So I was thinking about what if we could make a network that the only thing you needed to connect to it is to directly connect ( through wires or directed wireless antennas ) to at least 1 computer that takes part in it, with no centralized node of any kind. For that we would need a whole new protocol and address system. THIS IS JUST A THING IN MY MIND TO TALK ABOUT. I AM NOT ADVANCED IN THIS DOMAIN.
At first I thought at making groups of 256 nodes so that every node inside of that group knows every other node. A node will know nodes’s group address that until now are just 2 hexadecimal digits like “D8” and the location address. A location address means what path to take to connect to any node, a location address for 98 would be “connect to 63, ask 63 to redirect message to A9, ask A9 to redirect message to CF, ask CF to redirect message to 98”. Messages between a groups nodes would be all encrypted and all steps of the location address would be encrypted for each node in part.
Now every node in a group can send encrypted messages to anyone else in that group.
Now lets say that another node wants to connect to that network, but the group is already 256 nodes: That node will create another group. The first node of a group picks a random 2 digit hexadecimal address for that group. A node knows at least 1 computer’s location address from every group. Untill now addresses are like “D8.01” D8 is a computer’s address in a group and 01 is that group’s address. 256 groups will create a kilogroup, each node knows at least 1 computer’s location address from every kilogroup. Untill now addresses are like “D8.01.8F” , 8F being the kilogroup’s address.
This thing can scale ever more, creating megagroups, gigagroups etc…
If I wanna connect to D8.01.8F then I first connect to a node that I know is in the 8F kilogroup, that node will connect to a node it knows in the 01 group, and that node knows D8 directly so it will connect to him and give him message, this kinda works like a DHT, wich me sending the message to the closer node I know to the destination node
Now this is very very far from perfect or usable, what happens if 2 networks grow independent and when they connect they have the same addresses? What if someone wants to sabotage this with a fake node? The location is also not very private.
Can this get better or even usable? Do you have any ideas or just want to discuss this?
You could do point to point links over say 5 gigahertz or 6 gigahertz for connecting towns and such together and then do more local stuff inside those towns. If I remember correctly, even consumer equipment, over 6 gigahertz, can do 180 megahertz wide channels, and would allow you to get a max throughput of about 1.8 gigabits per second. I have heard talk of 360 megahertz wide channels but have not seen 180 or 360 megahertz in the wild personally. Not from consumer equipment anyway. From cellular networks, I have seen about 200 megahertz or just slightly above.
Edit: even at 1.8 gigabits per second or 3.6 gigabits per second though you would still have to do a lot of localization of content instead of going to say Netflix and asking for the newest movie you’d go to your city hall equivilant to ask for that movie. Why saturate the point to point links when they could be used once to pull down large content and then be shared over the local network more times without saturating that link.
What licensing and cost is needed for the links? I assume one just cannot set it up free and no paperwork?
Thanks.
Since the 5 gigahertz and 6 gigahertz spectrum is free use, there would be no licensing cost, but the equipment would definitely cost some money.
Hi there, wireless ISP engineer here(former)
This wouldn’t work because the spectrum is free. It is almost impossible to get a clean channel for high bandwidth, low latency throughout without using licensed frequencies.
You also have to deal with DFS, which will cause your radios to switch frequencies automatically if they detect certain types of equipment like emergency, aviation, or military equipment, and can totally fuck your backhauls.
Well, for point to point links, you’d be using extremely narrow band antennas and not omni-directionals, so most other frequencies shouldn’t interfere because of being cancelled out by the antenna lobes. As for the DFS, that is only part of the band in the middle, so you could either put your link above it or below it, or up on 6GHz.
It really doesn’t matter how narrow you go in loud RF environments. 5ghz spectrum is maxed out pretty much everywhere other than very rural areas, and can only get so narrow. Even that is starting to change with WISPs hanging tons of cambium and ubiquiti 5ghz APs.
A point to point link over 5ghz will encounter interference no matter how hard you try, trust me. Unless you’re there first.
6ghz works extremely well over very short distances, but even something like tree cover will reduce its connection quality dramatically
Fair enough. The other option is to go up to 60 gigahertz, but then rain fade starts to kick in real badly. I think there must be some set of frequencies where rain fade causes problems because for example weather radar uses 24 gigahertz if I remember correctly to measure rain and so that would obviously be a no-no. However, I am not aware of any other free use spectrum that would fall between 6 gigahertz and 60 gigahertz.
Thanks. Interesting.
Is there power requirements? Usually free use is limited to low power because otherwise you’ll get interference with other local users. That’s microwave, so you could get pretty directional. Then again, it might not work so well in rain.
It’s a good bet that if it was practical and just as good as what we have, ISPs would do it.
Yea there are power and frequency limitations depending on where you are. .
Well, definitely frequency. Things are always regulated by band globally.
Honestly that was half-rhetorical, because it wouldn’t make sense otherwise. For microwave devices like wi-fi access points it’s on the order of 1 watt, sometimes being a mere fraction of a watt. A quick look indicates 5 GHz literally is one of the bands used for wifi, so OP is basically talking about just connecting to a hotspot over in the next town directly.
If you got up into millimeter wave or close regulations are a bit more permissive, but that’s exactly because they don’t travel through stuff very well; For short range use, that’s fine (enter some versions of 5G) but for a backbone that’s pretty useless.
I’m not sure if there are any power requirements or not. I know that it’s obviously not better than cable or fiber because ISPs are not doing it. Fixed wireless is very similar, but not for everybody, at least not right now.