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Monday, May 16, 2011

Could wireless mesh networks be an alternative to government controlled Internet? : Libertarian

Could wireless mesh networks be an alternative to government controlled Internet? : Libertarian

Could wireless mesh networks be an alternative to government controlled Internet? (self.Libertarian)

submitted 3 months ago by electricfoxx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network

Everyone most likely has heard about the debacle in Egypt. I am a pragmatic person and believe there is a solution to this.

If the network was owned by the people themselves, they wouldn't have to worry about the government or some government-influenced corporations.

The only problem is many people want reliable technology. They want a consistent connection so they enlist the government to regulate the technology so there are fewer kinks. People in remote areas may have a problem because long range radio communication is heavily regulated, whereas short range transceivers (wireless routers) can be bought by anyone.

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[–]KantLockeMeIn 8 points 3 months ago

Not yet. We need more unlicensed bands which allow higher ERP for it to be effective. We'd also need to rethinking address allocation as a true mesh network would require a huge routing table and would be a limiting factor for most consumer priced routers.

(network design engineer + licensed amateur radio geek)

Not saying it's not technically possible... but you'd find it difficult to implement it tomorrow should the SHTF.

[–]demian64 6 points 3 months ago

Couldn't a mediated mesh rely on root servers such as the Internet does now for DNS? Could any mesh network even handle IPv6?

[–]KantLockeMeIn 12 points 3 months ago

Yep... I'm not really referring to DNS when I mean address allocation, but rather a way to manage a large routing table.

At home you have a default route... 0/0 which points upstream. Your ISP worries about how it will get to the destination, not you. When you have multiple upstream providers, and have a certainty that they will carry your traffic to any destination, you still have the option of routing 0/0 to both ISPs. But imagine you have 10 paths out, and none of which you can be certain have a path to Google or Yahoo or Wikipedia's servers. You now have to have intimate knowledge of each route to determine a workable path.

Most ISPs will allocate address space out of their blocks and when it advertises your block, it's part of a summary. So they may assign 10.10.0.0/24, but they may announce 10.10.0.0/16 to their peers. This reduces the size of the Internet routing table dramatically. There are still provider independent blocks assigned out of RIRs which are portable, and these may or may not be announced by providers based upon their prefix length (/16 vs /20 vs /24 vs /28, there is a limit to how small of a prefix someone will announce or listen to).

IPv6 would make it easier as there are more available addresses to allocate in a different fashion, but the crux of the issue is routing table sizes. The way addresses are allocated aren't really on a micro-geographic basis. What would be more effective would be to do such allocations where you could guarantee mesh connectivity among nodes such that the number of announcements could be limited and summarized outside of a region.

Problem is, the way summarization works is based upon bit boundaries. I can summarize two /24s into a /23, but only if it falls on a bit boundary. For example, 192.168.0.0/24 + 192.168.1.0/24 = 192.168.0.0/23.... however 192.168.1.0/24 + 192.168.2.0/24 != 192.168.1.0/23. So the issue is that geographic areas are bound to overlap. Think of holding a magnifying glass over a piece of paper. It can only cover one 4" diameter at a time, but the page is 8.5x11. At any given time, you can only see part of the paper. But you can move it at will.... so you can change what you see at any given time. If you tried to summarize routes, you're summarizing what is inside the magnifying glass, which is only significant to whatever touches the edge of that glass. With how the bit boundaries work, it's difficult to be part of two summary ranges at any given time.

I'm having a hell of a time explaining this one, so if you don't follow, it's my fault, not yours. I live and die by my whiteboard and I don't have one here :)

[–]demian64 6 points 3 months ago

I'm a system guy who has a high level understanding of networking so I get the general gist of what you're saying. The range of IPv6 is what lead me to ask if it would work. I figured the table would have to be huge. Could a mesh be set up with role transfer ability where one host maintains the primary allocation table and has redundant hosts based on a rotating schedule? Not sure how that would impact gateway addressing as I undertand it, though. I guess what I'm asking is can we have something like DHCP tied in to the allocation protocol that would allow for dynamic table maintenance? Or is it more fundamental than that?

[–]KantLockeMeIn 6 points 3 months ago

By no means am I saying that this is something that can't be figured out, just that our current mechanisms, tools, and protocols don't specifically work well. It's just a bit of a paradigm shift, that's all.

[–]samfoy 6 points 3 months ago

There could certainly also be community controlled wired networks. There are many alternatives available to government regulated networks. You should check out this article on p2p dns servers

[–]HeisenbergUncert 6 points 3 months ago

r/darknetplan is mulling it over. Some people think it might be easier to launch an open source satellite. There is an opensource meshnet project called Netsukuku

[–]djrocksteady 3 points 3 months ago

Not sure how secure a satellite would be.

http://articles.cnn.com/2008-02-19/tech/satellite.shootdown_1_uss-lake-erie-spy-satellite-sea-based-missile-defense?_s=PM:TECH

[–]HeisenbergUncert 3 points 3 months ago

Wow! Yeah, in that case the mesh would be better for no other reason than it wouldn't be centrally located. I understand that both Italy and Greece have pretty extensive wireless meshnet communities.

It would probably best to mimic them rather than re-invent the wheel.

[–]howardRoark36 6 points 3 months ago*

802.11s was supposed to address this, but i haven't seen anything. it was supposed to be included in the latest linux kernel (but i haven't seen any discussion/gui etc)

random other stuff: batman share on ubuntu roofnet seattle wireless

i have lots of ideas here, so if anyone wants to start a project, or has connections, please let me know. i think linux is our best bet - and/or java

there was another comment on netsukuku and it looks very promising

[–]pigfish 2 points 3 months ago*

open-med.com and open-mesh.org also look promising and are available today for use and even pre-flashed on routers for < $100. But this looks more like it is a way to get a few mesh nodes connected to the rest of the Internet rather than create a redundant mesh network.

Still, we have to start somewhere and a redundant mesh is not going to magically appear overnight. It also wouldn't have any services on it since everything of value is currently on the regular Internet.

Perhaps the way to roll out a redundant mesh infrastructure is to start by using any of these protocols to attach mesh nodes to the real Internet just to get things going. If the connecting nodes span across geographic and political boundaries (thus, various pipes connecting to the Internet) then it's far better than the current state where governments can exert pressure of a handful of corporations who control POTS/fiber/cable/backbone infrastructure.

It looks like Netsukuku hasn't been touched since 2009. Any other potential candidates? 802.11s was installed on XO-1 computers, though I never actually saw it in action to know if it worked.

[–]howardRoark36 1 point 3 months ago

you're doing this already, but we should define what we (i) want

  • solution that works on as many (existing and future) devices as possible (wireless and wired, wireless routers, etc)
  • solution bridges networks and makes all devices on all networks available to all others
  • no single point of failure (reliable, redundant)
  • encrypted (secure, private)
  • anonymous
  • possible profit model (so people are incentivized to participate)

[–][deleted] 4 points 3 months ago*

In the 70's almost every teenager had radio/transmitter setup in their bedrooms, radio communication was the Internet of their day. We may have to get back to that kind of setup.

A setup kind of like this http://www.rocketroberts.com/stereo/stereo.htm

[–]ZybexAkhenaton 5 points 3 months ago

Check out roofnet.

[–]Gadsden 4 points 3 months ago

In cities you could have city-wide networks, but linking to rural areas (where all the handy to have around during a revolution gun owners are) would be cut off without backbone links of some kind. Besides wireless can quite easily be jammed, at least in strategic areas.

Plus building a wireless network mesh with enough bandwidth to handle the population of any large city is a freaking nightmare.

I operated a WISP in a small city/rural area for about 10 years.

[–]KantLockeMeIn 3 points 3 months ago

In cities you could have city-wide networks, but linking to rural areas (where all the handy to have around during a revolution gun owners are) would be cut off without backbone links of some kind.

That's where we need more unlicensed bands and higher ERPs. Sure at some point the curvature of the earth is going to be a problem for some rural areas, but lower frequency bands can overcome this, albeit at much lower bitrates.

Besides wireless can quite easily be jammed, at least in strategic areas.

Today, yes. But FHSS and DSSS technologies are evolving. Increase the potential frequencies that can be used across multiple bands and you'd have a much more difficult time of it.

My biggest concern in general would be routing, as I said in another thread. And as you say, bandwidth... and what we both elude to, latency. Traversing 80 wireless hops to reach your destination won't make for fun times with regards to bandwidth or latency.

[–]princeamor 3 points 3 months ago

We need to create an internet2

[–]KantLockeMeIn 6 points 3 months ago

Like this: http://www.internet2.org/ ?

[–]princeamor 7 points 3 months ago

uhh... internet3?

    kw: mesh, networking, freedom, p2p, internet, bitcoin, asterisk, google, google voice, android, root, free, wireless, data, linux, voip, voice

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