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by CodexArcanum 2512 days ago
I've been very intrigued by their efforts for some time now. Last time I read about NYC Mesh, it sent me down a rabbit hole of research into mesh networks and what it takes to found an ISP. I'd love to replicate their efforts in NOLA, but the legal and technical hurdles are tricky!

When I had looked into it, these resources had been helpful for research:

Wireless Networking in the Developing world -- http://wndw.net/ -- A useful guidebook on the tech needed for large scale community mesh networks

Guifi.net -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guifi.net -- A huge wireless mesh in Spain, there's a linked economic report in the references that's very good but may be unavailable at the moment. It may have been, or be contained within, "The Cook Report on Internet Protocol" Volume XX1, No, 12 & XXII, No 1 March April 2013 ISSN 1071 - 6327. The report is very long and covers quite a bit of the social and technical challenges faced by Guifi.net

5 comments

Hey there codexarcanum,

My partner and I are NOLA based programmers / lawyers who have been researching this matter for a few years. We own the domain nolamesh.net and would love to work with you to navigate the political / legal / business issues to deploy a similar network in the New Orleans metro area. Please reach out to us at nolalawcorp@gmail.com and let's set up a meeting.

This is off to an auspicious start. Here's to seeing your "How HN helped us start an ISP in New Orleans" blog post in a few years!
your website is down
>own the domain
I also found https://startyourownisp.com/ to be a good resource. I have no interest in founding an ISP, but it was really cool to read and think about
Hey that's my site! Thanks for sharing!
Just want to say thanks for that site, it has led to countless hours of reading and thinking and dreaming from me that may eventually turn into actual work!
Came here to say the same! Here's the link to the related HN discussion, in case it can useful as well [0].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16160394

The main problem is organizing. Legal and technical problems are easy by comparison. I wrote a guide here for starting your own network- https://www.nycmesh.net/blog/how/
The problem has always been that this networking technology can’t really be compared easily to wired networking, but consumers do. You adversely select for people who want reliability instead of speed, which is the opposite of what WISPs provide.
>over 35,000 active nodes and about 63,000 km of wireless links (as of July 2018)

That's impressive.