A Second Open Letter to The Worcester Community

deavmi said:
Well the current setup of this mesh (like Freifunk in Germany) it runs one single channel, and all that use the mesh firmware will connect and broadcast on that channel too.
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Time for those YouTube videos. ;)
 
deavmi said:
Yes, well atleast in Worcesyer there are open channels, but we can atleast run a few wifi signals on the same channel, if all else fails then we use 5Ghz range.
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I have a couple antennae on my roof and both 2.4 and 5Ghz are saturated. At last count I think I saw something like 80 access points!
 
deavmi said:
With a mesh you can atleast change one thing for the better, which is decentralized routing.
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Okay, looking at freifunk. Good thing my mother-tongue is German.
First thing I saw when looking at their site "Wir sind dezentral organisiert" which means that their meshes are in different places and not organized in one place. It has nothing to do with wanting to decentralize the internet.

Their main purpose for setting this up, is to have one large network where one can share data and make phone calls for free.
This implementation is not great for a small town like Worcester. It works a lot better in Germany due to density of the population (Worcester has a population density of 1300/km^2, which means you would have to get near everyone to sign up to be able to have the town covered, rather than the 1 in 10 or so that most towns in Germany require).
They are also promoting sharing of videos, music etc. which is what I am guessing you want to do?

Freifunk is a good idea, but you will not find much support here, too many freeloaders.

It is also not secure, it is open access. (Credit card details over this network? Are you insane?)
For gaming, that would depend on the distance. You would still get better pings over DSL unless your exchange is congested or the guy is only 3/4 hops away. If it is across the city, your idea will not work/have higher latency.
 
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I didn't read through all the posts but did someone mention CTWUG? We use OSPF with Mikrotik, it might not be strictly a mesh network but we have loads of redundancy. By the sounds of it you want a Worcester wug. We will be happy to give input. You can find us on irc and the ctwug forums.
 
Crystal Web said:
Why is this better?
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Because if one router in the mesh goes down the route to get a packet to its destination can be re-routed, let's say if you have a mesh network comprised of four nodes, if you want to send a message from node one to node 4 there are 3 routes that the packet can take to get to it's destination.
 
Johnatan56 said:
Okay, looking at freifunk. Good thing my mother-tongue is German.
First thing I saw when looking at their site "Wir sind dezentral organisiert" which means that their meshes are in different places and not organized in one place. It has nothing to do with wanting to decentralize the internet.

Their main purpose for setting this up, is to have one large network where one can share data and make phone calls for free.
This implementation is not great for a small town like Worcester. It works a lot better in Germany due to density of the population (Worcester has a population density of 1300/km^2, which means you would have to get near everyone to sign up to be able to have the town covered, rather than the 1 in 10 or so that most towns in Germany require).
They are also promoting sharing of videos, music etc. which is what I am guessing you want to do?

Freifunk is a good idea, but you will not find much support here, too many freeloaders.

It is also not secure, it is open access. (Credit card details over this network? Are you insane?)
For gaming, that would depend on the distance. You would still get better pings over DSL unless your exchange is congested or the guy is only 3/4 hops away. If it is across the city, your idea will not work/have higher latency.
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I don't want to decentralize the internet, I want to create an independent mesh network.
 
deavmi said:
I don't want to decentralize the internet, I want to create an independent mesh network.
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The Freifunkers are really nice people, got so much support front the developer of the mesh firmware, Gluon, himself and was able to setup my Meshnetwork.
 
I also have to say there are more meshes than that, check out Oakland mesh, Seattle mesh and the NYC Mesh.

The NUc and Seattle Mesh Are very secure as they use cjdns as the routing protocol.
 
deavmi said:
Because if one router in the mesh goes down the route to get a packet to its destination can be re-routed, let's say if you have a mesh network comprised of four nodes, if you want to send a message from node one to node 4 there are 3 routes that the packet can take to get to it's destination.
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So redundancy? Well, non-mesh networks are able to provide (at a cost to businesses) 100% uptime SLAs. So I'm not really seeing how increased redundancy while forsaking latency and throughput is any sort of bonus.

Yes, you can setup a small, cheap, wireless mesh network. Its uses are limited though. The only APs able to mesh with decent throughput across 3 or 4 mesh hops are the likes of Ruckus, some Ciscos, and other expensive brands. You're talking in the region of around R30k per AP. This is, of course, if you wish to install a proper mesh network, and not a home-made wireless frequency jammer.
 
deavmi said:
Well atleast the mesh has two operating nodes. So I see now problem with that.
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It's good that you are learning, and having fun, but honestly, a mesh network is never going to work in Worcester. As mentioned earlier most of ZA is too sparsely populated for this kind of thing. I like my current connection - it is stable, has great latency, and I don't experience any issues with the way my traffic is currently routed.

In other words, my internet works, and I have none of the problems that a mesh network solves.
 
mister said:
It's good that you are learning, and having fun, but honestly, a mesh network is never going to work in Worcester. As mentioned earlier most of ZA is too sparsely populated for this kind of thing. I like my current connection - it is stable, has great latency, and I don't experience any issues with the way my traffic is currently routed.

In other words, my internet works, and I have none of the problems that a mesh network solves.
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Okay :D
 
I think stabbing my eyes out with tooth picks would have been more productive than reading this thread....

now wheres that jet pack....
 
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