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Building A Community Wireless Network From Scratch
adelayde writes "This summer I've been involved in a project to build a community-orientated wireless network in the city of Bristol, England. Recently I published an article ( mirrored here and here) describing what we have achieved so far, including some interesting thoughts on passive repeaters. There is a supporting site (mirrored here) with detailed instructions on how to build antennae, and the main project web site is also available here. A bit of own trumpet blowing perhaps, but I think it'll be of interest to those readers involved in similar projects and be of some help to those thinking of starting their own."
Orientated?
{cringe}
Similar projects for Seattle, Washington and Sonoma County, California can be found here and here, respectively.
-Kaos
I remember seeing a couple of stories about being able to extend the range of 802.11b today that might be relevant here. I'll get back to you as soon as I remember where they were...
But we may be crushing the bandwidth. I'm having problems on mirror1 already. Then again, maybe the web servers are those old SPARC stations.
In Vino Veritas
I would love to see more of these sites stress the importance of securing therse type of networks. All-in-all a good read.
I was working on a similiar project this summer as well. We have a grant from the state and community support to follow through, if someone is really interested they could read up on the grant at the link above.
These guys are way ahead of us, but if you are in the Reno area, or want to contribute ideas toward how we can setup a community wireless area here, please join our list and help contribute ideas! So far we have a couple people from Seattle and what not.
Personally, I think it would be uber cool to have someone setup a national (or International) wireless users consortum to organise all the great ideas people are coming up with. Non-commerial and commercial ideas a like.
A similar project for the Portland, OR Metro Area is located here.
My personal node (via nodedb) is here.
Join us.
GIR: I'm going to sing the Doom song now. Doom doom doom doom doom doom de-doom doom doom doom doom doom doom...
Lots of articles appear on slashdot about ISPs monitoring communications for the government, shutting sites down without authorization or anything resembling due process (important if you are a US citizen!), operating system and software vendors restricting freedoms, abuses of media by government PsyOps (ack!) organizations, media conglomerates manipulating editorials, ad nauseum.
While all of that may or may not be true, there is now a technology that can greatly reduce the reliance of the technically inclined and general populace alike on these large, controlled networks. This is the first time in history that a viable, high bandwidth technology can be bought into for a hundred bucks and some clever thought. The signifigance of that is not immediately apparent now, but I suspect it will become VERY important in the years to come.
If you really care about getting shafted by your ISP and care about free speech this is a avenue to pursue in addition to your standard channels of protest. Set up local networks! Once upon a time, we did this with modems, call forwarding lines, and crummy XTs. A bunch of kids trading software provoked national secret service investigations. Not with the internet, but with long distance phone calls. 802.11 is making being a ham radio operator interesting again - I can play with antennas and build networks on the cheap! At 11mbits to boot! When I was in high school, I thought the kenwood handheld and a battery operated packet modem was pretty pimp - and it cost me a lot more than a d-link pcmcia card!
If you live in a high density area, look at getting together a co-op for bandwidth. Distribute it on WiFi. Get people together and pool some cash. The networks are there, and once they're built, they only have to be connected. There is no reason that in 5 years, there can't be an alternative to commercial ISPs for bandwidth. Just as nobody thought the internet would work (what! no circuits! no central provide!), there is no evidence a widely distributed decentralized wireless network won't, either.
Security is a non starter. Make the network all-encompassing and encrypt your traffic.
Combine the technologies with something like Freenet (freenetproject.org), and you have a real motivator for social change (like it or not). Run more static nodes!
My $0.02. 802.11 isn't hyped enough.
..don't panic
Maybe the surrounding community was Vietnamese...
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
My high school is buying about a dozen wireless hubs (Apple Airports) so the teachers can use their soon-to-be laptops in conjunction with the school network. It's a little extreme for a high school of 300 students and staff, but I'd like to see how it turns out. Maybe I can talk the Sysadmin and school board into letting me build some Antennae for them so I can access the school network from home to do some... "school work." ;)
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Make Love not [Browser] War!
read SKO's journal.
{Here, I'll spell it for you so SK won't understand... f-r-a-u-d-u-l-e-n-t f-r-u-i-t-c-a-k-e}
Wasn't there an article about some guy doing this quite recently? $5 says I could submit a question about setting one of these up to "Ask Slashdot" and it gets frontpage tomorrow. Any takers?
Just in case.
Is there somewhere I can read about this Troll Tuesday thing? When is it? What should I do?
I would be interested in resources for both the technical how-to's and the political how-to's to accomplish a community LAN.
I have always wanted to start one in my area. If it's strait forward enough I could start one block at a time and maybe make a big hit.
Has anyone delt with the compitition? I would assume the Cable and DSL companies would be kinda pissed seeing everyone's money go to a wireless ISP with a T3 not through their wired lines. And since they have the bigger bank it means the little guys (dispite their good intentions) can get hurt real bad in battle.
Any feedback would be appreciated.
> SELECT * FROM brain_cells WHERE synaptic_rate > 0
0 row returned
Really nothing to do about wireless networks, but more about this submitted article.
:-) Well there is the bandwidth bill I suppose. hehe
If you are submitting your own site to slashdot, this is how you should do it! Have a couple mirrors handy so we can actually take a look at what you posted.
Kudos to this guy! There really should be some kinda of prize.
and buy a $3.49 sandwich. No, I'm not sure why.
based on the fact that these Brits are using discarded J&B whiskey tins to make their 'Can-Tennas' their network roll-out parties are probably one hell of a lot more interesting than the ones we have in America with Pringles.....
\/\/oobie
see above biatch
SexyKellyOsborne Is A Troll (fuck you, i dont care if i spelled your name wrong whore)
Most of the wireless community networks mentioned here appear to be springing up along the Left Coast. Anyone know of similar networks being constructed on the other side of the country, particularly in the Washington, D.C., area?
...because you never know who you're dealing with.
While I think that creating more local nets like we see here is great, it will take much more than a project like this to get rid of the "Oppressive ISPs."
The community in the article is still getting net access through a DSL modem, so they are still beholden to the Telco powers-that-be. If enough communities were to start up projects like this, and link together using their own methods, then a new form of Internet could take shape independent of the Telcos.
Imagine a mesh network on a national or international scale created from local nets and linked through purely public lines. Either that, or enough such networks sharing a few high-bandwidth connections along with freenet and tunnelling to make any monitoring and censorship pointless. The ISP's would have to adapt if enough communities simply shared one connection. The one's that refuse to move away from "one person/household == one account" will hopefully wither away.
As much as the Internet has become a big part of the way we live, we must take a greater part in shaping the way it develops if we want to retain the freedom we have with it, or to gain back the freedom we had before the Internet was declared a different arena from any other global communication tool (See DMCA, COPA, the recent decree from Panama etc for examples of this problem).
I know this has been mentioned in another post, but apropros of this article, the Waterloo Wireless group is (or was, I haven't heard from them in some time) trying for complete world domination at 11Mbit/sec.
I personally think that Tim Horton's (for those of you who need a reference, Timmies is like Krispy Kreme without all the ambience) should go all Starbuck's on us and implement wireless access points in their coffee shops. Well, at least around the University of Waterloo, anyway.
-- clvrmnky
I want to try something like this in my neighborhood. I have a couple of friends who suffer with dialup or nothing at all while I have a underutilized DSL connection ( A gigantor monster of a CO is right down the street ). My loft building is 2 story and I have access to the roof where I can install an antenna. I live on the edge of deep ellum in Dallas ( Main and Haskell ) if anyone in the area wants to think about this over beer at The Angry Dog drop me a line.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
Are you talking about Oakland? I used to ride my bike down that street every day. I worked at MicroProse in Alameda and lived in Berkeley. I never had a problem with anyone there. It does get kinda freaky at night though. Me and my $1000 bike was just fine. Mabye I'm just lucky.
The above is not worth reading.
As a cheaper alternative, why provide any direct bandwidth to the Internet? Use spare older boxes and set-up local news, email and web servers -- almost stepping back to UUCP days. It's a little hard for The Man to control your connection when you hardly have one, except for news and email feed. The local community web sites might not be too great, but they'd be in the community, which could be a plus.
Anyone who wanted could toss spare boxes onto your community intranet. Games servers, web sites, local small business -- And all without worrying about the pipe bill.
And clusters of community intranets could peer with each other. :^)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Unfortunately, you're then limited to local content. I personally don't give a shit about bake/yard sales, so I'm still dependent on my ISP's connection to the net (at least to do it legally, which I plan on doing).
Dropping it on an existing home-use DSL will cause .. trouble. If it doesn't violate the AUP, it will soon, and since the usage curve of a community WAN should be easy to detect.. (Sympatico has imposed a monthly transfer cap with extra charges past the cap.)
Alternately, a group could pool/raise the money for a legit connection, but then you're talking about money and organization. More power to those with the time for it.
One obsolete model was that of a lone operator setting up their own system and paying the costs out of pocket: The BBS.
I ran a BBS (Coherent/Linux based) for a decade until the Internet killed BBSs. (In the end, I tried a web-based BBS, still through my two phone lines. Couldn't afford that and a pipe out to the Internet, it died.) The main kicker was always the phone lines. I could have supported a large number of users even on a 486, but I couldn't justify the cost of the phone lines.
Now WiFi might make that model viable again. (After all, other than the cost of equipment, it's free.) WiFi doesn't have the coverage of the local telephone, but the number of "lines" are rather large.
I'm not talking about ye olde text BBS here, of course. Times have changed as have user expectations. I just think there might once again be room for a one-person cheep operation. What it would have to offer to make it attactive to users, I leave as an exercise...
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I was talking to a dude on irc last night about avoiding TCPA. And keeping my freedom, and stuff. We ended up talking about making a network of retro equipment. You know, PDP-11's PDP-7's Core Memory, all that stuff ;-)
Im thinking of starting a simllar thing in the West suburbs of Melbourne, Austrlaia. Well, im in Narre Warren. But its a cool idea nontheless.
So if you live in my area contact me, its a sweet idea, i will bring it up in an upcoming LUG meeting.
And clusters of community intranets could peer with each other. :^) ... Who needs the internet? I can build my own internet. with blackjack, and hookers! and ... in fact, forget the internet!
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ohh, I'm such a karma whore.
home page
I wishify that our esteemtated collegues in the Britishes Isleses could get it through their heads-a-waggers that you don't needify that extra sillylable at the end of certainish wordses. ;-)
Bandwidth is the key. It costs money, even if the costs are sometimes hidden. (Some companies have donated spare bandwidth -- Good for them!) What model is going to pay for that bandwidth while still offering free service?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
In the passive repeater section he mentions getting better signal by aiming the antenna at the church. In the real world we call this obstacle gain.
-sonic
Even though you don't like the man, it's our job as Americans to support him. He's our President.
a ct
ok, you're an offtopic troll, and I should ignore you, but I wont. Too much of this crap around.
Your statement is absolutely wrong and un-american.
I think we'd all agree it is along the same lines as "my country, right or wrong," or sanctity of the flag.
(aside: I thought you were supposed to ceremonially burn a flag as the official respectful way of retiring it. traditional army law. huh)
Problem is, this line of thinking is about as opposed to what the founding fathers meant this country to be as you can get. Democracy; intelligent, unrestricted open debate. Blindly following the dictator's edicts isn't american, it's authoritarian and Stalinistic.
And it isn't about respect either. Respect for the office of the President is why many have so little respect for Bush and how he's abused it. And Clinton as well for lowering the bar, for that matter. In america, we elect a man to lead us, not a god or a divinely appointed king. Respect for God/King is given like it or not. Respect for a man is earned. Bush hasn't earned my respect.
Rosseau's The Social Contract applies (well, sort of): http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Social+Contr
Speak up! Be heard! That's the american way. The constitution isn't just a guide to be followed when convenient, it's the trump cards of trump cards as far as US law goes. Just because we're involved in a supposed "war-on-foo", doesn't make the give Any president the right to put restrictions on the press, suspend habeas corpus, or any other temporarily inconvenient parts of the constitution. Don't let them tell you otherwise- does rape go by any easier if you shut up and just let it happen??
rant and ramble from a pissed off New Yorker...
This isn't communist East Germany you know.
For example, if I'm the only person in the street using the internet, then the network software could pool those 12 connections, using the unused bandwidth.
Of course, this goes against the idea of broadband, where the fact that someone else isn't using the connection means that I'd get my full bandwidth.
Would this sort of idea be possible to implement with current software and hardware?
Tim
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
Wireless is great, but how about security? It really worries me.
Apart from the buggy WEP implemention you also have to consider it would be really easy to perform some kind of DOS attack on the network.
Just start your laptop and start flooding the network. Or put an antenna on your microwave oven for that matter.
How are people that are already envolved in building these networks handle these kinds of issues?
Serrie.
Being from Bristol (UK), an early wireless adopter and a computing student, this article was very interesting.
:-)
However, I'm going to be very cynical and say that I don't see the point. What you have effectively done is split a product that costs >=£100 per month (2Mb ADSL) between 4 people. Individually it would cost those 4 people £20 each (512k ADSL for £19.99 per month).
While I think the project is a great excuse for the use of interesting technology, on such a small scale it's ultimately pointless.
The current aim of the project is feeble: "the aim was to prove that a portion of this connection could be successfully shared between a number of local residents or community groups by using wireless technology". Well, I could have saved you a lot of time and effort and told you it was possible
To make the project of any use (imho), it either needs to be far more widespread than it is (as you suggest, explore into other parts of Bristol), and approach Bristol City Council directly for funding/support, or there needs to be some benefit for those using it on a small scale, that there otherwise could not be. Simply giving 4 users ~512Kb/sec each isn't much benefit.
I'm pretty sure this might get moderated as a troll (if moderated at all) but that isn't the intention. Coming from where the article is based, it's hard not to get personal about the details - and although this project has a lot of potential, it seems to be in a very unevolved state.
Jonathan Love
I would argue that this actually makes it easier to intercept messages. If this is gonna be ad hoc networking with full freedom, then what is to stop someone hopping into the loop and having a listen. On the other hand, assuming there is at least a little bit of centralisation to help with security, it is not safe to assume that just because someone can set up a hub they can admin it properly. At least with ISP's they have to keep records and follow laws to a large extent. The same with the CIA/FBI/KGB etc. They have rules set too. If someone breaks them, then usually the checks and balances will bring them to the attention of the general public (or slashdot).
Now imagine a place with no set rules, no standard recording techniques and nothing that binds them to any real legal resposibility (Note:IANAL). Remember an anonymous free system is a two edged sword, if people can do anything without beiung identified, there is a good chance they will.
Ahhhh you bastard.
I was at work.
orientated and oriented have different meanings. It's not really a matter of British correctness vs. American corruption. For the most part, they can be used interchangeably. But when in doubt, use oriented. It has more meanings therefore can cover-up more ignorance. Which is of course why American's prefer it!
Since the idea is based on sharing ISP connection with your (temporary) neighbor, there are legal issues in several countries (at least european ones): Most often the ISPs forbid their customers to share the connection with others - sometimes even within the same household. So, while there's technically no problem here, legally it is. Any workarounds?
There's lots of seperate wireless projects in Bristol. I'll plug the one I'm involved in ... Consume Bristol
Wireless Bristol
Odd that. This looks like a printed version of innumerable impressions of the spoken English of a certain US president. (See (?) BBC Radio 4's Dead Ringers for one the the funniest)
a bit more complicated stuff than in the article, antennae's from finland
Hi,
As many people will no doubt find out as they scale up their wireless networks, 802.11b is the wrong protocol for large public networks.
You should be using straight 802.11.
The difference is that, although 802.11 runs at only 3Mbps and 802.11b runs at 11Mbps, 802.11 has guranteed bandwidth, whereas 802.11b is not guranteed.
Most community users, when given access to anything better than 56kbps, want to stream video, download large games and do all the usual bandwidth-intensive stuff.
The upshot is that 802.11b networks choke in situations with hundreds of concurrent users, whereas 802.11 does not.
Add to that poor signal attenuation and vulnerability to interference, and 802.11b does not look too hot.
With the newly announced potential to transmit 802.11b up to 4 miles away, this is worrying.
Add to that the fact that large-capacity 802.11 networks have the ability to knock out 802.11b networks completely and you can see some interesting implications.
How about your local community wireless network being knocked out by a large ISP so that they can sell their 802.11 accounts?
Believe me, it's already happening.
At my uni the Wireless Communications Club (previously the Radio Hams - obviously not fashionable enough any more ; ) are working to extend the ComSci departments wireless LAN using repeaters in student houses. If you live along the right roads, you can get T3 access straight onto JANET. And without all of that ISP crap.
And we all know the sysadmins, so we can get away with all kinds of shit : D
"If being a geek means being passionate about something, then I pity those who aren't geeks." - Pike65
Step one is getting the infrastructure in place, so let it run wild. Step two is securing that, and it is very easy using software like FreeNet, or even more mundane technologies like VPN. Or just encrypting the traffic you send over the public channel.
The key assumption with any public network or wireless data transfer is that it is fundamentally insecure once it leaves your physical location. The paranoid don't even assume that.
..don't panic
From the article, you can see that God Himself approves of wireless networking. That's why they are getting a better signal from the church!
Hi there, We recently started a similar effort in Montreal, QC, Canada. A small journal of our progress and press-watch is up here.
Notepad specialist & FAT administrator, group training available
Maybe you should call it a Community Area Network, or CAN. What can, you say? Pringles!
I have been mulling over the possibilities of becoming a local ISP in my rural area since getting here 6 months ago. Where I am there is no cable, no DSL of any kind, and there wont be for the foreseeable future. What IS available is satellite internet...high latency and HIGH cost. I (and my neighbors who haven't gone stupid and overpaid for satellite) am stuck with pathetic dialup with rarely better than 36kbps speeds.
As a result, I have been considering the local ISP possibilities. It would not be free, as a connection costs, plain and simple. I would also have to maintain the servers and handhold people in setting up and trouble shooting, thus I would charge - but I would like to charge below what telcos and cable companies charge for broadband access. I would even like to undercut AOL, which I suspect at least some locals would likely currently use. Basically, I would like to charge enough to cover the costs of a T1 line (or halfline) plus a little extra for equipment costs. I see something in the line of $17/mo.
This is based on a few assumptions: at least 100 local area families/individuals/companies interested in the service and the ability to gain wireless coverage over the important areas. This is the hitch. I am in flat country (Indiana) with trees hither and yon. There is a half-mile between me and my next-door neighbor. The local town is, of course, more tightly packed BUT there are trees everywhere. I can see my neighbor's house and even the house beyond him. The town is another 500 meters further still and hidden amongst trees.
I have checked on various community wireless network projects now and again and almost every one of them is associated with cities (clear LOS from rooftop to rooftop) and few tall trees. Other rural networks are associated treeless expanses. Are there any such networks being worked in rural settings that actually includes trees? Not a tree here and there, but TREES? If so, how do you obtain interconnectivity via wireless? I suppose with enough nodes useful signals could be passed through treed areas by "force" but I would like to be as clean an efficient (and cost effective) as possible if I decide to go into this further.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
funniest comment in a while
http://www.signull.com/specsheets/SMISMCY12T-specs heet.jpg
interesting antenna for testing
...or perhaps your brainwave monitor is OOS.
I don't know the details about the rest of the world, but here in Dallas, we do have some very flexible ISPs. My service agreement says explicitly that I can use the bandwidth as I see fit so long as it is not illegal.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Building Wireless Community Networks: Implementing the Wireless Web by O'Reilly...
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that,
lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of
their C programs.
-- Robert Firth
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