Oakland's Sudo Mesh Looks to Counter the Digital Divide With a Mesh Network

http://techpresident.com/news/25200/oakland-sudo-mesh-counter-censorship-digital-divide-mesh-net

by davidenglish • 12 years ago

57 19 12 years ago

So does the bandwidth get offloaded or underwritten by all the individual homeowners or businesses that let the antennas tap into their connections? Would comcast slap someone down for sharing their network connection via the mesh?

lbotos• 12 years ago

I don't have an answer to that but if traffic was encrypted then Comcast "shouldn't" care and should act as the pipes that they should be...

Nrsolis3• 12 years ago

LOL. Good luck with that.

It's trivially easy to detect this kind of TOS abuse, even if the traffic is encrypted.

I'm all for the creation of bypass networks but suggesting that connecting those networks to a cable modem connection is just going to end badly.

wmf2• 12 years ago

All "consumer" broadband prohibits sharing the in TOS, so to do this legally they'd need to buy some transit (which may still turn out to be cheaper, since almost all of the price of broadband pays for maintenance of the last mile, not bandwidth).

mbubb2• 12 years ago

right or possibly a business grade connection

dragonwriter• 12 years ago

Would comcast slap someone down for sharing their network connection via the mesh?

Isn't Comcast currently loudly trumpeting the fact that they are -- as a condition of approval of a merger -- bound by the terms of the FCCs 2010 Open Internet Order (even though that Order was later struck down as generally-applicable regulation) which prohibits protects the right of consumers to send any lawful traffic without blocking or discrimination?

wmf2• 12 years ago

I'm guessing other's people's traffic isn't lawful on a connection that was sold for household use.

acemonstertoys• 12 years ago

Does it really count as a mesh if there's only two nodes?

ryanobjc• 12 years ago

This is extremely awesome, I know some of the Sudo folks, great job all around.

I hope the noisebridge reboot can bring them in to this territory of Getting Shit Done.

One side note, there is already 2 wireless ISPs in san francisco. The very-corporate WebPass and the super-hackery monkeybrains.

The latter folk are awesome, overworked but deliver exceptional ISP value!

mbubb2• 12 years ago

HOPEX had a good talk on the subject: http://hope.net/schedule.html#wirelessme

They reference the RedHook (Brooklyn) project in the article which was an inspiring attempt - especially in how they got local help for installation and maintenance. I am not sure how that project is going as the blog does nto have a lot of recent updates http://rhicenter.org/

I volunteer for a meetup based project in my home town which is having a hard time getting roof access for the network. In my limited experience it seems the biggest obstacles are not tech problems but NIMBY.

Meshnet is a great idea - one of these days it will break through. It is exciting to see these projects

Oakland's Sudo Mesh Looks to Counter the Digital Divide With a Mesh Network

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