Needed a WiFi "FidoNet"
It would seems that the means may soon be at hand for using WiFi, or WiFi-like, equipment to create ad hoc, meshed, non-commercial networks. These, I believe would present particular difficulties for monitoring (law enforcement and otherwise) since routing and interconnections would be dynamic and there would be no ISP nor (potentially) any use of the Internet backbone. The DoD funded some research in the 80s and 90s (e.g., SRI's Packethop and MeshNetworks) which resulted in Metricom, Tetherless Access and Nokia's RoofTop's networks. Now some students at MIT have taken up the cause http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/print_version/wo_guizzo082903.asp. If a digital bearer cash system were to become available a means for pricing bandwidth and encouraging the establishment of such an infrastructure could well follow. steve "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" -- Arthur C. Clarke
Steve Schear wrote:
It would seems that the means may soon be at hand for using WiFi, or WiFi-like, equipment to create ad hoc, meshed, non-commercial networks.
The means are at hand, have been at hand for quite a few years in the form of packet radio, and now of course, as you say, wi-fi. Folks an I used to pipedream about a xtra-net or hyper-net that was completely non-commercial, completely censor-free shadow internet running on top of the internet. The idea being to tunnel IPv6 over IPv4 over packet radio and the occasional "real" internet where wireless networks can't span. Running a distributed hack of named and a shared trust base of nic records. This would use the unallocated IP space. In order to host a node you had to relay for all all nodes. In order to participate, you had to actually be familiar with and utilise netiquette. Not a big deal, Linux and FreeBSD make it all completely possible. But like many utopian visions, not too likely.
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Cubic Dog -
Steve Schear