How a DIY Network Plans To Subvert Time Warner Cable's NYC Internet Monopoly (vice.com)

Jason Koebler writes: Toppling a telecom monopoly is the dream of many Americans, but the folks at NYC Mesh are actually doing something about it. On any given weekend, Brian Hall and his fellow organizers can be found around the city, installing directional Wi-Fi routers on rooftops. Anyone in the city who lives near another person on the network is welcome to join, and NYC Mesh volunteers will help you install a rooftop router. The network is still small, but it has partnered with two internet exchanges to install "super nodes" that have a range of several miles and are connected directly to the backbone of the internet.

Comments

Re:sounds good on paper

[HiThere]

That's not necessarily true if you're using directional antennas to partition the mesh. For that matter, if you're using directional antennas you could probably get away with infra-red links, which have a huge potential bandwidth. Doesn't sound like they're doing anything that fancy, though. Sounds more like a cellular system with a mesh local connection, which, which a small enough cell, could be done with next to no power so you wouldn't have a problem with overloading.

Yeah, if they were using a simple mesh network they could easily get overfilled, but then they wouldn't be using directional antennas, so that's not what they're doing.