Mesh/MeshApps

What sort of applications (apps) and services would we like to see the community integrate with the network? See also about local server choices.

Services

The network should provide secure communication services (email, contacts, calendar, phone) to create more incentive to be on the network. The services can be integrated into a user account distributed database with master-master replication and low latency (ex. Cassandra). These services will use existing open source projects.

Storage / File Systems

There are several options for a distributed file system and each have there advantages and disadvantages. The distributed file system can be used to offer file storage or reduce latency across the network.

• Lustre - Used by sixty percent of the top 100 websites.
  • Performance: Amazingly fast! I can assert that Lustre can serve a lot of streams and that encoding speed is not affected by accessing files via Lustre.
  • POSIX compatibility: Very good!. No need to modify applications to use luster.
  • Replication, Load Balancing and Fail Over: Very bad!. For replication load balancing we and fail over we need to rely on other software such as virtual IPs and DRDB.
  • Installation: The worst!. Impossible to install by mere mortals. Requires a very specific combination of kernel, lustre patches and tweaks to get it working. And current luster patches usually work with old kernels that are incompatible with new hardware/software.

• MogileFS
  • Performance: Good for small files but not usable for medium to large files. This is mostly due to HTTP overhead since all files are send/receive via HTTP requests that encode all data in base64 adding a 33% overhead to each file.
  • POXIS compatibility: Non existent. All applications require to be modified to use MogileFS that renders it useless for streaming/encoding since most streaming servers and encoding tools do not understand the protocol.
  • Replication and failover out of the box and load balancing can be implemented in the application by accessing more than one tracker at a time.
  • Installation: Relatively easy and ready to use packages exist in most distributions. The only difficulty I found was setting the database master-slave to eliminate the single point of failure.

• GlusterFS
  • Performance: Very bad for streaming. I cannot reach more than a few Mbps in a 10Gbps network. Clients and Server CPU skyrockets on heavy writes. For encoding works because the CPU is saturated before the network and I/O.
  • POXIS: Almost compatible. The tools I use can access gluster mounts as normal folders in disk but in some edge cases things start causing problems. Check gluster mailing lists and you will see there are a lot of problems.
  • Replication, Failover and Load balancing: The best! if they actually worked. Gluster is very new and it has a lot of bugs and performance problems.
  • Installation is too easy. The management command line is amazing and setting replicated, striped and distributed volumes among several servers can not be any easier.

(source of above information)

• Hadoop (HDFS) - slow and has a lot of proprietary derivatives (MapR, GPFS, and other alternatives)
• XtreemFS - slow and we need more research on it.
• Cassandra File System (CFS) - proprietary software made by DataStax and included in the Enterprise Edition of their software.
• Network File Sytem (NFS) - comparable to Lustre, but the IO bandwidth doesn't scale.

Non-distributed file systems There's the option to use a modern file system with rsync. Comparison of ZFS and BTRFS A Quick Introduction to Modern Filesystems

Databases and Servers

These are decentralized databases and servers that could ultimately be optimized to store data nearest to where people access it. A significant factors with mesh networks, that as "size and complexity continues to grow, mesh networks that contain multiple hops become increasingly vulnerable to problems such as bandwidth degradation, radio interference and network latency." There are several other methods of improving network latency, but all means should be tested and implemented to improve services.

• Cassandra - a decentralized database with asynchronous masterless replication allowing low latency operations for all clients. Cassandra has Hadoop integration, with MapReduce support.
• CouchDB - I can tell you that it quickly becomes complicated to write multi-user app with CouchDB. Decent access control means that you need a database per user and likely a few extra databases. You then have to set all of these databases up to synchronize between each other which is further complicated by the limitations on what information is available by the limitations on how synchronization rules and filters can be written. There seem to be no good tools for managing/visualizing these complex relationships so you end up having to roll your own.
• PouchDB - a javascript based couchDB.
• Scuttlebutt - a data synchronization protocol, or a peer-to-peer replicable data structure.
• TahoeLAFS - a decentralized database.
• LevelDB - a fast and lightweight key/value database library.
• MongoDB - an open-source document database, a NoSQL database. Written in C++.
• Node.js - an HTTP server written in javascript.

Communications

• Radicale - a CalDAV (calendar) and CardDAV (contacts) server.
• Calypso - Radicale fork with a git back-end (by Keith Packard of X11 fame)
• Village Telco - an initiative to build low-cost community telephone network hardware and software that can be set up in minutes anywhere in the world. No mobile phone towers or land lines are required, it uses the internet. It has a Simple Unified Dashboard (SPUD) for mesh networks.
• Ripple (XRP) - a math-based crypto-currency designed to work seamlessly with the Internet. Powered by a global network of computers; a fast, direct, and secure way to send payments on the web. It can be used to prevent malious attacks on servers.
• OpenBTS - open source cell phone tower software.
• OpenMAMA - a high performance middleware agnostic messaging API that interfaces with a variety of message oriented middleware systems
• an encrypted asynchronous messaging system to replace email
• a module to have collaborative documents, voting, and groups (ie. groupware)
  • Read information about the peer-to-peer voting scheme.
• a module for peer to peer file sharing.
• a module for object-orientated tagging, shareable feeds.
• a module for feeds and posts, such as Trsst.
• Frontline SMS - a free, open-source desktop application that allows you to send texts.

Mapping

• NodeWatcher - an open source network planning, deployment, monitoring and maintanance platform.
• NodeShot - an easy to use wireless community map server.
• OpenWiFiMap - a database and map for free network WiFi routers (freifunk and others, too!).
• LibreMap - a scalable, global and decentralized router database and map visualization for community networks, such as guifi, ninux, etc.
• Tidepools - collaborative local mapping software
• Edible Cities - a food mapping project
• Bulletin Board / Local Classified Ads
  • Community Asset Mapping (ex. Mycelia)

Protocols

• Tent - a method to store all your data in one place that you control. Instead of your digital life being spread across many services.
• Docker - an open-source project to easily create lightweight, portable, self-sufficient containers from any application.
• MaidSafe - an encrypted, fully distributed data management service. This network manages static and dynamic data as well as communications. (charges money)

Social Platforms

• Diaspora - a decentralized social network
• Identi.ca - a high-performance Open Source social engine.
• Pump - a stream server that does most of what people really want from a social network.
• Twister - a decentralized, peer to peer microblogging platform

Utilities and Misc.

• Avahi - a mDNS responder that allows you to broadcast services
• Local Wiki - create a local wikipedia (eg; http://oaklandwiki.org)
• a module for sensor data (eg; Temperature, Seismic activity, air pollution)
• PiplMesh - an open source social networking and info portal for wireless networks used as a welcome page when users connect to the network.
• Neocities (git) - create free user sites
• Crabgrass - a project out of riseup labs, a ruby rails application for community organizing. It's not the easiest to run your own instance, but very easy to sign up to their server (we.riseup.net)

Use Cases

Leisure, Treasure Hunt, Animal Spotting, History / Science Plotting , Art/Design/Drawing, Mapping Secret/Weird stuff, Expression, Emotion

• Jordan is a 36-year old scientist and queer activist. Occasionally, he travels north to a 'radical fairy' retreat center on over 80 acres of land. He's undertaking a project to map out the diverse and undocumented biology and wildlife in this sacred area. For this, he would like a tool that would enable him to automatically map the coordinates, attach a picture, and include a comment about what it is, as well as the ability to add to social media (Facebook & Twitter).

Bulletin Board / Local Information sharing (jobs, events, etc) (people to people)

• Martin is a 35-year old Latino man who runs a website for displaying new job postings and opportunities for diverse, underserved populations in Oakland (eg; youth, veterans, and formerly incarcerated). Martin would like to easily transpose this data onto a searchable map that he could populate daily with new opportunities and programs.

Sensors: hardware-based [inputs & outputs]

• Naomi is a Midweatern 30-year old environmental activist concerned about the impact of fracking on the quality of water in her county. She's organizing a campaign to encourage fellow concerned homeowners to monitor changes and contaminants in air and water quality, seismic activity, radiation, and other potential environmental impacts of fracking.

Evidence Based Citizenship (crowdsourced data/reporting for an institution to solve, neighborhood to be aware of) (people to institutions)

• Alyssa is a 35-year old African-American woman working for the city government. Passionate about diversifying and expanding civic participation, she's been participating with Open Oakland to make civic data more accessible. She's working on an educational campaign for creating short videos explaining civic issues and how local government works.

Contexts

Community Asset Mapping / Archiving

• Kiara is a 34-year-old African-American community organizer and activist interested in mapping the various organizations addressing digital divide issues, as well as available resources such as public computers, free training and education, and free wifi spots.
• Molly is a 26 year old community organizer working on Oakland Wiki, a website editable by anyone and dedicated to everything Oakland. She recently announced the launch of an oral history project, the end product of which would ideally be mapped onto specific areas and landmarks.

Community Hub (communications / sensors / input + output APIs )

• Ali is a 28-year old Iraqi-American and works to catalyze community organizations in the Middle East. He is currently collecting stories from hackerspaces in the form of comics, as well as a 'Sister Spaces' project to partner hackerspaces for sharing insights and infrastructure challenges.
• Luke is a 33-year-old Australian data and open government geek. Among the mappable projects he's working on with Open Oakland are storm drains (the Adopt-A-Drain project), crime data, vacant and blighted properties, and organizations and resources addressing the digital divide.

Organizing Tool (activists, security matters)

• Mateo is a 32-year old Latino father living in the San Antonio neighborhood in Oakland, CA. He is interested in the capabilities of a mesh network for streaming Creative Commons-licensed content to his neighbors (possibly using an Asterisk server) and providing a means for connecting the community both digitally and physically through an online neighborhood bulletin board. He has a strong interest in reaching out to local businesses with an 'everybody wins' model of free wifi through a mesh, with a map-based splash page for communicating with others in the network.

Crisis Readiness

• Jen is a 30-year-old Asian-American technologist and community organizer in East Oakland. Passionate about DIY education and grassroots community-building, she's interested in mapping DIY communities as well as available resources for crisis readiness (such as relief centers, tools, food, water and shelter).
• Alexis is a 29-year old African-American technologist interested in the potential for mesh networking to expand internet access in underserved areas and creating a resilient communications network for crisis readiness. She is especially passionate about issues surrounding access to technology, and would like to see underserved communities participating in putting themselves on the map.