Internet Connectivity

As a non-profit Wireless ISP (WISP), one of the goals of NYC Mesh is to connect members to the Internet without relying on commercial Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and their potentially non-neutral networks. To support this, we operate numerous computers of our own at various Internet exchange points (IXPs) in New York City. An Internet exchange point is simply a physical location such as a datacenter in a building where numerous networks plug into the same networking equipment for the purpose of directly connecting their networks to each other.

When an NYC Mesh member wants to, say, perform a Google search, we must somehow carry their message all the way to Google’s servers and then back again. This starts with the indoor router to which the end-user device (e.g., laptop) is directly connected, continues “upstream” to the outdoor router on that member building’s rooftop, possibly “hops” across numerous different NYC Mesh outdoor routers on nearby rooftops, and then finally reaches one of our Internet gateways, which are the routers we operate at an Internet exchange point. At the Internet gateway, the message is either passed directly to the destination network (Google’s, in this example) or to another network that claims it can deliver the message to the ultimate destination. This same process repeats itself in reverse to deliver Google’s responses to the NYC Mesh member who is performing the Google search.

A network to which we are directly connected is sometimes called a peering partner (or, more succinctly, simply a peer). NYC Mesh is fortunate to peer directly with a number of large networks, including Google! This means that there exists a direct connection between NYC Mesh and Google, for example. This direct connectivity translates to shorter loading times—network engineers say that there is “less network latency“—whenever you use a Google service such as their search, in the above example, because there are simply fewer computers in between NYC Mesh’s computers and Google’s computers. We also peer with numerous other big networks, including Apple, Inc. and the Akamai content delivery network.

Each network with which we peer is identified by a unique identifier called an Autonomous System Number (ASN). These numbers are used in routing decisions that are made when a packet of network traffic reaches one of our Internet gateways in order to group various different Internet Protocol addresses (IP addresses) with the organizations responsible for maintaining connectivity for those Internet addresses. This mapping is configured and performed by a technology called the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). Although invisible to end-users, NYC Mesh volunteers who want to help improve and scale our network should refer to our Public ASN Peering documentation for a list of our peers and to learn more about how we interconnect with other ISPs.