Wireless community network
[1][2][3] Many of these organizations set up wireless mesh networks which rely primarily on sharing of unmetered residential and business DSL and cable Internet.
Wireless community networks sometimes advocate complete freedom from censorship, and this position may be at odds with the acceptable use policies of some commercial services used.
They are constituted by collectives, indigenous communities or non-profit civil society organizations that exercise their right to communicate, under the principles of democratic participation of their members, fairness, gender equality, diversity and plurality".
[5] According to the Declaration on Community Connectivity,[6] elaborated through a multistakeholder process organized by the Internet Governance Forum's Dynamic Coalition on Community Connectivity, community networks are recognised by a list of characteristics: Collective ownership; Social management; Open design; Open participation; Promotion of peering and transit; Promotion of the consideration of security and privacy concerns while designing and operating the network; and promotion of the development and circulation of local content in local languages.
[7] The Redbricks Intranet Collective (RIC) started 1999 in Manchester, UK, to allow about 30 flats in the Bentley House Estate to share the subscription cost of one leased line from British Telecom (BT).
[7] Regarding the international policy scenario, discussions on Community Networks have gained prominence over the last few years, especially since the creation of the Internet Governance Forum's Dynamic Coalition on Community Connectivity in 2016, providing "a much needed platform through which various individuals and entities interested in the advancement of CNs have the possibility to associate, organise and develop, in a bottom-up participatory fashion collective 'principles, rules, decision-making procedures and shared programs that give shape to the evolution and use of the Internet.'".
Founded by Ben Laurie and others, Consume aimed to build a wireless infrastructure as alternative to the monopoly-held wired metropolitan area network.
While they share common technical and organizational frameworks, the working groups supporting these urban wireless community networks are driven by the different needs of the city in which they operate.
[16] NYCwirelsss was established in New York City in May 2001 to provide public hotspots and promote the use of consumer owned unlicensed low-cost wireless networking equipment.
In order to get more public Wi-Fi hotspots installed, NYCwirelsss contracted with the for-profit company Cloud Networks, which was staffed by some of the founding members of the NYCwireless community project.
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in 2001 NYCwirelsss helped to provide emergency communication by quickly assembling and deploying free Wi-Fi hotspots in areas of New York City that had no other telecommunications.
When the Linksys WRT54G series was launched in 2003 with an open source Linux kernel as firmware, it immediately became the subject of hacks and became the most popular hardware among community wireless volunteers.
[26] In 2004, Freifunk released the FFF firmware for wireless community projects, which modified OpenWrt so that the node could be configured via a web interface and added features to better support a wireless ad hoc network with traffic shaping, statistics, Internet gateway support and an implementation of the Optimized Link State Routing Protocol (OLSR).
A Wi-Fi access point that booting the FFF firmware joined the network by automatically announcing its Internet gateway capabilities to other nodes using OLSR HNA4.
[27] The Freifunk FFF firmware is among the oldest approaches to establishing a wireless mesh network at significant scale.
The Meraki hardware and firmware had been developed as part of a PhD research project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to provide wireless access to graduate students.
[28] Early Meraki-based wireless community networks included the Free-the-Net Meraki mesh in Vancouver, Canada.
[30] Organizationally, a wireless community network requires either a set of affordable commercial technical solutions or a critical mass of hobbyists willing to tinker to maintain operations.
[31] Wireless community projects made volunteer bandwidth-sharing technically feasible and have been credited with contributing to the emergence of alternative business models in the consumer Wi-Fi market.
In 2009, this business model gained broader acceptance when British Telecom allowed its own home customers to sell unused bandwidth to BT and FON roamers.
