Marketing & New Node Info

[Dan Ryan]

Hey, We should put something together in terms of Marketing Material. I've put together a simple little New Node registration questionnaire piece here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Apc6jzp5Kd30dGNlTmpFSnJUekRlb09HZW1KTEgxVWc#gid=0, once a potential node fills this out its really simple to import it into nodeshot & add the node's location & details.

In terms of Marketing Material, lets define what we are, what our goals are, etc. & put it in flyer form.

Dan Ryan

[Dan Ryan]

Sorry, that is an old spreadsheet link that I put in, here is the relevant link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGpuVXFzOEg5enR0X1BTYXpNQ3UwdUE6MQ

Dan Ryan

[ma...@redecho.org]

I've been thinking a bit about the business model for this project. For
the most part, the beauty of the mesh net is that infrastructure ownership
is distributed. Instead of raising millions of dollars for a citywide
construction project, individual people just buy hardware and aim antennas
at each other.

Still, it isn't going to be free. There will be continual maintenance work
and other ongoing costs.
- somebody needs to maintain the node map and help new people figure out
how to join
- someone needs to keep track of traffic flows and create new
supernodes/relays when necessary
- someone needs to run an Internet uplink, or someone needs to develop
software that will allow people to safely share fractions of their home
Internet connections

All this means time and money. Who's going to do the work and who's going
to put up the money?

I think we ought to run this project in two parts: a not-for-profit
community organization that "owns" the mesh net, and a nominally
for-profit ISP that offers Internet access to meshnet members.

The ISP would be a well-connected meshnet node with a fat pipe. Maybe
located in the Westin building or something like that. It would simply
relay packets to and from specific meshnet IP addresses. You pay the ISP a
monthly fee to put your IP address on the routing table.

The ISP would not, however, actually own or manage the meshnet. It might
well have a representative on the community organization that manages the
meshnet. In practice it might well be all the same people running the ISP
and the meshnet, but organizationally and financially it ought to be
separate.

The reason for this is that in the long term it ought to be possible to
have multiple competing ISPs on a city-wide meshnet. You, the end-user,
should be able to pick out the ISP that will offer you the best service
and have them route your packets without needing to change your physical
network connection.

Another reason to organize the project this way is that it would make it
easier for the non-profit community organization to attract city or
charitable funding.

[Dan Ryan]

Mars, you make a really good point. Long term there should be 2 separate
organizations, one which is a non-profit that does maintain seattlemesh.net,
and another that is just a fat supernode, at the Westin building, Fisher Plaza,
or one of the other numerous data centers downtown.

We should form a board & a non-profit that'll be focused on maintaining and
growing the network, and then once we get a significant number of nodes up
we should form an LLC & locate a good deal on bandwidth & roof colocation.

I've also been setting up cjdroute/cjdns nodes recently, and it appears as
though cjdns is to a point where enough of the bugs are worked out to begin
using it. Short term plans that Caleb James DeLisle, (aka CJD) discussed
with me include adding autoconfiguring & autopeering to cjdns, so once you
install cjdns & start it up it will configure itself & peer with other nodes.