Editing Free network architecture (section)

= Story =

One of the things that can make the architecture of the Free Network difficult to understand is its emergent, evolutionary nature. It is not possible to simply roll out the type of network described here. Firstly, it is a participatory network, and so it has to be deployed by those that use it. Secondly, the scale and scope are too big to produce and provision the components in one go. So, in order to understand the Free Network, it is important to understand the ways in which it will evolve over time. Presented below are a few of the most probable ways for the Free Network to come into a community.

Of critical importance here is the idea that devices can start participating in the Free Network even before they are able to connect to the MIND and engage in material peer-to-peer. That is to say that if some family buys a [[FreedomBox]] to use as their home router, they can begin participating in the Free Network immediately, even if their neighbors haven’t caught on yet, and there’s no mesh to join. This is the purpose of [[FreedomTunnel]]. The family still purchases their network access from an ISP, but when they wish to communicate with others on the Free Network, their communications are automatically routed via FreedomTunnel. Eventually, others in the neighborhood replace their routers with FreedomBoxes, and are peered automatically in a Layer 1 network, allowing them to share directly with one another without having to use the Internet at all. At this point, the neighborhood might decide to start an Internet co-op.

Now, in order to understand what an Internet co-op might look like, let’s take a look at another use case. This time, instead of starting with a bunch of Layer 0 networks and moving to Layer 1, we’ll start with Layer 1, and move down to Layer 0. Take, for example, a typical, American subdivision. In this subdivision, you’ve got 100 families, each paying $60/month for a broadband Internet connection. If these families decided to form an Internet co-op they could purchase the same total amount of bandwidth for half of the aggregate price. In order to do so, they would pool their money, build a [[FreedomTower]], and each invest in a [[FreedomBox]]. Assuming a price of $5,000 for the Tower, and $100/box, the families would have recouped their investment in five months, and would save $30/month thereafter. As an added benefit, all of their communications with one another would be materially peer-to-peer. Communications destined for outside FreedomBoxes would leave the tower via FreedomTunnel, and due to the asynchronous nature of network usage, individual users would actually see much better throughput almost all of the time.

As the total number of FreedomBoxes in operation goes up, the more routes exist within the MIND, and the less users will have to depend on paid access and [[FreedomTunnel]] to communicate with one another. This is the plan: eat the telcos from the inside out – make it possible to start small and grow big, or to start big and use the economies of scale to drive adoption.

You’ve now seen the two basic directions in which the network can grow: up and down. You’ve only got to extrapolate the pattern to see how FreedomTowers motivate the construction of FreedomLinks -  in the same way that FreedomBoxes motivate the construction of FreedomTowers. Just as it is possible to build out from a tower, it is possible to start with a Link and build out from there.

Finally, when the Free Network has hundreds of points of presence on the IP core, we can begin to roll out our own fiber lines. This is how we escapee the telcos once and for all. This is the basic premise: we, the members of humanity, are going to build ourself a network. We will have to pay for the hardware, and we’ll have to pay for upkeep, but in the end we will save untold billions in the process of ensuring our own ability to communicate freely. By becoming our own service providers, we deny the ISPs the ability to profit off of us, choosing instead to provide for ourself, at-cost. Moreover, we will build a network  immune to censorship and resistant to breakdown.

Initially, the Free Network will consist of one [[FreedomLink]], and a couple of FreedomBoxes. This is enough for a proof of concept, and is well on its way to realization. From there, it will grow organically. As people adopt the [[FreedomBox]], and get used to the idea of owning their own data, the MIND will grow to meet them, and the Free Network will take form.