of comm hardware have every incentive to build devices that hog bandwith, and other common resources, until the whole system becomes unusable.
-- Rich
Free your mind and your Ass will follow -- George Clinton
"What I want is a global extremely-high-speed ad-hoc wireless data & voice network, where the only entry cost is a mobile phone (or newtork card or whatever)."
What I want is all of Bill Gate's money, all of Jeff Bezos's patents, and a quick easy way of getting rid of SCO once and for all (e.g., a tactical nuke).
I think that my desire is more realistic.
1. freeloader problem--your privately designed cell phones will be replaced with bandwidth suckers that don't do replays. No controlling body, so can't stop it.
2. no "backbone"--hopping accross phones works around the city (maybe), but how many hops will it take to get to.. japan? and don't forget that there's some countable amount of milliseconds per transfer--to get accross the nation is a lot of cell-phone coverage sized hops. Plus, we have to go around the grand canyon.
You would have a long time with islands of well connected individuals. And these islands wouldn't be connected to each other. I.E. how would cities be connected? Through a series of wireless cards in some farmers computer? I don't think so.
Excessive forking causes un-wanted children.
With all due respect, this has to be the dumbest 'Ask Slashdot' topic I've ever read. Of course you don't NEED telco's or ISPs. Unless of course you want internet and phone service. Since the majority of people who have internet are still on dialup I think your are atleast 10 years to early for a global wireless solution where everyone peers off each other, if this ever happens at all.
Are telecom providers and ISPs going to continue to be necessary in the future?
Answer: Yes, the phone company will still be in existence.
Why are we all paying subscriptions for communicating?
Answer: Because string and two tin cans just doesn't cut it.
What I want is a global extremely high-speed ad-hoc wireless data & voice network, where the only entry cost is a mobile phone (or network card or whatever).
Answer: Isn't Science Fiction neat?
Devices communicate peer-to-peer, or routed via other people's idle devices. Remember there are no subscriptions, so don't expect to piggyback on someone's paid for DSL bandwidth.
Answer: If you are talking future state, what's up with the DSL reference? I think we should all grow prosthetic-tails, which act like antennas.
What are the technological barriers? What kind of protocols would you need? What hardware advances? How would you solve problems of geographic isolation? Are there theoretical, political or economic reasons it couldn't work?"
Answer: 42
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
One more point before I am done with this thread...
"why are we all paying subscriptions for communicating?"
Communicating is not what you are paying for. It's still free to communicate with anyone in the world. Just go get your plane ticket (mail your money, please) and fly on over to strike up your conversation.
This article is so assinine, I am already tired of writing.
what we need is a new moderation option for the original submission: "-1 Fucking Idiot"
So, yeah, it does meen making use of the existing (paid for) network first. How does that work? Well, first of all, everyone with a wireless link starts routing to all there peers (or at least, the early adopters build pringes can links to other early adopters), and shares their uplinks (free of charge).
The thing standing in the way of that happening (I've put a lot of thought into this already, myself) is the lack of a suitable dynamic routing protocol for these routers... how do you get these wireless mesh nodes with uplinks to the *real* internet to properly route and make good use of those uplinks? Currently no dynamic routing protocol is designed for such a task.
:Wq
Not an editor command: Wq
this is a baited question. I have 1/2 dozen or so phone bills but what i really need is for my cell phone to double as my wireless router to my home network, and get 3G/4G high speed service.
when the heck am i going to get that?
Sprint, hello? can you do that for me?
then i can cancel my landline and earthlink account and have only my cellphone bill.
probably wouldnt work unless there was an extreme density of cheap wireless devices. Something like this is far off down the road, although it is feasible in high density communities. If we had lots of money to throw around, local goverments could provide the wireless access in medium to large cities. Central government could cover rural and smaller towns. This is far flung to say the least. Large corp. users would probably want their access to be more secure and reliable, regardless of how secure and reliable a global wireless p2p network would be.
TallGreen CMS hosting
Technical problems?
Yes. Wireless doesn't have the bandwidth to provide service everywhere everytime for everyone. Assuming the hardware was in place, there would be limits to how much traffic each node could pass and the aggregate bandwidth betweem all the nodes wouldn't be as great as that provided by fibre links.
Political problems?
ILECs, CLECs, Cable Co's, Govenments, etc., take your pick. It's an idyllic concept but too many people will want their piece of their pie.
Economic problems?
The system (were it technically workable) would require a large installed base before it would work AT ALL. Who's going to go out and buy new gear in the hopes the system will reach critical mass and become viable? Let's not forget the incumbants lobying the above point to keep from losing out on this point.
While the concept is certainly interesting, and could probably work on limited scales (p2p locally, then into a Supernode for long distance. I seem to remember Ricochet used something similar, with data hopping across subscriber nodes to reach the main towers) there's no way it'll work in the current social, economic, political, or technical climate.
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
What if wireless repeaters became so common place globally, you didn't need 'copper'?
The the cost would be price of repeater, communication device, and electricity. Why would we needs Telcos?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I happen to sell Rolls Royce ignition keys for 300,000 dollars. That may sound like a lot, but I throw in a free Rolls Royce with every purchase.
I do the same for Bentlies as well, but the price for an ignition key is starts at $600,000
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
We can treat the internet like we treat roads. Let the gov and taxes pay to built the network and then use our wireless connections and software to use the free network. It can work, the only problem would be reliability. I think the quality and reliability is something only an ISP can provide.
I would use an ISP for business, for commerce and so on, but I'd use the free internet to surf the web and do stuff like slashdot.
I think theres room for both.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
So, under such a system it would be FREE to call across the Atlantic... provided there is a solid line of swimmers with cell phones all spaced a half mile apart all the way between the coasts... personally, I'd rather pay somebody to build an infrastructure.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Criticisms about e. asking for a free lunch, or forgetting economics 101 are missing the point: can wireless technology evolve to a point where our dependency on land-lines is greatly reduced? And can technology be created that accomodates such a world, where every computer is both a transceiver and a relay for traffic?
I would strongly contend the answer is yes. Why? Several trends contribute to the answer.
There's more that would suggest that ISPs and Telcos of the future will either not exist or be radically different, but I haven't eaten my supper yet, so I'm too tired to articulate more thoroughly. It's easy to see that telcos will consolidate around providing high-capacity long-distance links for businesses--wireless will lag beyond land-lines for a long time on both counts will win. And ISPs? In a pervasively networked world, where many nodes are mobile (and many users may switch among multiple, personal nodes), some things have to remain at fixed, well-known nodes--leaving ISPs to consolidate around various forms of hosting and co-location. It may be that in the future, that's what happens to telcos and ISPs: network providers that offer co-location and hosting services.
I wouldn't make any large bets on it never happening. Remember that the Internet wasn't invented by those telcos or ISPs; it was develooped 100% on government-supported projects.
And there's an obvious metaphor that's been with us for years: The highway system. In most of the world, it is "free", and all you have to buy out of your own money is a vehicle.
It isn't really free, in the "free beer" sense, of course, since we all pay for it with taxes. But it is free in the "free speech" sense, since anyone can use most roads without paying anything extra.
It's true that there are a few privately-owned roads, but they are generally a very small portion of the roads. And there are toll roads, but they are mostly short, high-capacity roads.
We could very easily end up with the same system for bandwidth. In all parts of the world, bandwidth is legally "public" property, i.e., owned by the government. And when parts of it have been leased to private business, the result has generally been a "vast wasteland", built up with near total disregard for the needs or desires of the general population.
The business world has, quite frankly, done a crappy job of making Net access available to the masses. They provide support only to MS customers, block ports 80 and 25, and extract things from customer messages for commercial use. And they sue us for making use of it in the obvious ways.
All it would take is enough people getting disgusted with this to produce a widespread "public" network. It's already happening in many rural areas, where commercial comm companies see no prfit in supplying service.
Of course, if the telcos and ISPs would provide true Internet service over wide areas, they could probably become very popular. But there's no sign this is happening. They are being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century, all the while trying to protect their traditional way.
The new "mesh" buzzword could well be their death rattle. Stay tuned. It should be fun to watch.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Tried this earlier as anonymous, but it sank, so here it is with a name attached...
manetIt's the mobile ad-hoc networking IETF group doing just what he's talking about. And as everybody would probably expect, QoS is the biggest obstacle.
Because infrastructure and reliability costs money(no no, trust me, I get more insightful below. Well, maybe not insightful. It's hard to answer this story insightfully, I just point out the facts.) Communications mediums are WORTHLESS if they are unreliable, which is one of the reasons cell phones took decades to "take off"(realize that it's been at least 3 decades since the cell phone was invented, and only in the last 5-6 has there really been a cell phone boom, at least in the US. Realize that the # complaint with cell phones is still how unreliable they are.)
Devices communicate peer to peer, or routed via other people's idle devices.(snip) What are the technological barriers?
Well, you asked, so here goes:
There are also some hidden consequences, like "everyone's mobile device is no longer idle, it's processing someone else's packets, so its battery life goes into the toilet".
How would you solve problems of geographic isolation?
That's just it- you'd need wires/fiber/something...and that would cost money. But, reliability would be far better- so people would opt for wired connections they had to pay for. Oops, right back where you started.
Also related- the reason high-speed access costs so much money in the US is because of geographic isolation and population density. It's no surprise that several Asian countries have DSL service in the megabyte-per-second range to your door for $10-20/mo; after all, you're probably in a huge apartment complex, in a city.
If the population density isn't high enough to support pricing high speed access low enough, I doubt you'll have enough nodes to even occasionally get any kind of connectivity to anything else- much less guarantee it.
Back to the cell phone example- look at how many billions(if not trillions?) of dollars have been poured into the cellphone network(which in turn is reliant upon a larger wired network.) I don't care what network you're on, soon as you get a little bit beyond the suburbs, off a major highway- forget it, you're screwed.
Are there theoretical, political or economic reasons it couldn't work?
Well, for one, if you did telephone calls over this "system", I'd move to another country. When I pick up the phone, I damn well expect a dialtone, because, oh, say, my house could be on fire. There are no doubt thousands of o
Please help metamoderate.
Browsing through all of the threads of this article I have found nothing but negative replies. Obviously the idea won't work tommorow, but does that mean that it will forever be unfeasible? C'mon I thought we were supposed to be the freethinkers, the idealists right? How 'bout instead of dismissing this because of its faults, someone post an alternative, or way that we could make it work?
I'll start:
Use cordless phones as a starting point. Have the base station of the phone repeat the signal accross many other base stations until it finds it's destination. when no base station is available, use the mobile phone equipment. It wouldn't be an answer to the problem, but it could serve as a springboard to new ideas and working technologies.
Or alternativly it could flop and be a great disappointment. Let's work on it.
D
D
Sure, it's possible, but no, it would never work.
First of all, you have the problem of latency. The only reason you can cross the USA in 40ms and the Atlantic in 100 is high-speed backbones. ad-hoc networks are going to have terrible latency, on the order of seconds.
Combine thousands of crappy routers with thin pipes contantly re-negotiating in between yourself and your target node, and you get crap latency.
Second of all, you've got to supply the other aspect backbones supply: links between population centers. You don't think every hick in Nebraska and every desert dweller in New Mexico is gonna contribute to this, do you?
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
OK, No free long distance (problems crossing empty spaces).
OK, we need backbones.
I have very little problem with those guys. I have a big problem with the last mile companies, cable and telephone (esp. Verizon).
Is there a way to just bypass them?
What I want is a global extremely-high-speed ad-hoc wireless data & voice network, where the only entry cost is a mobile phone (or newtork card or whatever)
And what I want is a pony.
I wanna newtork card too!!!!!
Uhm, whats that do?
This question is quasi-Marxist and stupid on a number of levels, but let's give it the benefit of the doubt.
What we are talking about here is totally decentralizing the internet, which isn't a bad idea, at least in theory. There would be no ISPs or backbones to go down, so the system would be pretty damn robust. However, there are a couple of conditions that have to be met, which make the solution in many ways worse than the problem.
In order for this to work, the following situation must exist:
1. Bandwith of each node is exponentially greater than the amount of data to be sent, on average. In other words, since Farmer John's wi-fi card is going to be called upon to link Baltimore to Philadelphia, it's going to have to be hugely, gigantically fast.
2. Power of each node is exponentially greater than the distance to be covered requires, on average. See above.
So an ad-hoc, dynamic system can only work if each node has a huge amount of bandwith and power to throw around, which will be wasted in 99% of cases. The current hierarchial system is advantageous because it lessens the requirements on most nodes and allocates bandwith to the links that need it.
We don't need no stinking Telcos (and ISPs)? We're doing just fine witho^ÏÆ'©âcgs7ww8
+++
NO CARRIER
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
If metropolitan areas were linked by a peer system - where the "price" of having a telephone or a being able to view the popular media of that culture (in whatever form, whether written or not) were to buy a box for a couple hundred bucks and pay the energy bill on its use, then that would become the fair unit of exchange. We would no longer value "bandwidth" because it would no longer be a limited resource (just like the printing press - duh). And if these metro areas wanted to communicate with other areas at higher speed, they could pool resources (ie taxes) to a national agency that would maintain such a high speed infrastructure for their use.
Of course, that would put the individual metro areas at the mercy of this national organization - not a good thing. So the sensible thing would be to contract with many providers and let them compete with one another for their share of that aggregated bandwidth.
Which is really pretty much what we have - or could have - right now. Nothing at all preventing you from forming a community network and accepting a monthly fee to pool for the connection to the world. Individuals could even participate for free in the local community (ie local phone service and local TV) for nothing, but would contribute to the pool if they wanted to access the greater network.
What's most limiting this right now is the lack of standardized hardware that people feel comfortable with - ie a telephone, a radio receiver, a TV set. If we could buy an 802.xxx telephone at wal-mart for twenty bucks, or a radio, or a completely plug and play box that could act as a bridge to our existing telephones and TVs, then such community networks would likely explode in number.
Or perhaps I should say when and will...
Infrastructure costs money. It's easy to say "Let's just stick a bunch of wireless radios all over the world", but it's much more difficult to implement. Who is going to foot the costs of the radios, leasing land or roof space, maintaining connections, etc. etc.
This question has most definately come from someone with end-user only experience. Anyone who actually "makes the wires work" knows it isn't easy, and it's certainly not cheap. This is just the unchecked imagination of an idealistic DSL user fed up with paying for services. You don't get your electricity, water, gas, cable, or any of the other utilities free, why should communication services be any different?
A more reasonable question would be, why are we still paying such high prices for these services. The answer to that, however, is simple. The public infrastructure is owned by government sponsored monopolies.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
Let me put it to you this way.
I'll set you loose in the Library of Congress. We will remove the Card Catalog, and all indicative signs.
You find a single book that I specify.
I'll come back and check on you in three years.
Routing is an art. Do not assume you can just magically pull it out of your ass. That IP is as scalable and capable as it is is truely impressive.
As to your dreams, there is nothing wrong with thinking aout of the box. Things like the internet got started as little projects like ARPAnet. But your optimisim leaves something to be desired, come back when you can get this working on even a dense city level.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
I think possible in the future some scheme like this could be possible, but probably not anytime soon. The main problem that I see is the massive amounts of traffic each node(cell phone, NIC, etc.) would need to receive and process. Take for instance, If I initiate a phone call to someone else, assuming that their phone is mobile, I have no Idea where they might be, so I have to broadcast to every device near me hoping that it can route. It in turn must then broadcast to everyone it is next to, and so forth. You can see that the number of packets present in the system gets exponentially big from just this one packet. Now imagine that that you are the receiving handset. You may receive millions of the same packet from various sources around the world as the packet was passed around trying to find you. Esentially every packet in the system would have to be passed around to nearly everyone else. You could potentially get around this by "checking in" to a central server somewhere and tell it your present location. Then you could find an optimal path to pass the packets in the right direction always to eliminate most excess packets. The problem is that then you are talking about some sort of Telco or ISP again.
Ummmmmm. No. You're talking out of your ass.
And there's an obvious metaphor that's been with us for years: The highway system. In most of the world, it is "free", and all you have to buy out of your own money is a vehicle.
Its not free at all. It's existence might be 'free' in the sense that it came out of your taxes, but in most of the developed world you need to pay extra to use it. In the UK its Road Tax, in the US its a tax on your licence plates (i think, I'm not 100% about how US road tax works). You also pay taxes on the gas you use to run your car. So lets say that you're paying $150 a year in road taxes and petrol taxes. Wait! Thats almost the same as you would pay each year for dial-up access. Hardly free is it.
In all parts of the world, bandwidth is legally "public" property, i.e., owned by the government.
Do you actually know what bandwidth is? Bandwidth is a technical term which has come into common usage to mean the amount of data that can be transmitted over a communications channel in a set period of time. Its impossible to 'own' bandwidth - it isn't a real thing.
I think what you actually meant was radio spectrum. However, radio spectrum is less dominated by comercial interests than it is by military interests. So I guess the publics (goverments) 'property' is being used by the goverment (BTW there are plans to more some of the military spectrums around to make room for more unlicenced bands like are used for Wi-Fi).
A company spending millions of dollars laying fibre and installing equipment doesn't use up bandwidth, nor does it use up the public radio spectrum.
There is one very very big problem with this whole idea anyway. Bandwidth saturation. Since bandwidth is a function of the transmission method and medium, any given medium has an upper limit on its bandwidth. In the case of wireless transmitions its been shown that with the commonly available technologies we have at current (various Wi-Fi forms) it isn't very hard to saturate the available bandwidth. This is why you need those very very expensive fibre links with all the high speed switching equipment, along with all their expensive upkeep. Unless there is suddenly a cheap way to get around that then the question at the top was written by someone who was smoking crack.
BTW - given the inefficiency of a goverment, especially when it comes to contractors to the goverment, I reckon that we're getting our internet connections far cheaper now than if the gov. was to take over....
we have a network were
1) you use everyone else's excess capacity
2) you don't pay for your use, and you don't get a surcharge if you use a lot
3) there is noone to control "goalkeepers" to prevent you from being flooded by the network in any way not thought of by the initial protocol designers
4) the use of this network is not subject to restrictions of political speech
so
a) this network is spammer haven
b) DOS DDOS and other floods are to be expected
c) you don't have any "point of contact" to reach in case the network is flooding you, just buy a new card
d) use of the network during an election can break democracy through creative flooding, if enough people have it
Have I summarized it correctly?
Where you can always count on the flames being modded up to Insightful...
Anyways, sure the original post was a bit off I think, but it was a perfectly legitimate "what-if" in my mind, no need to flame him all to hell for posing the question. How it got included in the day's headlines I'm not sure, but I would seriously doubt nobody in the studio audience here has pondered a similar idea. No need to flame him for asking a question and trying to start a discussion. Uh oh, I feel warm already....FLAMES AWAY!
As far as my thoughts on the subject...I don't think it would work technologically. I think the political barriers would be IMMENSE (ie: who would govern what is 'right and decent' to allow through the 'network', normal political BS that goes on anyway and would be hugely amplified by this type of thing), and I don't know if people would be ready for it (I mean really, do you really want everyone in the world bouncing through your computer to get their kiddie pron? Do you want to be held legally responsible if they do, because you know somehow a government would make you be held liable for what users access through your hops?)
Oh well, flame away, this probably isn't that useful a post on this thread, but mainly because I have to pee and am trying to be brief.
"But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong" - Dennis Miller
Okay, I'll bite.
A free wireless network isn't happening anytime soon, for reasons mentioned by.. everybody. I'd like to also pull attention to the routing problem, which is just as big (larger?) than the huge-gap problem.
The best solution is not getting rid of infrastucture, but making it invisiable and if not free.. very close to that and with hidden costs. Call it Iridium2.
Assume the following technological advances, none which are fundemental breakthorughs (a la telepathy and anti-grav):
- cheap hardware
- cheap space launch
- incredible wireless bandwidth (compression, or other methods)
- incredible wireless range from improved antennae, etc.
Have the government(s) launch a shell of uber bandwidth sats. Ignore the concentration of power we just gave big brother. Assume that the gov gives universal free access and no one notices the additional $5 on their tax bill. (precedents: GPS nav system; the internet).
Now we have routable, free internet and phone for everyone with no coverage gaps and no ugly wires. The costs are dispersed/hidden and maintainance is low. But its highly centralized and control is possible. Pick one.
- Wifi becomes really really fast
- Long-range Wifi becomes really cheap
- All Wifi stations are connected on a huge Mesh network
- Everything is encrypted and signed
- Bandwidth and memory are so abundant that keeping a list of all nodes and routes on this huge network becomes easy
- Batteries get replaced by hydrogen power cells which promise a theoretical 100-fold improvement over batteries
- Camera's get really small
- retina-laser-projection HUD displays are default in glasses
- You control what you do or who you communicate to by looking at your HUD (that's also possible already)
It's inevitable - probably during our lifetime we'll be wiressly connected just about everywhere while being able to talk to everybody for free and sending high resolution life-video from just about everywhere to just about everywhere. Control TV's, stereo's, lights and microwaves wirelessly with your eye-movements. Work on the beach lying in the sun on your back. But your head's in the office/school. Or in the cinema:) And ordering a drink is a matter of seconds.But there's more:
- Cam, HUD and videofilters will make the sun shine everywhere and you can be in any possible virtual room you want together with all your friends
- Face-recognition will bring up names next to people while they automatically send you their business card, blink once to talk - even if the other person is pretty far away
- Zooming is default on all glasses
IMHO all this is just a matter of time - all basic technologies exist and everything's getting faster, cheaper, smaller, wider...0x or or snor perron?!
Who defines free and open? All the companies that provide backbone data service are (to my knowledge) publically held companies; they are subject to regulation from the FCC and the federal government. They aren't "publically unaccountable". And, all-in-all, they do a fairly good job of moving bits from place to place. Why should we induce the inherent inefficiencies of a government buracracy in to this equation? There are already publically accessable computers available for those who can't afford internet access -- go to virtually any public library in the country; the government provides special funds for computers with Internet access (encumbered by restrictions, true, but funds are still provided). As far as I'm concerned, this is enough "information infrastructure" already.
reading the responses here is so depressing! you pepole have no vision! this idea is largely possible, we just have to do it. don't wait for the telcos to make a high speed network in your neighborhood or apartment building. DO IT YOURSELF. NOW.
1. create a high speed ad-hoc network covering say 100 households
2. create a high speed connection to a neighboring community who has done similar.
3. repeat
stir in Internet connections via radio or fiber as needed.
and while you are at it, get some good bandwidth back from the military (through government lobbying).
no really, we can have free high speed internet access. i give my neighbors free access through a wireless router.
it happens gradually.
fear is the mind killer
Well, here are some ideas about what you would need to make this work and to deal with the problems.
Problem 1: Freeloaders. Well, you could design a tit-for-tat protocol where you never rebroadcast packets from a freeloader. Think Bittorrent, where if you don't share, you don't get good download badnwidth. The game-theoretic knowledge is there to design an ad hoc protocol where the Nash equilibrium behavior is to not freeload.
Problem 2: Long Hops. OK, so long distance pipes cost money. And they won't go away soon, because some, posibly large, fraction of traffic needs them. So let the operators of the pipes charge tolls. You could have a whole ad hoc marketplace where some people let you use their hardware for free, and others charge. You tell your computer how much money and what QoS you want, and it tries to route effectively.
There are problems here, of course. One is how to establish trust -- how to do billing in an anonymous ad hoc system? Some sort of self-signed certs might be made to work... or maybe we'd need a palladium-ish technology? Either of these solutions can also help with the problem of needing end-to-end encryption on everything.
So there. I've thrown out some solutions. They may have problems, but at least its a start, instead of grousing about the original question.
Individuals, with no wires or terribly sophisticated equipment, have been able to broadcast voice across the world for decades using ham radio, and digital has proven to be a hell of a lot more efficient than voice. Look at what has been achieved in the way of wireless just using scraps of some of the worst spectrum, the unregulated dregs. Given the right protocols to avoid saturation, along with deregulation of the airwaves, there should be no problem implementing such a system with minimal hops.
The areas Iâ(TM)d say were most relevant to the problem would be first, achieving enough processing power in the devices to deal with the fact that they would be basically analysing the entire spectrum all the time looking for relevant broadcasts. Secondly, achieving enough power storage efficiency to run the thing portably, and third, more precise emitters and sensitive receivers to allow increased signal granularity and give the protocols something to work with.
We could probably make a pretty good go at such a setup now, if the airwaves werenâ(TM)t so thoroughly regulated. But don't expect it to come from any of the existing commercial entities.... they'd probably have you shot if they thought you could make it work.
<rant> Oh, and a big fuck you to the multitude of rabid capitalists who think thereâ(TM)s something inherently wrong with not wanting to pay for stuff. You can take your American Dream, consumer culture, built-in obsolescence, slave to the machine, bleached pop culture ideas and go fucking rot. Itâ(TM)s idiots with a attitudes like yours that make it possible for someone to sell boxes of fucking diapers to clean your floor with when a fucking mop will do. You are the modern day serf... go back to your damned cubicle and shut up.</rant>
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Hmmmm.. This sounds interesting. So you want a communications network that doesn't actually require an infrastructure? If there's any additional equipment required, you'll always have to have someone to pay for it. Your phone bill goes to your telco's costs, like paying for the wires, hardware, physical locations, staff, etc, etc, etc...
:) You're limited to being within range of their AP's though.
I like the idea of the wireless peer networking idea.. If you're in range of other devices, you can relay through them. There was a PDA out a year or two ago targeted towards school kids that could do that. But it was limited to about 100' range. I suppose it could be done with an ad-hoc network, but there are definate problems with it.. Like, what happens if you have too many people in the same place? What if you're the only link to the next network?
I'd definately not want to be the only point between two large groups.
But, it's not on "the" internet, unless there's a peering.. Peerings don't come free. Without a peering, you don't see the Internet.
Wireless, as it is, won't cut it. There are a few places in the world that would be obsticles to this, such as oceans (a subtle percentage of the earth's surface), and deserts.. I drove across I-10 not too long ago, and saw a whole lot of dirt and rocks, but had no signal on my phone, and no AM or FM reception. I know what I drove across (4 lanes of pavement 2000+ miles long) is a very small sample of what's out there. A boost in power could work, but it would also cause *LOTS* of interference. Imagine 10 people broadcasting at high power in the middle of the desert. They'd have no problems reaching each other.. Now imagine the same broadcast power in a "hyperdense" area. 83,000 people per square mile in New York.. That would be messy. Good thing cell phones are low power, and they have a lot of towers.
To get access *anywhere*, you'd need a more distributed method.. Iridium has a beautiful network of satellites, with both data and voice service, but you're going to have to pay for using it.. Someone paid a few dollars to get those satellites up there.
Until people are willing to do things for free, and receive things for free, you won't see free connectivity.. Now you're looking at a Star Trek Utopia that will never happen.
I for one, am willing to give my time, but it's going to take a lot more than the two of us, and someone's going to have to figure out where the equipment comes from to do something like this. You can just go war-driving, and find poorly configured access points, and do VoIP on those.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
The way I see this, is that he means that his computer is connected to all of those around him, they in turn are connected to all those around them, etc. Think about this for a minute. My computer is 1 km away from yours, and we can connect to one another wirelessly, but you can't reach a computer 2 km away. However I can reach that computer, and relay the information back to you.
A lot of the posters here have got it in their heads that "it can't work without internet access." Don't they realise that this is a form of internet access? Instead of the commercial internet, we could end up having a world wide INTRAnet arrangement.
Someone said "what if Bob went away and took his computer with him, Susan turned hers off and mine is broken... the network would fail." I disagree on this point. You are looking at the problem of A connects to B connects to C, etc. Think a little bit outside the square and create an actual WEB (after all that is what it is, isn't it.... World Wide Web) Why can't A connect to B, C, D, E, F. Then B could connect to A, C, E, G, H. Now for A to connect to H, the packets must go via B, but D is also connected to H, therefore they can go via D. Think of an actual spider web where every computer is connected to hundreds or thousands around it.
Naturally there are some problems which have been brought up, namely accessing the other continents, but he was also talking about the future. In time that will be no problem. Think about how far we have come.
But who knows... prehaps I am dreaming... but remember this, there is nothing that man can dream that he cannot create/do
I am not stubborn. I am right!
Clearly RFC 1149 would be the best for this.
In Australia at least, anyone wanting to be considered eligble under the law as a telco provider needs to be able to guarantee connection for phone calls to emergency services.
I know this is has presented itself for wireless networks seeking official blessing and the freedom to carry certain kinds of traffic legally.
Generally, ad-hoc networks can't (at least not without major investment) deliver this fundamental.
I for one think this requirement is a good reason to keep telcos - Sorry, no route to host errors when you need an ambulance would not be fun.
I ask a simple question in the hopes of stimulating some debate. You people are so closed minded. Well, you live an learn. You won't be hearing more from me on slashdot after this post. (are those cheers I hear?!)
Thank you to everyone who answered with reasonable answers either for or against. Before I go I'll answer some of the points people raised.
Land Lines & Infrastructure
I am talking about a wireless network with no central infrastructure, no land lines, just peer devices.
The initial costs of a centralised netowrk are huge. Do you think that operators are going to continue to roll out huge networks after the fiasco that was 3G? (and regular broadband/cable TV in many areas). I think we'll wait a long time before we see those kind of investment by any central organisation again.
The total costs of a distributed network are even more huge. However the cost is spread among whoever wants to pay for their devices. See that FAX story on slashdot from a while ago for an analogy.
Free as in ... peer?
I don't want the infrastructure or services I need for free.
I am not a freeloader or pirate. I am quite willing to pay for my equipment. I just want it to be subscriptionless. The cost of the network is built into the the device and whatever it costs in electricity (at least until I fine tune the cold fusion process & matter replicator that I've been working on that is). If this means $50bn devices as someone mentioned, then so be it ;) Technology prices come down all the time though. How much is an ethernet card today compared to when it first arrived?
Let me ask a question, do you pay a subscription for a bluetooth PAN? For WiFi in your home? Why not? Are you ripping someone off by not doing so? Why not extend the metaphor to communities, or towns, or cities, or the world? I am quite aware that there are problems of scale and many others which was why I asked the question. I wanted to see what you all thought could be potential solutions. Seems you'd mostly prefer to take cheap shots or try to look cool or whatever.
I don't expect to connect to existing networks like the internet, GSM, POTS etc. for free. They are largely owned by private operators and if you want to connect to them they are going to charge you for that privelege. However if you have a no-subscription network out there then maybe web sites, and all those other services that appear on communication networks would start to appear on it, or even migrate exclusively to it.
Spectrum saturation & interference
I don't know enough about about spectrum to answer this myself, so I'll point you at this GnuRadio: MeshNetworks and also this slashdot story The Myth of Radio Spectrum Interference which was featured on slashdot a while ago, and ask it it just BS? They seem to me to be saying that the more nodes in a wireless network, the greater the bandwidth.
Battery life:
This is a problem that is going to take a long time to solve unless there are some major breakthroughs in battery technology. I have no suggestions.
Routing:
Difficult? For sure, but impossible?
You don't have to use IP you know. It's not the internet. I think that it is going to be possible for devices to route to others. I'm not saying it's easy but surely not impossible to at least get a "good enough" algorighm?
I recall reading somewhere about a routing algorithm that was modeled on ant's behaviour to achieve good enough shortest path finding. Is there no scope within this or other areas of research to make advances? Here's a link to one similar paper I found now just to proove I'm not hallucinating: http://www.computer.org/proceedings/icppw/1680/168 00079abs.htm . Use g
Great Question. As I said above Boo-Hiss to the early responses and moderation. I'll try a serious answer.
The technological barriers are:
1) Wireless equipment cost -- it has to come down by a factor of 10 or 20 so that ordinary people can afford to solve their own personal connectivity problems by direct personal action. The range and bandwidth per dollar have to imporve. Mass production of cheep roof-based antenae and other WiFi gear needs to happen. When you can get a 1 mile range for $30, this will take off.
2) Routing protocols -- TCP/IP probably wont work because there will be too many hops and it is too hard to administrate. The network topology will be an order of magnitude more complicated. TCP/IP doesn't deal well with ad-hoc roaming connectivity. Rest assured some really smart people are working on these problems.
3) Making the technology user-friendly and turnkey. Joe sixpack isn't going to want to look at a linux prompt to administrate his peer-to-peer router.
4) New application protocols -- if you throw out TCP/IP to deal with adhoc roaming P2P, you have to rethink everything that rides on top of it: DNS, EMAIL, HTTP, etc... Consider something as simple as establishing your default gateway. What if it wanders out of range?
The geographic isolation problem is directly a function of cost, range, and popularity. Keep in mind that in rural settings, people generally don't have cable or DSL anyway, so the pressure is even greater to find a high bandwidth solution. People were willing to put antenaes on their roofs to get TV -- I'd exect they'd do it for free broadband too. It's a simple matter of making it affordable to use repeaters when necessary.
The political barriers are IMHO the most likely to kill this. AT&T, Sprint, WorldCom etc simply don't want people to obsolete them. You think the RIAA and MPAA are a formidable lobby? Try the telcos. They would attack the uncontrollability of such networks. How do you stop child porn on a P2P wireless network? How do you stop copyright infringement? How do you wiretap terrorists and organized crime when there are no wires?
The economic barriers for deployment are pretty straight forward: equipment cost, range, and bandwidth. But the real question is how do you deal with malicious behavior by network participants? I imagine that trust networks problems have to be solved. How do you avoid the tradgedy of the commons (ie bandwidth hogs). Spam will still be a problem.
Good management and policy by the FCC would allow in the near future many solutions.
However, donâ(TM)t expect â¦, do expect anti-competitive freq-hogging by telcos to keep control of local market.
In the near future, it should be possible to provide 100% wireless voice, data, TV, ⦠multiple carriers/providers over the most populated areas. Allowing the customers to swap (totally, 100%) providers/services for QoS or cost reasons. I look forward to getting rid of the wires in the house and the local-bell. The USA Government and businesses are not in the lead on these technology sectors.
PLEASE, check out these technology concepts: http://www.airship.com
REVOLUTIONARY AEROSPACE SOLUTIONS FOR TRANSPORT AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS IN THE 21ST CENTURY
There are other companies around the world (Europe) moving in this direction.
Take a look at http://www.cargolifter.com/2002/repository/splash_ e.html
Take a look at http://www.aiaa.org/images/about/01_TC_Highlights/ aiaa-lta.pdf
Take a look at http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/systems/haa.h tm
OldHawk777
Reality is a self-induced hallucination.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?