Slashdot Mirror

belial writes "The FreeNetworks Conference is in less than a month (June 6-8). If you want to find out what's happening in the Community Wireless Network world, this is the place to be. Keynotes include Tim O'Reilly, Cory Doctorow from BoingBoing, and a whole gaggle of wireless geeks from the FreeNetworks community. Find out about the latest happenings from BAWUG, Consume, NoCat, NYCWireless,SeattleWireless, WirelessLeiden, and more!"

infractor writes "Wired has an article about a wireless project delivering free broadband to a rural community. Using Linux based devices called meshboxes from Locustworld, they've created a local mesh network. More detail in this article. With Wi-Fi friendly ISPs talking about micro-ISP deals for wireless sharers this could be the accelerator UK broadband has been waiting for." Last year we mentioned the MeshAP-05, a bootable CD which "turns a single board computer or laptop into a mesh node and access point," since updated to MeshAP-06. Update: 02/13 19:52 GMT by T : I see from comments that -08 is actually the current version of MeshAP, with -09 soon. Thanks.

andylaurence writes: "NTL has issued a statement on their site of their intentions to trial highspeed wireless Internet access in London. They don't seem to know whether it will continue after the trial, but they have stated that it will cost £25 a month (the same as their cable modems). One would assume that this will be based on an 802.11b network, and the questions will then arise as to how secure this is. Another company also seem to be pioneering wireless Internet access this month, with a trial due to start soon. Seems to me like this might just take off." Wait -- I thought London already had wireless access.

An Anonymous Coward pointed to this San Francisco Chronicle story about San Francisco's wireless networks there for the taking, set up for convenience but left open to anyone with an 802.11 card to grab packets, and in many cases, hop on the networks themselves. Sometimes that's intentional, other times it's not. The article mentions some of the well-known public wireless projects consume.net and Seattle Wireless, but what about your city? It would be interesting to find out and map where else folks have found (or founded) pockets of free bandwidth.

GrokSoup writes: "Neat article from the WSJ (free site) about European hackers using 802.11 technology to create limited-range, high-speed outdoor networks. As you might expect, people are messing with directed antennas to send signals up to a kilometer. While I've tried this to get from the house to the pool, the idea of banding together in open-source fashion had never really occurred to me. Nifty!" We've mentioned consume.net before, but this piece mentions some interesting possibilities, like how the same idea may result in an approved-by-the-Man wireless network in Sweden, and the golden hope that multiple connection methods will let us switch handily among several wireless protocols as the occasion merits.

Elvis Maximus writes "Technocrat.net has an interesting piece on an effort in London to create a wireless alternative to traditional ISPs called consume.net. Similar projects discussed include guerilla.net, SFLAN and SeattleWireless." Interesting both from the technological and legal sides.