After the Net comes the Mesh?

By Darren Abrecht, McClatchy Interactive

Wireless mesh networks hold promise for lowering barriers to network connectivity. They also hold the potential to alter the balance of power in cyberspace, and revive the hopes of those who once believed that the Internet could provide a forum for open communication beyond the reach of corporate or government censorship.

Verizon and AT&T have both expressed interest in bidding on wireless spectrum in the FCC’s January 2008 auction. So has Google. Many analysts see this unusual move as a ploy to force the telecoms to observe open access rules which Google supports but which the telecoms oppose. However, at least one technology pundit, PBS’s Robert Cringely, believes that Google is planning to use the spectrum to build a large-scale mesh network and bring wireless broadband to the masses.

Meshes behave differently than the communications networks we’re familiar with. In our existing communication infrastructure, most client devices connect directly to a service provider’s network. When you make a cell phone call, for instance, the first stop for the signal after leaving your handset is your carrier’s nearest tower. If your phone can’t find a tower owned by your carrier or one of its roaming partners, you don’t get to make the phone call.

With a wireless mesh, however, other client devices become links in the communication infrastructure. A cell phone that was part of a mesh network wouldn’t necessarily be stranded if it couldn’t find a tower right away. It could search for other cell phones within range, and then bounce a signal from mobile to mobile until it found a tower. If the person you’re trying to call isn’t too far away, you might be able to connect to them without even using a tower. A Swedish company called TerraNet is trying out a cell phone system based on this concept. TerraNet phone calls, which are free, are routed using only other cell phones and the Internet.

The same principle has been used to extend the range of Wi-Fi Internet access points. MIT is working with the city of Cambridge, Mass., to provide free Internet access throughout the city by means of a wireless mesh. A company called Meraki is doing the same for San Francisco. Meraki is partially funded by Google, adding fuel to the rumor of a wireless ‘Googlenet.’

While a mesh network can provide a route to the Internet backbone, using a mesh to connect individual users in a peer-to-peer fashion may prove to be the more revolutionary application. The One Laptop Per Child project plans for its devices to be used in this way, communicating directly with each other to enable chat, voice-over-IP, and project collaboration without accessing the Internet.

Bringing the power of social computing to the world’s poor is just one revolution that mesh networking could bring about. If everyone used their laptop as a server, client and router, it just might breathe life back into the dream, once held by many, that the Internet could be a positive force for liberty.

In 1996, early in the Internet’s explosion as a popular medium and just prior to its broad commercialization, activist and Electronic Frontier Foundation founder John Perry Barlow released “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” a cyber-libertarian manifesto. Addressed to the “governments of the Industrial World,” the declaration asserted the identity of the Internet as an autonomous democratic community, exempt from the authority of existing governments.

The declaration was widely read and its sentiments broadly shared among early adopters. However, the Wild West of the early Web was not to last. Its independence was a consequence of the cultural gap between computing enthusiasts and authority figures, not an intrinsic feature of the Net itself. No one has believed in the independence of cyberspace since the government of the world’s most populous nation erected the “Great Firewall of China”—an electronic censor monitoring all Net traffic in that country—to restrict the free flow of ideas to its people.

In the U.S., the government and Internet backbone corporations have worked together to compromise civil liberties, often using copyright, pornography and terrorism as pretexts to invade the privacy of civilians. AT&T is the target of a class-action lawsuit alleging that the company collaborated with the NSA to illegally spy on American citizens. A federal judge has ruled the lawsuit may go forward, despite the government’s attempt to have it dismissed on state secret grounds.

Wireless mesh networks could allow users to communicate by routing signals through computers held by private citizens, without the need to pass through a backbone controlled by corrupt government and corporate entities. The result would be to wrest control of the infrastructure from powerful interests and bring it under the domain of the public good.

©2007 McClatchy. Reprinted with permission.