450 mesh nodes on an East Coast drive, found from Data Slayer's car
A whip antenna on the roof turned a road trip into a hunt for the open-source radio network, some of it solar-powered and hiding in plain sight.
Data Slayer
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The Open-Source Internet Is Bigger Than I Thought
Data Slayer put an antenna on the car and went looking for an internet nobody owns. In "The Internet Is Being Rebuilt Without ISPs," the channel drives down the East Coast listening for mesh networks, the small LoRa radios that pass messages from node to node with no cell tower in between. The description puts the count at more than 450 nodes along the way, including solar-powered relays tucked into ordinary places.
It was the only upload of the week. The comments read like a builders' meetup. One viewer in Slovakia is setting up what may be one of only a handful of nodes in the whole country, and is not ready to call text messages an internet. Another, in southern Maine, is putting up solar weather stations. Others point out MeshCore networks the drive must have passed, or pitch the idea to towns as a disaster backup.
The heavy lifting still comes from the trip before it. "The Open Source Internet Is Here," with its attempt to push Reticulum over HF radio on a Hermes Lite 2, passed 2.3 million views in under three weeks, and "How to Become Your Own ISP" keeps finding people two months on.
Overall the channel ran at well under half its usual daily pace, adding about a thousand subscribers. Most of the tech review channels around it were slower too, and Data Slayer landed mid-pack for views gained, a mesh enthusiast sitting comfortably among phone and camera reviewers.
Published on Trari
Where next?
What viewers say
I still have solar routers up all around the county that have been there for 3 years and they're still running fine.
@EpiclyRecklessSee it on YouTubeI'm in southern Maine. I've been chipping away at solar powered weather stations / radiation weather stations I think it's a good grass roots way to get a better network out there.
I'm currently porting ratspeak tdeck-plus to a tdeck-pro. That should be drafted soon.@jaredharvey1511See it on YouTubeThis has real startup potential. Towns, cities, and states could partner on it as a disaster-preparedness backup, with elevated relays and local mesh coverage when normal networks fail. Trucking fleets and school districts could add a practical vehicle-tracking use case.
@TimothyOReillySee it on YouTube
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The videos drawing views on Data Slayer right now
- Channel
- Data Slayer
- Subscribers
- 540,000 ▲ 1,000 this week
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 472,284
- Videos published this week
- 1
- Video published
- October 4, 2026
- Video views so far
- 47,796
- Views on its first day
- 36,277
The numbers
Here is how Data Slayer's week looks in figures.
💡 Test your knowledge
In ham radio, the HF bands that Data Slayer used to bridge Reticulum are named for what?
HF stands for high frequency, the 3 to 30 MHz range whose signals can bounce off the ionosphere and travel hundreds of miles.