<nettime> Community wireless meeting

["Steve Cisler" <cisler@pobox.com>]

(May 16, 2002) O'Reilly Publishers is hosting a conference on emerging
technologies this week in Silicon Valley. It's an intersection of policy,
geek passion for new and unusual solutions to technical issues,
self-organizing networks of people, toys, machines, and a look at the future
trends.  There were few women, almost nobody in suits, but all ages and
races were present.

Today Lawrence Lessig is announcing at this conference the plan for a
Creative Commons <http://www.creativecommons.org/> which will focus on ways
of sharing on the Net and perhaps counteract some of the more onerous trends
in intellectual property law.  There was a whole session on Blogging (the
web log phenomena), and I'd say about 40% of those I saw were using laptops
on the 802.11b network.  Some people were posting running commentary on
their web site, as they sat in the conference sessions.

A community meeting on wireless was open to people like me who were not
attending the main conference. I was alerted to it by John Wilson, a fellow
from Wales who is working on a wireless project there. The BAWUG meeting was
reminiscent of the hackers' conferences and computer users group meetings I
attended in the 80's and 90's and was probably a bit like the legendary Home
Brew Computer Club meetings in the 70's that spawned some of the current
high tech movements and companies.

While wireless was pervasive at the hotel conference site, it certainly
isn't in most places in the world, in spite of the intense interest.
Millions of 802.11b (Wi-Fi) cards are being sold each month. The (San
Francisco) Bay Area Wireless Users Group <http://bawug.org/> is just one of
many urban efforts to spread the availability of public 802.11b networks.
There were about 50 people at this meeting including Tim Pozar who has been
a pioneer in community technology that intersected with Internet radio and
these wireless LANs; Rob Flickenger, author of the seminal text on the topic
"Building Wireless Community Networks", Matt Peterson who installed PlayaNet
at Burning Man in Nevada, and guysfrom Portland and Seattle wireless
networks.

The meeting was informal and chaotic. A stream of young men in black
t-shirts walked to the front, modern-day tech monastics, clutching their
illuminated laptops. Some lounged in armchairs on the stage, while others
twiddled with the laptops and projector.   The t-shirts read
"ANARCHIST/CRIMINAL/PARASITE" alluding to a recent Business Week article
that played up the threat of these non-commencial efforts. Suddenly a web
page with a printed circuit board and a bunch of tech gibberish flashed on
the screen. There's a small logo "Soekris Engineering" in the upper corner.
A fellow stood up, holding one of these boards.  It turns out that it's a
commuications computer using the venerable 486 chip, and it serves as very
capable low-cost communications access point (AP) for wireless networks.
Depending on the memory installed, it costs betwee $287 and $380.  The
experts seem impressed with the features packed in to this unit.
<soekris.com> is located in Morgan Hill here in Silicon Valley.

Matt Peterson stood up, gave a brief introduction to the monthly meetings
and opened it up for questions.  I asked what experience people there had
had combing VSAT Internet feeds with 802.11b networks. Many people in
developing countries are interested in this sort of hybrid network.
Peterson was heading for Cambodia to help an ISP with a wireless network,
but at that point nobody said they had worked outside the U.S.

In spite of this the efforts these networkers are making seem relevant the
needs of places without good infrastructure and with past experience of
traditional community networks.  Many of those present were wearing Free
Networks.org t-shirts.  <http://www.freenetworks.org/  >   Their mission
statement is: "A freenetwork is an excercise in telecommunications freedom.
A network created by those who use it rather than brought to consumers by
business. It is not neccessarily 'free' as in cost, but more to the point,
autonomous and self governing. "  Sounds familiar...

All of the speakers bought into this ethos, but they were not necessarily
opposed to the many firms selling 802.11b services (some were at the meeting
but did not Spam us).   Most of these networks are using FreeBSD or Linux,
and they are trying to do it cheaply and openly.  The Seattle Wireless.net
<http://seattlewireless.net/> is ad hoc; it is growing organically. Nobody
is really in charge, but they have 21 nodes and five links between the nodes
after about two years of operation.  The city of Seattle is talking to them
about using them for emergency backup in case of disaster.

Portland, Oregon, is filing to become a regular non-profit. They are not
really interested in hooking to the outside Internet (though some nodes do);
instead they are building an open access fast city-wide intranet.  It's
called Personaltelco.net and they have just acquired a 20-year old
television mobile van for $500, complete with telescoping antenna.  It's
being refitted to become a mobile wireless van that will travel around the
city (much as the Grand Rapids Community Media Center is doing already). Be
sure and take a look at the maps of these cities that show the growing
coverage.  There were lots of allusions to the kinds of (illegal) antennas
used to extend coverage, and most of these were made from Pringle potato
chip cans or detergent boxes!

All during these informal presentations there were questions from the
audience. It was more of a conversation instead of a formal Q&A, and it was
invogorating.   Many of the developments and hacks are shared on the
different web sites. It takes a technical person to make sense of the
strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches.  All the people were
willing to answer questions, but some seemed to have tired of the endless
"how do I get started" questions, so Flickenger's book was recommended as
well.  A company called Sputnik <www.sputnik.com> had integrated a lot of
this public code and  handed out CD-s with Open Community Gateway beta code
and documents. What does it do?  Insert a 802.11 card in your PC, connect to
ethernet hub and boot computer (PC) from the CD. You now have a Community
Gateway up and running!

The meeting broke up after two hours, and I thought about how their
knowledge could be shared with beginners in other countries or with
traditional community networks.  Later, in talking with Peterson he said
that a conference on building wireless community networks would take place
in San Francisco this July.   The lessons he learned doing Playanet in the
hostile desert environment of Burning Man <www.playanet.org/prebuilt/ >
might be of use in setting up these networks in other extreme climates.
There's a lot to explore with this movement. Peterson hopes to invite
Association For Community Networking <www.afcn.org> members to present.


Steve Cisler
4415 Tilbury Drive, San Jose, CA 95130
cisler@pobox.com
http://home.inreach.com/cisler
(408) 379 9076
"There are some places where the road keeps going."
-Bud Parker.


#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net