This is something I'm quite interested in and have thought about a bit. Not neccessarily with the dystopian DRM scenario, but building a separate net *just because*, to avoid censorship, make a point to governments etc. to give up filtering and similar ideas.
For long distances - primarily, in a totally dystopian world, this network would have to be for personal communications and distribution of political information, i.e. e-mail, simple web pages and other text applications. Doesn't need much bandwidth, so the beginnings could be made with amateur packet radio and similar serial links, perhaps good old analogue modems (not everything has to be wireless), etc.
Other possibilites might be, as Gowan said, discarded cables in the ground (which could do much higher bandwidth), the usual hacked WiFi gear (record is, what, over 70km I believe, still with about 300kbps throughput), all kinds of hacked radio equipment. And for densely populated areas, efficient mesh systems should develop that can actually route a message from one end of the city to the other, through maybe 10 nodes, without too much delay.
And after I've got my physics degree, I'll join the underground and build you quantum entanglement modems for instantaneous, high-bandwidth untraceable data communications ;-)
Anyway, if there's no freely programmable hardware around - well, just keep your current gear running. I mean, even a 486 could route several megs per second with the right equipment and software, I'd guess. Also, there's the processor being developed in China (a favourite candidate for post-DRM freedom on Slashdot) that'll run Linux.
I don't think that kind of scenario is going to happen, if only because there are so many ways around it. But the next couple of years are going to be *very* interesting. |
