As regards the slow increase in broadband speeds, we would be partially better off networking between each other via 802.11G at 54Mbps >…
well appart from the number of ip points between any two points in the network, but considering the speed increases of 802.11n about to arrive, Id be very much interested in seeing how fast an associative isp’less wireless cloud network would operate in a city like london, with some of those points sharing their access into the internet. I invisage this would involve firmware modified routers where a private broadband connection was percentage shared over a public wireless network dependant on the level of spare private use capacity occuring at any one moment.
Web servers could also be run of the public side of the wireless network meaning that if a website was on the public wireless network it would not be necessary routing wise to hit the internet, this would mean that overtime we could switch over and develop an isp-less version of the internet powered purely by wireless networking technology and our own electricity bills. The advantage of this would be that as new wireless technologies came out it would advance in speed much faster than Bt seems possible of progressing with their fixed infrastructure, and also there would be no monthly cost, this could be, apart from the electricity/ initial router cost one of the first new truly free utilitys invented in the last one hundred years, after all the wireless spectrum is owned by the public anyway.
I doubt we live in a society intelligent enough to adopt this approach, since weve have almost lost the idea to beleive in something free being something better than paid for product, we almost will companies to charge us for things, when there is no real need to.
I don’t think we’re doomed to an ISP future. I think ISPs are doomed, particularly as they continue lowering caps and increasing prices, to protect their TV businesses. I think if you can convince the geekier web users to set up this co-operative internet, then eventually more and more sites are going to want to be on this net, instead of solely on the ISP net. Some renegade ISPs may even connect the co-operative internet to theirs, providing all users access to many interesting user-hosted sites available only on the co-operative net. Once a certain critical mass is achieved, it will spread quickly, and the ISP will be over, except for certain niche applications. This structure is closer to the original design intent of the internet, as something that survives attack.
mesh based wifi is possible, and wifi standards and speeds can probably increase faster than better broadband rollout, ISP’s scoff at this idea because its precisely in their interests to do so, the point with mesh wifi based routing, is that sadly for it to realty take off people need to sell a product that does it simply and easily, also mesh wifi with N wifi networking providing maximum range you would probably need one in 3 houses in a street to adopt it for it to work, and on top of that it would require some people with cantenna style wifi bridges to bridge the bigger gaps, but in citys it is certainly possible, to be honest the people behind giff gaff might be the people to organise such a thing initially the people capable of flashing third party firmware could build a uk based mesh wifi network, and then once a certain critical mass has been reached, an off the shelf purchaseable router would be the best solution, for those that dont wish to flash routers. secondly this network would differ fundamentally from bt openzone and btfon, in the sense that this mesh wifi network would have to allow machines on that network to act as servers to serve websites and information directly within the network without necessary recourse to the normal internet, as this would be the only to make it truly isp less, is to push the content to home servers. When packets were requested that originated from a source on the internet that would also need to be catered for by a shared proportion of broadband connection.
Basically the problem at the moment is the isp’s and hosting companys provide all the content, and those few points can be manipulated, In the early dawn of the internet, a compromise was made to provide better downloads speed for users by providing asynchronous access, meaning that you were always massively at a disadvantage if you wanted to run a server at home, as you could only serve others too slowly to be worth bothering, as most of the offered bandwidth was given as download bandwidth as most people wanted to browse rather than the upload bandwidth necessary to serve information, in the intial broadband connections the ratio was either 1/10 or 1/20th of the download speed. WIFI has no such disadvantage as a medium it can work as fast in both directions so serving data is as quick accross the data link as receiving.
To be honest were pretty much doomed to an ISP based future as it would take a gigantic open source user lead movement to setup such a network, but nearly all BT ISP users dont realise that BT is capitalising of everyones broadband connection to run a WIFI network BT openzone from the routers, sadly this only to provide access to the internet per access point, these wifi nodes do not link or serve content to each other directly in a network except via the internet which prevents it from qualifying as an isp less wifi network.
Also the media and governments would truly fear such an uncontrollable network, though such a thing would be the true incarnation of the internet. where each appoint in the network auto assembled itself into part of the network infrastructure, with no distinction between network that served information and those that received it.
Why is no one talking about this? Especially in the wake of the Wikileaks release and the FCC’s failure to ensure net neutrality this past week, passing an offensive piece of legislature, and the obvious dominoes that have yet to fall when an inherently chaotic organization like Anonymous is a political actor. This will obviously be necessary as the next and only step by the people (for whom governments and corporations exist to serve) to establish a truly free and open internet. This genie will not go back in the bottle.
Sorry corporate ISPs… the public gave you a shot. You proved unworthy.