Wireless Community Network

Since I bought a Linksys WRT54g router and setup a wireless network at home, I started actively investigating every topics in wireless networking. After google'd a while, not only I gathered some useful information about building wireless networking, but also discovered some voluntary projects aimed at providing community wireless access in local area.

The following wireless communities drawn me attention of their success:

• SeattleWireless is a not-for-profit effort to develop a wireless broadband community network in Seattle.
  Rob Flickenger is one of the active member and admins one the the node in this community network. I acquired most of the wireless networking knowledge such as hardware devices (from wireless card to antenna), wireless technology and node building from this site. Aweful lots of materials you will find useful there.
• Portland-based Personal Telco Project promotes and builds public wireless networks through community support and education. Just like seattlewireless.net, this site will help you find what you need to know in order to get connected to the Wireless Community Network.
• NYCWireless is another community providing Free Public Wireless Internet Service to mobile users in public spaces throughout the New York City metro area. Although the information from this site is very limited, it brings me to a Debian GNU/Linux-based pebble distro and the knowing of NoCat.
• SOWN (the Southampton Open Wireless Network) is yet another wireless community project in Southampton, UK. But the site provides advanced techniques to setup wireless meshing network and finally promotes transparent mobility!

I am currently experimenting a Soekris net4521 board loading pebble Linux and featuring NoCatAuth. As NoCatAuth is running in Open mode, public users who are able to detect the box's signal could be able to connect my node. As I see some success from the above sites and has been sucessfully build my own wireless node, I am now thinking of building a wireless community network in my own living place and rolling out my own pebble-like distro!

Finally note: as of this blog writting, this issue of Linux Journal features Community Networks in cover story. Pebble and NoCat are also noted. I have just grabbed a copy and enjoy the reading right now.