A DIY Internet Network In NYC Now Covers Large Parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn (vice.com) 109
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A community-run operation named NYC Mesh is on a mission: to deliver better, cheaper broadband service to New York City. The locally-run nonprofit project says it's engaging in a dramatic expansion that should soon deliver a new, more open broadband alternative to big ISPs to a wider swath of the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn. With the installation of a new "supernode," NYC Mesh has greatly expanded its coverage area to much of western Brooklyn, as well as much of lower Manhattan.
Born out of frustration in 2013, NYC Mesh isn't a traditional business. It's built on the backs of volunteers and donors who dedicate their time, money, bandwidth, hardware, and resources to building an alternative to the abysmal logjam that is shoddy US broadband. Initially, the mesh network was powered by a single "Supernode" antenna and hardware array located at 375 Pearl Street in Manhattan. This gigabit fiber-fed antenna connects 300 buildings, where members have mounted routers on a rooftop or near a window. These local "nodes" in turn connect to an internet exchange point -- without the need for a traditional ISP. Unlike a traditional ISP, users don't pay a fixed monthly rate, and there are no costly monthly usage caps or overage fees. A NYC Mesh rate sheet notes the project is funded by optional monthly member donations of $20 or $50 for a residential users, or $100 for a business. Users also pay $110.00 for a WiFi router and rooftop antenna, and a $50 installation fee. The organization announced that it will install a new Supernode 3 antenna and hardware array at Industry City in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn. "According to NYC Mesh, this new supernode will have 50 times the capacity of the original node, allowing the project to extend availability to Sunset Park, South Slope, Park Slope, Gowanus, Red Hook, and beyond," reports Motherboard.
Born out of frustration in 2013, NYC Mesh isn't a traditional business. It's built on the backs of volunteers and donors who dedicate their time, money, bandwidth, hardware, and resources to building an alternative to the abysmal logjam that is shoddy US broadband. Initially, the mesh network was powered by a single "Supernode" antenna and hardware array located at 375 Pearl Street in Manhattan. This gigabit fiber-fed antenna connects 300 buildings, where members have mounted routers on a rooftop or near a window. These local "nodes" in turn connect to an internet exchange point -- without the need for a traditional ISP. Unlike a traditional ISP, users don't pay a fixed monthly rate, and there are no costly monthly usage caps or overage fees. A NYC Mesh rate sheet notes the project is funded by optional monthly member donations of $20 or $50 for a residential users, or $100 for a business. Users also pay $110.00 for a WiFi router and rooftop antenna, and a $50 installation fee. The organization announced that it will install a new Supernode 3 antenna and hardware array at Industry City in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn. "According to NYC Mesh, this new supernode will have 50 times the capacity of the original node, allowing the project to extend availability to Sunset Park, South Slope, Park Slope, Gowanus, Red Hook, and beyond," reports Motherboard.
Strange. Sounds like Capitalism to me. (Score:1, Insightful)
Individuals investing their own resources voluntarily into this or that. That's Capitalism.
The term "non-profit" is a legal term; it applies to organizations that have reduced tax burdens. In other words, the government is stealing less from them than from other organizations.
Taxation is theft. This is capitalism.
Attempting to twist the conversation (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't attempt to twist the conversation.
TFA clearly says people are devoting free labor and resources to this cause - that's hardly capitalism, it's more like collectivism or socialism.
Also, people are rarely complaining about simplified examples of capitalism. The issues people take are with the games that get built at scale. Let me give you a contrasting example:
Simplified thinking: Competition is great because it incentivizes manufacturers to improve their products or pricing, both of which are great for consumers.
Reality: Big box store are able to sell more units than anyone else, and use this to dictate sale price, forcing manufacturers to degrade their products to reduce cost, which has a ripple effect on the entire supply chain.
Reference example of a distorted supply chain: https://www.cio.com/article/2439956/supply-chain-partnerships--how-levi-s-got-its-jeans-into-wal-mart.html
Even if we leave politics completely out of the question, unregulated capitalism is pure evil, and while the redistribution of taxes is not ideal in it's current form, it's representative of the long held understanding that we don't currently know how to make capitalism represent our humanitarian ideals.
Re:Attempting to twist the conversation (Score:4, Insightful)
Except by that argument, every classical economist was a "socialist". None of them thought that *every* human need would be provided by the market.
Words mean whatever people agree they mean, and right now the Republican Party has succeeded in changing the definition of "socialism" to be "anything we don't like". As an unintended consequence, they've de-toxified the term "socialist" because it refers to things that are actually consistent with a market economy.
Before that, to be a "socialist" meant to reject the very notion of market valuation in favor of the labor theory of value. "Market socialist" was a contradiction in terms. Today, most "socialists" are "market socialists", which is to say not socialists at all. Just who who falls short of radical laissez faire capitalism.
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But individualism taken to an extreme denies there's a community at all. The fact is that some things actually benefit from economies of scale. Each individual going out and having to pay for their own health care in most cases would infeasible should they suffer any serious medical condition. Pooling resources together, whether through insurance or through a single payer system spreads the costs.
The real world isn't a Libertarian paradise. In reality, collective action, whether it's full-on capitalist free
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Capitalism no more guarantees a humane society than any other economic system. Capitalism itself has to be restrained by democratic institutions, otherwise it's just as likely to lead to misery as any other economic system you can think of.
Society isn't about just one thing. There's no single ideology that makes society works. For any society to work, there has to be pragmatism, a balancing of individual and collective liberties. Like it or not, humans are social animals. We aren't all lone wolves (and real
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That's why you have a constitution which limits the power of even the voters.
And no, taxes aren't theft. They have existed since the dawn of civilization because they are the only way civilization can function. Again, we're not solitary creatures. We are a social species, and to create any order at any scale beyond a hunter gatherer group, you've got to have a means to collect taxes; whether monetary, labor or otherwise.
You imagine a fantasy, but to me Libertarianism at its core is a nightmare, and would be
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Capitalism to the extreme is this:
Take a currently profitable business (like, say, making insulin) that sells something people HAVE to buy (at least some people do, so you have a captive audience), buy all the companies that make that product, and overnight you quadruple the price. INSTANT WEALTH! YAY CAPITALISM!
THAT is capitalism, and it is evil.
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This example is wholly compatible with a libertarian paradise. It is voluntary, individual driven, and doesn't seek to eliminate competition. Just because it is funded by donations rather than regular billing doesn't mean it's socialist. There is nothing wrong with collective action not for profit in capitalism.
If this were socialist, it would be the government providing the service for "free" but paid for with involuntary tax dollars.
Re: Attempting to twist the conversation (Score:1)
Collective ownership is socialist. If you search for socialism online, the first five results or so refer to social ownership of production as socialism. If the customers of an ISP also work for the ISP, then that's a socialist enterprise. Worker owned businesses are also socialist. If big G Government owns and operates a business, it's socialist only if the government is beholden to the will of the people. The United States Post Office isa great example of a government run socialist enterprise.
Socialism an
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Taxation is theft.
We should "steal" more so Anonymous Cowards like can get an education.
Re:Strange. Sounds like Capitalism to me. (Score:4, Informative)
capitalism /kapdlizm/
noun
an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
Notice the "for profit" part? First sign that you are a true ideologue is that you are willing to change the definition of words.
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Individuals investing their own resources voluntarily into this or that. That's Capitalism.
The term "non-profit" is a legal term; it applies to organizations that have reduced tax burdens. In other words, the government is stealing less from them than from other organizations.
Taxation is theft. This is capitalism.
Capitalism [wikipedia.org] is "an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit." An alternate definition of capitalism [dictionary.com] is "an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, especially as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth."
Simply choosing to use resources in a project is not capitalism; otherwise,
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Simply choosing to use resources in a project is not capitalism
When the resources (read: means of production) are privately owned, and the purpose of the project is to produce some good (Internet access) for the owners' benefit (read: profit), then that is capitalism even by your own narrow definition. The fact that the IRS classifies the organization as a "non-profit" is a red herring. The organization might not profit from the endeavor, but its members do.
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Taxation is theft. This is capitalism.
Taxation in a democratic system is by consent of the governed. Capitalism is by definition profit-oriented. There can be pride in the hard manual labor of building a dam, a road or a bridge.
But fundamentally the crews are out there because they are being paid for their work.
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Doesn't this violate the telcos right to make profit? I'm sure the telcos will lobby for a law to prohibit this.
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YOU: If you are the TELCOS, let's see you do some lobbying
TELCOS: Lobbying!??!! We don't do no lobbying. We don't need to do no lobbying. I don't have to ever do any more stinkin' lobbying!
YOU: But we've done nothing wrong. What about our rights?
TELCOS: We'll decide what's wrong and what rights you got. (To workmen standing behind him) Okay boys, pull down those access points and feed 'em to the shredder. Make sure they run our special routers from now on.
Sorry, but those NYC people don't stand a chance. Ne
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Doesn't this violate the telcos right to make profit? I'm sure the telcos will lobby for a law to prohibit this.
It's New York City. I'm sure the lobbyists can dig up some existing law or administrative ruling, say a zoning technicality, that shuts this down.
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What about https://www.link.nyc/ [link.nyc] ? How is this better?
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Can't be communist, it seems to be working.
Doesn't New York have fiber everywhere already? (Score:2)
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It's easy. And, fiber helps with regularity, improving throughput.
San Francisco must have a lot of fiber!
In this particular area, San Francisco and Seattle are in a race to the white pasty bottom.
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Fiber does not help with or regularity, nor does it help soften shit. Fiber makes it harder. Fiber creates constipation.
If you have hard shits, increase fat and water. If you have runny shits, you are ill or you need to eat things that require chewing.
Re: Doesn't New York have fiber everywhere already (Score:2)
Wow a whole gigabit, just for NYC (Score:1)
truly astounding, we must live in the future where everyone can get a least kilobit download speeds
slow (Score:2)
Having thousands of users share a single "gigabit fiber" connection is probably slower than what you can get from a real ISP
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NYC must have coverage from all mobile operators. If you need reliability, why don't you get a cheap mobile data plan from each, a couple of mobile modems, a small server (RaPi or Zbox, for example) and a virtual server as a tunnel endpoint. Then you can route the minuscule amount of data that is needed for these critical applications through multiple networks. Make RAIN, so to speak: redundant array of inexpensive networks.
The only problem (Score:4, Interesting)
The only problem with this is that the costs of LEGALLY starting an ISP, *and* complying with all applicable laws and regulations, are probably beyond the reach of a donation-based ISP.
Once this gets big enough, the major ISPs will bring court action to compel them to comply with the same laws and regulations as every other ISP, and looking at those costs, this will probably be shut down.
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What law and regulations do you think NYC Mesh are violating? Did you even bother to research who they are and how they operate?
Incoming NSL requiring government wiretaps in 3.. (Score:1)
2.. 1..
Portland did it already (Score:1)
We had a community run mesh network called Personal Telco. It's mostly gone now because gigabit internet service is cheap and reliable from the major ISPs, whereas Personal Telco was basically free but slow and unreliable. We also have two non-profit ISPs providing mesh networks, one called StepHouse using legitimate commercial grade hardware to do it. I think they will succeed where most have failed because they're a legitimate business charging for access rather than relying on the good will of people.
The Bay Area did it, too (Score:2)
I wrote about a project founded by Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive called SFLan [sfgate.com], way back in 2004. Unfortunately I haven't followed it since then, but I think they still have a community network operating around the vicinity of Richmond, CA.
Love these kind of projects. (Score:2)
Uses proprietary mesh networking (Score:2)
It looks NYC Mesh uses Ubiquiti's proprietary airMAX ac [ui.com] protocol on 5 GHz.
This is probably blowing out everyone else's 5 GHz 802.11ac WiFi...but hey, it's an unlicensed frequency, so tough luck!