I'm thinking about what a Local Internet looks like. Can we build a setup, local servers, local webdevs, local helpdesk. Get local businesses to pay us to make local pages. Organize local delivery drivers. What if we didn't scale?

Could we make it work? How big a city do we need?

in reply to silverwizard

Yeah idk either. But domain control is a pretty critical component you might want to keep local.

I think there could be lots of similar infrastructure services to consider. If someone's got an app deployed on EC2, you want them to be able to pop it over to a local alternative.

In the end, it probably means a local software engineering org. Of course you'd start small & do it piece by piece, building up your local consortium along the way.

in reply to Darth Hideout 🏳️‍🌈

@Darth Hideout 🏳️‍🌈 a webdev, a small ISP, and a sysadmin is probably MVP for this kind of thing. But yeah, could you support two employees on the local businesses of my town of about half a million people? I dunno, maybe?

domains would probably be owned by businesses, but easy to host a small registrar/dns. Email would be owned by businesses, but easy to host. Web would be trivial to host. Ordering stuff would mean payments, which is an actual complicated task, but far from impossible. Owning DNS and the CAs has large scale needs.

in reply to silverwizard

Running a TLD is likely the best start, CAs are acrually seperate (maybe bcause that came later on) but a decent DNS setup can go a long way, a lot of email configuration is in TXT record (DMARC/DKIM) and these systems were deaigned to scale with a sense of locale, even if they handoff to a larger network.

<yourdomain>.<yourtown>

Payments are not as hard as you think, until the IRS tells you it's illegal 😀 If its a micro-currency for local businesses that can happen in the form of coupons that are only redeemable at local stores.

I'm building a bit of a swiss-army-knife style networking runtime that will eventually do this called Caneka, it's a long road until it's ready, but I can say it's all possible, having researched every protocol/technology area that you've mentioned.

in reply to Madison Silvernight 🏳️‍⚧️

@Madison Silvernight 🏳️‍⚧️ @Darth Hideout 🏳️‍🌈 I'm in Canada which is a far more regulated payments environment, but has a more mature system, but, complicated to start. Our finance industry destroys the world less though.

The goal of "already works with people's phones" means it's hard to do a TLS but probably could do a second layer domain: business.town.ca which would make it work well on the internet as a whole.

in reply to silverwizard

As an American whose finance industry destroys the world I wasn't counting on payments, existing TLDs, or anyones phone working for much longer 😀

Maybe that's why I've deaigned a wholesale replacement toolkiit for the internet!

I have lived in the UK though, and the instant bank transfer was absolutely wonderful, if Canada has a system anywhere as smooth as that I understand why you'd want to use it.

This entry was edited (Saturday, September 12, 2026, 1:59 PM)
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe

As an astounding part of Silicon Valley history, if we consider eTransfers in CA and the UK, and then remember that PayPal was the start of so many US tech entreprenuers, and it's still a comparatively crappy experience three decades later.

That's a pretty good metaphor for why the US tech industry is a mess... Lol

in reply to NewsHund

Came here to mention mesh.

A lot of old tech would work. RSS, XML/XSLT....SIMPLICITY

We didn't abandon those things because they didn't work well.

We abandoned them because more expensive service level options were shoved down our throats.

I'm down for a throwback retro nerd revolution.

Is there a preferred spot to organize our needs and ideas?

If anyone is geographically close to each other, we can even do some small scale tests too. 💕

(This inspires me! 🙃)

in reply to Madison Silvernight 🏳️‍⚧️

@Madison Silvernight 🏳️‍⚧️ @silverwizard I've contributed a small amount of code which is sitting in a queue to be reviewed, but it's like a drop in the ocean. I'm also working on adding another feature which has apparently frequently been requested but nobody has the time to work on.

The fun thing is that I used the reticulum network itself to submit it. Git over RNS (Reticulum Network Stack) is a thing.

in reply to silverwizard

here’s lots of examples of community mesh networks

datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/…

&

A book / essay on commons & neighborhood structures

libcom.org/article/power-neigh…

in reply to silverwizard

Great idea! And you are not alone.
It is being done. No need to think about it so much, just do it.

There might already be a network in your area, all you need to participate might be a (reasonably) affordable LoRa radio. Take a look at #reticulum.

Apart from reticulum as a complete departure from traditional internet, all the #fediverse tech will "work" in isolation, there is no need for "internet".

humble advice:

Possible stumbling point in my experience is thinking in terms of "Internet". Don't compare or try to replicate.

Size does not matter. >1 is a "network". so it does not need to scale, but it does need a purpose. It might be good to pre define WHAT it is and WHY it exists, then you can hopefully attract like minded participants and avoid those who may damage the project.

Beyond initial outlay, fibre rollout is maybe not as costly as might be imagined. Running the fibre optic cable might be an issue in your locality however, but maybe worth looking into.

in reply to Keith Whyte

Hehe.. one thing about fediverse is you don't always see the entire thread on an instance, so one should always read the original page before replying! (Note to self.)

So, reticulum was already mentioned. Good.

And a few people talking about payment gateways and infra and DNS/CA. If commerce is a raison d'etre then harder to see the point in doing it, again.. why replicate?

I'd avoid #DNS like the plague in any new network. Somebody already had the terrible idea to start assignment of names on reticulum.

After reading the thread, just wanted to add that being aware that it is not only about the physical layer and the network stack is obviously important. (you point to this in the original post, I believe.)

Ultimately it comes down to having enough interest locally to have the so-callled "human resources" to make it work, and thrive. you might be able to do this with a capitalist model, but I doubt it. Not as long as the other internet exists anyway.

#DNS
in reply to Keith Whyte

People on the thread might get something from this talk:

tv.lumbung.space/w/nzuB248U2LQ…

in reply to Keith Whyte

@Keith Whyte @silverwizard I'd add to that a recommendation to look into either nomadnet* or MeshChatX.** Both are all-in-one messaging, browsing, chat clients that run on Reticulum and are generally compatible with each other.

If you use either of those, you can point their browser at: 6bfef461c2c9419e21deeab0456ac61e

I've set up a page there that serves as a sort of index of things that should help you get started. The Zen of Reticulum is a good read (though there are bits with which I somewhat disagree).

* Console (TUI) based
** GUI based

This website uses cookies. If you continue browsing this website, you agree to the usage of cookies.