It is been three years almost. Welcome to new era of mesh-networks. This is the first post about our attempt to implement mesh-network in Puducherry. A series of posts will follow.
What is Microsoft, Google and Apple to computers and services are the Cisco, Juniper, Verizon, and in india Airtel, BSNL and Reliance to network infrastructure. They pour billions if not trillions of dollars into building and maintaining the infrastructure. And even more money into supressing the competition and alternatives.
What do they have?
1. Establishment - BSNL, Reliance and Tata are unquestionably the backbone of networking infrastructure in India.
2. Marketing - Airtel owes its strong presence in India to its marketing.
3. Power - Some of these organizations can effect regulations of govt, if they wish.
4. Money - In terms of billions a year.
Money and power creates a positive loopback aiding these organizations to attain even more money and power. So our sane intial step will be to create a network which complements and works in harmony(whenever necessary) with the already existing network.
What do we have? A clutch of interested volunteers. If we are to rival these organizations(which is possible, I agree) we need the support of the people, not just few of us who want to deliver better alternatives to the people. Let's face it. In general people are reluctant to try and learn new things. The reason is they don't want a better system, when exisitng one gets the job done. we resist change, because we don't trust each other. So our ideal goal should be to make the people more liberal. Making people liberal can be a life long project on its own. So lets settle for the mesh-net.
Nothing works better than drama to gain people's attention. Attention is not enough. You know why male perfume advertisements throw a few hot girls in there. We need to attract people. We need to organize a grand event(what do we do in that event?) in a college(no other place comes to my mind, suggestions?)
As already mentioned, people won't trust us with their devices to install some great tool which will enhance public knwoledge(but they are ready to install crappy games and flash light apps, which will steal the shit out their phone[1])
As a branch of thoughts from our first MeshNet meetup at open-drop
* We need to install mesh nodes among few potential zones.
* We need devices to do so? How many devices do we have at hand(Should have a discussion on which cheap and feature-rich router to use for our campaign, if you will)
* We need funding
* We need a dedicated machine to compile openwrt to multiple targets(I guess that can be arranged)
Lets say we do organize a grand event. Who are all going to come to that event. What is going to be our influence over them and what is going to their influence over our activity from there on. How do we make sure that people stick to the plan. What activity will demostrate the power of mesh network. How do we illustrate the difference between centralized and decentralized networks to them, the laymen.
Talking and presenting are the only key ingredients, I agree. There is a little problem with that. It take too much time, and active participation from us. How many of us have the gumption and conviction to go through with this?
People and society have their own issues. And we do too?
* Our own goals
* Finanicial issues
* Peronal issues
* Gradual decline of (interest/attention?)taste/motivation in one thing
If talking and presenting are not our only devices, what else are we gonna employ?
Cookipedia and its kind, are good ideas.
Another messaging app?
Localizeed P2P file sharing? (We already have wikipedia dump)
If we are gonna host services, where do we host'em? (assuming ipfs is not our initial step) and what purpose the internet using individuals do mostly? browse web? share stuff? watch porn?
We must admit that this is unchartered territory for most of us. We need to sit and go through countless frustrating hours to get it working both technically(we are lucky here, since most of the things are in place) and politically(so damn unlucky).
I think and hope the responses to this post generates more questions than it answers.
Lets talk about some technical problems:
how do we identify other people, in mesh-network.
Someone mentioned about statistical algorithms for semi-human-readable(seeding names instead registering by hand) names in the comments section of this post[2]
And very importantly, we need to have bigger goals than just implementing mesh-net as an alternative internet. We by ourselves need a direction, a higher purpose to empower people and let them grow, and for which the mesh-net will act as a viable tool. The desire to implement mesh-net by itself will not drive motivation. It is not the desire to gain money that drives us to gain money, it is the thought of spending it after gaining it.
What is Microsoft, Google and Apple to computers and services are the Cisco, Juniper, Verizon, and in india Airtel, BSNL and Reliance to network infrastructure. They pour billions if not trillions of dollars into building and maintaining the infrastructure. And even more money into supressing the competition and alternatives.
What do they have?
1. Establishment - BSNL, Reliance and Tata are unquestionably the backbone of networking infrastructure in India.
2. Marketing - Airtel owes its strong presence in India to its marketing.
3. Power - Some of these organizations can effect regulations of govt, if they wish.
4. Money - In terms of billions a year.
Money and power creates a positive loopback aiding these organizations to attain even more money and power. So our sane intial step will be to create a network which complements and works in harmony(whenever necessary) with the already existing network.
What do we have? A clutch of interested volunteers. If we are to rival these organizations(which is possible, I agree) we need the support of the people, not just few of us who want to deliver better alternatives to the people. Let's face it. In general people are reluctant to try and learn new things. The reason is they don't want a better system, when exisitng one gets the job done. we resist change, because we don't trust each other. So our ideal goal should be to make the people more liberal. Making people liberal can be a life long project on its own. So lets settle for the mesh-net.
Nothing works better than drama to gain people's attention. Attention is not enough. You know why male perfume advertisements throw a few hot girls in there. We need to attract people. We need to organize a grand event(what do we do in that event?) in a college(no other place comes to my mind, suggestions?)
As already mentioned, people won't trust us with their devices to install some great tool which will enhance public knwoledge(but they are ready to install crappy games and flash light apps, which will steal the shit out their phone[1])
As a branch of thoughts from our first MeshNet meetup at open-drop
* We need to install mesh nodes among few potential zones.
* We need devices to do so? How many devices do we have at hand(Should have a discussion on which cheap and feature-rich router to use for our campaign, if you will)
* We need funding
* We need a dedicated machine to compile openwrt to multiple targets(I guess that can be arranged)
Lets say we do organize a grand event. Who are all going to come to that event. What is going to be our influence over them and what is going to their influence over our activity from there on. How do we make sure that people stick to the plan. What activity will demostrate the power of mesh network. How do we illustrate the difference between centralized and decentralized networks to them, the laymen.
Talking and presenting are the only key ingredients, I agree. There is a little problem with that. It take too much time, and active participation from us. How many of us have the gumption and conviction to go through with this?
People and society have their own issues. And we do too?
* Our own goals
* Finanicial issues
* Peronal issues
* Gradual decline of (interest/attention?)taste/motivation in one thing
If talking and presenting are not our only devices, what else are we gonna employ?
Cookipedia and its kind, are good ideas.
Another messaging app?
Localizeed P2P file sharing? (We already have wikipedia dump)
If we are gonna host services, where do we host'em? (assuming ipfs is not our initial step) and what purpose the internet using individuals do mostly? browse web? share stuff? watch porn?
We must admit that this is unchartered territory for most of us. We need to sit and go through countless frustrating hours to get it working both technically(we are lucky here, since most of the things are in place) and politically(so damn unlucky).
I think and hope the responses to this post generates more questions than it answers.
Lets talk about some technical problems:
how do we identify other people, in mesh-network.
Someone mentioned about statistical algorithms for semi-human-readable(seeding names instead registering by hand) names in the comments section of this post[2]
And very importantly, we need to have bigger goals than just implementing mesh-net as an alternative internet. We by ourselves need a direction, a higher purpose to empower people and let them grow, and for which the mesh-net will act as a viable tool. The desire to implement mesh-net by itself will not drive motivation. It is not the desire to gain money that drives us to gain money, it is the thought of spending it after gaining it.
உள்ளுவது எல்லாம் உயர்வுள்ளல் மற்றது
தள்ளினும் தள்ளாமை நீர்த்து. - வள்ளுவன்.
[1] http://truthinmedia.com/exclusive-top-10-flashlight-apps-are-stealing-your-data-even-pics-off-your-phone/
[2] https://nohats.ca/wordpress/blog/2012/04/09/you-cant-p2p-the-dns-and-have-it-too/
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