World Tree Network

Lightning Mesh

Ordinary routers, talking to each other directly. No company in the middle. The neighborhood still has a network when the towers go dark.

Field-tested Installed at Embassy SF · fleet-tested July 2026
Join a network Read the source

What it removes

Connectivity usually assumes an ISP, and often a vendor cloud that admits your access points. Lightning Mesh does not replace your internet plan. It stops the plan from being the only way two people in the same place can reach each other. The routers peer. There is no front desk that can turn the neighborhood off.

Nobody grants the router an address. It joins by being there, and leaving does not require permission.

A house can stop after any layer

Installed at Embassy SF. More installations are starting in San Francisco and the East Bay. Coverage was already field-tested on our own OpenWrt fleet in July 2026. A house can still stop after any layer. Freifunk is evaluating adoption. That is a conversation, not an install of theirs.

  1. Coverage

    Field-tested

    Several ordinary routers, one Wi-Fi name, your existing modem left in place. Phones join an open network. If any router has the internet plugged in, the house has the internet. If none does, the routers still see each other. This is the layer we ran on a small OpenWrt fleet in July 2026: client traffic reached the internet and crossed between the routers.

  2. A directory in the building

    Working

    A phone on the Wi-Fi opens hello.mesh and sees people, apps, and services. Names end in .mesh. A machine in the house can publish a service there, with no cloud login. The software does this. Walking from one router to another can still drop a long call — that part is not field-tested.

  3. A disk that stays in the building

    Store not open

    The disk is a Raspberry Pi 5 with an SSD, in the building. Sensitive data — room recordings, for example — stays on it. The same machine runs the community’s web services and shares them across the mesh. We have the hardware. The online store is not open yet; write and we will sell you one.

What is true today

Checked against the join guide on 24 September 2026. “Built” means it is in the current software and meant to work on a current node. It does not mean every router in a mixed fleet has been updated.

In the software now

  • Open Wi-Fi, and the internet through any router that has it connected
  • hello.mesh, including when the internet is down
  • An IdentiKey on the mesh, with a 24-word recovery phrase you hold
  • .mesh names an operator publishes, and an apps shelf
  • Adding another router, and sharing the internet once the two are peered

Not yet

  • A second router does not find the first by itself. You still paste node ids.
  • Address roaming exists. A call that stays up while you walk has not been field-tested.
  • You cannot yet pick a pretty name, or review app approvals, from the hello.mesh page.
  • Names are not yet trusted HTTPS. The browser may warn.

The steps — unbox, flash, connect, publish — live in the join guide. This page will not duplicate them.

Where it sits

When the network asks who you are, the key is IdentiKey. You mint it, and you can take it with you.

Flash a router from the join guide, or write us for a pre-flashed one and, if you want it, a Raspberry Pi 5 with an SSD. The store is not open yet.

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