Mesh Up the Internet v2.0!!!

[SteveEdiger]

Here's the Internet today

What if neighborhoods had an internet engine just for themselves and established trust with each other to share tools, garden produce, And could connect with other neighborhoods on a trusted basis to share what they wanted?

And could could use this infrastructure to connect to the Internet at discounted rates from all other providers.

Group Facilitators and Slack Handles

Steve Ediger @SteveEdiger and others tbd

Who we're looking for

We're looking for people who are interested in a more equitable internet. There will be plenty of different types of work, including data collection, data analysis, cartography, writing, meeting the communities, designing the systems, implementing a pilot project this year.

Chi Hack Night slack channel: mesh-up-the-internet

Start at Chi Hack Night Slack if you're not already on it. Then join the public mesh-up-the-internet channel.

[stevevance]

How does municipally-owned broadband fit into the story?

[SteveEdiger]

@stevevance this is rather late; I'm not in the habit of checking github comments.

Muni-networks break out into two categories. County networks, like Kane County's network, provide fiber optic highways and a gateway to the internet that they lease out to larger businesses and small internet service providers. City/small region based networks, like the Urbana-Champaign Big Broadband Not for Profit and Central Illinois Regional Broadband Networks, act as ISPs a serve homes and small businesses in their footprint.

[IohannesArnold]

Just posted this on Slack; I'll reproduce it here:
The talk tonight was quite inspiring, thanks @SteveEdiger! I've been kicking around the idea of doing something like the Guifi or Freifunk projects for a while, and it was really envigorating to hear other people say similar things tonight. I'm based in Hyde Park and want to get at least a small demo mesh running there. As I understand it, when you boil things down, there are two main needs for a successful mesh network:

• Nodes
• A connection to the backbone
  My plan for Hyde Park is to leverage my connections to the housing cooperative scene there as well as the connections that I have to the University of Chicago. I think that the housing coops in the Hyde Park area would be sympathetic to the idea of establishing a distributed, communal network and might humor a startup project like this. So the Hyde Park coops will be the first nodes. Meanwhile, I will ask around at the Universiy of Chicago to see if they would be willing to allow the nascent network to connect to the wider internet through them. As that network gets up and running, it can expand to other places in Hyde Park and across the south side.I plan to move forward on this regardless of the amount of help I can find here. But as long as people here agree, I would like to share my progress in this space and pay attention to any other happenings going on here so that we can collaborate on all mesh-related projects across Chicago. And if anyone would like to join in setting this thing in motion here in Hyde Park, you'd be quite welcome :)

Thanks,
John

[SteveEdiger]

John, This is to let you know that after a lapse in the Mesh up the Internet breakout group, we've made some breakthroughs which have reinvigorated this project. The group is generally meeting on Tuesday nights at the Merchandise Mart. If you're interested, RSVP at chihacknight.org (before noon on the Tuesday you plan on coming). Or you could email me what you're up to and we can discuss further. Steve Ediger 773-920-7350 (google voice) 505-426-7088 (mobile)

…

On Tue, Jun 26, 2018 at 11:09 PM John Arnold ***@***.***> wrote: Just posted this on Slack; I'll reproduce it here: The talk tonight was quite inspiring, thanks @SteveEdiger <https://github.com/SteveEdiger>! I've been kicking around the idea of doing something like the Guifi or Freifunk projects for a while, and it was really envigorating to hear other people say similar things tonight. I'm based in Hyde Park and want to get at least a small demo mesh running there. As I understand it, when you boil things down, there are two main needs for a successful mesh network: - Nodes - A connection to the backbone My plan for Hyde Park is to leverage my connections to the housing cooperative scene there as well as the connections that I have to the University of Chicago. I think that the housing coops in the Hyde Park area would be sympathetic to the idea of establishing a distributed, communal network and might humor a startup project like this. So the Hyde Park coops will be the first nodes. Meanwhile, I will ask around at the Universiy of Chicago to see if they would be willing to allow the nascent network to connect to the wider internet through them. As that network gets up and running, it can expand to other places in Hyde Park and across the south side.I plan to move forward on this regardless of the amount of help I can find here. But as long as people here agree, I would like to share my progress in this space and pay attention to any other happenings going on here so that we can collaborate on all mesh-related projects across Chicago. And if anyone would like to join in setting this thing in motion here in Hyde Park, you'd be quite welcome :) Thanks, John — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#137 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABcbw0jKCr5DaCVojIi-5gcIv-C1lD46ks5uAwVzgaJpZM4RaWQf> .

[SteveEdiger]

reopened this version 2.0

[IohannesArnold]

Steve, I just sent you an email about my personal plans.

More generally:
Do we have a resource wiki for this? Is it this issue?
Anyhow, this was a really cool conference and here are some great video resources about decentralized networks:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCudGRFTjVGsrKF0h27GER2g/videos

Particularly, this is a FLOSS distributed network project that is actively recruiting organizers; they may be useful:
https://althea.org/#getinvolved

[derekeder]

Closing as it is a duplicate of #183