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."

Comments

Interesting

[Slashdotess]

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.

Similar project in Reno,NV

[ShavenGoat]

A group of people, including myself, are trying to implement something similar in Reno, NV: RAWUG(Reno Area Wireless Group).

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.

Similar Projects (Addendum)

[rlangis]

A similar project for the Portland, OR Metro Area is located here.

My personal node (via nodedb) is here.

Join us.

Small Community School Efforts.

[miscellaneous_havoc]

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." ;)

Wireless Community Resources

[K'tohg]

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.

Re:If you care about speech, get involved with the

[mtnharo]

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).

Re:If you care about speech, get involved with the

[AndroidCat]

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.

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. :^)

WiFi BBS model

[AndroidCat]

The current model for WiFi community networks seems to be that of a community wireless pipe to the Internet. Now that sort of project is worthy and has it's place. The problem is cash and the pipe.

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...

More wireless projects in Bristol

[andylaurence]

There's lots of seperate wireless projects in Bristol. I'll plug the one I'm involved in ... Consume Bristol

Re:If you care about speech, get involved with the

[Pike65]

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

Mulling over the possibilities

[praedor]

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.