Slashdot Mirror
Motherboard and VICE Are Building a Community Internet Network (vice.com)
In order to preserve net neutrality and the free and open internet, we must end our reliance on monopolistic corporations and build something fundamentally different: internet infrastructure that is locally owned and operated and is dedicated to serving the people who connect to it, writes Jason Koebler, editor-in-chief of Vice's Motherboard news outlet. He writes: The good news is a better internet infrastructure is possible: Small communities, nonprofits, and startup companies around the United States have built networks that rival those built by big companies. Because these networks are built to serve their communities rather than their owners, they are privacy-focused and respect net neutrality ideals. These networks are proofs-of-concept around the country that a better internet is possible. This week, Motherboard and VICE Media are committing to be part of the change we'd like to see. We will build a community network based at our Brooklyn headquarters that will provide internet connections for our neighborhood. We will also connect to the broader NYC Mesh network in order to strengthen a community network that has already decided the status quo isn't good enough. We are in the very early stages of this process and have begun considering dark fiber to light up, hardware to use, and organizations to work with, support, and learn from. To be clear and to answer a few questions I've gotten: This network will be connected to the real internet and will be backed by fiber from an internet exchange. It will not rely on a traditional ISP.
It will be provided over a community run network.
No, you dimwit. Unused fiber is dark fiber .
#DeleteFacebook
I think what they are saying is that they are going to connect to the internet via the kind of provider that just sells you a fat pipe to the internet and doesn't care what you do with it unless what you are doing is harmful to their network or unless they are required to care by legislation, regulations or a court of law. The kind of provider that doesn't have a pay TV network (cable, fiber or otherwise) to protect.
In all of the blogs, ./ stories and articles that I've read regarding Net Neutrality, I have yet to hear anyone speak about network peering. Here's a scenario: Your ISP is BigCo-A, and the server you want to access is using BigCo-C. BigCo-A and BigCo-C are not directly connected but use BigCo-B as a common peer (to bridge the network gaps). If BigCo-A and BigCo-C decide not to throttle anything, but BigCo-B does, then all that traffic will be throttled regardless of who your ISP is or the ISP of the server host.
ISP are really entrenched, even Google with all of its unlit fiber failed to get last mile. These clowns have no chance.
People have to remember that what the "Internet" is, is a collection of privately owned networks connected by mutual free data exchange agreement or by paid agreement. So, There is nothing stopping something like this from existing. The "Internet" will exist as long as people with their own networks want to connect to others. I wholly support this sort of thing. At the same time, there is nothing WRONG (in theory) with two private networks paying each other for access to the other. We get into trouble when the end consumer has no real choice in the marketplace to choose which company best serves their needs. Net neutrality would not be an issue if we had a REAL competitive marketplace for the consumer at the last mile. If we had THAT then I could simply choose the ISP that has the least restrictive network rules. As it is now, most people have at most 2 options and in many places just 1.
This being Motherboard/VICE, will they truly provide unfettered access to a free and open Internet, or will they cave under pressure and block communications that their politics lead them to believe should be blocked? How will they respond when users pirate content? Share child porn? Or even just visit alt-right websites? I don't trust them, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong about that.
No, genius, net neutrality has zero to do with ISP competition and doesn't govern it in any way. It's about business weasels using traffic prioritization to juice their customers (among other things).
That's nice.
But how, exactly, do these bastions of Bias-Free Internet propose to carry their customers traffic to and from each other, much less the world-at-large that everyone want to connect to?
That's right, through the backbones of those Other players. You know, the ones who are busily writing the new best-seller, "How to Throttle for Fun and Profit".
It's called a leased point to point circuit, and all those evil scary ISP's already sell those services. That's how all those little companies the article talks about haul their data around.
Yes, this is true, but this way a bunch of people only have to buy one big fat connection with one big fat wallet, which will carry some serious clout when negotiating the price. This way the buyer prevails, or at least there is a balance of power. "Socialism" from the bottom up.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It would be interesting to try community fiber, 1Gbps symmetric broadband, for a low monthly cost maybe $30-$40 per month per household.
There's all this "dark fiber" that the federal government subsidized just sitting under our streets. If communities were able to connect the last mile to all that fiber we could bypass the telecoms entirely.
You'd basically pay nothing for internet access then pay for TV and streaming services. Fuck verizon!
This Sig does not Exist.
Meshing does work, if:
1. All your nodes are of the same brand, model, and revision.
2. If that particular implementation of the Atheros chip or whatever actually works fine with meshing
3. The driver support for that particular embedded linux you want to use is good
4. You are willing to accept speeds in the "single digits" of megabits even with "single digits" of users.
Meshing will obviously never work even closely as good as a 1300mbit AC device at 5Ghz in the same room. But that's what people tend to benchmark it against.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Socialism" from the bottom up.
If by that you mean free market negociation then yes.... On subject: This exact thing happend years ago in our country (Eastern Eu), which led to very good connection speeds. Unfortunately the big ISPs bought the smaller networks but the net effect is that the high speeds became standard as consumers were demanding them. This is real world what happend, not some theory.
How many streaming Netflix boxes can this proposed 'mesh' or peer-to-peer Network support simultaneously?
These kids have their panties in a wad because they are afraid an ISP might choose to throttle a handful of websites, so their answer is to implement an alternative mesh/peer-to-peer Network that because of it's inherent design effectively throttles ALL traffic?
Brilliant! That will show them what's possible when the 'community' comes together.
Ken
It's like having a BBS with a bridge to the Internet (emails, Fidonet, ...) like we did in the 90's. :)
Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
There always seems to be a rather conservative upper limit to the intelligence of shills...
No, not sneaking around. These guys:
https://stealth.net/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Local, and they've been putting their own fiber in the ground.
They should consider partnering, if this is more than a publicity stunt.
Disclosure: I have done business with Stealth in the past.
Did not know the Internet has only been around for 17 years. TIL. /s
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
So, because there are a limited number of "wired" broadband ISPs in a community, we need to build a "wireless" ISP, ignoring all the wireless ISP that already serve the area?
Communities want prices lower than $10 per GB. From a document published by a nationwide wireless ISP describing its home Internet service: "Overage is billed at $10 for each additional 1GB." In the age of multi-gigabyte operating system updates and movie and game downloads, $10 per GB is seen as prohibitive for a household's primary information and entertainment connection.
Eliminating regulations + Free market + Existing and FutureTechnologies will continue to assure good internet service over time because that's what the public wants and that is what they will pay for. Assuming that Net Neutrality provides good internet is insane. Go read up on Comcast's java injections into your web sessions - they did this during net neutrality. Saying Vice is intelligent is laughable. I've seen many of their attempts at journalism and their conjecture is as idiotic as Don Lemon frolicking with Wolf Blitzer in a pile of Clinton cash. That reminds me... I need to get back to calculating my upcoming tax rebates and stock gains. What a great time to be alive.
The difference is that the post office can't refuse to sell you priority mail services or deliver your mail if you pay. Everyone has access to them if they are willing to pay. Once NN is repealed you can say good bye to chunks of the Internet as your local ISP will block them.
You understand that there are no "tax rebates" in the GOP tax bill, don't you?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Except this is community based. So when you live downtown and a free or near cost wifi opens up because someone was nice, there really won't be much the ISPs can do about it. They could try to deny connections to the people but if the AP goes to a VPN and they run a an internal tor routing node on the connection it would be pretty hard to figure out who is running these things for awhile.
Once people start to use them and like them, it'll be hard to put that genie back in the bottle. Remember back when ISPs wanted you to pay extra for each computer you had on the internet? Lol.
...GOP wants less government generally.
So to "prove those dirty Republicans wrong", 'populist' web groups create a functional substitute ... that doesn't require government to run it or police it.
Hm, I guess that'll show 'em, right?
-Styopa
Once these sorts of networks let you get talk radio over IP nearly for free will you admit liberals are better a solid 70% of the time?
It depends on the provider. Eventually dailystormer will find a way to host itself p2p or out of hundreds of neighborhood providers, find one that tolerates them. I'm no fan of daily stormer but according to weev the biggest issue is actually not hosting. The biggest issue is that nazis don't have enough talent to run websites at scale and the few of them that can get ran ragged.
Getting your website shut down by your hoster is just the final straw that makes these guys give up and get a new hobby.
Hey friend care to post your regular slashdot username that you totally have so we can educate you on the history of the internet?
The truth is that the internet was highly highly regulated for 20 years until some liberal fuck ruined it all by helping you get on.
Fucking liberals.
Forget the blackjack!
Basically what this article is saying is that Motherboard and Vice have decided to start an ISP to compete with other ISPs.
So, exactly what anyone in favor of repealing the FCC rules would have suggested they do and other than the attempt at publicity for their ISP using political buzzwords, not something which relates in any way to FCC Title II regulations.
The worst part is the authors of the article don't even seem to realize what an ISP actually is and that what they're doing is creating one. That doesn't bode well for their ability to run one long-term.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
since they're naming the guide they're writing "Motherboard Guide to Building an ISP" i think they realize it better than you think.
I truly hope you're right, my friend. I suspect, though, that the laws written to kill this off will be more akin to those state laws crafted to keep Tesla out of the market, or drug laws allowing the police incredibly wide discretion to stomp on Americans' freedom in the name of "save the children and kittens".
There's rarely been a time when I wanted so much to be wrong.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
And right below the dent in the mattress being made by your daughter. (snicker)
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
There is nothing wrong with people using their government to acquire clout in the free market. In fact, it's only way they can. They don't have the capital needed to play the way the super rich do.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
There's rarely been a time when I wanted so much to be wrong.
Well remember this when some kook in your city starts talking about public or shared wifi. Volunteer.
I'm not sure it's technically socialism, if it's voluntary. Depends on the definition chosen, and I don't argue definitions.
But it's definitely libertarianism.
There's room for (voluntary) socialism in a libertarian society. Or even a partially libertarian society that allows such libertarian institutions.
Allows them so far, anyway.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Is a government of the majority "voluntary"?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The article is a bit clueless. Comcast and AT&T have quietly bought out the internet backbone companies that actually run the internet. With acquisitions and buy outs; the duopoly of Comcast and AT&T have acquired a majority of the ISP companies that provide connection to the internet for most of the U.S.
Now, they have won a victory in a battle that they have been playing since the mid 1990s making it lawful for an ISP to edit, throttle, and control what their customers can do on the internet.
Even if you can get the capitol to create a new small local ISP company; it is now legal for the duopoly who runs the internet backbone to muck with the ability of a new service provider to provide service. The FTC fines if they are caught are inconsequential compared to the benefits of proving only the big boys can play here.
The big telecom companies first got net neutrality put in as a regulation (1996) by being greedy when they finally got into the internet business. The repeated court challenges to net neutrality got it put into a long winded regulation in 2015. By bribing or bullshitting their way into getting the regulation of the internet tossed out; Comcast and AT&T are daring the public to push for making net neutrality a law instead of a regulation.
We have been dared. Shall we take up the dare and write our Congressional representatives? This might just be one issue that Democrat, Republican, and Libertarian can agree on; giving control of the internet in the U.S. to a corporate Duopoly.
A> Control of the majority of internet access (ISPs)
B> Between the two companies; owning all the backbone provider companies.
That sure sounds like a cartel of two having a monopoly or damned close to me.
C> Can now legally throttle connection speeds, block content, sell information on use of the internet. Will they decline to profit from those, now legal, options?
NRRPT/RCT
You do realize that in many states it is now unlawful to set up a muni wifi?
The large ISPs have gotten court orders to shut down muni wifi as it is government directly competing with private business. Direct competition even if the ISP doesn't provide service to small town and rural areas.
That was one reason net neutrality, keeping an ISP out of personal business, was so necessary.
My personal experience with muni wifi is very very bad. When you fill wifi with inserted advertisements making reading anything with a web browser a frustrating exercise in clicking multiple windows closed with each paragraph it can be not worth the effort. When you load down a wifi access point with so much net nanny filters that "nail gun" gets blocked as a terrorist weapon; even checking prices at Home Depot. (Raspberries to the Virginia town I'm thinking of. Had to buy a molasses slow air-card to actually do any business across the net on that job.)
NRRPT/RCT
No.
If you and two muggers vote on who gets your wallet, majority rules. But the transfer of the wallet is hardly voluntary, unless these are the kind of muggers who take "no" for an answer.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Semantics.
It's more than semantics. There are nothing even resembling tax rebates in the GOP tax bill.
So if you're "calculating your upcoming tax rebates", I can help you out. Just put a big "0" on the line.
You are welcome on my lawn.