This has been on here a couple of times the past few days or weeks. Finally pulled the trigger and bought a Seeed Studio Wio Tracker L1 Pro for MeshCore. I find the idea of a para-internet just fast enough for text based monomedia content highly appealing. Probably a mix of nostalgia but also realism - my thinking is that a network too slow for pictures / audio / video would elegantly avoid problems like spam and (illegal) pornography by design.
The issue is that these mesh protocols quickly break down under any real loads.
Setting up a few mesh nodes, running some tests, and thinking you have a kit that is usable in an emergency is like so many other "disaster recovery" drills we've been through that assume ideal conditions. The excellent daily tape backups that you realize too late you can't utilize in a bare metal recovery situation because nobody kept an OS install media handy, or they forgot to keep the installer and license keys for the backup software in the datacenter.
The challenge with these mesh systems is that few, if any, areas have even gotten to a point that they could run a realistic simulation of relying on this system for communications.
In Montréal we've rebooted Réseau Libre which used to be a Wi-Fi mesh experiment 15+ years ago. It's a fun experiment, but in a way feels like a step backward for me. Meshtastic and Meshcore are just that, messaging, but that makes it the standardized killer app. On the other side you have reticulum which allows decoupling from the LoRa low bandwidth only radios, seems to do a lot of neat stuff, but if we're reinventing a whole network layer, we're going to have to reinvent services, discovery, etc. and I fear we're wasting time when in the end what wins is controlling the backbone bandwidth, but with the added difficulty of a p2p mesh.
I'm starting to feel this is a fun activity, but realistically copium for a world that is very sadly centralizing everything.
I have difficulty following you.
> a Wi-Fi mesh experiment 15+ years ago. It's a fun experiment, but in a way feels like a step backward for me.
Why? WiFi technology is cheap and available. Seems like a great basis for a mesh.
> Meshtastic and Meshcore are just that, messaging, but that makes it the standardized killer app.
Why "just"? All the internet protocols are also just messaging at the end of the day - request: A sends message to B, response: B sends message to A.
> On the other side you have reticulum which allows decoupling from the LoRa low bandwidth only radios, seems to do a lot of neat stuff
I'm not familiar with Reticulum (neither with Mesh* in any meaningful way) - do you mean to say that Reticulum is more flexible regarding the radio technology - as in: no need to by specific devices like for Meshcore?
> I'm starting to feel this is a fun activity, but realistically copium for a world that is very sadly centralizing everything.
Can't say I disagree, sadly.
Oh yes, Wi-Fi was cheap, but before HaLow we ended giving up because we couldn't get a meaningful density for the network to get far enough across town to start to be remotely useful, even with 10-15dBi antennas mounted outside.
About the messaging aspect, I mean that though a messaging app is great, I feel that the end goal is having an independent network from the telcos, carriers, etc. In that sense we're going to need to allow more than an SMS replacement.
And from there is born the problem. Bootstraping such a network for more than geeks is relatively impossible in that context. You either have a device that does one thing as a drop-in magic solution for newcomers to jump on, or you chase the better solution, but that brings as much complexity, if not more, as running the Internet...
And while I'm happy to see p2p and mesh research continuing, participate when I can, I just feel like it's a pipe dream that is far far away and I'd like to see it grow beyond the few dozens of decentralization geeks in every city :)