Simon Vans-Colinas Infrequently updated blog.

Monday, March 31, 2003

Welcome to the Mesh Net.

There has been a lot of discussion on the internet recently about how wireless has the potential to change what the internet means, how content is delivered, who gets to be a provider. And a lot of hackers are out there building wireless community networks, meshnets.

The internet as it is now is a start network. You connect to your isp, they connect to theirs, and their connected to a backbone. Over this 'star' network, many people are running p2p programs, like kazaa. These are mesh networks, where each node is connected to the 4 closest nodes (in theory.)

The idea behind building a new wireless mesh net is to take this peer to peer network topology and build it in hardware, with the radio spectrum as its ether.
The cool thing about this is that with out an up-stream and a down-stream, this new internet will be inherently uncommercial. There will be payment for content, but not access. And the reward of the commons, is communciation becomes free (as it should be.)

In light of this, i am setting up a free network in ridge st surry hills. I will be sharing my music, providing internet access and voice over IP. My current linux box (which already has 2 network cards) is getting a ZOOM 802.11b wifi card tonight, and i have added myself into the NODE DB.

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