Comment by throwaway48540
Comment by throwaway48540 11 hours ago
Is it possible to create a mesh 5G network run by volunteers supplying their connectivity, thus remove the need for mobile network operators?
Comment by throwaway48540 11 hours ago
Is it possible to create a mesh 5G network run by volunteers supplying their connectivity, thus remove the need for mobile network operators?
Is it possible? Sure, its possible. Would it actually be feasible and good? Probably not.
Take a look at WiFi-dense apartment buildings. So much crowding, no centralized assignment or management of the bands. It is a wild west of people transmitting on whatever channels and whatever power levels they want (within the legal limits). It ends up with few people actually having a good experience when there's no centralized management. 5GHz/6GHz makes WiFi more usable because it naturally limits your ability to hear your neighbors. Going to 700MHz/900MHz/1.2GHz (the normal frequencies used in a lot of 5G deployments) is only going the opposite direction of where WiFi has been going to solve this problem. Expect more noisy neighbor problems as you lower the frequencies.
Then we're not only going to saturate the bands with people doing whatever they want (within legal limits), we're going to depend on mesh routing through all that noise? There goes your reliability and efficiency of sending data.
I'm talking about creating a single mesh network, not a Wifi-like situation with many networks on the same bands.
There is no difference in the end. It is still a single collision domain for everyone talking.
And who's to say they want to join your mesh and not Bob's super awesome mesh? Or start their own mesh? Oh, you get to decide how to operate the mesh but I can't? I guess you'll end up getting some kind of license so you can standardize how this particular mesh should operate and prevent others from running competing services on the same frequencies as your one mesh.
You'll put out standards on what kinds of devices are certified to work on it and ensure certain settings so tx/rx errors are reduced to ensure good usage. You'll start encouraging people to not put up more nodes in a certain area because it's just getting too crowded here, but hey we need to incentivize someone to set up a node on the other side of town.
Snap now it seems like we're running a regular carrier.
I participate and use city-sized WiFi mesh networks in the amateur radio world. They're not anywhere near a replacement for what normal people think of as internet connectivity. I can't imagine swapping WiFi for 5G cellular stacks would end up making a radical difference. The issues are largely with having to make multiple wireless hops, mesh routing inefficiencies/problems, and having everyone actually play nice all the time.
How do you prevent selfish leechers that use network bandwidth, but don't contribute to it, like on public torrents? Using people's cellphones as relay nodes is a non-starter because it's going to be a massive drain on battery life, so you'll have to rely on volunteers setting up their own wired base stations.
That should be fine. If it's part of every modem/gateway router, there should be so much bandwidth it doesn't matter. Standard QoS techniques can apply - don't allow someone to take it all when there are more people who want bandwidth.
>If it's part of every modem/gateway router, there should be so much bandwidth it doesn't matter.
Why would it be part of every modem/gateway? Since there's no monetary incentive to participate, in all likelihood all nodes would be run by volunteers who are shelling out extra for a compatible modem/router.
Actually come to think of it, you can run a volunteer network providing internet connectivity with off the shelf equipment right now. It's called setting your wifi network to "open". Why don't people do that? How would your mesh network fix those issues?
Not only just shelling out more for that compatible modem/router, that volunteer would also have to be willing to set up at least the antennas in a place optimal for others to actually use it instead of potentially optimal placement for their own services. A client on the street is not going to get good connectivity to someone's cell repeater tucked deep in their media cabinet next to their game console and under their TV in the center of their home. You'll need to get your volunteers to bother placing these antennas on their roofs, on the top of flagpoles, etc. to get good propagation. They better have properly grounded it as well and put fourth good lightning protection for this new wire high point at the top of their home.
Why is it not a mesh? There are fundamental differences between normal and mesh networks in the ways they route packets, and I think this is still a mesh network.
5G for just internet is somewhat doable, but unlikely reasonable. There is a volunteer-driven LoRaWAN Helium[0] mesh network which added 5G some 2 years back. But it's cryptocurrency-driven and apparently unprofitable for volunteers investing in radios and antennas. At least where I live.
My neighbor still has the Helium antenna and radio on his balcony but it's offline due to costs/profits disproportion. It's the LoRaWAN, pre-5G hardware though, and I don't know anyone running the 5G version, if it's even a real thing. I liked the idea from technical perspective but the project itself was off-putting for me due to being built around a crypto token and having overall web3 smell.
There are a few problems with this. Mesh is cool for other uses but can't replace the infrastructure of mobile operator.
One, what frequency are you going to use? If you use 2.4GHz or 5GHz, your Wifi-using neighbors will hate you. There is the 6GHz spectrum but has problems with long ranges. The 3.5GHz CBRS is probably the best bet but that requires spectrum allocation and organization to run it. The mobile operators have all the good low frequency, long range spectrum.
Two, the range with home routers is going to be pretty short, maybe 1mi. That means lots of node to cover a city. Also, 5G routers are not that cheap. It also means that there will be no reception away from the city. Most routers are meant to be used inside, and good coverage, requires mounting them outside on a pole.
Three, I'm not sure there is 5G device-to-device. There was LTE-Direct but it never got implemented. There D2D in 5G spec but I can't find any implementations.
Let's start with the technology, then it can be used to argue for legal changes.
I think the technology is already there to hook into a 5g network and repeat it. However, you would need to create a network "Provider" for the mesh. Then you would need to connect all the nodes. In the end you have made one more wireless company. I think the governance model for the mesh provider would be way more important than the tech itself.
However, creating the Wikipedia/Internet Archive of wireless ISPs would be pretty awesome.
Connecting the nodes through a common backbone shouldn't be necessary in a mesh network. Nodes can provide connectivity by relaying even if they don't have access to internet directly.
Yes via sidelink: https://www.abiresearch.com/blogs/2022/11/08/5g-sidelink/
Not used everywhere, but seen as something that would be rolled out for critical communications, natural disasters, etc.
There's some specs out for 5G on unlicensed bands, but even that uses licensed bands for coordination.
So, if you want to run legally, you're going to need spectrum licenses and transmitter licenses and all that. That will make you a mobile network operator, regardless of how you arrange labor and sites.
Not sure I'd classify this under "volunteers", but you can run a 5G hotspot on the Helium network: https://www.helium.com/5G
It feels like they've partially given up on the whole Helium 5G model as much as it still exists. Their current sham is instead to rely on user-installed Wi-Fi hotspots that use Passpoint 2.0 it looks like, and they're steering more adoption of their cursed WiFi implementation.
That's less a "mesh" than it is a community-run WISP.
Mesh would be each home (or some percentage of the homes) act as nodes. These have all the homes hit a few towers around the city. Traffic isn't routed directly between (or through) the homes in this example, it is all centralized. They hit a single big tower that then does all the routing.
The link in the Vice article to the project's site is old. Here's a current one; https://detroitcommunitytech.org/eii
Maybe we’d have a chance if you told us why you have that view in the first place.
Why is it a pipe dream? It could also be something like roaming (in foreign countries), whatever - just a community mobile network that anyone can join.
If you're talking about wireless-only mesh and using it as the only form of connectivity, sure, you're right. If it's just another way to connect then it is very practical for use in high-density urban areas, but highly unlikely to be widely implemented as ISPs are the main distributors of the most suitable node devices and they are the ones with the most to lose if mesh is easily available.
I participated in community mesh networks for years and even did a startup where people could get paid for installing mesh nodes on their roof. Many others have done this as well over many years, and have either pivoted (Meraki) or gone out of business and sold their assets to conventional ISPs (Common Networks).
The biggest hurdle is that reliably running high performance transmitters is not easy for amateurs, and the payoff for any one transmitter is not that much. I'm going to use the example of a residential ISP but this applies to cell networks as well. The "meshier" the network is, the more people revenue needs to be split between, exacerbating the problem.
Another issue is that reliability is extremely important for internet access. Given the fact that amateurs are not going to be able to maintain high uptime, for a decentralized mesh network to succeed at actually providing internet service, you need to have a lot of redundancy in any given area, further reducing income from any one node.
The solution to this is to have a team of technicians that can go around and fix and optimize nodes as soon as there is any problem. This is basically what an ISP or cell carrier does. An added difference is that in a mesh network, the idea is generally that the property owner owns the node, while with a conventional ISP, the property owner leases to the ISP who owns the node. Property owners generally prefer the latter, since this is the model they are used to operating under as landlords.