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[PTTG??]

What if there was an internet without ISPs? Something that was totally open and free- something that the modern internet threatens to loose in the coming years.

While this ACTA treaty may be overhyped, the threat that it shows, the barely hidden contempt, to freedom of communication is plain.
It struck me that as long as the hardware of the world wide web relies on physical cables, owned by companies, institutions, and monopolies, and the software that runs it is reliant on the companies that resell that bandwidth to the consumer,  then this freedom will be, if not actively in jeopardy, granted only at the consent of these powerful groups. And as soon as the consumer starts to threaten that power, legally or illegally, those agencies will take away that privilege.

I must clarify a few things- most pressingly, I am not against the ACTA treaty because it will make piracy more difficult- I am against it and similar legislation because it makes tyranny easier for both governments and even corporations. Also, let us be clear of the terminology- I use "Internet" here to refer to multimedia file transmission, particularly that of html documents. In other words, content of the sort you are reading right now, as well as anything you might find in a google search. The World Wide Web I'm using, somewhat inaccurately, to describe the current networks that allow this content to be sent. No so much the physical hardware, but the agreements, legal networks, and companies that keep that hardware running.

Now then; some might say that moving content, particularly in a way similar to the modern internet, without this hardware, is impossible. I have a theoretical way that I think will work. In the same way that Wikipedia made enourmous amounts of data available by harnessing the power of people, my system- the Internet Packet Radio Network- will distribute the monolithic task of making a global network of billions of computers to the users.

Of course, such a thing would still be difficult if I expected users to string miles of cables or otherwise truck the packets manually by mail. Luckilly there is an alternative to wires, and that is Internet Packet Radio- the sending of binary information via HAM radio connection.

As you no doubt can guess, each user would use currently-designed HAM radio equipment to connect to the nearest thousand or so other users. They would form a constantly-updated map of the world network, and relay data from city to city, nation to nation, and continent to continent. You would be able to host pages as easily as you can move files to a hard drive, and, like a torrent or other file-sharing system, web sites would be distributed over the web- in fact improving upon current web systems by being resistant to ddos attacks.

I will not pretend that my system is free of faults (notably, slower speeds for some, and update dispersion), or that what I have outlined above is even close to the technical information that will be required to put this into work. However, after the reliability, the self-hosting, and freedom that this system implies is all accounted for, there is one other advantage, however mean that might be.
Everyone who uses this system would be required by a number of laws to at very least have a HAM radio license. Imagine, for a moment, an internet where the only 13 year olds are those that are smart enough to have gotten a license. Yes, I promise an end to perpetual September.

[Tilla]

Have you looked at the Freenet? It has some ideas mentioned here at least; it's anonymous and distributed randomly among member nodes, copies of data hosting remotely. Slow as heck and rather..distasteful in areas, but interesting.

[Ampersand]

The treaty is an attempt to put the genie back in the bottle, and it will not work.

[Outcast Orange]

Wow, major issue with this idea.
Privacy and security would be invisible (not there).
You can pick up ham radio signals with a (you guessed it) ham radio.
Don't even mention encryption,
since any decent form of it would make the rest of the internet useless to you.

Ham is a bad idea. Tighter government regulation on ISPs in the freedom direction,
is what you want. Them maybe Comcast will stop sleuthing through my downloads.
We are a democracy, and we don't need to re-invent the wheel to make this work.
Protection from the government though, is hard to find, and making a network of ham radio hubs
isn't going to help that much when they can just put up a jammer and tear the whole thing down.
Don't think they wouldn't, it would be under the guise of protecting this nations economy,
or preventing terrorism.
They wouldn't want you getting your internet for free, taking Uncle Sam's money.

Also, people in other countries, sorry I'm so American-centric, it's just that I've never been anywhere else,
and I lose my grip on the world pretty easily.

[PTTG??]

Freenet is a good idea, and I think that much of that technology could be rebuilt into what we need. However, it is still reliant on corporate-controlled networks.

That is the true curse of the internet- it is legally and ethically RIGHT for the owners of a network to discriminate however they choose, because they built the networks. A law to make web entities act good would work no better than a law to make all politicians non-corrupt.

I also disagree about security and privacy; I wouldn't expect packets to be floating around unencrypted, and in fact you would be able to fine-tune your own encryption levels. Once it was all implemented, I suspect this network would be as safe if not safer than the modern web.

As for jammers and other Orwellian activities, what we are talking about here is not a rebellion or uprising of any political kind. The final product would be as legal as the current internet is. The g-men cracking down with political-thriller technology like HAM jammers is no more plausible than them cutting other lines of communication.

And how is a vulnerability to Jammers make this network worse than one susceptible to hedge clippers?

[Outcast Orange]

Maybe you don't know how encryption works.
You can't encrypt your files if the person at the other end cannot decrypt them.
If another human such as yourself has the ability to receive your package, why wouldn't a hacker?
Also, the government doesn't have the man power to run around cutting phone and cable lines, and nobody would stand for that.

A government radio station passively blocking only internet signals would only upset a small percentage of the populace, and they could get away with it politically.
We would be accused of stealing the internet from America.

[codezero]

I don't see it working internationally, you'd never pick up the signals. Why not just operate a rebel isp.

[PTTG??]

Let's keep this a place for serious discussion. Encryption would be no different than it is in the modern web. Packet sniffing and snooping would be no easier. Simply listening to the frequency would give you no more information than you might get by splicing into a fiber optic cable and trying to read the lights.

A government radio station passively blocking only internet signals would only upset a small percentage of the populace, and they could get away with it politically.
We would be accused of stealing the internet from America.

The "internet" signals would be on the same set of frequencies as regular HAM traffic. An organization would no more be able to get away with blocking this than they would with, say, vaporizing ships at sea or putting chaff into low-earth-orbit. And with the technical difficulty of blocking jamming signals over a large area without blocking all radio traffic it would be quite an achievement.

More importantly, this is no place for paranoid schizophrenic concerns. We are talking about a simple government here. While I am concerned about the ACTA treaty, I don't think it's a harbinger of fascist dictatorship- I just think it's a group trying to police the network they themselves built.

This "stealing the internet from America" business is pure fantasy. If it ever where real, I would take it as no less than a call to action.

In one post you state that we are under imminent threat of government internet death squads, and in the other, you suggest that the best solution is... legislation?

My solution is nothing complex or absurd. We merely replace the fiber-optic or copper connections of the internet with radio wave connections, and by doing so, move the ownership of these connections from the big companies to the individual. Everything not emergent from these corporate networks may very well remain the same.

I think that it is the prerogative of web organizations to put whatever limits they like on their networks. All that is needed is a tool that will prevent them from having a monopoly.



Oh, a rebel ISP? One that's constantly being sued for not following takedown notices?
Am I to string my own transatlantic cables? Set up my own telephone poles? It is simply impossible to build a new physical network. Which again leads us to radio. It is impossible for an ISP to legally not follow takedown notices, and this leads us to a distributed network of individuals

[Outcast Orange]

: )

This is going to be one hell of an argument, I can tell.

(try not to be really offended)
Here's the bit that made me smile:

Packet sniffing and snooping would be no easier. Simply listening to the frequency would give you no more information than you might get by splicing into a fiber optic cable and trying to read the lights.

You make it sound likes it's convenient to dig up fiber-optics, cut them open, then hook them into a PC without the user noticing.

If the internet came by way of ham, then you could just sit in your house, and receive all the internet signals in the area (maybe even country or world) with the same method you use to get the ones your are intended to get.

Also, migrating the internet over to Ham is definitely an attempt to escape government regulation,
along with corporate regulation.

The other big problem with your solution,
is that future internet seems like it will be faster and more jam packed than ever before,
so Ham signals will start to fall behind in power at some point.

Like you said now, there are already people with faster internet, that wouldn't benefit from ham.
All this ham talk is making me hungry.  : D

Moving the internet to ham sound more paranoid than assuming that
 the governments will take actions to protect their own best interests.

[qwertyuiopas]

Why use HAM, when WiFi technology is so advanced?

Just have self-organizing network software that builds a massive network around all donated internet points, regardless of type. So you may have a long chain of WiFi going between two cities, while another two are connected through HAM, and yet another pair get a full sattelite uplink. Two distant farmland neighbors run a physical network cable, completing another link in a worldwide network. A multi-milliomaire and some of his rich buddies run their own intercontenential line, and charge a minimal fee but avoid being labeled an ISP and evade being affected by the laws.

Then people notice it's 2012, the governments break out the nukes, and humanity disappears in a puff of radioactive rebellion. (But take the governments with them)

[Outcast Orange]

I like that idea the best!
Donated wifis? Sounds good.

[qwertyuiopas]

Well, I mean the donated internet is coming from ISPs or other long-distance data flows, and the network itself comes from EVERYONE using it.

You would pass along other people's data in return for them transmitting yours. At some point or other, you either reach the destination(webserver?) or an ISP who hasn't disabled the connection yet, and the page is sent back, along the same system.

[sluissa]

In the US at least, it's illegal to transmit encrypted data on HAM frequencies.

Bandwidth is also a big problem. The good frequency bands are already pretty packed even with just people who are Radio enthusists.

There's also the problem of Omni versus directional signals. Omni would take a hell of a lot more power to get good range out of(in the mean time clogging the airwaves even more since you're sending your signal everywhere instead of just where it needs to go.) Whereas directional would be easier to deal with as far as power concerns, but it's going to limit the network to people who are in the cone your antenna is pointed at.

I'm assuming you're talking about doing this all on HF and lower frequencies. Those are the only ones with semi-reliable propogation beyond line of sight. Some of these problems clear up if you're talking about UHF or VHF. There's more bandwidth there, but it could still end up being tight. But with UHF and VHF you're limited to a small area. Roughly the same kind of range you could get out of WiFi as it is if you just boosted the power a bit. A network of VHF or UHF signals might do the trick, but again, it's not going to be as easy to setup or use as WIFI nor will it be anywhere near as fast.

I'm not saying not to try it. HAM radio is all about experimentation. But know and follow the rules and don't expect miracles.

[G-Flex]

If you think there's enough bandwidth in the available ham radio spectrum to handle all internet traffic, ever, at rates comparable to what we have now, you haven't done your homework.


And even if you did this, the internet would still need infrastructure. You'd still be connecting to networks, DNS servers, devices meant to handle and route traffic to the proper machines, etc., if you want anything to work at all. In other words, you'd still effectively need ISPs!


Oh, and good luck bouncing HAM radio signals at high-speed-internet transfer rates across the globe. Or at all, really. Doesn't quite work that way.

Let's keep this a place for serious discussion. Encryption would be no different than it is in the modern web. Packet sniffing and snooping would be no easier. Simply listening to the frequency would give you no more information than you might get by splicing into a fiber optic cable and trying to read the lights.

Which would work, if it were easy.

It's more comparable to, say, wifi snooping: Some people are stupid about encryption and have none, and encryption methods sometimes fail. Both WEP and original WPA have severe security flaws, and a lot of protocols are very poor about security to begin with (FTP is all plaintext, for instance). The instant the commonly-used encryption method of the day gets broken, you're screwed, and it would be a lot easier to listen in on data when it's being broadcast around the entire world and not just the 100-foot-wide sphere around your house.

[Outcast Orange]

I love when you guys refer to the geometric limitations of the hardware, in such a technical context.

It seems hilariously unexpected, and I probably only think that because I'm horrendously uninformed.
Pointing your antennae cone at something to give it better internets, or imagining the 100 foot wide
 protecto-sphere glowing ominously at passers-by.

Those are the images that come to mind.