A hundred years ago on irc someone from Russia was describing their internet connection, which was ethernet, while I had only ever heard of dial up outside of large companies.
It was just people had set up their own hubs and switches in their appartment buildings and strung cables between buildings.
This blew my mind. They just ran themselves ethernet and everyone got a drop from a switch in their building.
It wasn't clear how it got from a neighborgood level upstream.
But just the idea that they could all just decide to give themselves internet, and ethernet no less, string ethernet outside the walls of their own appartments to other appartments, and outside the building from one building to another? Unimaginable in the US. I was boggled and jealous.
Even in the US, rural folk have been beaming directional wifi to each other for a couple decades now (at least), and sharing utilities by personally running electrical, coax, telephone, or ethernet throughout a shared building or across houses stretches back for as long as those services have been available.
Sharing ("stealing") Cable TV by just running coax around was huge before those systems transitioned from simply using sometimes-encrypted broadcasts to a more authenticated/addressable scheme. For decades, party lines (for the telphone) were both official installations from the telephone company and de facto local networks run by one's handy neighbors. Countless people punched ethernet between walls in apartment units just the way you describe to share upstream connections. Same goes for power in squatted urban units or among trailers/shacks where they would be clustered tightly.
What made it unfamiliar to you (and perhaps many here) was probably just the class and finances of your family and the people they mingled with.
Yep, a coworker of mine even made a business out of it. He owns a lot of land, put up (essentially) a big cell tower with directional radios, signed some paperwork with AT&T for the upstream and sold to his neighbors who only had shitty CenturyLink on the cheap. I think he's still doing it.
I've seen this in remote areas in the US too. There's a broadband ISP, but they only connect to one house for some reason, even though others would be willing to pay. So "neighbors" (separated by a thousand feet) share ethernet and wifi.
Not from Russia, but nearby.. It was very common - kinda wild east and nobody cared. As soon our telecom started providing DSL - we (neighbourhood kids) got a commercial DSL into my apartment and shared it between 2 five story apartment buildings. Our set up was tiny and not very reliable. Some local networks like this grew and became almost proper internet providers. But they continued this gray practice of pulling cables in the air, between buildings. They'd also do other sketchy stuff like installing hubs/switches into electrical boxes and tapping supply from the building. We learned about it when a technician from a provider like this dropped a screwdriver on live wires and knocked out power for half of the building.
You're describing the sort of daydreams I had about running a cable between my home and my friend's home when I was 14 years old. We were too far apart. But playing Descent matches would have been awesome. We got by on dialup, but a kid can dream.
I also dreamt of ISDN. Looking back, it seems such a paltry offering, but that tells you what an old man I've become.
My neighbour and I did this when we were about that age, and it was just as good as you imagined it to be! I think we managed to talk our parents into it because it would mean we were no longer tying up the phone line and racking up bills to play Doom.
Very early on, say maybe late 90s, cable companies didn’t lock down their networks and you could effectively do this if you were on the same loop. It was amazing to browse neighbor’s windows SMB shares, play LAN games, etc.
Having ISDN whilst most of my friends were on 56k made me really appreciate it. It connected silently and almost instantly, ping times were low with virtually no jitter, it was a consistent 64k whilst also leaving the phone line available (a boon for parents and kids alike) or you could use both lines for 128k. Fond memories.
That you can do what you describe is why I love the Internet! There is effectively no limit to the scale and topology of the network, and with a well-configured system you can literally yank cables out and find the network operating without more than a second or two of additional latency. I play chess on lichess.org, and when the Wi-Fi signal drops out my device switches to LTE without even interrupting the game!
The fact that all of the above is possible with only a single kind of cable and generic, 'dumb' switches is icing on the (seven-layer) cake.
Lots of co-workers in Serbia do this today. Someone gets a fast fiber connection and they run an Ethernet cable to their friend in the building across the way. They both split the costs.
With good reason. Building codes in the US prevent disasters like the one that happened at Grenfell Towers in the UK. Run plenum-rated wires through an appropriate space for safety's sake.
UK building codes (we call them building regulations) should also have prevented Grenfell. A large issue was that the companies involved were using materials which weren't up to code.
> Building codes in the US prevent disasters like the one that happened at Grenfell Towers in the UK
US building codes are pretty good and well enforced, just as they are in the UK ... but even with that, you have a Surfside condominium collapse - so not perfect.
Yeah, one of the things that makes disasters impossible in the US is that we have real Professional Engineers with Iron Rings doing everything. If you don’t have an iron ring, you can’t really understand what it takes to build a thing in the real world. You can play with your software or whatever but you’re not going to reliably change the real world.
Even Ghost Ship had no iron rings present. That’s what got them. You need those rings. One of my friends has one on each finger. A true 10x Professional Engineer. Nothing he has ever built has a single flaw.
I wired up 1/2 of our building by just throwing cables between rooms via the windows. We got our upstream via a commercial DSL connection, which when split 11 ways, was about the same price as dialup, but way faster.
In mid-00s this was still how much of the country got its Internet, actually, even in Moscow. I wouldn't say those things were "community", exactly; it would usually be a few people with enough knowledge to set it up, running it all as an actual business - officially registered and all - with other residents of those buildings paying for their connectivity.
But even then it was still very anarchic. For example, one common perk of such setups for their customers was that traffic inside the LAN would be free. And they'd run searchable file sharing servers and P2P hubs (Direct Connect, usually) inside the net, which members would use to share their file collections.
Some of those actually evolved into "proper" ISPs eventually.
Oh that's right, I think I remember them talking about local file stores and other local services too.
Initially they had only said something off hand that was normal for them, but the whole room was fascinated and asked them questions and they ended up describing as much as they could.
They didn't actually know that much about how it worked or was set up, they were just a regular user.
There was a great book (that I thought was called Nerds 2.0, but now I can't find it again) that I read decades ago that described how Cisco got there start. Running wires through gutters on Stanford's campus and hoping no one asked any questions. Built their own routers and what not. The official story now looks like Stanford knew what a great idea that was, but the history that Lerner provided in the book suggests that their initial response was pretty negative and only positive once they formalized the project and made a company around it.
Odds are those connections weren't sanctioned by the building management and were the result of lax enforcement. There are actually plenty of smaller apartment buildings in the US where tenants could get away with this as long as they didn't damage the building or cause frustration for other tenants.
> A hundred years ago on irc someone from Russia was describing their internet connection, which was ethernet, while I had only ever heard of dial up outside of large companies.
I don't think it is community owned, but the distinction doesn't seem that important from a customer experience standpoint. The scale and locality of the business is what makes it great. They can care a lot about the network quality because there isn't so much of it that they need to outsource everything. All elements of their infrastructure are not only on battery backup but also standby natural gas generators. My power and water go out before my fiber does. I've never had an outage outside of scheduled maintenance windows.
That works out great until some capital pool decides to start acquiring smaller isps to roll them up into a larger corporate behemoth. As has happened in multiple other industries from groceries, animal vets, rentals, software niches, to hospitals and these days nursing homes
Then the "efficiency" becomes how much can be extracted from the business and customers
Privately held companies have the option to reject these offers. A business doesn't have to be a non-profit or community-owned in order to do something principled. One good leader/owner is all it takes.
that can be made very hard to outright impossible (or prohibitively expensive) to do, if the foundational documents of the company are set up correctly. Say, a non-profit, or a cooperative-ownership model...
Yes, non-profits can be fucked up too (as we saw with "Open"AI recently) and cooperative-ownerships can be bought out if one is willing to spend enough money, but it at least raises the bar a significant amount.
Community-owned _broadband networks_ I'm not sure about.
Community-owned _physical infrastructure_ (especially last-mile — fiber & copper going to everybody's house) … that needs to be the default.
And if it's not community-owned, it needs to be regulated with open access requirements.
Yes you can theoretically build a second fiber network and hook up people's houses. Yes it has happened in actual practice. But it is commercially questionable and just completely silly.
Having the "last mile" be owned by the community just makes complete sense; in fact it should be a requirement of future government subsidies (perhaps with an option for the existing infrastructure, if "good enough - fiber" to be sold to the community) as it reduces overlap and waste.
Around here we have had THREE separate companies drop fiber in the last year (technically not to everyone's house as they only do that last connection when you subscribe) - so my yard now has five fiber lines through it. That's a bit overkill.
They could have had the municipal electric utility run fiber to everyone, and then designate a single building as a POP/exchange and let any company that wanted to run a fat pipe to that and start reselling.
What you're talking about is called local loop unbundling - the government owns the last-mile infrastructure, then leases access on FRAND terms to ISPs. It's a perfect alignment of incentives and a huge win for customers, so naturally ISPs fiercely oppose it and look to immediately crush any move in that direction whenever they can.
It's not a perfect alignment because it gives the government monopoly power, to raise the price, decrease the service level, and reduce consumer surplus. That said, you can also make the case that governments (in most places) already have that power because of their permitting powers, and ownership of many poles or conduits.
Missouri's law was "reinterpreted" to allow broadband networks. The article even mentions KCFiber, a wholly owned fiber network (owned by the city of North Kansas City) which provides free services ($300 one time activation fee) to the entire city! Another one is Springfield, which built a fiber network which it owns but leases to ISPs (currently only one offers service, but in theory others could participate as well).
And there's more good news. Minnesota is not on that map, but Minnesota has moved in very good directions re: ISPs. My rural neighbors have community internet, and it's _good_. High quality fiber.
I have centurylink - ok not a community plan, but it competes directly with T-mobile, Xfinity (comcast), and other cell-based providers, and provides an excellent product for much cheaper.
If I recall the original law in North Carolina to limit community-owned broadband was called "Saving North Carolina Jobs Act" or something similar. It came about as a backlash to powerline broadband. Ironically all the people that seem to be laying fiber are contractors from Florida.
This debate about regulations is alway interesting. There are regulations which help protect the environment, like not being allowed to dump dangerous chemicals into your local stream or river.
Then there are regulations like these which are aimed at protecting the investment companies have made into infrastructure, effectively granting them a monopoly.
When people debate this, they often are thinking of the first class of protective regulations that are too onerous on companies, but I think most people like clean drinking water and rivers that no longer catch fire.
Whereas the second class of protection is really harmful to the consumer, and the powers-that-be have effectively been given a monopoly, and with that the money and power to protect their place in the market through continued influence on elections and other things to maintain these rent seeking businesses. We all hate the latter, but these companies have a lot of sway over politicians.
And from the article, the telecom industry receives billions in corporate welfare. A common argument against cutting it off is that telecom is capital intensive infrastructure, and if you cut their govbux you're blocking poor people from being able to communicate, we all deserve the right to communicate. But if that's your take, how can you also hate the protectionist laws? Telecom are given a monopoly because it doesn't make sense to, say, have N sets of telephone poles or power lines from each provider.
The FCC and FTC have a huge say on this. See the scandal with bulk-loaded, astroturfed public comments on broadband under the former Trump-appointed FCC chair.
The FCC determines what broadband is, and which companies get federal government subsidies for it. Federal subsidies > state subsidies.
Of all the states I've lived, TN blew me away wrt internet the most, by far. Most have heard about EPB over in Chattanooga. KUB in Knoxville recently did the same thing. But those aside, it seems like every little nook and cranny has some sort of fiber, whether it's from the utility board or a private company.
I lived in a city of about 20k, not near any big city. There were two different fiber companies(one utility, one private) and Spectrum offering service. Cookeville, Crossville, McMinnville, Manchester, Tullahoma, etc...cities most probably haven't even heard of, all have generally great FTTH coverage.
I really hate to make a political connection here, but it's hard not to notice that of those states exactly one didn't vote for the current President-elect.
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It was just people had set up their own hubs and switches in their appartment buildings and strung cables between buildings.
This blew my mind. They just ran themselves ethernet and everyone got a drop from a switch in their building.
It wasn't clear how it got from a neighborgood level upstream.
But just the idea that they could all just decide to give themselves internet, and ethernet no less, string ethernet outside the walls of their own appartments to other appartments, and outside the building from one building to another? Unimaginable in the US. I was boggled and jealous.
Not at all.
Even in the US, rural folk have been beaming directional wifi to each other for a couple decades now (at least), and sharing utilities by personally running electrical, coax, telephone, or ethernet throughout a shared building or across houses stretches back for as long as those services have been available.
Sharing ("stealing") Cable TV by just running coax around was huge before those systems transitioned from simply using sometimes-encrypted broadcasts to a more authenticated/addressable scheme. For decades, party lines (for the telphone) were both official installations from the telephone company and de facto local networks run by one's handy neighbors. Countless people punched ethernet between walls in apartment units just the way you describe to share upstream connections. Same goes for power in squatted urban units or among trailers/shacks where they would be clustered tightly.
What made it unfamiliar to you (and perhaps many here) was probably just the class and finances of your family and the people they mingled with.
Something I've always been curious about: how much stolen electricity / water can a modern utility detect? And how well can they localize the source?
Asking for friend.
Deleted Comment
I also dreamt of ISDN. Looking back, it seems such a paltry offering, but that tells you what an old man I've become.
The fact that all of the above is possible with only a single kind of cable and generic, 'dumb' switches is icing on the (seven-layer) cake.
With good reason. Building codes in the US prevent disasters like the one that happened at Grenfell Towers in the UK. Run plenum-rated wires through an appropriate space for safety's sake.
US building codes are pretty good and well enforced, just as they are in the UK ... but even with that, you have a Surfside condominium collapse - so not perfect.
They get fiery but mostly peaceful apartment building siding, we get spray foam and rotten roofs.
Even Ghost Ship had no iron rings present. That’s what got them. You need those rings. One of my friends has one on each finger. A true 10x Professional Engineer. Nothing he has ever built has a single flaw.
I wired up 1/2 of our building by just throwing cables between rooms via the windows. We got our upstream via a commercial DSL connection, which when split 11 ways, was about the same price as dialup, but way faster.
But even then it was still very anarchic. For example, one common perk of such setups for their customers was that traffic inside the LAN would be free. And they'd run searchable file sharing servers and P2P hubs (Direct Connect, usually) inside the net, which members would use to share their file collections.
Some of those actually evolved into "proper" ISPs eventually.
Initially they had only said something off hand that was normal for them, but the whole room was fascinated and asked them questions and they ended up describing as much as they could.
They didn't actually know that much about how it worked or was set up, they were just a regular user.
He might have been a student at Moscow State
https://scribe.rip/p/moscow-state-university-network-built-b...
I don't think it is community owned, but the distinction doesn't seem that important from a customer experience standpoint. The scale and locality of the business is what makes it great. They can care a lot about the network quality because there isn't so much of it that they need to outsource everything. All elements of their infrastructure are not only on battery backup but also standby natural gas generators. My power and water go out before my fiber does. I've never had an outage outside of scheduled maintenance windows.
Then the "efficiency" becomes how much can be extracted from the business and customers
Yes, non-profits can be fucked up too (as we saw with "Open"AI recently) and cooperative-ownerships can be bought out if one is willing to spend enough money, but it at least raises the bar a significant amount.
Deleted Comment
Community-owned _physical infrastructure_ (especially last-mile — fiber & copper going to everybody's house) … that needs to be the default.
And if it's not community-owned, it needs to be regulated with open access requirements.
Yes you can theoretically build a second fiber network and hook up people's houses. Yes it has happened in actual practice. But it is commercially questionable and just completely silly.
Around here we have had THREE separate companies drop fiber in the last year (technically not to everyone's house as they only do that last connection when you subscribe) - so my yard now has five fiber lines through it. That's a bit overkill.
They could have had the municipal electric utility run fiber to everyone, and then designate a single building as a POP/exchange and let any company that wanted to run a fat pipe to that and start reselling.
What kind of communist, socialistic talk is this? It's frankly anti-American and hurts the linchpin of the best country on earth, out job creators /s
Despite this ban, many communities in these states have pushed forward.
I have centurylink - ok not a community plan, but it competes directly with T-mobile, Xfinity (comcast), and other cell-based providers, and provides an excellent product for much cheaper.
And I know for a fact that colorado has been fighting the good fight. https://communitynets.org/content/colorado-passes-new-broadb...
It's literally the incumbent Bell provider - back in the day being AT&T and then USWest after the antitrust breakup.
Times certainly have changed for someone to even have this thought, much less write it down!
Deleted Comment
What are they doing down there? Their governor is literally the Democratic VP nominee.
Then there are regulations like these which are aimed at protecting the investment companies have made into infrastructure, effectively granting them a monopoly.
When people debate this, they often are thinking of the first class of protective regulations that are too onerous on companies, but I think most people like clean drinking water and rivers that no longer catch fire.
Whereas the second class of protection is really harmful to the consumer, and the powers-that-be have effectively been given a monopoly, and with that the money and power to protect their place in the market through continued influence on elections and other things to maintain these rent seeking businesses. We all hate the latter, but these companies have a lot of sway over politicians.
The FCC determines what broadband is, and which companies get federal government subsidies for it. Federal subsidies > state subsidies.
Dead Comment
I lived in a city of about 20k, not near any big city. There were two different fiber companies(one utility, one private) and Spectrum offering service. Cookeville, Crossville, McMinnville, Manchester, Tullahoma, etc...cities most probably haven't even heard of, all have generally great FTTH coverage.