Mesh networking uses a distributed routing approach. there is no centralized router, each node in the mesh can act as a router, forwarding data to other nodes. when I was joined up the the NYC mesh, I bought my own router and flashed it with open source firmware.
there are various approaches to routing tables and node discovery, too, including fully open and permissionless. they _can_ be closed (like for military purposes or something), but they can also be fully open as long as a node has compatible hardware.
open your mind a bit! it feels like you're very defensive about the topic...
it feels like you don't understand the problem
if everybody is routing and there is no IP hierarchy that means everybody has to have a global view of the network so it doesn't scale and bad actors can join and spam the routing tables
You could use subjective reputation systems to establish routing preferences per node. You could introduce _some_ opt-in centralization at appropriate levels in geographic communities. You could introduce opt-in hierarchy in the same way ("I choose this gateway/router and I trust it wrt the peers it routes to").
None of these are perfect solutions, but I don't enjoy seeing people throw the baby out with the bathwater, because I do think we have an upcoming networking and connectivity emergency on our hands when State actors and/or megacorps decide to turn their malign attention towards Internet infrastructure and it would be great to start exploring mitigations early.
Do you have other solutions? I'd love to hear them. you could do all of that, my point was just that the technology doesn't exist still, that's what triggered this discussion, so now you're agreeing with me basically
I guess we're close, but I draw a distinction between "the technology doesn't exist" (it does) and "nobody is doing it yet" (agreed, they're not exactly at large scale).
When you said "mesh networking doesn't exist" you seem to have meant "doing it correctly is technically possible but there is little will or energy going in that direction". We might agree that the goal is to advance freedom technologies (like mesh but also lots of other stuff) but I oppose blasting out pessimistic "doesn't exist, (but yea I guess you could do it)" takes. Getting people aware of and optimistic about the possibilities is a good way to help make sure they actually come about.
I get what you're saying, but I still think that there is a somewhat of a hard line here
if decentralized routing was a solved problem don't you think someone would have implemented it already, even as an experiment?
urbit's routing is hierarchical but also decentralized. Planets depend on Stars for their routing, stars depend on Galaxies (Planets can spawn Moons). Anyone can own one of these nodes and put them anywhere. I don't like their approach because of it's overly hierarchical nature, but it is an interesting hybrid.
This is just an example of an "experiment" that maybe you haven't heard of? (Or maybe you have). The world is big and I don't presume to know of all the things people have tried but haven't taken off because of poor marketing or outright idea suppression by powerful centralized forces.
I tried to read about it but couldn't find anything useful, doesn't urbit rely on IP already?
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