[nradov]

Have WiFi mesh networks ever been proven to work at scale? The few experiments that I've seen seemed to be slow and unreliable. And in order to be of any real value, at least one of those mesh network nodes needs a connection to the real Internet.

[simfree]

Mesh networks like https://guifi.net have been reliably delivering internet longer than you have been a member of HN.

There are many mesh networks with Autonomous Systems Numbers, peering at internet exchanges, etc. You don't order 10Gbps ports at various IXPs if your community run network can't deliver that bandwidth usefully.

[traceroute66]

> You don't order 10Gbps ports at various IXPs if your community run network can't deliver that bandwidth usefully.

Well, to be fair....

   - Membership of most IXPs is not that expensive and the smaller port sizes are not that expensive
   - Many IXPs are moving to 10Gbps as the default port size (e.g. with a membership at LINX in London, you get your first default-size port for free, which is now 10Gbps at LINX).
   - If you are running an eyeball network (i.e. xSP, WISP etc.) then you might as well just buy bare-minimum IP transit and save your money for your peering point memberships, since most of your traffic will be going to the CDNs etc. all of whom have open-peering policies at IXPs, so why pay more than you need to ?
   - Moving to cynical-view territory, its a marketing expense ... become an IXP member, get a nice logo you can put on your website and give your salesdroids something to name-drop ....

[pessimizer]

> And in order to be of any real value, at least one of those mesh network nodes needs a connection to the real Internet.

I don't know what this means. If all of my family and friends are on a private network, and I'm serving my copy of Wikipedia, and all of us are sharing our books, movies, and music, we have a bulletin board, voice and video chat...

No real value?

[AnimalMuppet]

How did you get your copy of Wikipedia? How do you update your copy of Wikipedia?

How do you get your books, movies, and music? How do you get new ones?

Yes, it has real value as a fill-in-the-gap until you can reconnect to the real internet. Long term I guess it still has some value as a way to look at a static collection of things (plus content generated by people on the mesh), but the real internet is much more valuable.

[memhole]

I believe NYC has had one running for quite some time.