[frigite_]

Actually, I didn't read about it on reddit, but thanks for thinking so highly of me. :) And there is no way it will ever get any significant traction as long as people dismiss it as lunacy immediately after it is mentioned.

People treated kids that programmed like socially disabled outcasts in the 1980s. Ten years later, many of those kids were making millions. Dialing into a BBS to communicate was a waste of time. Now almost every business has a Twitter account.

Mesh may seem stupid now, but when the current net gets locked down and turned into a "white" government-regulated net within the next 20 years, people are going to start connecting to the shadow "black" mesh net to share files. No, I'm not talking about mesh nets connected to our current net. I'm talking about a completely different internetwork. And if we wait too long, we won't be allowed to setup such a network, because it will be outlawed before it has a chance to flower.

I'm not saying there is a magic field of jellybeans that can replace our current net, although IPv6 may as well be that, as slow as it has been rolled out. But, to dismiss mesh as a crock is just plain lame.

[trotsky]

It seems like you think wishful thinking is a replacement for actual engineering knowledge. The difference between your story and today is that in the 80's (and 70's) tons of real engineers were already using the internet, dialing plenty of BBS's, and already knew the Internet was going to be huge - and understood the science of how it would grow.

In contrast, the only people willing to suggest that a decentralized wireless mesh has the possibility of replacing the internet are people that haven't used one and have no rf background.

[frigite_]

What about Open Mesh Project, Open Source Mesh, B.A.T.M.A.N., Roofnet, GNUnet, Dot-P2P, SMesh, Coova, Babel, SolarMESH, WING, Daihinia, P2P DNS, Digitata.org, Netsukuku, Tonika, We Rebuild, Freifunk, Athens Wireless Metropolitan, wlan ljubljana, The Darknet Plan, the connective, Meraki, Open Mesh, firetide, guifi.net, OLPC, Iridium constellation, Commotion Wireless Project, Serval, and IEEE 802.11s?

http://emergentbydesign.com/2011/02/11/16-projects-initiativ...

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

[trotsky]

You do understand the difference between proving a technology exists and is suitable for localized high latency low bandwidth communication and suggesting that it's suitable to replace tier 1 isps that handle terrabits of data traffic per second, right? No one has ever suggested that you can't run a relatively small, localized, and centrally managed mesh network - those have been in use for all sorts of purposes for quite some time. What you're being told is that those technologies don't scale to millions of users, long distances or high bandwidth/low latency applications.

It's perfectly fine that you don't know a lot about networking or network management. Just stop telling people how they can replace the internet when you really have no idea.

If you don't want your ISPs or others sniffing your traffic user encryption. If you don't want the RIAA telling your ISP that you're pirating music stop putting your computer on a global list of computers that are offering to serve popular.mp3. It's a pretty solved problem.

[frigite_]

"It's perfectly fine that you don't know a lot about networking or network management."

I am not suggesting everyone can use mesh now and magically you no longer need an ISP. I am saying that is where we need to go. And I started off many years ago learning how to design and manage networks, getting certifications, wiring my business with cat3 then cat5, managing routers and switches, and then I moved onto something more interesting- now I just try to protect HN from morons.