NYC Mesh Community Internet
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
That said, I don’t have a Mesh internet connection because I live in a large apartment building and would need permission from the building owner to install anything. Even then, there are thirty-odd units in my building so splitting that antenna bandwidth between all of us wouldn’t amount to much. A better option (that Mesh provides) is for large buildings to get fiber connections and share bandwidth with the Mesh network at large. But that would require considerable involvement from my building management and they couldn’t care less.
Given how common that is it seems like a big hurdle for the project, while corporate competitors like Starry will probably have an easier time convincing skeptical owners. Fingers crossed that as they roll out more locations more building owners will get on board.
Kinda strange for me. Do you need a permission for router install too?
Having said that, the fun of mesh is having those conversations and getting others to also purchase equipment and install. Also as your neighbors and surrounding buildings add their own installs, the boxes will also wirelessly mesh together which will increase bandwidth and possibly speed.
So maybe you could ask 2 of your neighbors to pitch in, which would get you the connection but also influence others to join in on your neighborhood network.
Right now I bought a Ubiquiti Edge router and balance my connection so that NYC Mesh is a failover. Initially was receiving 40Mpbs download but checked again recently and now am sometimes seeing speeds of 100Mbps because the nodes in my neighborhood grew.
Right, and that’s the key problem with building management approval. They’re already disinterested and they’re even less interested in installing something that only benefits one apartment or maybe a couple. There’s already a specific exclusion against the likes of DirectTV satellites that only serve one apartment on the roof.
So the best chance of getting approved is to go down the fiber route, but that’s a so much larger and complex solution that there’s less chance it’ll ever happen. Feels a little catch 22-ish: the small solution is too small to get approved, the large solution is too large to get approved. None of this is Mesh’s fault, it’s just that plodding real estate interests in the city always default to doing nothing if they can.
(worth noting though that a number of folks in NYC live in co-op buildings where the apartment owners are the building management, I imagine the fiber option could make inroads there much more easily)
Make the argument to opt out and I think you will find that once it’s in place no one will want to put in the time to opt out because the opt-in is all benefit.
I understand what you’re saying and the fiber option could be a later enhancement. I know NYC building management is sometimes difficult but my installs were fun and painless that I’m hard pressed to believe it wasn’t worth it.
The friends of mine that use NYC Mesh often experience speeds faster than what can be reasonably purchased from other ISPs available in the same building. It's a great way to eliminate your internet bill and gain much faster upload speeds.
This project is really interesting, but it requires a certain amount of organization and technical expertise. Installing directional antennas, running wires, etc. isn't incredibly hard, but it's a lot more work than setting up a router.
The new WiFi mesh routers are pretty great at covering a larger area and in my city the apartments are pretty close together. In a 3-unit building, it seems like you could just get one internet connection in the middle unit and a nice 3-unit WiFi mesh system and save on internet costs.
You can order a connection which allows sharing, but it’ll cost you about a grand or so per month.
It’s not like you can deliver LSD digitally, so there would have to be a shipping address.
If you neighbor is shipping you LSD then you have a different problem: free LSD and/or a neighbor issue.
As to a proper solution, please refer to my above comment about registering a business and keeping the Internet connection in the name of the business.
There are established procedures for law enforcement to contact ISPs to get the required information and that’s when you present your logs.
2/ The ISP only needs a single business address, not multiple registered addresses for all their sites.
3/ This thread isn’t specific to NYC Mesh, but the same principles apply
You tell the cops to go to this address and see this person as that’s the customer with the requested IP address.
For any further questions you refer them to your company lawyer.
Now, if I lived in a halfway sane society, meaning one where the worst case scenario would be police knocking at my door and asking some questions or even serving a search warrant, that might be a risk I'd be willing to take.
Unfortunately I live in a completely deranged one, where the more likely scenario would be flashbangs through my windows, a battering ram through my front door, and full auto rifles in my face.
No, thank you.
Well, that’s the problem right there.
If you are running an ISP business you should not have your backhaul connection registered in your name, but in the name of your business.
Thus swat would have to contact your business first before they can get a physical address.
I would really love to do something like this in my neighborhood. Seems like an interesting project and a fun hobby but sadly I think I would have a hard time with hardware and finding willing people to help out.
Is it the sole internet or backup is an important question to answer.
Find a local ham group, they may already be doing something similar and might be interested in other projects.
Funny you mention hammers. I checked and my local ham group is run by a bunch of right-wing nut jobs, so I don't think they would be interested in a meshnet.
When I was in college at NJIT I had access to a building, with roof access, 10G networking, head of networking was a friend, battery backup, and staff members on site at all times [0] and attempted to figure out what we'd need to connect to NYC Mesh or if they'd be interested in starting a sister mesh. We're in NJ so connecting to the NYC Mesh might have been difficult but we likely had line-of-sight to some parts of Manhattan.
tl;dr: No one was able to help at the time and we'd have to foot the bill for the equipment which was not possible at the time. This is obviously completely reasonable but hopefully as they grow they can do more outreach.
A Mesh alternative to standard ISPs is critical in my opinion. It could even be used for emergency communications in the next Sandy-like scenario.
[0] - https://www.k2mff.club/ & https://web.njit.edu/~k2mff/ourwork.html
> and we'd have to foot the bill for the equipment which was not possible at the time. This is obviously completely reasonable but hopefully as they grow they can do more
edit for context: in brooklyn
Now we're moving to Long Island and the town has only two choices - optimum and FiOS. When I looked at the Optimum statement, there was a ton of "discounts" for being in a high-competition area which is how they got the price down to ~35 as well, from the base of about $70 as you said. Though we later changed our minds and went for Fios at about $39.
Isn't that a "secret" government agency location now?
NYC Mesh’s Supernode 1 is on top of a different building, at 375 Pearl Street.
The goal of nyc mesh is not capitalism or to become a standard ISP.
No one said it only works sometimes or wasn’t reliable. You just won’t be using it to binge watch TV shows or competively gaming.
This isn’t the first time the city has given an ISP to provide internet access for NYC and previous attempts by large ISPs were either a lie or unsuccessful. Yes I do think internet should be community operated and owned and if that means the city pays NYC Mesh some money to install and maintain it, then that’s good for the city. That’s tax money being invested into the quality of the neighborhoods. Where did you get this information that the contract excludes any sort of maintenance?
The current system for ANYONE who wants to be apart of the network but not install is tipped based. There is nothing that indicates the contract between the city and NYC Mesh would operate that way.
These networks are so easy to set up that almost little to no maintenance is required. And this is the first step to city wholly owned and maintained networks that is a good thing. That means the people in the city are better off and more self sufficient when it comes to internet access.
NYC Mesh has an excellent track record of providing and maintaining service (maybe at a cost or not). Large ISPs have continually failed in that regard. So yes this is a better and more visible use of money.
I invite you to get involved and be more than an arm chair critic.
I’m all for this, but I hope you realize operating something like this at scale is only possible because you aren’t paying even a minimum wage and are avoiding all the hassles and rules that make doing this according to what society wants for all other non-profit and profit entities. This is gig-economy ISP which apparently is great here but the NYT and leftists hate for all other places.
> “NYT and leftists”
No reason to politicize this and pigeon hole advocates.
Honestly it’s wild to see this kind of logic of HN. Goes to show how much technology has become more about business culture than about the technology itself.
NYC Mesh's model isn't groundbreaking, rather it is set up like Guifi.net to encourage other small businesses to crop up supporting individuals who want to join the network.
I assumed the tip wasn’t a hard requirement? Is there a reason you thought otherwise? Otherwise it wouldn’t be a tip.
Obviously, it would be crappy not to give them anything if you’re a well-to-do person, but one of the purposes is to service lower-income households.
We have instructions for a DIY connection on our website and a channel on our Slack where you can ask other members about problems. The DHCP lease tends to go dead every couple of months and we have various things to try when that happens.
A traditional WISP model might be more practical, if you can secure tower sites.
In addition to all this, you would have to be running an aggressive counterintelligence program internally, because such an operation any intelligence agency would love to be part of, whether you know it or not.
The lack of widespread computer science knowledge in the United States makes it so we all continually fall for what are likely scams or intelligence agency plays.