<nettime> A DIY Data Manifesto by Scott Gilbertson

[John Case]

On Tue, 8 Feb 2011, Eugen Leitl wrote:

> Server space is one thing, BBS networks are an interesting solution, sort
> of a HAM radio version of the internet.
>
> I think the backbone needs to be de-privatised as well.


Look, this is all fine and good - everyone with two brain cells to rub 
together immediately thought "mesh network" - not for Egypt, per se, but 
anytime in the last four years that this issue has come up.

But you go digging into the guts of this and you'll find that you only 
have to get about three levels deep before the whole thing is a mess.

Start reading the mailing list archives of MANET, BATMAN, OLSR, and so on, 
and you'll find that there are serious, serious 
math/network[1]/graphing/etc. issues that are nowhere near to being solved 
on any scale larger than your neighborhood.

So, a standalone wireless BBS ?  Golden.  The knee jerk "I (somewhat) 
grok the OSI model and some related bits of trivia and I think ya'll 
should just set up a mesh" ... not so much.


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_(mathematics)