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by trotsky 5208 days ago
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.
1 comments
frigite_ 5207 days ago
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

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trotsky 5207 days ago
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.

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frigite_ 5205 days ago
"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.

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