L. Aaron Kaplan works in Vienna Austria. He spoke on Session 3: What We Can Learn from Muni Networks at the Freedom to Connect 2009 conference.
If you'd like more info about the conference, see
http://freedom-to-connect.net/
5. It [radio] is purely an apparatus for distribution,
for mere sharing out. So here is a positive
suggestion: change this apparatus over from
distribution to communication. The radio would
be the finest possible communication apparatus in
public life, a vast network of pipes.
Bertolt Brecht
«The Radio as an Apparatus of
Communication»
(in Blätter des Hessischen Landestheaters, Darmstadt, No. 16, July 1932)
6. Current Internet
• scale free
• a lot of concentration on key nodes
• getting more and more centralized
9. Contrast
• less scale free, more meshed or completely
meshed
• decentralized, anarchic
• more resistant to failures?
• mobile
• innovation at the edge
10. Motivation
• Censorship resistant networks (“3 strikes out”)
• (anti-surveillance), anti data retention
• Independence, running own network
• financially stable, self-sustaining
11. How it started in
Vienna
• q/spot history
• Book - asked if we can use 10 existing locations
for free
• Tested AODV, mobilemesh, OLSR. OLSR sort of
worked. Same results in Berlin Freifunk
• Public presentation, invitation to the public
12. Where are we now?
• aaron@viviroof:~$ ip route show table all | wc -l
674
• 240 roofs
• repeated in Graz, Bad Ischl, Weinviertel
• halfway distance to Bratislava
• longest links 30km
• vibrant very active community
• fibre co-sharing / digging
13. In parallel...
• Guifi.net Barcelona
• Djursland - forgotten by the telco industry
• Berlin Freifunk
• Athens wireless
• Paris Sans Fils
• czfree network
14. Principles of Funkfeuer
• Free, everybody is allowed to join
• Pico peering agreement. Free transit
• Bandwidth provided by association
• Experimental network
• Value is (in) the network