In a typical week, NYC Mesh–a community-owned internet network in New York City–might get five requests from people who want to join. In the wake of the FCC’s decision to roll back net neutrality rules, it started getting dozens of requests a day.
Without net neutrality protections, big telecom companies can choose to slow down or block certain sites. If you want to watch Netflix, for example, Comcast could decide to charge you more to access it. A community-run “mesh” network, by contrast, takes back control from corporations: Everyone on the network can agree to keep all content open. When a system is fully running, the people who use it can cancel their contract with a traditional internet service provider and stop paying any monthly bills.
“I think with around 30 or 40 supernodes we could cover the whole city,” says Brian Hall, a volunteer working on the project. “It’s going to take us a while, but that’s our plan.”
It’s something of a return to how the internet originally worked. “One thing that inspires me is that the original idea of the internet was a network of networks,” Hall says. “Different organizations like universities or the Defense Department would form their own network, and then they would join them together, and that is how the internet formed. We’re just getting back to the idea. We formed a network, and we join our network with other networks, and get rid of the ISP layer that we don’t really need.”
Unlike big telecom companies, which rely solely on a small number of these expensive relay points, a mesh network can route internet from house to house. Having a dense network of participants can keep the bandwidth high and makes the network resilient. But building a comprehensive network is also difficult. “One of the problems in starting a mesh network is bootstrapping–how you get a mesh network from nothing to actually existing,” says Juul. “Every time someone comes and wants to be on the mesh, in the beginning, they’re very likely going to be very far away from anyone else on the mesh.”
It’s becoming easier as the hardware improves; some new equipment that will be on the market in early 2018 is smaller and simple to mount with a zip tie. People’s Open Network also runs workshops that teach anyone how to install a node. In 2018, the group will likely run a Kickstarter campaign to launch nodes in a large number of homes at once.
It’s feasible, they say, for community-run networks like these to eventually replace traditional ISPs. If a community can get cheap internet from a Tier 1 provider–in the Bay Area, the group is working with a company called Hurricane Electric that has a global network and low rates–and because the hardware is getting cheaper, then “you can serve a lot of people for almost no money . . . the bandwidth cost goes toward zero if enough people share it,” he says.
In some locations, including large parts of Spain, this type of network is already operational. The Spanish Guifi network has more than 30,000 active nodes. If it can succeed in the U.S., mesh networks could help avoid the problems that come with traditional internet service providers; participants can sign agreements to uphold net neutrality. People’s Open Network others are working on a network commons license that the group plans to adopt next year.
The mesh could also eventually replace cell service providers, using hardware built to a new LTE standard that allows anyone to create their own cellular base stations (without the expensive licenses that were previously necessary). “That would really expand what the mesh could be used for,” Juul says.