Ask Lemmy

You could do something like that using point-to-point wireless links or just cables slung between buildings to connect boxes running a self-organizing mesh network protocol like yggdrasil. But there are too many challenges for me to go into depth here ranging from getting buy in from enough people who are located in close proximity, managing user expectations of speed, making services available over such an overlay network (or managing and paying for proxies that provide access to the regular Internet), dealing with geography, etc.

You'd basically be looking at replicating freifunk or nycmesh or doing something along those lines. NYCmesh as I can tell operates more like an ISP so I would expect it to be at least harder than what they do.

Imo time is better invested in developing and advancing decentralized applications and protocols, such as developing stuff using bittorrent/DHT or I2P which can just take advantage of the existing internet.

Public infrastructure and taxes. Internet is handled by or function in a similar way to local libraries. Social media is replaced by locally run forums that use some kind of federated protocol for national connectivity potential. 99% of people don't need global internet, private ISPs still exist but less people need global high speed connections so mostly businesses and important shit that needs to be off the public connections.

Like ip2?

You mean Lemmy?

You want to know how people can make Lemmy?

Because anything more independent would require running physical infrastructure to peoples houses...

Like, you might be able to "wifi mesh" something together in cities, but it'll never cover everything and that's still technically using the existing network. Like, there's no "free uncharted territory" left, it's all owned by telecoms.

Figure out funding first.

Hi. I'm a network specialist. The Internet is not a big truck (it's a series of tubes).

To explain simply: time, distance and money. That's why nobody is doing it. All the humans are spread out over too much land, and to span the vast distances between places, you need either a really long cable (see: fiber optics) with permission to run said cable over that distance, or you need wireless relays (these don't have as much bandwidth).

The main problem isn't getting the power to reach a particular destination... You could fire a wireless signal from New York to LA if you had line of sight with relatively little power.... The problem is, the damned earth gets in the way.

So what do we get if we try? A bunch of independent communities with spotty connections to nearby communities, and it's likely that as soon as you go any significant distance, the demand on bandwidth would vastly outstrip any bandwidth you have.

Great, now the internet is slow, shit, and half the time, doesn't connect to what you want to access.

The Internet is set up the way it is because it's efficient and economical to do it this way. Let me talk at you for a minute and explain.

ISPs in your local area use copper wires, such as telephone or cable TV lines that were put in place more than a generation ago, to handle the "last mile"... The fact that we can get as fast of service down 20+ year old lines is a miracle half the time. Also, anyone with fiber, go sit in the corner, you're in a different class.

So all these last mile runs go to their distribution building that amalgamates them into a small number of high speed, high bandwidth fiber lines that go towards the nearest exchange. Not telephone exchange, internet exchange. They're usually located in data centers.

Internet exchanges act as a nexus of cross connectivity between ISPs, and corporations that host internet services like Meta, Google, etc. As well as transit providers, international data connectivity service providers that own undersea cables.... Everyone and everything that wants to communicate on the internet is connected at these points, which is why they're in data centers. The data center is attached to the internet exchange, not the other way around.

IX-es are connected to eachother over long distance fiber cables, usually run along utility properties, like those used for high voltage power transmission towers, or run along railroads or similar. Basically anyone who has a long, uninterrupted stretch of land, probably has been approached by transit providers to run fiber across their property between locations.

It's a huge, complex web of companies that have agreed to move customer traffic between locations.

Recreating all of that is an insane technological challenge especially for a rag tag group of volunteers and hobbyists with little money, and no resources.... From scratch.

I like the idea, but implementation is going to be nigh impossible.