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The problem would be establishing trunks to carry enough traffic to make it worthwhile, or figuring out a way to distribute the traffic over many links so as to (again) make it worthwhile. I think streaming would be hard. And of course it would be an ecosystem, in which bad things could grow, just like the net is now. You have to solve the problem of DDoS to make this work, I think, and I don't know of anybody who has any idea how to solve that problem.

Free as in not-for-profit. Freifunk is a loose agglomeration of people who build (mostly wireless) community networks. It takes the form of a non-commercial membership corporation, but you don't have to be a member to participate. Freifunk about Freifunk.

Freifunk takes the mesh networking approach and develops alternative router firmwares based on OpenWRT to enable the use of low-cost COTS hardware.

They are catching up with the European freifunk movement developments, as simple as that. Basically connection sharing is a matter of choice and convenience. When you apply mesh networking you move towards a situation where networks are independent from ISPs. In the aftermath of US hurricane Katrina also some US wireless mesh services provided backup networks. With mesh networking the internet becomes what is was supposed to be, a peer to peer communication service without the need of intermediaries and telcos. We will probably see the same debate after Sandy to get internet up and running again. Mesh networks are better defended against single points of failure.

In Germany, or better: in Berlin the Freifunk movement started like 10 years ago. The movement around mesh networking protocols spread all cross Europe and from there also to developing nations. The technology is available, the only remaining problems arise from liability risks. Berlin is going to launch a city-wide Wifi service soon. The Pirate Party strongly advocated for Piratenfreifunk, that is rebranded Freifunk technology. We also need to fight for good unlicensed spectrum. The Prague based OpenSpectrum Alliance does a great job to promote more access to spectrum and non-profit internet providers like Guifi.net advance customer services.

Just find a open WLAN and use that ...

http://start.freifunk.net/
http://www.hotspot-locations.com/modules.php?name=HotSpots&op=hotspot_query&hsl_countryhs=2DE&hs_state=&hs_city=&hs_operator=&hsl_type=&hs_access_box=on&search=Search

For urban dwellers, we can also set up city-wide off-internet wireless mesh networks (for example). Fuck the ISPs, if projects like this achieve critical mass, we'll have our own local networks with thousands of anonymous peers.

I studied CS at FU-Berlin, the program can be quite demanding, but it's very good. Some courses are taught in English, and in those courses you can write the exams in either German or English. If you're just going to spend a semester abroad, you may be able to get away with taking all your courses in English. You'll inevitably need to learn some German though, if only for social life (even though many people are fluent in English), but the effort may well be worth it. There is also a welcoming Linux geek society at the faculty. Oh, and Berlin is a very nice city. There's the typical tourist attractions, but also a large and very active hacking community which naturally provides lots of entertainment for CS students (projects such as the CCC, freifunk, C-base, bootlab). Beware -- many students have been known to end up stranded in these communities. Check here for information about application procedures for students from abroad.

I experimented with 5 units of WRT54G wireless routers running Freifunk firmware and I tried saturating the link with several G.729 VoIP calls. The system doesn't scale well. Over 3 hops, the number of calls greatly reduces as there is just too much random delay. In order for voice communication to be worthwhile, the latency cannot be more than 200ms although there are good forward error correction schemes and huge buffers.

Latency is a real problem especially when you are doing it over several hops. The "lag" isn't consistent. It will hit you at random interval, and that can be extremely irritating. This may be due to the use of CSMA/CA and RTS/CTS (depending on configuration). I haven't found a way to improve it though...

German "Freifunk" (literally: "Free Wireless") initiative has made a complete firmware package [1] that integrates mesh routing (they use OLSR [2]) into it's web interface and also allows for remote administration per SSH. Installation is cake.

To see what's possible with that technology, just look at the maps of the Berlin [3] or Leipzig [4] networks; these cities had DSL white spots, just like parts of the US (or rural areas, for that matter).

German "Freifunk" (literally: "Free Wireless") initiative has made a complete firmware package [1] that integrates mesh routing (they use OLSR [2]) into it's web interface and also allows for remote administration per SSH. Installation is cake.

To see what's possible with that technology, just look at the maps of the Berlin [3] or Leipzig [4] networks; these cities had DSL white spots, just like parts of the US (or rural areas, for that matter).

German "Freifunk" (literally: "Free Wireless") initiative has made a complete firmware package [1] that integrates mesh routing (they use OLSR [2]) into it's web interface and also allows for remote administration per SSH. Installation is cake.

To see what's possible with that technology, just look at the maps of the Berlin [3] or Leipzig [4] networks; these cities had DSL white spots, just like parts of the US (or rural areas, for that matter).

There's actually a project exactly dealing with this issue in Germany and other countries. There are a few router on which you can patch the firmware and get them linked up. Check out http://start.freifunk.net/ or http://global.freifunk.net/

There's actually a project exactly dealing with this issue in Germany and other countries. There are a few router on which you can patch the firmware and get them linked up. Check out http://start.freifunk.net/ or http://global.freifunk.net/

just look at german "freifunk" [1], they even develop routing protocols [2,3].

[1] http://start.freifunk.net/ (german)

[2] http://olsr.org/

[3] https://www.open-mesh.net/batman

for example in the eastern part of germany, after reunification, there were lines in cities that could not be used for DSL. the german "freifunk" (literally "free wireless", both as in beer and as in speech) project managed to build some sizeable city mesh nets using a routing protocol known as OLSR [1,2].

just look in awe at the leipzig cloud [3]. also, try to imagine wireless cell phone / pda mesh nets (probably doable right now with openmoko).

[1] http://olsr.org/
[2] http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3626.txt
[3] http://db.leipzig.freifunk.net/uptime/png/ -- careful, images is 3165x4206

well, FON is *not grassroots, they are neither open nor free. they distribute their routers totally locked down. "pah", the average customer thinks," that won't affect me". only that it does.

see, FON wants *me* to pay *them* for access to *my neighbour's* wireless. when i asked him to open his AP, he said he couldn't, because if he installed openWRT (or another open firmware) he wouldn't get the benefits FON offers (i never knew if he used them actually).

also, technically FON requires a direct internet connection. urban wifi would be much more likely to succeed, if they used mesh network strategies (what would mean with even only 20% of APs actually connected to the net, traffic is) like the german freifunk project does. hell, freifunk developers even create new routing protocols. if you wanna see what openWRT and freifunk devs are making possible, check this graph [1] from the german city of leipzig.

i just cannot see why technical people are falling for this FON scam (other than plain ignorance, of course).

[1] http://leipzig.freifunk.net/

kinda reminds me of cory doctorow's "eastern standard tribe" [1], where ad-hoc mesh networks are formed between cars and they share music. there are many beneficial uses for ad-hoc networks. i own an linksys WRT45-GL wireless router (runs linux, of course) and participiate in the freifunk project [2] (although not very long) b/c city-wide mesh networks fascinated me the moment i heard of them. big freifunk-enabled areas are in berlin, weimar and leipzig (when you are visiting the latter, look out for BSSID "ca:ff:ee:ba:be").

i could easily imagine that some ad-hoc chatting protocol (zeroconf anyone ?) could be used to form an IRC-like chat when stuck in traffic. or someone starts to stream a movie (i am waiting for "matrix vista"). possibilities are endless.

[1] http://www.craphound.com/est/
[2] http://freifunk.net/ (german)

sorry, I am a supporter of open networks. I think the freifunk olsr-protocol approach of open wireless networks is best. We don't need internet providers and we don't need internet provider which leak our communication data to the governments and endanger the freedom of the net. The net should be a net and wireless technology is great for the creation of a real P2P internet.

I cannot support any action against people who use your network. It is against my understanding of hacker ethics. When you don't like it then close your network. But no childish games please.

I may even say that I find it unethical to exclude your neighbours from using your network but I respect your opinions. When your network is open it means: Be free to use it. Not: You can use it but I will fuck up or intercept your communication.

Or you culd check out http://freifunk.net/

What about OpenWRT http://openwrt.org/, it runs on several consumer grade DSL routers http://wiki.openwrt.org/TableOfHardware and supports IPv6 http://wiki.openwrt.org/IPv6_howto?highlight=(ipv6 )?

With nice Web frontends it's as easy to use (when successfully installed) as e.g. the Linksys Web frontend. Freifunk http://www.freifunk.net/ has a nice customized OpenWRT version (sorry, homepage is in German only).

The best way to build a WISP with a WRT54G is using the Freifunk Firmware (based on openwrt.org) which builds a routed mesh network with any WRT54G flashed with the same firmware. It is really simple and totally open and free - unlike the Sveasoft weenies. Some howtos on my blog:

How to setup OLSR (a mesh protocol) with Freifunk firmware on a WRT54G
Sharing broadband with a WRT54G
Really simple antennas for the WRT54G

If you can handle losing the (lame, in my opinion) Linksys web configuration interface, OpenWRT is probably a better choice. I've had it running for about 6 months here with no problems, and it's a real OSS project, with anoymous CVS access and all. If you do need the web interface, there's a couple of different add-on packages that provide one, or you could use the Freifunk Firmware, which I understand is based on OpenWRT and includes one (I haven't used it mysef).

Well actually people aready do construct mesh networks in the "real world". And they do that even without exhausting another letter from the precious 802.11 namespace. For example, the freifunk.net initiative is playing around on a larger scale with the OLSR Ad-Hoc-Mesh-Networking-Protocol in Berlin.

I've commented on the math that Mesh Dynamics uses to justify their system on several occasions -- needless to say, it's wrong and overstates degradation. More importantly, their systems is _extremely_ expensive. Meanwhile, groups like CUWiN, FreiFunk and others are developing free open source mesh networking systems. CUWiN's software (and, for full disclosure, I cofounded and coordinate the project) can be downloaded by anyone, it's under an open source license, and everything (including the developers' environment) is freely available. We haven't implemented multi-radio solutions yet -- mainly because the bandwidth degredation hasn't been bad enough to justify it. But to do so, we're only talking about a few weeks of work -- which can be done by anyone who wants to add the feature -- and then you'd have a system that does the same thing as Mesh Dynamics, but is freely avaialable to anyone who wants it.

you know, wireless p2p style internet is already here: it's called "datenwolke" (datacloud) and build by volunteers in berlin. every person gets an accesspoint and donates bandwidth to the cloud. in turn he get get online trough some gateways http://freifunk.net/ (german)

Since everyone working on the project are very busy, building more net (our goal is 16.000 users), preparing for the convention and more - lots more, I doubt it that anyone else from inside DjurslandS.net will be able to find the time to comment here at Slashdot.

Thus, I'll try to do my best, though I'm not much into all the technical details. I can assure though, that DjurslandS.net is much, much more than technology for technologys sake, and that we do care about security in our network.

I am sorry we cannot provide much info in english yet - we are working on that - but I'd of course like to give all of you what little we do have.

Here's a small collection of usefull links:

A somewhat outdated Power Point presentation, originally used for presentation of DjurslandS.net i Berlin, sept. 2003 - in english:
http://www.djurs.net/biblioteket/international/dju rslands_net_english_presentation.ppt

An article written by Juergen Neumann from Freinfunk.net in Sept. 2003 after the Berlin convention - in english:
http://www.freifunk.net:8080/sc2004/wiki/ArticleOn Djursland

Two Tv spots made from the same raw tape by WDR - Real Player format - in german:
http://djurslands.net/video/wdrq21mq.rm
http://djurslands.net/video/djursnettv336.rm

More technical or other questions you may have, can be send to me by email, and I'll try to find someone with the required knowledge and time to give anyone who wants it more detailed information.

Regards