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Comment by brador | Hacker News Reader

A decentralised web is not viable until we can create an NP soft or better mesh network. Until then the network load to manage itself crushes it before it can walk.

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+1 for bringing up mesh networks. I have been reading about mesh network projects in Germany and other places. What I think is needed to increase adoption is something like the raspberry Pi, a cheap and open mesh router that would allow setting up community networks, with hooks for volunteers to provide low bandwidth gateways to the web, tools for sharing locally hosted copies of Wikipedia, projects for local social media, market places for local commerce, etc.

When there is a low cost system available, then I can visualize myself starting a class at the local library, etc.

In an increasingly centralized world (central banks, the awful one worked government philosophies, winner take all hubs on the web, etc.) it is too easy to lose track of the fact that local issues, economy, and life are more important than global issues.

There are many millions of people who don't have the problems, that can be solved by mesh networks. They live in countries, where ISPs are not overregulated and are very competitive, bringing cheap high quality high speed internet to every household. In fact, those ISPs and the whole broadband market there emerged from similar communities of local networks you describe, except they weren't mesh networks, but wired networks.

And yet there is no decentralized web there either. Because it's not technology, that's stopping it from happening.

Thanks for your comment. I see mesh networks as an alternative to be used alongside the web. Also, in the USA, local mesh networks were useful in dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, as another example of utility of mesh networks.

> tools for sharing locally hosted copies of Wikipedia,

Why?

It's much easier for the ISP to peer with Wikipedia/etc.

Why would you want a low bandwidth gateway to the web?

I don't understand the advantages.

Valid question. I was thinking about maintaining local copies of useful information for emergency use. Most things are going well in the world right now, but it is possible that there could be long term outages in infrastructure.

It is not viable until there is an order of magnitude cheaper storage (e.g $1/1TB) and cheaper/faster bandwidth. For the latter it is becoming more expensive and slower lately.

decentralized routing is a problem separate from decentralized hosting on a core-shell topology network, i.e. the current internet.

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