NYC Mesh Community Internet

Mesh is such an awesome project. I remember when the pandemic lockdowns started I spoke to friends that teach in poorer neighborhoods and they regarded the schools plans as a joke: even if they distributed Chromebooks&#x2F;tablets to every student without one, a lot of them didn’t have an internet connection to use it with. A Mesh network with antennas on top of public buildings (schools, libraries) could have been a huge asset.<p>That said, I don’t have a Mesh internet connection because I live in a large apartment building and would need permission from the building owner to install anything. Even then, there are thirty-odd units in my building so splitting that antenna bandwidth between all of us wouldn’t amount to much. A better option (that Mesh provides) is for large buildings to get fiber connections and share bandwidth with the Mesh network at large. But that would require considerable involvement from my building management and they couldn’t care less.<p>Given how common that is it seems like a big hurdle for the project, while corporate competitors like Starry will probably have an easier time convincing skeptical owners. Fingers crossed that as they roll out more locations more building owners will get on board.

My small upstate NY city has a mesh internet provider <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.massivemesh.net&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.massivemesh.net&#x2F;</a> but frankly its one of the worst in town. They don&#x27;t even list bandwidth speeds on their packages because they are so poor. They might be a better option than DSL, but not cable-based internet. I have team members who live in buildings that contract with this mesh company and they are constantly dropping out of zoom calls for unstable connections. The poorest parts of the city are out of range for their mesh network, but luckily people in these areas can qualify for low-income internet pricing from the cable company.

One of the things I&#x27;ve wondered is why people don&#x27;t create small-mesh networks off their cable internet? For example, if I&#x27;m living in a relatively small apartment with nearby neighbors, why not get one of those WiFi mesh router systems and hook up 2-4 apartments to a single internet connection?<p>This project is really interesting, but it requires a certain amount of organization and technical expertise. Installing directional antennas, running wires, etc. isn&#x27;t incredibly hard, but it&#x27;s a lot more work than setting up a router.<p>The new WiFi mesh routers are pretty great at covering a larger area and in my city the apartments are pretty close together. In a 3-unit building, it seems like you could just get one internet connection in the middle unit and a nice 3-unit WiFi mesh system and save on internet costs.

I use Mesh at home as my sole internet provider and I&#x27;ve had a great experience so far. I typically get 80mbps download, and the service has been overall very reliable (although there is an occasional brief outage or slowdown when it&#x27;s raining hard). The only other option in my building is Optimum, which has its own reliability issues and is much more expensive (~$100&#x2F;month for 200mbps).

This is great but I want to see a community mesh network which competes with the internet rather than delivering it. Best of it was based on existing wifi overlaps. Distributed, decentralized.

Amsterdam had such a project in ~2002, called Wireless East. It was subsidized. Not sure if still exists. I been to Serbia in 2008 and they were also rolling such out. Back then mobile traffic costs were insane.

a coalition of groups in New York City is also pushing for a municipal broadband option: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;internetforall.nyc&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;internetforall.nyc&#x2F;</a>

Dunno if this is allowed or not, but paywall free version is here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;Z6GXD" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;Z6GXD</a><p>I would really love to do something like this in my neighborhood. Seems like an interesting project and a fun hobby but sadly I think I would have a hard time with hardware and finding willing people to help out.

I thought about joining the network but it&#x27;s a hard sell over Verizon Fios. 300&#x2F;300 for $40 a month is hard to beat.

<i>&quot;Mr. Hall secured funding from the Internet Society to set up NYC Mesh’s first “supernode” on top of the former Verizon building in downtown Manhattan&quot;</i><p>Isn&#x27;t that a &quot;secret&quot; government agency location now?

The article mentions a problem is the mesh goes down and they rely on volunteers to fix it. Furthermore the “volunteer” who installed required a $50 tip to come out. I get why this is so much cheaper but without an organizational structure with people paid to come fix stuff you will always have situations where stuff is busted. Plus as more non-tech, non-ideological folk get connected they will abuse the volunteers when they come to help just as people do with any tech support, and volunteers are under no obligation to assist if they get annoyed. I think a formal non-profit structure with employees will be required to make this work. If the goal is an under-the-table donation at fixed prices then this can work as a tax dodge for informal employment (which is also interesting) but again, this isn’t a sustainable model.

what ever happened to the possibilities&#x2F;power of those LinkNYC phone booth towers all over the city? I was impressed&#x2F;very excited about them when they first deployed. The speed coming off those things was great. Could those not add tons of nodes to the Mesh? or are they all in the &#x27;wrong&#x27; part of the city heh

How applicable is this model to rural or mountainous regions?

I had a positive, albeit short, experience with mesh.

It bothers me that people are not more suspicious of things like this. Setting up a mesh internet grid is not a trivial engineering task. You would need to recruit at least several extremely skilled, extremely expensive network engineers with phenomenal understanding of how antennas work and radio wave propagation. You would have to run operations 24&#x2F;7. You would need skilled lawyers in local, state, and federal law to fend off the legal challenges. Also you would have to have fierce integrity and honesty to not sell the data to recoup some of your costs.<p>In addition to all this, you would have to be running an aggressive counterintelligence program internally, because such an operation any intelligence agency would love to be part of, whether you know it or not.<p>The lack of widespread computer science knowledge in the United States makes it so we all continually fall for what are likely scams or intelligence agency plays.