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Can Mesh Networks Save a Dying Web? (thenextweb.com)

From an anonymous reader: "The web is dying, but mesh networks could save it," writes open source hacker Andre Staltz. He warns that Facebook, Google, and Amazon plan to "grow beyond browsers, creating new virtual contexts where data is created and shared," and predicts the next wave of walled gardens will be a "social internet" bypassing the web altogether. "The Web may die like most other technologies do, simply by becoming less attractive than newer technologies."

He wants to build a mobile mesh web that works with or without internet access to reach the four billion people currently offline, adding that all the tools we need are already in our hands: smartphones, peer-to-peer protocols, and mesh networks. His vision? "Novel peer-to-peer protocols such as IPFS and Dat help replace HTTP and make the web a content-centered cyberspace... Browsers can be made to work like that, and although it's a small tweak to how the web works, it has massive effects on social structures in cyberspace... Now that we have experience with some of the intricacies of the social web, we can reinvent it to put people first without intermediate companies... We can actually beat the tech giants at this game by simply giving local and regional connectivity to people in developing countries. With mobile apps that are built mesh-first, the smartphones would make up self-organizing self-healing mobile ad-hoc networks... In internet-less regions, there is potential for scaling quickly, and through that, we can spawn a new industry around peer-to-peer wireless mesh networks."

He cites mega-projects "to rescue the web from the internet", which include progress on peer-to-peer and mesh networking protocols, followed by adoption on smartphones (and then a new wave of apps) -- plus a migration of existing web content to the new protocols, "to fix the overutilization of the wirenet and the underutilization of airnets, bringing balance to the wire-versus-air dichotomy, providing choice in how data should travel in each case...But it can only happen if the web takes a courageous step towards its next level."

124 of 201 comments (clear)

  1. The web is dead. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Best that you just accept it and move on.

    Wait. WTF? The web is dying???

    1. Re: The web is dead. by Boutzev · · Score: 2

      Actually it is you that misunderstood what he meant by saying that "the web is dying". He didn't imply that web usage is going down, but that the web (as a concept for sharing information on equal basis) is dying with all information being centralized in three large companies. In my opinion he is right. Now those companies will probably still be using the same web technologies as today (with future extensions) but it won't be the web we know - the web that provides free and equal access to information. He explains his reasoning pretty well in his article.

    2. Re:The web is dead. by multi+io · · Score: 1

      Fake news. Cancer is not infectious.

    3. Re: The web is dead. by Hylandr · · Score: 1

      *Whooosh*

      --
      ~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
    4. Re:The web is dead. by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Cancer is infectious.
      It is just so that for humans under nirmal conditions it is pretty difficult to infect each other.

      For Tasmanian devels it is rather easy to infect each other with 'face cancer', right now it looks like the whole populatin is killing each other by infecting each other with cancer.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  2. Andre whatever is dumb by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    his dumbass is mixing up layer 2 and layer 7

    news for nerds my ass, more like stories from idiot millienials

    1. Re: Andre whatever is dumb by gl4ss · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I was thinking more like wait what is this news and ideas from 2001 or whenever the fuck... ..ok dude, build it. build a version that works and moves info. and put some warez on it. see if it keeps working.

      mesh was all the rage at the dawn of wifi. turns out, it's not that easy to make it practical so that people would use it.

      also, yeah, it would be practical if the internet were dead. but it's not.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    2. Re:Andre whatever is dumb by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 1

      Pretty much, yes. The (alleged) problem is not access, but content and context.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    3. Re:Andre whatever is dumb by Scarred+Intellect · · Score: 1

      I was sure I was reading something from Wired magazine...the web is dying, so let's fix it by building the web...but somehow this isn't theirs...

    4. Re:Andre whatever is dumb by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      Maybe it's not Andre.

      Maybe it's Ayn Rand.

      In any case, it's horseshit.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    5. Re: Andre whatever is dumb by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      This.

      Mesh is goddam hard to do.

      And, in any case, anybody who thinks a mesh can't be monetized has the IQ of an artful deal-maker.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  3. Inversion by alternative_right · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The promise of the internet: decentralized information.

    The reality: 90% of the traffic goes to FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) monopolists.

    The only solution: get away from a single source of access, and to one where we can route around the herd and its chosen megacorps.

    1. Re:Inversion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      WTF AYFTA? They're only monopolists because people decide to use them. People can decide to route around them whenever they want to.

    2. Re:Inversion by cshark · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The promise of the internet: decentralized information.

      And it still is. The bigger problem is law, as a broad general topic, as it relates to the internet. The web used to be a wild frontier where anything goes. I've been working on it since the beginning, and more of that wild appeal is disappearing by the day. Monitoring by governments, likewise, is a concern.

      The reality: 90% of the traffic goes to FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) monopolists.

      So? Facebook, Google, and Apple don't really own anything. They aggregate content, and they're useful for that. Netflix drives video. They're only a major player because of the size of the files they move. Not because of the number of sessions they generate. Personally, I'm a lot more worried about corporations like Comcast, that hold their users essentially at gunpoint, while they make sure that there are no other options for access in the markets they work in.

      The only solution: get away from a single source of access, and to one where we can route around the herd and its chosen megacorps.

      The source of access is the isp. No two ways about it. Once online, people can choose to use facebook or netflix, or not. The ISP is non-negotiable. I honestly don't know if I want to live in a world where every app is OpenBizarre.

      There are serious drawbacks to a horizontal decentralization of the server infrastructure which are persistent no matter how you do it. If a website or profile is unpopular, it may be more difficult to access. If the profile or website is only online when a user is, then you've got issues. You could try to solve it by providing hosting services against the network, but then you're doing the same thing you were doing before.

      I don't think the web is going away anytime soon. Especially as app stores continue to lose traction. There's probably a better solution out there, but I don't think anyone's thought of it yet.

      --

      This signature has Super Cow Powers

    3. Re:Inversion by Dog-Cow · · Score: 2

      The Internet allows decentralized access to data. It promises nothing.

    4. Re:Inversion by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      The megaocorps now control search. They can derank any result for any party political reason they want.
      We need a new search engine that actually gets real results rather than filters the internet politically.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    5. Re:Inversion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      https://duckduckgo.com

      i've run into some less than legal searches that have zero results now on google. and i know it's not zero.

    6. Re:Inversion by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2

      Amazon provided the best price by dumping: they were mocked for 'making a loss on each sale but making it up in volume,' but that allowed them to become the go-to shop for entire categories of things for a lot of people. Now they're not always (or, in my experience, often) the best price, but they are the most convenient.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    7. Re:Inversion by Boutzev · · Score: 1

      For now.

    8. Re:Inversion by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 3, Funny

      The Internet allows decentralized access to data. It promises nothing.

      The Internet doesn't like to be anthropromorphized!

      --
      Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
    9. Re:Inversion by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Well,
      I notice people who do not even know what a 'web address' is.
      They type 'facebook' into the search/addeess field, ignore the auto completion of the browser', hit return and then click on the first search result to end up at facebook.com.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    10. Re:Inversion by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1
      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    11. Re:Inversion by jbmartin6 · · Score: 1

      I think there is sort of a Gresham's Law (bad money drives out the good) in play on the Internet. "Bad users drive out the good ones" or something like that. The early visions of the Internet as a democratizing global community are still in play to an extent, but the dreamers ignored the tragedy of the commons that is inevitable. I think a lot of people are withdrawing into closed systems because they do not want to deal with all the trolls and assorted other Internet beasties.

      --
      This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
    12. Re:Inversion by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Thats is great for privacy angel'o'sphere.
      The political deranking from the original search engine is still not avoided. The same selected results are just much more private.
      The world needs a real, new search engine again.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    13. Re:Inversion by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      I don't think the web is going away anytime soon. Especially as app stores continue to lose traction. There's probably a better solution out there, but I don't think anyone's thought of it yet.

      The Intertoobz is becoming mature. As much fun as it was back in the day - and damn, it sure was fun, those old days are gone.

      And the people who are still interested in tinkering with new technology are moving on. This leaves the toobz being the playground of smartphone addicts, Grandma, and The big corporate players.

      Mostly the toobz have become boring. I still come here to get interesting conversation, and I'm forced to use Facebook, but the web itself is only marginally interesting. We're moving on.

      In my own case, I've returned to an early love - RF. Software defined radio specifically, and weak signal modes. The software is still there of course, but the fun part is designing and building the equipment.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    14. Re:Inversion by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      If you organize the funding we can write on :)

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    15. Re:Inversion by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      The funding for a new search engine?
      The funding examine how an existing search engine does its human guided and automated deranking?
      Reverse engineer and correct for the political search results? What result deranked back to page 1000 is back in the top 10 results?
      Look at how search results got done in the past when the brand was growing and had to be still be accurate to gain marketshare.
      What happened when the deranking pushed results back.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    16. Re:Inversion by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Well,
      the deranking by google ,is part of your search history, location, language etc.
      The upranking (search completion suggestions) is partly references to actual news, I guess that isma tricky part.
      As we actually don't want unjustified deranking, who cares, how google does it?
      A simple, like/hate system would probably enough for the start.
      Frankly I would be more concerend about the actuall cost of holding the search indices etc. than about algorithms.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    17. Re:Inversion by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      The only solution: get away from a single source of access, and to one where we can route around the herd and its chosen megacorps.

      Money has an eyeball radar. There is no escaping it.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    18. Re:Inversion by cshark · · Score: 1

      The Intertoobz is becoming mature. As much fun as it was back in the day - and damn, it sure was fun, those old days are gone.

      And the people who are still interested in tinkering with new technology are moving on. This leaves the toobz being the playground of smartphone addicts, Grandma, and The big corporate players.

      Cool. I've got nothing against new technologies. It's just that nobody's created anything that's both reliable, and a solid platform yet. The beauty of the web was and is that it's anything you want it to be. Interested in writing Java? Cool, the web will support it. Want to screw around with php? Done. Want to experiment with Go or Python? Put it on the web. It's easy. Takes very little work, and it's widely used. For me anyway, that was always the appeal of the web. It's everything, all in one place.

      The problem with mesh networks, well, there are a lot of problems with mesh networks, but the biggest is that (at least so far) they generally lock you into a manosphere of technology. If you're going to replace the web, which is something I'm in favor of, do it with something that has more features... not less. Alls I'm sayin'.

      --

      This signature has Super Cow Powers

    19. Re:Inversion by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Cool. I've got nothing against new technologies. It's just that nobody's created anything that's both reliable, and a solid platform yet. The beauty of the web was and is that it's anything you want it to be. Interested in writing Java? Cool, the web will support it. Want to screw around with php? Done.

      Yeah - I mean that's nice and all, But hardly inspiring. I'm even learning Swift and playing with XCode at the moment. But its just a mental exercise mostly. The direction the web at large has taken largely bores me. The best it is is like paper in a book that the interesting things sit on.

      The problem with mesh networks, well, there are a lot of problems with mesh networks, but the biggest is that (at least so far) they generally lock you into a manosphere of technology.

      Wait... What? What do mesh networks have to do with that?

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  4. No dinner for Andre. by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    He warns that Facebook, Google, and Amazon plan to "grow beyond browsers ..." ... and predicts the next wave of walled gardens will be a "social internet" bypassing the web altogether.

    You know that the Web is more than just social media and online shopping sites - right?

    He wants to build a mobile mesh web that works with or without internet access ... He cites mega-projects "to rescue the web from the internet", which include progress on peer-to-peer and mesh networking protocols,

    So... using other networks, but not "the internet"? You know that "the internet" is a network of networks, perhaps even different kinds of networks - right?

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    1. Re:No dinner for Andre. by TheLongshot · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You know that the Web is more than just social media and online shopping sites - right?

      As Google, Facebook and Amazon have gobbled up more of the Internet, this is becoming less true. Back in the day, remember the concern people had over Internet Explorer and the influence Microsoft had? Well, Google controls how most people find things on the web and a browser that controls how they see it. Amazon hosts a large percentage of web sites through AWS. Facebook is the dominant social network where people communicate with each other. Now that Net Neutrality is dead, ISPs now can control who goes over those pipes. The concern is real.

    2. Re:No dinner for Andre. by BlueStrat · · Score: 1

      You know that the Web is more than just social media and online shopping sites - right?

      That admittedly is a problem, however it is currently in the process of being addressed as the web is gradually shifted to more resemble cable TV where data mostly flows one way.

      Strat

      --
      Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
    3. Re:No dinner for Andre. by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 2

      So... using other networks, but not "the internet"? You know that "the internet" is a network of networks, perhaps even different kinds of networks - right?

      My first thought is that what he's talking about sounds a lot like way back in the stone age when you had to work your way through different "exchanges" to maybe possibly reach Aunt Flo on the other side of the country, by negotiating with various operators...

      --
      If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
    4. Re: No dinner for Andre. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Any time you see open source advocate for doing things differently, nothing happens.

      This is why email (SMTP) has been unchanged since inception.

      The internetâ(TM)s Achilles heel is the DNS system as it turns both domain names and ipv4 addresses into real estate.

      There is no way to change this.

      L2 Mesh networks are inherently unrouteable with the Internet. So you might put your pocket mesh network up on a 2.4ghz Wi-Fi router, but unless you are going to give every man,woman,dog and cat a relay, there will be no way to access anything.

      Not to mention this creates another problem of address collisions. So assuming this could all be resolved with magic, this still leaves no replacement for DNS.

      Back, decades ago, we had novellâ(TM)s IPX protocol, all the routing , computer names, and address assignment was automated. This would be a good starting point to create a decentralized protocol, though it lacks any of the modern security.

      The next step would simply be assigning BitTorrent magnets to every file and revision of files at a global scale, maybe though a double hash ( one for the file checksum, one for the metadata .) Sure rare files will decay and disappear, but they wonâ(TM)t need to if the metadata can find newer or older versions.

      That leaves indexing and discovery. Even now the discovery mechanism has been partially solved, by peeking in certain clients to see what other files people have fragments of. This is how obscure porn still exists long after the original seeds disappear, yet anime from 1997 is impossible to find because nothing old is being re-released on blue ray.

      Indexing can be solved by invoking the same blockchain tech so that people are not tricked into downloading garbage, and bots canâ(TM)t manipulate search. So someone can do a âroverâ(TM) search that asks neighboring machines for a query, and as soon as a result is returned, hand the blockchain data to the search origin and stop the âroverâ(TM) or have a TTL set to keep asking machines until the time expires. No initial query is ever serviced by the originator (eg I ask for X file, and do not rely on my cache for it, rather rover asks every machine it can see once or until TTL expires)

      But as I said at the beginning, OSS advocates often throw away what works for stupid politically motivated reasons, not common sense, practicality, or even need.

      So what if a bunch of walled gardens pop up. The are popping up because people started blocking ads; and thus content creators have to use paywalled gardens.

      If OSS advocates want something to happen, propose it to the porn industry. They are the ones that are hurt the most currently by the status quo.

    5. Re:No dinner for Andre. by Dog-Cow · · Score: 1

      The web has always been a medium in which data flows mostly in one direction. It's server-client architecture, and always has been.

    6. Re:No dinner for Andre. by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 2

      Bullshit. When the Web was invented, the plan was for everybody to have a workstation (it started on Next workstations) that had an httpd running on it. You would put your 'blog' in a folder on your system shared to the world. People would link together.

      There is even still a web browser, Seamonkey, that has the old symmetrical design. It has a 'Composer' component like browsers of the past, so you can WYSIWYG together a web page to share to the world.

    7. Re:No dinner for Andre. by slack_justyb · · Score: 4, Insightful

      As Google, Facebook and Amazon have gobbled up more of the Internet

      But you're missing the entire point here. That's not a technical failure. There isn't some line of code that went wrong or some flaw in OSI that caused that. That's how capitalism works. Build a new browser and it'll just become the next IE, Chrome, whatever, five - six years down the road.

      Well, Google controls how most people find things on the web and a browser that controls how they see it.

      You've got duckduckgo.com and firefox.com. You are welcome.

      Amazon hosts a large percentage of web sites through AWS

      Again, not a technical issue, that's a "I'm lazy as fuck to fire up or my boss is too cheap to buy a machine that I can touch and connect to the Internet directly." This kind of mentality is a tick-tock thing on long enough scales. Give it maybe another ten or so years and we'll be right back on the tock side of things.

      Facebook is the dominant social network where people communicate with each other

      THEN STOP FUCKING USING IT! Trust me, you'll feel a whole hell of a lot better. Shit you might even sleep better at night. I told everyone on Facebook they can call, email, snail mail, whatever but honestly I don't give a shit about your one like equals one prayer BS, and I have never looked back. It's that simple, just stop using it. I know people are all like, "but what about Aunt Rosey or..." No, no, no, no, you're thinking too much on this. Just... S-t-o-p using it. That's all.

      Now that Net Neutrality is dead, ISPs now can control who goes over those pipes.

      ISPs have been controlling what goes over those pipes which is why we needed NN in the first place. It's disappearance isn't the hearkening of some new dark era of the Internet, it's the return to the brain dead, the dollar is first, nickel and dime story that we use to have. It'll also more than likely be the thing that drives people to download once and store on hard media at home for local consumption (tick-tock).

      The concern is real

      Yeah, and I'm not saying you're wrong, the problem is that the problem isn't what you think the problem is. The problem is people being greedy as fuck and there isn't a technical means to stop human beings from being idiotic dumb fucks of human beings. Except, I will admit that I am keen to one purpose solution to the problem.

    8. Re:No dinner for Andre. by blahplusplus · · Score: 1

      You know that the Web is more than just social media and online shopping sites - right?

      It wouldn't matter if people were technology literate but the rise of steam, world of warcraft and facebook means the average person has no clue how technology works and have are being taken advantage of. PC games have been outright made defective and part of the software is held hostage by drm, it's a far cry from the open games of the 90's. No dedicated servers with PC games these days that release the server exe's because they want total control of the software.

      The average consumer is too stupid not to spend money on walled garden software like games, etc. So these companies like Microsoft are reengineering the software that runs operating systems and the internet because the average person is too tech illiterate to understand what windows 10 and things like league of legends mean for the future of software users don't control.

    9. Re:No dinner for Andre. by ngc5194 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm with fahrbot-bot here.

      My reading is that a mesh network is a physical layer networking technology/philosophy that is especially useful where resilience and ad hoc qualities are beneficial. Cool.

      I have no doubt that the big application layer providers mentioned plan to expand their service offerings to control more and more of the market. I also have no doubt that they would like to provide more and more content behind their walled gardens.

      What I can't imagine is how a physical layer technology solves the problem of the application layer elites trying to control more and more of the application layer world. If someone could explain this to me, I'd be grateful. Alternatively, I will continue to assume that either the article is as silly as the summary makes it sound, or the summary is garbage.

    10. Re:No dinner for Andre. by Yaztromo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Well, Google controls how most people find things on the web and a browser that controls how they see it.

      But when it comes to search, there is no real vendor lock-in. Don't like Google's search? Think they are blocking relevant results? You can use DuckDuckGo, or Bing, or Yahoo. And you can change right now, as there is no search lock-in.

      Amazon hosts a large percentage of web sites through AWS.

      Citation needed. They are hardly the only hosting service out there; they aren't doing anything you can't replicate through some other provider, like Google, Microsoft, or any number of smaller regional players. If they don't want to host your site, you have options.

      Facebook is the dominant social network where people communicate with each other.

      The massive user bases of WeChat, WhatsApp, Line, iMessage, Skype, and Google Hangouts (never mind old-school SMS) would seem to show that users have a lot of options in the user-to-user communication space. While wildly popular, I'm having a hard time seeing what service Facebook provides that you can't get elsewhere should you choose.

      Now that Net Neutrality is dead, ISPs now can control who goes over those pipes. The concern is real.

      Net Neutrality is only dead in the United States. The world is a damn big place outside the US. I would agree there is a real concern that inside the US there are some real concerns that the tier 3 access providers may start picking winners and losers, but outside the US that's only the situation in countries with tight Internet control, such as China or North Korea.

      Yaz

    11. Re:No dinner for Andre. by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Network neutrality was the key differentiator between the early ISP and the incumbent OSPs. Services like AOL and CompuServe gave you access to a network and controlled what you could access, how much it cost, and so on. ISPs, in contrast, gave you unprejudiced access to a network that was not within their control. There was no need for network neutrality regulation because network neutrality was the key differentiator for ISPs. Then the OSPs died and the ISPs started wondering whether they could become more OSP-like and more profitable as a result. Network neutrality regulation only began in response to a relatively recent movement by ISPs away from a neutral network being the default stance.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    12. Re:No dinner for Andre. by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      Your point does not make your parent wrong.
      Just because your workstation can be a server for someone else does not make the http protocol a pear to pear protocol.
      You still have technically a client/browser on one machine and a server on the other. The servers don't communicate with each other, nor dose the browsers. And until recently with newly introduced comet calls or web sockets the servers did not send data to the browser without having a http request first.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    13. Re:No dinner for Andre. by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      A mesh network does not go over established wires/networks.
      It goes from hand held to hand held via wifi or bluetooth or similar technology.
      In other words, there is no ISP etc. involved.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    14. Re:No dinner for Andre. by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      Yeah, except the big ISPs are probably going to start divvying up what was the Internet in favor of a de-evolution back towards walled gardens. Between that and the Great Firewalls that some countries have and/or their restrictive policies for the Internet, it's getting hacked to bits.

    15. Re:No dinner for Andre. by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 1

      Just because your workstation can be a server for someone else does not make the http protocol a pear to pear protocol.

      Thanks, now I have to go to the store, through the snow, because now I want a pear.

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    16. Re:No dinner for Andre. by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 1

      So... using other networks, but not "the internet"? You know that "the internet" is a network of networks, perhaps even different kinds of networks - right?

      My first thought is that what he's talking about sounds a lot like way back in the stone age when you had to work your way through different "exchanges" to maybe possibly reach Aunt Flo on the other side of the country, by negotiating with various operators...

      We still had to do that, for a while anyway, when I was still in college and our main server was a VAX 11/785 running 4.3BSD - host!host!host!user

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    17. Re:No dinner for Andre. by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 1

      A mesh network does not go over established wires/networks. It goes from hand held to hand held via wifi or bluetooth or similar technology. In other words, there is no ISP etc. involved.

      Unless the mesh covers everywhere you want to go (so to speak) around the world, your packets are going to travel over some ISP, backbone or infrastructure network (ie: the Internet) at some point. So, there's no "replacing the Internet", just coexisting and cooperating with it.

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    18. Re:No dinner for Andre. by HeckRuler · · Score: 1

      But when it comes to search, there is no real vendor lock-in. Don't like Google's search? Think they are blocking relevant results? You can use DuckDuckGo, or Bing, or Yahoo

      Or Startpage!

      Net Neutrality is only dead in the United States.

      It's more like... "no longer enforced at the federal level". But yeah, that still sucks. And it sucks for Europe as well because you're currently reading text that was served to you from the United States.

    19. Re:No dinner for Andre. by Yaztromo · · Score: 1

      It's more like... "no longer enforced at the federal level". But yeah, that still sucks. And it sucks for Europe as well because you're currently reading text that was served to you from the United States.

      The lack of Net Neutrality rules in the US probably won't affect tier 1 or tier 2 ISPs however. They don't really have a business case to deny carriage to anyone. And besides which if that ever were the case, sites could simply pack up and move their hosting to some other first world country outside the US.

      However, even if for some reason Slashdot was being disadvantaged by the lack of NN rules in the US and for some reason didn't feel like moving their hosting to outside the US, it would hardly be some great loss. It isn't as if some other company can't setup shop and provide me text from outside the US instead. Indeed, /. could move their hosting to Toronto or Montreal or Vancouver tomorrow, and chances are nobody would notice any difference.

      Yaz

    20. Re:No dinner for Andre. by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      That example of yours is not the definition of amesh network, facepalm.
      Why do you think I tried to give a simple explanaition?

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  5. No. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    For fucks sake, who thinks this is viable? The internet ONLY worked because by the time it reached end users, it cost little time to set up and offered a lot of utility. Meshnets are, from an end-user perspective, far worse.

    "How do we save the web from the internet?" The article asks. Well, if you want to save the web from the internet, you have to start with physical infrastructure at near-parity to the current multibillion dollar one. And jerking off to the ideology of decentralisation won't get you there. More, end users won't get you there either, and that's the real problem. In some countries, population is distributed so sparsely that even with massive end user adoption - unlikely, because, again, in the early days of developing infrastructure, meshnets give them fuck and all - that there would be utterly incredible bottlenecking issues.

    It's not viable, and the question that it's predicated on isn't even really meaningful, since the web is in the same class as these hypothetical wholly-proprietary walled gardens: a service executed across the internet, and not the internet itself. Nothing that google and facebook do changes the fact that they operate on a layer above the one the author contends is the problem.

    1. Re:No. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Simply put, the article is complete shit.

    2. Re: No. by roland.c.harrison · · Score: 1

      These guys built one that works http://www.servalproject.org/

    3. Re:No. by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 2

      Meshnets are a viable technology. It will, like everything, get adopted first by nerds. Once the network is set up the normal people will want on. A meshnet routers is no more expensive than a cable modem, and you only have to pay for it once. There's no ongoing subscription, just buy the hardware and power it and you're set. It makes sense from every angle, the internet is already designed to work that way - you don't need to create a second internet, you just need to have people replacing their $70-$150/month low-bandwidth cable modems with gigabit mesh network routers - the lack of a monthly fee alone would drive that.

    4. Re:No. by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

      While this is intersting, at some point a router needs to be connected to theminternet, to have, well ... acces to the internet.
      The interesting part about meshnets are ad hoc networks in case of a catastrophe that invloves power failure and failure of internet and cellular infrastructure.
      Or revolutions/demonstrations like right now in Iran where people need to communicate without giving the government options to block communication completely.

      --
      Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
    5. Re:No. by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 1

      I think you're looking at it a little off. People only need to connect to what they want to access. Social networks, restaurants, etc tend to connect people locally more often than not while popcorn sites like Wordpress and PHPBB allow anyone to spin up their own sites easily. This means people can very easily set up local networks for their town, with nerds and people with corporate-paid-internet paying for the outside connections (it would be slower for the outside world, but free is free.) When that reaches a critical mass ISPs will need to connect towns and cities, not individuals. When that happens wider internet access may well be included in local taxes, or just avoided for some areas, since people will be able to get all their browsing needs served locally anyway. I think it will take a decade or two, but I fully expect meshnets to take over, along with localized social networks, shops, etc where the only value lost will be in the eyes of the media, who won't be able to stop piracy on such networks across the country let alone the world (which will likely also be the main selling point to get normal people on such mesh networks.)

    6. Re:No. by CrazyCaps · · Score: 1

      It could have been done. Had wireless routers had an open , no-password public connection and mesh capabilities built in from when I wrote a similar theory back in 1999, we would have a good system by now. I agree that the early adoption problem and rural problem exists, but I blame Linksys and Netgear for not giving us an anonymous backup mesh network. Paranoid people not wanting to share "bandwidth" who closed their routers didn't help either.

      --
      Drive it like you stole it!
    7. Re:No. by Zalbik · · Score: 1

      Who are these imaginary people who "get all their browsing needs served locally" anyway?

      I can't think of anyone I know who would want/use such a thing.

    8. Re:No. by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 1

      People looking at local news, weather, menus for local restaurants, etc. You might be thinking of Facebook, but they would give that up easily - it's just a bunch of morons pretending to have a happy life to make up for their impression everyone they know is having a happy life which detracts from social interaction by satiating the desire to socialize anyway. Bait them with pirated videos and switch into quitting Facebook, it's a win-win (even for people too dumb to see it.)

    9. Re:No. by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 1

      There are blockchain-based certification models which don't require centralization. Certificates are all about who you trust, do you really trust the cert providers approved by Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Apple - or do you trust what people tell you they trust, which happens to translate to "the little green lock in the browser" to most people?

  6. Life is a mesh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    And full of pipe dreams.

  7. This works by neoRUR · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In places like Cuba, where you don't have internet all over the place, then it works to have the packets routed through people cell phones or other devices to go out to all.
    But don't confuse the base internet pipes with those companies that sit on top of it. The Base Internet is fine.

    1. Re:This works by quintus_horatius · · Score: 1

      In places like Cuba, where you don't have internet all over the place, then it works to have the packets routed through people cell phones or other devices to go out to all.

      IIRC, even in Cuba they don't use mesh networks, they use sneaker nets everywhere.

  8. OSI 7-layer model by JimToo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Old, basic and obviously forgotten.

  9. Hold on a second by grasshoppa · · Score: 5, Funny

    Can we go back to where it states that the web is dying, I was too busy laughing and lost track of the rest of the post.

    --
    Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
    1. Re:Hold on a second by Solandri · · Score: 2

      The web is dying. It's being replaced by a bunch of proprietary apps you need to install to gain full access to any particular site on a mobile device. Facebook app, Google Maps app, YouTube app, Amazon app, etc. The reason the web worked on the PC was because you only had to install one app - a browser. Then you just typed in a different address for each site you wanted to visit into the browser, and like magic it was almost like you'd installed an app specific to that site. No more. I had to go through and purge a bunch of apps from my phone this weekend because its performance was bogging down (I had over 350 apps installed). On PC about 40%-50% of those apps were just bookmarks in my browser so took up no additional resources unless I was visiting the site at that moment. But on my phone they were constantly using up storage space, and in most cases constantly using RAM and network bandwidth (Amazon is particularly bad about this).

      TFA is correct in that regard, and the danger of the shift back to walled gardens (AOL, GEnie, Prodigy back in the days before the web). Basically, rather than adapt to people shifting to mobile devices by creating mobile-friendly websites, companies have taken advantage of the shift to convince people to install a proprietary app on their mobile device instead. That app can then constantly run, monitor, and spy on the user even when it's not being used, and report it all back to the mothership.

      Then it goes into a non sequitur about mesh networks saving us from all this, That's kinda like claiming SUVs will save us from proprietary dashboard navigation systems which cost hundreds of dollars to update. Those things have very little to do with each other. There is nothing inherently broken with TCP/IP or HTTP(S), except maybe HTML could be updated with some features to make for a more seamless browsing experience on mobile touch devices. If people are spending 90% of their online time on Google, Facebook, Amazon, moving away from the Internet won't prevent that. If mesh networks become popular, those three companies will just eventually set up mesh network sites, or modify their apps to also work over mesh networks.

    2. Re:Hold on a second by grasshoppa · · Score: 1

      ...you do know that the internet is more than just mobile devices right? People still have laptops and computers.

      You know that, right? Right?

      --
      Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
    3. Re:Hold on a second by HeckRuler · · Score: 1

      I think the article is 90% clickbaity hyperboleish bullshit. ...But this was one of the insightful bits.

      You DO know that the web is just a subset of the Internet, right? The Internet does a lot more than serve webpages. File transfers, email, and all the data that goes into phone apps. When you load facebook on a phone, you're not using http (I think. I'm trusting the article a bit here, which I acknowledge is dangerous). The insightful part was that blue and yellow graph about where traffic to facebook is coming from, cellphones, desktop PC's, or a mix. I didn't expect that the bulk was cellphones. I'm part of the minority in the solid blue PC section. Now, I'm largely out of facebook, but I know how popular it is. This is.... if not the way things are going, it's one way things could go.

      But... it hardly matters. Http or whateverthefuck facebook uses on the backend, it's still Internet traffic. But this walled garden of the Internet is hardly web-traffic anymore. Which caught me by surprise.

  10. Re: doesn't require Internet access by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Why do would a global network of mesh networks not be considered the Internet?

    Or do they think it's going to be IoT peer to peer all thr way across the ocean?

  11. WWW != Internet by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

    The "World Wide Web" is not the Internet, it's what is the cumulative result of using the Hyper Text Transport Protocol. The Internet is the amalgamated cable, routers and servers which send information around, including the Web. I agree that the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) which dictates what qualifies as being Web has gone to shit and needs to be replaced but that has nothing to do with the hardware.

    The Internet is more alive than ever, it's only what the Internet is used for that needs to be replaced.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:WWW != Internet by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      What is at the end of the network?
      Hotline? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
      The use of a tracker to find your fav servers new ip?
      A network of wifi hardware around a city that anyone can join but never has any connection to the internet.
      A server that is found and has information, files on it?
      The dark web ? Something that can be part of the internet but is more secure to political censorship? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  12. Prioritization and/or zero rating by tepples · · Score: 1

    People can decide to route around [the Internet giants] whenever they want to.

    Unless all ISPs serving your area have decided to deprioritize and/or charge per bit for traffic other than to the Internet giants.

    1. Re:Prioritization and/or zero rating by dcollins117 · · Score: 1

      Unless all ISPs serving your area have decided to deprioritize and/or charge per bit for traffic other than to the Internet giants.

      I don't think you understood the article. With a wireless P2P mesh network, you don't need an ISP.

    2. Re:Prioritization and/or zero rating by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Except there is this funny thing called hundreds of vacant square miles between all the Metropolitan Areas with high populations.

      So I suppose each big city could have it's 'mesh' and there could be some 'bridges' between each mesh. I'd call that an ISP.

    3. Re:Prioritization and/or zero rating by vlad30 · · Score: 2

      you don't need an ISP.

      That is the problem somewhere you will need something be it your email address or IP there will be some service that you will need and that will need to be paid for.

      And therein lies the problem payment if you want it for free then they will give you ads which just plain suck and make the internet suck as to sell ads they will give you the lowest common denominator and those that charge for service have yet to catch on that you need to supply quality

      --
      Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
    4. Re:Prioritization and/or zero rating by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 3, Funny

      Except there is this funny thing called hundreds of vacant square miles between all the Metropolitan Areas with high populations.

      This exactly. I was dealing with some people who were insisting that emergency communications could be solved via mesh networking with F.C.C. Part 15 low power Routers, or if you had an Amateur Radio license, some of the Channels are open to higher powers.

      Either way, the things need many individual stations, and since the RF at these frequencies doesn't travel far by design, RF characteristics and power, Those rural and low population areas would have to be literally littered with nodes.

      They didn't like it when at best I pointed out that they could at best put up a special mesh in a building or two. Or use the wireless already in the building if it had it. Or even better and faster, run temporary copper.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    5. Re:Prioritization and/or zero rating by tepples · · Score: 1

      [Paid prioritization and zero rating] would be illegal. Are you another one of those America-centric morons who thinks that your laws (or lack thereof) apply to the entire world?

      For one thing, Slashdot's headquarters is in the United States. For another, to what extent is your country willing to accept refugees from the U.S. last-mile cartel?

    6. Re:Prioritization and/or zero rating by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      Yes.

      Mesh requires density of devices.

      What's with this third-world crap?

      It's a paradox.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    7. Re:Prioritization and/or zero rating by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Yes.

      Mesh requires density of devices.

      What's with this third-world crap?

      It's a paradox.

      I cant say for certain, but it sounds like Techies and a certain amount of cannabis are involved...

      "Doooood! What if like everyone in the nation turned their wireless routers into this kickass network? Oh my Gawd, that would be so awesome!"

      "Oh hell yea dude! That would kick ass, man. Now hand me the fuckin' Cheetos!"

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    8. Re:Prioritization and/or zero rating by tepples · · Score: 1

      3) "Unless all ISPs serving your area" Moving goalposts as is usual for you, eh?

      If you claim that "Unless all ISPs serving your area" counts as "Moving goalposts", then what course of action do you recommend for people affected by an abusive ISP? In particular, are you recommending that people move to a different city for the primary purpose of being served by a less abusive ISP?

  13. With the end of Title II by tepples · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But don't confuse the base internet pipes with those companies that sit on top of it.

    Ajit Pai and his FCC voted along party lines to allow ISPs to perform exactly such confusion in the United States.

  14. open source hacker? by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 1

    ... writes open source hacker Andre Staltz.

    So... he downloads the source and edits it? Cool. Something to add to my resume. :-)

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  15. This idiot is their own stated problem. by slack_justyb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From the piece of drivel written

    In other words, the internet economy simply isn’t ready for a scenario where IPv6 is used everywhere and NAT is abandoned. We are stuck with what we have.

    That is exactly the crap I hear that stops IPv6 migration. This person literally is the reason why they are lamenting IPv6's slow adoption. But that said, so we have this technical argument for why the "web" is dying, even though it's an Internet argument. But let's backtrack to this little gem.

    The advent of NAT routers also allowed for that intermediate computer to become a guardian and protect other computers from some dangers of the open internet.

    If that's what you are doing, you are doing it mostly wrong. That's not a function of NAT, that's a flipping function of *routing*. You can literally have all kinds of globally addressable IP addresses on systems, connect them, and then have 100% of them respond to 0% of the incoming requests. You literally do not need NAT for that and if that's the sole reason you are using NAT (to be more secure), you more than likely shouldn't have your job. That's not saying NAT doesn't have a place or anything, but that is me saying that if your rationale is solely for security, you will find lots of folks that will tell you otherwise. Again, NAT has a place, time, and use, but this person writing the piece is missing every single point of that. Now I know everyone is going to foam or spout with their opinion on NAT, but you have to snap out of it because, remember these are "Internet" issues not "web" issues and as you keep reading, if you aren't keeping that point in your head, you'll just get sucked into this argument of "NAT is awesome v. F*** NAT!" So I digress, let's actually continue.

    It also meant that some computers were first-class citizens on the internet, while other computers were subordinates. In addition, the scarcity of IP addresses caused them to be considered valuable assets, and so it became a business opportunity. IP addresses are being sold so that some computers can become first-class citizens on the internet.

    I had no actual problem with this point until that last part I highlighted. That's when my brain snapped out of it and was like, "Wait, this has absolutely nothing to do with why Facebook, Google, et al are these massive black holes." This person is literally making this overly complicated, but weak attempt to dumb down an argument about the web, on technical merits that have nothing to do with what reasonable people would call "the web". And that point became even more clear here.

    As a consequence, the internet has allowed intermediate computers to rule. These are like parasites that have grown too large to remove without killing the host. The technical flaw that favored intermediate computers prefigured a world where middlemen business models thrive. Google and Facebook connect consumers with advertisement publishers and charge fees for each ad.

    Oh Mother of Stars that's eight hundred times pi radians of all kinds of wrong!! IPv4's short comings have **NOTHING** to do with why the big boys on the Internet are who they are. It is at this point your brain should be saying, "This person has about as much clue as to what they are saying as a canine on the ISS has of managing the station." I assure you it does not get better as it goes.

    Novel peer-to-peer protocols such as IPFS and Dat help replace HTTP and make the web a content-centered cyberspace. This way the link to an image can be something like QaPdNnDWRLF1b — a so-called hash of the image, summarizing it — instead of mywebsite.com/pic.jpeg so that even if mywebsite.com servers are removed,

    1. Re:This idiot is their own stated problem. by Yaztromo · · Score: 1

      For people with intermittent or unexistent connectivity, ISP-free mesh networks with moderate but consistent speeds become quite attractive. Facebook and Google are desperate for getting an early grip of those four billion people, e.g. through Internet.org and Project Loon. However, because their middlemen businesses are tethered to the internet, all of these projects require the old hierarchical structures of ISPs and cables.

      What I'd like to now is where is this place in the world where people typically own smartphones, but who don't have any sort of Internet connectivity?

      I have little doubt there are parts of the world where people have dumbphones with no Internet connectivity (North Korea?), but I don't think there is anywhere on this globe where there is a major area filled with people saying "well, I paid a bunch to get this amazing smartphone, but I can't use any of its features because there are no options for Internet access. Why did I buy this thing again?"

      Yaz

    2. Re:This idiot is their own stated problem. by apoc.famine · · Score: 1

      Ok, but how do you really feel?

      --
      Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
    3. Re:This idiot is their own stated problem. by G00F · · Score: 1

      I couldn't agree mroe on you that they don't have a clue about what they are talking about. Confusion of web vs internet and not understanding that the internet is a mesh of networks..

      Makes me think they grew up as a special snowflake that got passed along.

      P.S. I like NAT/PAT.

      --
      The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
  16. Rest in Peace by iamacat · · Score: 1

    Web is great for it's purpose to compose and link information. However, it sucks as an alternative to well written apps that it replaced. I am glad that technology is catching up and that companies are investing resources to keep social forums clean rather than everything being a wall of dick picks. I am also glad that there are freer options like 4chan and completely decentralized facilities like Tor/Bittorrent for absolute free speech. But these are (important) edge cases, not mainstream Internet passtime.

  17. Someone already built it and you can download it f by roland.c.harrison · · Score: 1

    Someone already built it and you can download it for free. It is also open source. http://www.servalproject.org/

  18. Worry about people who are currently online by AHuxley · · Score: 1

    Get their internet censorship proof and encrypted.
    Too many gov, mil, NGO, people, brand owners want to censor and totally stop free speech, search results.
    Create an internet that works again that does not get blocked.
    Links can be shared without losing an account, been banned, reported.
    Something that is resilient to the US party politics of a few computer brand and social media owners.

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  19. Betteridges Law by Hylandr · · Score: 1

    No.

    It is not.

    Also, Betteridges Law

    --
    ~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
  20. Re: NSA doesn't approve. by roland.c.harrison · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Already has. You can download it now. http://www.servalproject.org/

  21. Re: Someone already built it and you can download by roland.c.harrison · · Score: 1

    They started almost 10 years ago. 95% of the work is the back end. It is designed to be resilient and functional, not pretty. Considering they are funded entirely on donations it is very impressive.

  22. Can't remember the name! by dohzer · · Score: 1

    I heard about this giant, world-wide mesh network once, but I've forgotten what it was called.

  23. Re: No by roland.c.harrison · · Score: 1

    http://www.servalproject.org/ These guys wrote their own protocol to solve the problem you are discussing.

  24. Can they? by Narcocide · · Score: 1

    Yes, they can just like they can save public security surveillance, and data preservation in a way that neither commercial nor government endeavors are possibly even capable of. They won't though, because a critical mass of people are simply too stupid to realize it. And I don't mean that they're too stupid to actually do the work. One or two people could do all the work. All the bulk of the rest of the populace would need to do is cooperate by plugging in the damned devices. They're just too stupid to even realize it's necessary. Maybe this is proof they don't deserve salvation after all.

  25. Drivel, but interesting drivel. by SuricouRaven · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Set aside some of the ridiculous hyperbole and optimistic technological claims of the article, and look just at the technologies it mentions. Some of them are pretty cool and could have their valued uses. I've praised IPFS many times on this site because it has the potential to distribute static content in a manner that is more affordable, reliable, and bandwidth-efficient than just putting it up on web servers. Throw in a bit of decentralised wireless, and your cellphone data use could plumet - rather than download all those big updates over the cell network, it'll just ask the phone of the person sitting next to you to send them via wlan, and only need to go to the cell network if it can't find a copy in range.

    Just don't view distribution as a way to 'replace the internet.' It's a supplement. It can do certain things better.

    1. Re:Drivel, but interesting drivel. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's bitztream the autism-hating, custom EpiPen-hating, Musk-hating, Qualcomm-hating, Firefox tabs-hating, Slashdot editors-hating Slashdot troll!

  26. The web is dying? by QuadEddie · · Score: 2

    Has Netcraft confirmed? Or is this just clickbait... yeah, I think it's the latter.

  27. Re: doesn't require Internet access by grumbel · · Score: 2

    The Web has been dying ever since its inception, one link at a time. The problem with the Web is that the links in it don't point to content, but to locations. So whenever a server goes down, be it temporarily or permanently, the content disappears and the links go dead. Even a bit of renaming on the the server site makes links go dead. That's one of the problems IPFS addresses by making links based on a content hash, not the current storage location.

    That issue cascades into a whole lot of other issues and is one of the reasons why Facebook and Co. are so popular, since they can provide a stable content host, something that wouldn't be possible with regular HTTP and everybody renting their own server. With IPFS you can have a stable and self hosted web, since the storage location no longer is the thing that holds the web together.

  28. Re:No by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    That's ok. Most internet users don't even know what an SLA is, let alone actually have one other than "whatever we can provide is what you'll get, no matter what we advertise".

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  29. Re:Good idea -- decentralize by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    Can we first do world hunger? It's logistically easier.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  30. Andrew Staltz is dying by mbeckman · · Score: 1

    This statement is more accurate than the silly one Andrew Staltz made.

  31. Re: doesn't require Internet access by Wootery · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yes, yes. There's a reason Ted Nelson's Xanadu idea never panned out.

    Whenever someone points out that the web suffers link-rot, they demonstrate that they're not thinking clearly about robustness in large distributed systems.

    You don't have the choice between link-rot and utopia. Your choice is between a single centralised point of failure, or many points of 'partial failure'. Thankfully, the web gives us the second option. We even have archive.org to take the edge off. Unfortunately, of course, we now have silos, which take us back to the first option.

    That's one of the problems IPFS addresses by making links based on a content hash, not the current storage location.

    Eh? So if I make a correction, the address of the resource changes? On the web, you have the choice. e.g. on Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterPlanetary_File_System gives you the latest page, and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=InterPlanetary_File_System&oldid=818883368 will always give you the snapshot from the 6th of January 2018. Similar schemes exist on GitHub and BitBucket.

    (Disclaimer: I'm just being snarky and don't really know much about Xanadu, or distributed databases, or IPFS. I'd be glad to be corrected.)

  32. ISPs Rule by cstacy · · Score: 1

    OK, let's take control away from ISPs by using our smartphones to route around them. That's great but I think maybe you forgot how smartphones are connected to each other?

  33. Article is stupid by zifn4b · · Score: 1

    Mesh network = network topology, web = HTTP, the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol which is at a completely different level of the OSI model. Why is this drivel on slashdot? It's complete nonsense. Aren't the editors supposed to have some understanding of the internet?

    --
    We'll make great pets
  34. Th3 W3b iz DYEING! by Chas · · Score: 1

    Any time some dipshit tells you the Web's dying, just ask them what they think they're selling, and then cut them off and send them on their way. Like Jehovah's Witness door-to-door people.

    --


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!
  35. "social internet" by sycodon · · Score: 1

    Because "social" shit has really done SOooo much for the internet today.

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
    1. Re: "social internet" by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      If there was a shadow P2P network, gravitational attraction of millions of individuals would simply evolve into clumps called social media.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  36. Here we go again by RobinH · · Score: 2

    Every time a new class graduates university, a few of them realize there's problems with the way things are and decide they're smart so they'll fix them. That's great, but of course they fail to do the basic work of coming up to speed on all the reasons why it is the way it is.

    The internet was already designed as a decentralized network. It's already fundamentally peer-to-peer at its lowest level. It automatically routes around damage.

    The fact that companies built centralized services like Facebook and Google on top of them doesn't mean you need to throw away the whole network. Email is federated (you can run your own email server if you want) and worked just fine until Facebook offered everyone the devil's bargain and they mostly all accepted it.

    Building a mesh network can't solve this problem. Why can't you build a Facebook on top of a mesh network? Answer: you can.

    Facebook and Google are huge because they offer stuff "for free" in exchange for your personal information, which is worth far more to them than they money it costs to run the service. You can go invent a distributed communication and/or social network where it's not supported by selling your data, but then the users will have to pay, and almost nobody will want to pay the few dollars a month it will cost. If most people won't pay, then there won't be enough people on it to be a viable network.

    --
    "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
    1. Re:Here we go again by RobinH · · Score: 1

      Your cheap residential service precludes the ability to run servers, generally, but not always. There are lots of alternatives if you want to run a website. Setting up a simple site is under $20 in hosting per month, depending on options. You can rent rack space for your own server from a company, even if that "server" is just a cheap PC. In reality, this has already been solved when Diaspora* was created, and you can run your own pod, or sign up to host your data on someone else's pod.

      --
      "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
  37. need corporate change by sdinfoserv · · Score: 1

    Those of us who used “the web” before the dot com bomb 1.0 © 2001 will likely attest the “web” died long ago. There was a time when the internet was a wonderful place of sharing and learning. The “godz” shared their knowledge, and those to whom such wisdom was bestowed, passed it on. We built and answered questions and learned because it was the right thing to do. A time when browsers just loaded, unencumbered by relentless multi-media ads. The web was built by techies, for anyone who desired to build, learn and create.
    All goodness is eventually corrupted – the web was consumed by marketers and parasites. Used by the uniformed masses willing to gleefully hand over deeply personal information and preferring the instant gratification of a “like” over a professionally researched news is now the norm. Morons chanting artificial, made up and meaningless terms like, “pivot” or “disruption” not really caring to learn, create, build or share – just wanting to throw together some useless idea funded by someone else’s money in the hopes of being swallowed by an even larger entity and walking away with a pile of soulless cash.
    As far as a mesh it’s more expensive than fiber – and ask Google how that fiber thing went I looked into building a mesh a couple of years ago. 36 endpoints per square mile are required for complete coverage with signal strength throughput decreasing by ½ per node jump. Logistically and financially, it’s not practical – unless you use super cheap equipment, aka super vulnerable and unsupported/un patched. So, once again you’re at a point where it can be hijacked for profit. Cycle repeats.

  38. Need a New Mesh Browser Under User's Control by Slicker · · Score: 1

    I would be far better if users could simply define what they'd like to see and pick or create the look and feel for how to see it.

    It frustrates me to no end that others take over my browser windows, showing ads and videos to me that I do not want to see. Also, why do I have to learn a different system for every single website? Different colors, styles, menu types, etc..

    I really want control over my own system.

    I would prefer just define what content I am looking for, have the browser query for that and display it in the panels that I setup for them (horizontal/vertical orientation, fonts, font sizes, colors, etc). For example, I might want to setup a menu with options for common activities. Each option would include criteria by which to query the web for data and a layout description as for how to present it on the screen. Let's say I want to see funny, fail, and cat videos plus daily xkcd and dilbert cartoons and tech news. I might setup the layout to present one video at a time in the upper right corner (not autoplaying) that would enable skipping through them or further filtering the types. The cartoons would be in a similar panel on the left but say about 3 at a time oriented vertically. The lower right would then show the tech news vertically scrolling..

    Imagine also the commercial implications of this. If my queries to the web can also be seen (which should be optional) then not only could I write the criteria for what kinds of products and services i am interested in but retailers could see what kinds of products and services people are seeking. The criteria would include any factors of relavance. For example, the following heuristic search:

    laptop computer:
    price $100
    battery life > 8 hours
    memory > 64 megabytes
    hard disk size > 200 gigabytes
    include unknowns

    This should be a heuristic search. So if I said "hard disk > 200" it could reasonably infer the size in gigabytes. The results can add the specifics so I could modify the criteria if it's not what I am seeking. Also, "include unknowns" if for cases where the requested data isn't provided. If the vendor didn't list the memory of a laptop, include it also because I added "include unknowns" but by default unknowns should be left out of the results.

    The Semantic Web is a terrible basis for this. It is too rigid and complex. Schema's demand only specific sets of fields each with a highly specific definition. This inevitably leads to a plethora of new schemas each very similar to others and horrific levels of misuse of fields.

    Also, we cannot expect the world to instantly convert their databases to this network. It must be very easy, quick, flexible, and extensible. As JSON and non-type-safe languages demonstrate, flexible and extensible usually leads to easy and quick. This and heuristic methods lubricate programs interactions with each other, as well as internally. It would be a good idea to build crawlers to common retailer sites for data.

    However, I also believe that if even just a few hundred people began making queries for commercial products in such a system, that retailers would be more than willing to start using it. Frankly, I bet even 10 users would interest a retailer. So selling this should be no hassle.

    It would be more challenging for news sites and other non-retailers. However, it would act as meta-news. That is, people tagging and categorizing interesting content from elsewhere. One could choose go to their conventional web pages or not, from there. However, I'd suggest that ultimately retailers would much prefer this system to paying for advertising everywhere in everyone's faces. Eventually, perhaps you'd pay for access to investigative journalism. Perhaps you'd be satisfied with citizen journalism and government and non-profit resources. In any case, it would be a free market with no ability of monopolistic control. So free market principles could work as ideally envisioned and not as the growing conglomerates have taken us, lately.

  39. Re: NSA doesn't approve. by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

    No offense, but why are you repeating more or less the smae post now for the third time?
    It only runs on Amdroid btw.

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  40. FUCK. THAT. SHIT. by Hallux-F-Sinister · · Score: 2

    "The web is dying, but mesh networks could save it," writes open source hacker Andre Staltz. He warns that Facebook, Google, and Amazon plan to "grow beyond browsers, creating new virtual contexts where data is created and shared," and predicts the next wave of walled gardens will be a "social internet" bypassing the web altogether. "The Web may die like most other technologies do, simply by becoming less attractive than newer technologies."

    "The U.S. Postal Service is dying, but mesh postal delivery could save it," writes someone with a fantastic view of his own colon...

    "Social postal delivery will bypass the USPS altogether. People will just deliver mail FOR each other, and even though letters may not get to anyone truly rural, or be able to go from one city to another if no one HAPPENS to be going that way, at that time, until someone does, that's a perfectly fine and acceptable replacement for the USPS. Sure, sometimes instead of delivering your mail, the neighbor you're forced to entrust it with might instead open and read it, then laugh about the contents with all his (and your) friends, or maybe just use it for kindling, but hey... we can ALL feel good about STICKING it to the postal service by using these new, amazing social postal delivery systems.

    The idea of replacing the internet with "mesh networks" is as laughable as replacing the USPS with a hodgepodge of people carrying each other's mail. Note, not some company offering services IN-PLACE-OF the USPS's, but private individuals. It's a joke, and anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't really thought about it.

    --
    Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
  41. FFS this a solution in search of a problem by kenh · · Score: 1

    "to fix the overutilization of the wirenet and the underutilization of airnets, bringing balance to the wire-versus-air dichotomy, providing choice in how data should travel in each case...But it can only happen if the web takes a courageous step towards its next level."

    What the heck does a 'balanced dichotomy' with taking the 'next bold step' in the evolution of the web?

    This reads more like a transcript from a slacker boardroom bingo game than anything useful...

    I think the submitter needs to stop watching HBOs "Silicon Valley" stoned...

    --
    Ken
    1. Re:FFS this a solution in search of a problem by painandgreed · · Score: 1

      "to fix the overutilization of the wirenet and the underutilization of airnets, bringing balance to the wire-versus-air dichotomy, providing choice in how data should travel in each case...But it can only happen if the web takes a courageous step towards its next level."

      What the heck does a 'balanced dichotomy' with taking the 'next bold step' in the evolution of the web?

      This reads more like a transcript from a slacker boardroom bingo game than anything useful...

      I think the submitter needs to stop watching HBOs "Silicon Valley" stoned...

      Actually, sounds like they've been playing the latest version of Shadowrun. The wired internet goes down due to global virus attack and crash, so there was this wireless mesh IoT going on and people decided to just put it into production and shift everything over, because that would be easier than fixing the wired version. Did I mention this was after the paper eating bacteria destroyed all written records?

  42. mesh networks are NOT scalable by rapjr · · Score: 1

    As you add more nodes they get slower and slower as the packets have to jump more hops to get to their destination. To build a scalable ad-hoc mostly mesh network you need backbone nodes that do long haul transfer between small mesh clouds. This has been well researched by the US military and the wireless sensor network research community. Also battery power is an issue for mobile nodes, are you willing to dedicate half your battery to forwarding packets for other people while your phone is in your pocket? A mesh mode for phones that only forwards very short text messages in a disaster area may have some utility, however building a nation sized mesh-only network won't work. So figure out how communities could provide some fiber or microwave links between small mesh clouds (maybe use cars as more powerful mobile backbone nodes, and homes as fixed location backbone nodes?) and then you'll have a workable, scalable partially mobile partially ad-hoc network. Routing in such a network is another difficult problem though, if everyone is moving, the data that needs to be sent to inform every node how to get packets to every other node is massive. There are some possible solutions for that, though those solutions and the backbone links may result in giving up some decentralization and possibly be a privacy vulnerability. Creating a completely independent mobile internet/web that does not rely on the existing internet is not a simple problem. How to grow your network is a chicken and egg problem as well (until the full network exists who will use it?) Learn from how UUNET started using UUCP over telephone lines; you could use existing networks to support your new network until it can stand on its own: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  43. Reposted article from Reddit by HeckRuler · · Score: 1

    Oh Hey! I saw this on reddit. Someone linked to the initial posting on the dude's site. I shot it full of holes and he actually responded down in the comments. Looks like he didn't take any of my criticisms and is continuing to push it. He also posted it up on /r/technology.

    Lemme see... the highlights of all that bullshit....

      1) This is hyperbole in the extreme. He's lying to you to generate traffic and controversy. Clickbait.

      2) He makes up bullshit terms like "closed web" and "Wirenet".

      3) He's somehow trying to blame IPv4 and NAT for the rise of Google and Amazon as middlemen. This is crazy.

      4) Oh, and "wires" in general. No, seriously, did you read that line:
     

    It is possible to escape middlemen businesses by decreasing reliance on the infrastructure that plugs their systems together: wires.

    I can't make this shit up

      5) He mentions "scuttlebutt" which legitimately looks interesting as a way to harvest and cache parts of the Internet when your connection is intermittent.

      6) He also mentions DAT, but doesn't know how it works. He thinks it would remove the need for the IP layer. Also DAT would be TERRIBLE for a mesh network.

      7) After cutting away all the salespitch bullshit and technological misconceptions, I think he's imagining a bunch of Africans walking around with cellphones
    hosting their own webpage that gets harvested by their friends cellphones when they're in wifi range of each other. With some mesh networking to help extend that range a little. Which is a cool idea.

    The big takeaway from that whole ordeal was when he admitted:

    I have never used a MANET myself, I have basically no practical experience with its concrete problems.

    I have no idea why he would then write an article about how they would save the world.

    I have to agree with the others above, it's drivel.

  44. Score:-5, Pwned by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1
  45. So.... by BitztreamNotARealNam · · Score: 2

    How's life in the hypocrite lane?

  46. Re:State vs BigCo by cshark · · Score: 1

    Ah, the usual libertarian rhetoric. Gotta love that smell. State == bad, private enterprise == good.

    Really? I thought I sounded like a Bernie bro on that one. The state does misunderstand its role, but the cronyism is really my biggest complaint. Giant corporations paying for laws that benefit them, and hinder the rest of the industry, literally stealing taxpayer money in the form of handouts. And the cable industry has had some of the biggest handouts in history.

    Thing is that state is these days deep in private enterprise's (note: only big corps in that club!) pockets.

    If you agree with me, then why are you trying to argue the same point I'm making?

    Is now state == good, since it's just a branch of private enterprise?

    (Yours, I assume is a branch of Big Coal these days).

    I'm having trouble parsing that last part. Sorry.

    --

    This signature has Super Cow Powers

  47. Re: State vs BigCo by cshark · · Score: 1

    Yep.

    --

    This signature has Super Cow Powers