WIRED NEWS
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,38803,00.html

Free the Wireless Net! 
by Leander Kahney 

3:00 a.m. Sep. 19, 2000 PDT 

Five years ago, do-it-yourself activist James Stevens rigged up a wireless
network that let his London neighbors
share the high bandwidth Internet connection he'd installed. 

These days, Stevens has far more ambitious plans: He wants to wirelessly
network all of London by using
relatively cheap, off-the-shelf parts. Stevens' project is one of several
regional, free-wireless initiatives trying to
combat the high cost of Internet access. 

See also: 
Home Networking's Bitter Brawl
Fast Connection Sans Cables
Infostructure strengthens your backbone
Join The Wireless World

With the help of dozens of volunteers, Stevens is hoping to create a
city-wide wireless network, built and
maintained by the users themselves. 

Unlike the commercial wireless networks, Stevens' Consume the Net network
will offer free access to anyone with
a computer and a US$100 wireless networking card. 

"Broadband is prohibitively expensive," Stevens said. "A reasonable level of
connectivity is absent. Technology
gives us the opportunity to do it ourselves." 

The network will use wireless cards based on the 802.11 ethernet standard
and manufactured by vendors such as
Lucent and Apple. Networked computers will communicate over the unlicensed
2.4 GHz range of the spectrum, the
same frequency used by cordless phones and Bluetooth devices. 

Data between computers can be transmitted at a rate of up to 8 Mbps. Access
to the Internet will be limited by
the speed of the primary broadband, cable modem, or DSL connection, which is
often significantly slower. 

Computers will have to be within 45 meters (148 feet) of the closest
broadband connection, but the group is also
experimenting with booster antennas to extend coverage to between 1 and 4
kilometers. 

Stevens hopes that enough volunteers with broadband connections will invest
about $1,000 to hook up their Net
feeds to wireless base stations and booster antennas so that the project can
stretch across the entire city. 

So far, the group has attracted about a dozen committed members, and more
than 180 people have subscribed to
the group's mailing list. 

Stevens said the first three nodes of the network will be up and running
sometime this week. The nodes will cover
about a square mile of East London, which, while one of the poorest parts of
the city, is becoming a hotbed for
new-media business. 

Stevens, a firm believer in cooperative action, said Consume isn't just
about sharing broadband costs, but is also
an attempt to bring Net access to those who can't afford it. 

"We'll put up this data cloud and anyone in the vicinity can tune in," he
said. 

Stevens has no plans to commercialize the project. "There will be plenty of
spin-off opportunities later on. This is
the new way of the Net -- user constructed networks," he said. "We're
demonstrating the potential without
outside commercial pressure." 

Stevens has been active in cooperative projects for years. He also founded
Backspace, an arts community that
provided free Net access to the homeless and others from a converted
warehouse in South London. 

"It's a great idea," said Steve Tyler, a director of Mase Integration and
Communications, which is networking
hundreds of buildings for Newham Borough Council, one of London's local
authorities, using essentially the same
equipment. 

Tyler cautioned, however, that because the network operates in the
unlicensed 2.4 GHz range, there could be
interference from other devices that use the same frequency. 

"It's not a problem yet," he said. "But it will probably become a problem in
a year or two. If someone else puts up
their own antenna and it interferes, there's nothing anyone can do about
it." 

Steven's group also has to grapple with a number of other obstacles. The
nodes of the network require specific
software to connect; the network is purely line-of-sight and won't penetrate
trees and houses; and there could
be interference problems with signals bouncing off buildings. 

On the plus side, the group has access to a sophisticated network-mapping
tool called Web Stalker, which was
commissioned for the troubled Millennium Dome project. Web Stalker will
generate a 3-D map of the network to
help users find the nearest access point. 


Stevens is not alone in his desire to create community-run wireless
networks. Similar efforts are underway in
Seattle, Boston and San Francisco. 

In Seattle, Matt Westervelt is trying to coordinate a similar
802.11-standard wireless network in the city's
residential Capitol Hill district. 

The plan is to allow free wireless access to Net-connected computers at
home, Westervelt said. He had been a
subscriber to Metricom's Ricochet service, but tired of the monthly charges.


"We're building our own infrastructure," said Westervelt, a systems
administrator for Real Networks. "You shouldn't
have to pay a monthly fee to be on the airwaves. You should be able to do
this for free." 

Like Stevens, Westervelt has experience jerry-rigging guerrilla networks. A
few years ago he shared a T1 line with
his neighbors in Seattle's Pioneer Square by stringing Ethernet cables
through windows and across alleyways. 

Westervelt and his colleagues have been running about half a dozen
independent wireless nodes from apartments
in the area since June, but face the problem of hooking them up into one
seamless network. 

He said they need more volunteers to fill in the gaps or someone on a
neighboring hill whom they can bounce
signals off of. The group also is toying with the idea of charging users who
don't contribute to the network by
running a node. 

Seattle Wireless recently linked up with Xlan, a project started by Greg
Daly, an engineering student at the
University of Washington who is designing homemade booster antennae for
802.11 networks. 

Daly said his designs will allow broadband-connected users to share their
connections with others up to 20
kilometers (12.42 miles) away by setting up inexpensive base stations hooked
to a booster antenna. 

"Right now a lot of people have cable or DSL connections, but people down
the street don't because of
distances," he said. "We hope to help eliminate that." 

Daly has designs for a 4-kilometer directional antenna that costs about $20,
and a 20-kilometer directional
antenna based on a used satellite dish. He expects to publish detailed plans
for the antennae on his site within a
month. 

In Boston and surrounding areas, Guerrilla Net members are creating a
decentralized, wireless alternative to the
Internet. 

"The purpose is to ensure that the flow of information is not obstructed,
captured, analyzed, modified, or logged,"
said Brian Oblivion, a member of computer security site L0pht Industries. 

"This requires a networking fabric which lies outside of governments,
commercial Internet service providers,
telecommunications companies, and dubious Internet regulatory committees,"
he wrote in an email. 

Oblivion said that while the project is centered in Boston, it has
"hundreds" of interested parties worldwide,
particularly in the United States and Europe. If there are enough people in
a particular location, they set up a
"cell," Oblivion said. 


Related Wired Links: 

Home Networking's Bitter Brawl 
Sep. 15, 2000 

DTV: The Return of Rabbit Ears 
Aug. 23, 2000 

A City With a Broadband Future 
Aug. 22, 2000 

D.C. Gets the Skinny on Broadband 
Jul. 26, 2000 

Network Replaces Nosy Neighbors 
Jun. 15, 2000 

Fast Connection Sans Cables 
Mar. 14, 2000 

ISPs to FCC: Let My People Flow 
Dec. 17, 1999 

'US Out of Broadband! Now!' 
Aug. 23, 1999 

Aussies: Open Access Not Hard 
Jun. 28, 1999 

AtHome's Medin: 'It's Our Cable' 
Jun. 16, 1999 

Comcast Seeks MS, AOL Backing 
Apr. 30, 1999 



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