[Nullabillity]

100Mbps was fast 15 years ago. These days it's the bare minimum. And remember that you'll be sharing this capacity with all your neighbors who sign up, and since it's wireless you can't just expand the capacity by adding more cables.

And, as jkilpatr mentioned[0], the latency will make it pretty much useless for a lot of applications (such as real-time multiplayer games, or anything that creates a lot of short-lived TCP connections such as web browsing).

The only way to build out decent Internet infrastructure is to dig. Even if they come from the best intentions then these WISP efforts ultimately just end up poisoning the well.

Then again, maybe it'd be a good thing to keep connectivity at a point just before garbage like Stadia becomes viable.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20320949

[jkilpatr]

I have gigabit fiber at home. I also run a WISP.

This is from one of my wisp customers taken literally seconds ago.

  root@OpenWrt:~# ping 1.1.1.1
  PING 1.1.1.1 (1.1.1.1): 56 data bytes
  64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: seq=0 ttl=61 time=7.791 ms
  64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: seq=1 ttl=61 time=7.084 ms
  64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: seq=2 ttl=61 time=6.691 ms

Same server from my gigabit fiber to the apartment unit

  [justin@DESKTOP-UALBV95 ~]$ ping 1.1.1.1
  PING 1.1.1.1 (1.1.1.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
  64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=56 time=11.4 ms
  64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=56 time=11.2 ms

The point to point customer antenna added ~6ms of latency the remaining ~2ms is the fiber line to the internet exchange.

tl;dr Wireless point to point is easily competitive to Cable on speed and anything on latency.

[Nullabillity]

> The point to point customer antenna added ~6ms of latency

For one hop. The OP literally has Mesh in the name, so I'd expect a large multiple of that. Especially given that NYC's highrises would likely make it harder to provide direct line of sight.

> Same server from my gigabit fiber to the apartment unit

That doesn't say much unless they're colocated geographically, and the rest of the equipment is equivalent. Especially since 1.1.1.1 is heavily anycasted (like most other public DNS servers).

For the record, my results look like this (also using consumer-grade gigabit fiber):

     teo  ~  ping 1.1.1.1
    PING 1.1.1.1 (1.1.1.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
    64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=58 time=1.45 ms
    64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=58 time=1.49 ms
    64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=58 time=1.47 ms

> tl;dr Wireless point to point is easily competitive to Cable on speed

Very curious about your customer density here. It may be competitive for a few customers, but I suspect that interference from neighbors would cause a sharp drop in urban areas if everyone bought in.

[jkilpatr]

> For one hop. The OP literally has Mesh in the name, so I'd expect a large multiple of that. Especially given that NYC's highrises would likely make it harder to provide direct line of sight.

First off I will note that the goal posts here have been moved. Your original statement was that any wireless effort was doomed. This has now been revised to include many hops and distance to the internet exchange.

NYC mesh uses very traditional WISP equipment and OSPF routing (for the most part, also last I talked to them was a while ago)

If you look at their map they have several two hop nodes.

https://www.nycmesh.net/map

althea.net also runs a multihop wireless network so I can get some samples to discuss right now.

You can find a comprehensive overview of our design here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4EKbgShyLw

But to get back on subject Althea has exactly the sort of network your interested in since we're focusing on building a distributed, incentivized, mesh WISP. More than half of our users are behind two or more hops.

Here's a rough sample of some two hop users.

   fd62:e3a0:6100:ae2:2e0a:d8a7:7f25:294f metric  246  RTT  26.976  price  42840
   fd64:30f4:7ea7:5700:f391:6c14:e9c7:6f11 metric  193  RTT  15.750  price  42840
   fd65:9f14:c542:d97e:88dd:13ff:99f8:20d7 metric  239  RTT  29.966  price  42840

Most of these links are degraded by trees and distance, causing higher than ideal latencies. The users are ecstatic though, their only other options are 1mbps DSL or sat internet. No other WISP will enter the area because line of sight is so challenging.

I will also note this is literally the cheapest gear off the shelf. It gets 100mbps to the user but has serious problems with retrying packets it should just drop.

Each hop provides many degrees of freedom, we haven't found a need for more than two hops at all yet.

If we where in an urban area getting a couple of ms would be much easier, interference free 60ghz and shorter distances.

[NotSammyHagar]

Nullability sounds like a frustrated Comcast exec. The tradeoffs sound reasonable to me on the free alternative.

[darkpuma]

No way, 100Mbps is fast today for most people.

This 8K youtube video is 5m38s long and 850MiB large: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1La4QzGeaaQ

Do the math on that and you need 21Mbps to stream that video without buffering, assuming a uniform bitrate: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=850MiB+%2F+(5+minutes+...

100Mbps down is fast for most people. What do you think the average user is doing that needs more than 100Mbps down?

[FigmentEngine]

I work from home, family of five and 100 is not enough. all my tv comes over internet. three TVs, often two on at the same time. add kids with tablets, and streaming radio, teleconference and virtual desktop and 100Mbps is struggling. Latency is the tough part, less latency matters for most interactive activities. i work from home: 360Mbps up, 35Mbps down.

[darkpuma]

> "most people"

I think it's fair to say from your description that your bandwidth demands are greater than average. (Also I think you swapped your up and down, unless you've got a really strange connection.)

[FigmentEngine]

opps i did swap, er to test you were reading :-)

i'm not sure my demands will be that unusual, ppl consume what is available. and remote working and EVERYthing over IP is a trend just biting

[rayiner]

I have the similar usage to you. Cord cutter, four heavy smartphone/tablet users, remote desktop, etc. About a year ago a badly done patch-panel punch on my part slowed down our internet from gigabit to fast ethernet speeds. (Bad connection on one of the four pairs.) Nobody noticed.

I've got 3 gigs symmetric at my house, with 10-gige in the wall, and Ruckus APs that can do at 500+ mbps if using Apple products. I can't think of a way to use even a fraction of the bandwidth.

[Nullabillity]

> 100Mbps down is fast for most people. What do you think the average user is doing that needs more than 100Mbps down?

For streaming? Sure, you'll be fine as long as you're faster than the content. For downloads (Steam, etc) the difference between 100Mbps and 1Gbps is literally a 10x speedup. If you're waiting for a multi-GB game patch to download then there is a huge mental shift between waiting 20 seconds and 4 minutes.

That said, I mainly interpreted the GP as talking about expectations. You could argue that driving at 30km/h is blazing fast compared to walking, but it's still the slowest car speed that we usually consider worth thinking about.

[darkpuma]

> "If you're waiting for a multi-GB game patch to download then there is a huge mental shift between waiting 20 seconds and 4 minutes."

It's not exactly a life altering shift though, is it? Four fewer minutes of gameplay time is not, for most people, the 'bare minimum.'

A car that only does 30km/h would be a huge downgrade for any car owner, who would no longer be able to safely drive on any highway. That's a ridiculous comparison. Most users would only perceive any difference between 100Mbps and 1Gbps in uncommon circumstances and the severity of those circumstances would almost always be minimal.

If I'm backing up multiple terabytes to rsync.net, am I going to notice the difference? Oh hell yeah. And ditto if I'm pirating HBO's entire back catalogue. But if I'm bopping around on facebook and youtube? Not a chance. Maybe a few times a month I get a big video game update and have enough time to bake some chicken tendies before it finishes downloading, but a gamer's got to eat anyway doesn't he?

[Nullabillity]

> It's not exactly a life altering shift though, is it? Four fewer minutes of gameplay time is not, for most people, the 'bare minimum.'

It doesn't matter that much in absolute terms, but psychologically it can be the difference between the download finishing while you're complaining about it, or saying "meh, let's do something else instead".

[sgt]

How is that an 8K video? It seems like it's only available on YouTube as 1080p (60fps). It was shot originally in 8K sure, but it does not look particularly impressive on my 4K monitor.

[darkpuma]

Check it with `youtube-dl -F`, a 8K stream is available, but may not be presented to you in the browser UI:

    format code  extension  resolution note
    272          webm       7680x4320  4320p60 32524k , vp9, 60fps, video only, 850.48MiB

If you want, you can download it for yourself like this (the +251 part adds an opus @160k audio stream):

  youtube-dl -f 272+251 https://www.youtube.com/watch\?v\=1La4QzGeaaQ

Incidentally some videos also have VERY low bitrate encodes that also aren't shown to most users by default. This particular video goes down to 256x144, but sometimes you see even smaller, particularly with a reduced framerate.

[cowsandmilk]

The video description says that to show you 8k video, you have to use Chrome.

[d-sc]

I’ve been lucky to get 2Mbps at places I lived in the last couple years. 100 would be lucky for me.

[vvanders]

I run cable with WISP as fallback, their ping times in pfSense gateway monitoring for 1.1.1.1 are within ~5ms of each other.

Point to point can be faster than cable due to fiber/copper running at a fraction of the speed of light. That's why some HFT firms prefer ptp links.

[rolltiide]

Incentivize the nodes in a meaningful way and performance will quickly improve

[jkilpatr]

Althea.net is such a protocol and it's available for use today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4EKbgShyLw

[Nullabillity]

So, back to pay-per-use pricing. Yay?

[jkilpatr]

Flat rate means that the user ends up paying an average 25c/gb in the United States.

5c/gb doesn't sound very bad in that context.

Flat rate is also the biggest contributor to a lot of poor internet service. Providers (cable,dsl) will start selling service at a given speed then oversell it until it's crap. The incentives are all out of whack.

For the 93% of the country without fiber to the door the 2018 FCC report shows that nearly 70% don't see their advertised speed during peak hours.

[darkpuma]

It would suck for heavy use 'whales' like me, but most consumers would save money since they'd no longer be subsidizing my behavior. The selfish part of me is pretty comfortable with this status quo.

[woah]

Flat rate just means that light users subsidize the heavy users.

[rolltiide]

This why staking and network administered rewards are so effective as they dont directly burden the consumer

[dboreham]

Transcending the laws of Physics!

[rolltiide]

where there is a will there is a way

the system doesn't have to be perfectly ungameable