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

Survival of the bribiest.

[Tablizer]

Indeed. A lot of regulation out there is NOT socialists per se trying to control things, but rather crony capitalism whereby fat cats (legally) bribe laws into place to keep small cats out of the market.

Socialists then get all the blame.

I'm happy someone is trying to stick it to a big telecom. Big telecoms have turned me grayer than Bernie Sanders over the years. They can die an ugly painful death along with Microsoft, Oracle, and SCO. I wish this new endeavor luck and success.
     

TWC will try

[Varenthos]

I guarantee that TWC will do anything and everything in their power to stop this, slow down the implementation process, or just make their lives as difficult as possible. Right on down to standing on the steps of city hall holding their breath.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for what these people are doing. I just can't see TWC letting this go without a fight, or at least a temper tantrum.

Community Wireless Networks

[Badooleoo]

Air-Stream in South Australia have been doing this successfully for a long time and is one of the largest wireless community networks in the world.

http://air-stream.org/

Also WACAN in Western Australia is doing well.

http://www.wacan.asn.au/

Re:sounds good on paper

[geoskd]

In a mesh, more nodes = more paths.

It's also wireless, which means that more nodes = more total traffic one the limited bandwidth available. Doccis has the same limitation, but when you add a router to a congested wifi location, the congestion gets worse, not better. When you add routers to Doccis, the individual congestion clears up.

Mesh networks work reasonably well up to about 1000 - 2000 nodes per square mile. Above that, performance drops as a function of n*log(n). By the time you reach 10,000 nodes per square mile, performance on 802.11n drops to less average bandwidth than old school DSL. at 20,000 nodes per square mile, bandwidth has dropped to dialup speeds. New york city (including the boroughs) has over 25,000 residents per square mile. That means that the Mesh network cant handle more than 10% of the population before performance begins to drop under ideal conditions. Under real world conditions, It is likely to be half that, and will get worse over time as more and more bandwidth pollution is brought into service in the form of the IoT. The part that people don't understand about mesh networks, is that even with huge numbers of gateway routers, once more than a dozen nodes are within reach of each other, their traffic starts interfering with each other significantly due to multiple transmission collisions. Directional antennas help a little, but not nearly enough, especially when there are vastly more sources of wifi that are not part of the mesh that inject pockets of congestion and provide no services to the mesh (other peoples wifi routers who are time warner customers for example).

Mesh networks have their uses, but the operating envelope is a relatively narrow band of opportunity, which will not allow them to "take the city by storm".