" He gestured at the now-empty beer. "We *could* use a focused
antenna, but if I move a little bit off the beam" -- he nudged the
coffee cup to one side -- "we're dead. But there's a third solution."
"We ask the beer to pass messages around?"
"Fucking right we do! That's the mesh part. Every station on the network
gets *two* radios -- one for talking in one direction, the other for
relaying in the other direction. The more stations you add, the lower
the power on each radio -- and the more pathways you get to carry your
data."
Alan shook his head.
"It's a fuckin' mind-blower, isn't it?"
"Sure," Alan said. "Sure. But does it work? Don't all those hops between
point *a* and point *b* slow down the connection?"
"A little, sure. Not so's you'd notice. They don't have to go that far
-- the farthest any of these signals has to travel is 151 Front Street."
"What's at 151 Front?"
"TorIx -- the main network interchange for the whole city! We stick an
antenna out a window there and downlink it into the cage where UUNet and
PSINet meet -- voila, instant 11-megabit city-wide freenet!"
"Where do you get the money for that?"
"Who said anything about money? How much do you think UUNet and PSI
charge each other to exchange traffic with one another? Who benefits
when UUNet and PSI cross-connect? Is UUNet the beneficiary of PSI's
traffic, or vice versa? Internet access only costs money at the *edge*
-- and with a mesh-net, there is no edge anymore.
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