“So why don’t you just use my network? I want to be able to get online anywhere in the Market, but that means that anyone can, right?”

The crusty-punk waved his hand dismissively. “Sure, whatever. But what happens if your network gets shut down? Or if you decide to start eavesdropping on other people? Or if someone wants to get to the printer in her living room? It’s no good.”

“So, what, you want me to switch to focused antennae?”

“That’s no good. If you used a focused signal, you’re going to have to be perfectly aligned if you’re going to talk back to your base, so unless you want to provide a connection to one tiny pinpoint somewhere a couple kilometers away, it won’t do you any good.”

“There’s no solution, then? I should just give up?”

The crusty-punk held up his hands. “Hell, no! There’s just no centralized solution. You can’t be Superman, blanketing the whole world with wireless using your almighty antennaprick, but so what? That’s what mesh networks are for. Check it out.” He arranged the beer and the laptop and the coffee cup so that they were strung out along a straight line. “Okay, you’re the laptop and I’m the coffee cup. We both have a radio and we want to talk to each other.

“We could turn up the gain on our radios so that they can shout loud enough to be heard at this distance, but that would drown out this guy here.” He gestured at the now-empty beer. “We could use a focused antenna, but if I move a little bit off the beam"—he nudged the coffee cup to one side -- “we’re dead. But there’s a third solution.”

“We ask the beer to pass messages around?”

“Fucking right we do! That’s the mesh part. Every station on the network gets two radios—one for talking in one direction, the other for relaying in the other direction. The more stations you add, the lower the power on each radio—and the more pathways you get to carry your data.”

Alan shook his head.

“It’s a fuckin’ mind-blower, isn’t it?”

“Sure,” Alan said. “Sure. But does it work? Don’t all those hops between point a and point b slow down the connection?”

“A little, sure. Not so’s you’d notice. They don’t have to go that far—the farthest any of these signals has to travel is 151 Front Street.”

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