Same here and when people refer to the PC tower as the CPU

It would seem a lot of people think Wi-Fi is internet. I've heard someone call it "Wi-Fi with exclamation mark" when without internet access.

WiFi is a specific protocol, IEEE 802.11 (with a lower case letter at the end for the version). There have long been hobbyist and commercial methods for using it with point-to-point links. There are some other wireless methods for this, like LoRa/Meshtastc, but they tend to be slower and less developed. Everyone prefers using WiFi.

So, yes, they are using WiFi in a point-to-point way. The antenna is directional to give it (potentially) several miles of range.

Language is so weird these days...

Everything is "app" nowaways

A .exe install on windows is "app"

A reddit account is "app"

Buying a phone plan and inserting a sim card into a phone is "activation" of a phone

Lol

Its a windows program or software

Reddit is not an "app", its a platform.

You're not "activating" your phone, your phone is already usable, all you did was purchase a voice/data plan and inserted a sim card. "Activation" is a apple internet lock thing, totally separate.

I'm old enough and nerd enough to be slightly peeved that "community built" isn't hyphenated ("community-built").

For a municipal wireless network, I'm not too bothered with how OP describes it if it's accessed through Wi-Fi.

But.. It is P2P WiFi...

NYC Mesh has been around for more than a decade. I assume they talked to other similar projects when building it.

I see freifunk networks more rarely nowadays. They also are notoriously slow. Usually the mobile phone network is faster, even in Germany.

https://www.tucsonmesh.net/

I think European has a head start on this. Not sure which US cities are doing it

KPUD in Kitsap County, WA does something similar: https://www.kpud.org/fiber-internet/free-public-wi-fi/

They also have very affordable public fiber.

I reached out to the NYC mesh folks and they are going to walk me through it. It seems like a lot of work. But the more people who can get to help. The stronger it becomes.

My friend has been using NYCmesh for a couple years now. He has nothing. It positive things to say about it.

The domain has a c in it

in reality though I did get excited seeing this only to be disappointed that it's only in new york city and I live in upstate new york

I heard about some city (NYC??) that has public wifi access points with the terminal thing that acts like a touch screen computer for people to browse the internet. And people were allegedly watching porn on it, like in public on a busy street. So they disabled the touchscreen computer thing and only left the wifi access point on.

Packet shaping.

I was just thinking about ricochet while perusing the thread. Ricochet was new when I was starting in IT and I can still remember connecting a ricochet modem to a company laptop and then pulling up our novell netware file share over our vpn. It was jaw dropping to see it at the time. Amazing how far we've come since then.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Wireless almost had it right.

You don't need satellites, just some connection on a datacenter (like but internet in bulk, maybe they have some special deal and is free or very cheap). But this is the boring part, the fun part is that you can connect to the hubs (light blue dots in the map) with a router with an antenna or you can connect to another router (red dots). The network is like a living being that keeps expanding. Then to go out to the Internet, the packets are jumping as they can between neighbors (they have a way to know the path) until they reach the datacenter. It looks like you only have to pay for the initial equipment (plus some donations to maintain the network), but it will probably end up costing you some of your time maintaining the network, learning and helping other people in the network.