Meshnet activists rebuilding the internet from scratch

This is pretty cool, and gaining momentum

Across the US, from Maryland to Seattle, work is underway to construct user-owned wireless networks that will permit secure communication without surveillance or any centralised organisation. They are known as meshnets and ultimately, if their designers get their way, they will span the country. Dan Ryan is one of the leaders of the Seattle Meshnet project, where sparse coverage already exists thanks to radio links set up by fellow hackers. Those links mean that instead of communicating through commercial internet connections, meshnetters can talk to each other through a channel that they themselves control.
Each node in the mesh, consisting of a radio transceiver and a computer, relays messages from other parts of the network. If the data can't be passed by one route, the meshnet finds an alternative way through to its destination.

'Guifi' a mesh network in Catalonia, Spain which was set up in the early 2000s by an Oracle employee who wanted broadband at his rural home is doing really well, the local network now has more than 21,000 wireless nodes, spanning much of Catalonia. Guifi allows users to communicate, hosts web servers, videoconferencing services and internet radio broadcasts, which would all still work if the internet went down in Spain.

The Seattle Meshnet has just completed a successful crowdfunding campaign for meshboxes – routers that come preloaded with the cjdns software needed to join Hyperboria. Users will just plug the routers into their existing internet connection and be ready to go on the virtual meshnet – or a local physical meshnet when one becomes available.

For more information on 'meshnet' you can read the full article here

reply to post by Lady_Tuatha


This does sound cool .

Let's Just hope that the Men in Black don't get to them and you know off before we get to see or maybe try..

reply to post by Lady_Tuatha


This sound really cool, S&F for this.

But I can't help but wonder: If the authorities can't enforce laws on this new Internet system, won't it open the door for Mafia and neonazi surveillance-less communication, thus higher criminal coordination?

Again, nice find

Originally posted by swanne
reply to post by Lady_Tuatha

 

This sound really cool, S&F for this.

But I can't help but wonder: If the authorities can't enforce laws on this new Internet system, won't it open the door for Mafia and neonazi surveillance-less communication, thus higher criminal coordination?

Again, nice find

Yeah I was thinking about that also, but here is what meshnet have to say on the likelihood of it being a doorway for criminality -

Visions of a decentralised internet come with a seedier side – the darknet. One way to access it is through the anonymising routing service Tor, which lets a user find hidden web pages that have .onion addresses, rather than IP addresses. But anonymisation like this can facilitate otherwise unacceptable activities. Illegal drug market, Silk Road can only be accessed using its .onion address. But Alexander Bauer, who works on a meshnet in Maryland thinks meshnets are less likely to carry this content. Any website that can successfully run on a meshnet must be socially acceptable to every peer they connect with, making it less attractive for child pornographers or websites like Silk Road. "That's why we don't think the network will be taken over by child porn. You have to have someone accept what's on your node in order for them to pass your traffic around," he says.

link

reply to post by Lady_Tuatha


Okay, thanks for the info!

The wireless radio layer is 2.4 & 5.8GHz. There are some pretty strict FCC rules regarding the total transmit power of the radio.

So just saying... The FCC can cruise around in vans and find the transmitters and they could put you away, fine you and confiscate all your equipment if you are exceeding the power limit. All you would have to do is put a high gain antenna on and boom, they can throw the book at you.

Might need mobile nodes to make it all work under "duress". If TSHTF, It would probably be super slow. pictures and text only and it could take hours or days to get from point A to point B. In exigent circumstances it would be golden.

Thanks for the guidance.

reply to post by Lady_Tuatha


Nice one. Was wondering when someone would do something like this. The tech is all there for it.. Well overdue..

Just found this cool little short vid about meshnet, how it works and what you can do to help



Feel free to spread the word.