GoKawiilI love networking, a lot. So much so that I've run my own ISP since 2024, complete with its own ASN, IPv4/6 address space, fiber optics, etc.
However, do this and you quickly realize how reliant you still remain on central service providers. The internet is a mesh, but the real players on that mesh are few, far between, and easy to coerce into censorship and other bad things. Even after ascending to the lofty realms of direct BGP peering myself, my access to those resources is locked behind yearly fees from ARIN. Ownership of the "real estate" of the internet, IP addresses, no longer exists.
The tragedy of modern computing is that the local compute we own in our offices, on our laps, or in the palm of our hands is massively, massively powerful, but Big Tech companies actively refuse to take advantage of that fact. Why are you, I, and our neighbors largely relegated to consuming access from big players when the computers we have are capable of so much more?
Mesh networking, sending packets of data through many directly interconnected peers instead of through central datacenters, promises to free us from our reliance on central service providers, and it's something I've been really excited about lately.
Of course, there is good reason for how the internet is currently designed. High bandwidth connections are costly, and for some applications lowering latency as much as possible is very important, which realistically requires continent- and ocean-spanning fiber optics with as few middle-men as possible.
This doesn't mean we need to put all our eggs in this basket though. While bandwidth-intensive services like Netflix or latency-sensitive services like gaming are not likely to come to mesh networks anytime soon, there are a vast number of applications which are perfectly suited to mesh networking:
Messaging, social networking, and general information sharing are very practical uses for mesh networking where access, censorship resistance, and resiliency are increasingly critical for many people around the world.
For applications like this, we don't need to trench fiber connections through the ground to get everyone connected. In the modern mesh networking space, much of the innovation is happening in the LoRa radio space.
LoRa radios use license-free, sub-gigahertz radio bands that are available for public use in nearly all countries around the world. Compared to the license-free 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz radio you'd recognize from Wi-Fi (but is also used by many other technologies), LoRa operates at much lower power and, importantly and simultaneously, at much longer range.
Mesh networking over the airwaves presents a very unique opportunity for our societies. We could build a resilient, peer-to-peer network that coexists with the internet, enabling connectivity in currently underserved regions and increasing our personal sovereignty online by maintaining a functional backup to the internet for our most critical needs.
... continue reading