Toronto Gets Its Own Free, Encrypted Mesh Network

Canadians are famously dissatisfied with Internet access in this country, and Mark Iantorno and Benedict Lau, two Toronto developers, are no exception. In December, they met for lunch at a cafeteria in a downtown office, and got to talking about how increasingly frustrated they were—Iantorno with sky-high data plan prices, and Lau, who is a mobile engineer with Android, with “black box design,” or the opacity of consumer tech. At that lunch, they talked about how to bring free, accessible Internet to the city, uncoupled from Canada’s three all-powerful telecoms. They went over various ideas: Iantorno suggested floating Wi-Fi rigged balloons over the city, an idea cribbed from Google’s Project Loon. Lau was skeptical. "I'm doing this thing called mesh networking,” he said. “You should take a look.”

Meshnet networks, or meshnets, are a form of intranet that doesn’t require a central router point. Instead of emitting from a single point, they’re distributed across an entire system of nodes. Accessing one is free—and doesn’t require the services of a telecom. Lau had spent the previous summer chatting with other meshnet enthusiasts in Europe, trying to figure out the best way to set up routers across the city. He suggested it was time to give it a try in Toronto. What grew out of Lau and Iantorno’s meeting, four months ago now, was a plan to build a meshnet in this city—one where users wouldn’t need to worry about eavesdroppers, because it would be encrypted. When it’s finished, Toronto’s first free-to-use meshnet should provide an accessible and secure internet community, maintained by locals keen on becoming digitally self-sufficient. Those early adopters could reshape our relationship to internet providers, and cut monthly rates out of the picture.