Meshed Shared-Access Gateways: Technological Overview, Public Benefits, and Practical Deployment

Abstract

When the Internet Protocol was first developed in the 1970s, the infrastructure of the Internet was owned by government and academic institutions. In contrast, today most Americans connect to the Internet through physical wires and routing facilities owned by a small group of private broadband service providers. These providers install and own “last- mile” broadband lines running from individuals’ homes and businesses to providers’ regional routing facilities that are physically connected to the Internet backbone. Mobile Internet for handheld devices relies on a separate infrastructure of cellular wireless access towers that connect the devices to the Internet backbone. The FCC’s National Broadband Plan states that the high cost of laying cable fiber, the high cost of building cellular towers, and the lack of innovation in last-mile infrastructure have diminished competition in the market for Internet access. As a result of low competition, the price of Internet access in the United States remains high, and many regions of the country remain underserved or unserved by incumbent providers. Regional routing facilities also act as single points of failure that render today’s Internet highly vulnerable to natural disasters and targeted attacks — if the connection between an individual’s home or business and her provider’s regional facility is broken, she will be cut off from the Internet backbone at a critical time. Additionally, wired home broadband connections are rarely used at full capacity since individuals frequently connect to the Internet on their mobile devices outside of their homes.There is nothing inevitable about the peculiar structure of our network. Many groups have advocated for solutions that would address the prevailing problems with our network infrastructure. For almost twenty years, mesh-networking advocates have called for a complete restructuring of the last mile, whereby regional routing facilities would be replaced with a system of peer routers capable of propagating packets to their final destinations. More recently, shared-access gateway advocates have proposed opening up all wireless access points for public use in order to utilize excess bandwidth. To date, widespread adoption of these kinds of networks has failed, and the technologies have been largely relegated to niche applications, such as emergency connectivity for disaster relief workers. However, as demand for mobile Internet connectivity and concerns over the current architecture continue to grow, widespread deployment of mesh networks and shared-access gateways is becoming more valuable and more realistic.This paper proposes widespread deployment of meshed shared-access gateways (“MSGs”) — a novel combination of mesh networking and shared-access points — as the basis for an alternative Internet infrastructure. Part II provides a technical and institutional background on network infrastructures. Part III demonstrates how an MSG network can generate substantial social value. Part IV explores why certain mesh network and shared- access gateway deployments have failed or succeeded in the past. Part V proposes two broad strategies for deploying a large-scale MSG network — one based on collaboration with broadband incumbents, and the other based on grassroots, user-driven adoption. For each strategy, the paper examines technical, social, business, and legal barriers to successful deployment. Finally, Part VI concludes the paper by comparing the two strategies and recommending preliminary steps for a centrally coordinated, user-driven deployment of MSG technology.