The internet may seem amorphous, but it's at heart pretty physical. Its backbone is a huge array of fiber-optic, telephone, and TV cables that carry data from country to country. To gain access, you need someone to connect your house to that backbone. This is what's known as the ''last mile'' problem, and it's usually solved by large internet service providers such as AT&T and Comcast.
Meshes evolved to tackle this problem. In Athens, they did so by linking up a set of rooftop wifi antennas to create a ''mesh,'' a sort of bucket brigade that can pass along data and signals. It's actually faster than the Net we pay for: Data travels through the mesh at no less than 14 megabits a second, and up to 150 Mbs a second, about 30 times faster than the commercial pipeline you get at home.
The last-mile problem, it turns out, isn't just technical or economic: It's political and even cultural. To repurpose the famous A.J. Liebling statement, internet freedom is guaranteed only to those who own a connection. ''And right now, you and me don't own the internetwe just rent the capacity to access it from the companies that do own it,'' Wilder says.
So now digital-freedom activists and nonprofits are making mesh tools specifically to carve out spaces free from government snooping. During the Occupy Wall Street actions in New York City, Wilder set up a local mesh for the protesters. In Washington, DC, the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute is developing Commotion''internet in a suitcase'' software that lets anyone quickly deploy a mesh.
''We're making infrastructure for anyone who wants to control their own network,'' says Sascha Meinrath, who runs OTI. In a country with a repressive government, dissidents could use Commotion to set up a private, encrypted mesh. If a despot decided to shut off internet access, the activists could pay for a satellite connection and then share it across the mesh, getting a large group of people back online quickly.
Meinrath and his group have tested Commotion in American communities, including Detroit and Brooklyn's Red Hook neighborhood, where locals used it to get back online after Hurricane Sandy. Now OTI is working on a mesh that will provide secure local communications for communities in Tunisia.
Even voice calls can be meshed. Commotion includes Serval, software that lets you network Android phones and communicate directly via wifi without going through a wireless carriersort of like a high-tech walkie-talkie network. Created by Paul Gardner-Stephen, a research fellow at Australia's Flinders University, Serval also encrypts phone calls and texts, making it extremely hard for outsiders to eavesdrop.
How to Keep the NSA Out of Your Computer | Mother Jones
Meshes evolved to tackle this problem. In Athens, they did so by linking up a set of rooftop wifi antennas to create a ''mesh,'' a sort of bucket brigade that can pass along data and signals. It's actually faster than the Net we pay for: Data travels through the mesh at no less than 14 megabits a second, and up to 150 Mbs a second, about 30 times faster than the commercial pipeline you get at home.
The last-mile problem, it turns out, isn't just technical or economic: It's political and even cultural. To repurpose the famous A.J. Liebling statement, internet freedom is guaranteed only to those who own a connection. ''And right now, you and me don't own the internetwe just rent the capacity to access it from the companies that do own it,'' Wilder says.
So now digital-freedom activists and nonprofits are making mesh tools specifically to carve out spaces free from government snooping. During the Occupy Wall Street actions in New York City, Wilder set up a local mesh for the protesters. In Washington, DC, the New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute is developing Commotion''internet in a suitcase'' software that lets anyone quickly deploy a mesh.
''We're making infrastructure for anyone who wants to control their own network,'' says Sascha Meinrath, who runs OTI. In a country with a repressive government, dissidents could use Commotion to set up a private, encrypted mesh. If a despot decided to shut off internet access, the activists could pay for a satellite connection and then share it across the mesh, getting a large group of people back online quickly.
Meinrath and his group have tested Commotion in American communities, including Detroit and Brooklyn's Red Hook neighborhood, where locals used it to get back online after Hurricane Sandy. Now OTI is working on a mesh that will provide secure local communications for communities in Tunisia.
Even voice calls can be meshed. Commotion includes Serval, software that lets you network Android phones and communicate directly via wifi without going through a wireless carriersort of like a high-tech walkie-talkie network. Created by Paul Gardner-Stephen, a research fellow at Australia's Flinders University, Serval also encrypts phone calls and texts, making it extremely hard for outsiders to eavesdrop.
How to Keep the NSA Out of Your Computer | Mother Jones
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