How can a group of volunteers build at least the tech for a replacement for the internet?

I was hoping that each individual user could run and maintain a piece of the infrastructure in a decentralized grassroots way.

How can users build a community owned and maintained replacement for the internet?

I hope that we can have our own servers and mesh/line/tower infrastructure and like wikipedia/internet-archive type organization and user donations based funding.

How could this be realized?

Can this be done with a custom made router that has a stronger wifi that can mesh with other’s of it’s kind? like a city wide mesh? or what are ways to do this?

Edit: this is not meant as a second dark web but more like geocities or the old internet with usermade websites

  • @[email protected]
    7•1 day ago

    I’m just dreaming here so humour me if you like, or don’t, no harm done.
    Would it be possible to build an independent and mostly autonomous hardware backbone for the internet using some sort of mesh-like design?
    I.e. consider a mesh of nodes that are solar powered with batteries to last the night. You plop those all over the place: your roof, in meadows, on vehicles, bus stops, wherever. They connect to each other wirelessly. They should be cheap and near maintenance free. In case one dies, the mesh should have enough redundancy to compensate while the node is being replaced.

    Something like that should be fully independent, net-neutral and accessible by everyone right. Although you will need a rather high density of nodes/people who join, for it to work