If anyone can claim to be the “father” of community LANs, it might be Matt Peterson who founded Bay Area Wireless Users Group after his first wireless adventure, PlayaNET (an internal network for the annual Burning Man event back in 2001). Matt Peterson, Rob Flickenger and others built the foundation of what was to become a global movement through BAWUG. Soon after, Portland’s PersonalTelco, SeattleWireless and many other activist community LAN organizations were formed.
Rob is a founding member of the NoCat Network and one of the primary developers of NoCatAuth, the automatic redirect capture program for community Networks. Flickenger also authored O’Reilly’s groundbreaking Building Community Wireless Networks and Wireless Hacks, a must have for every community LAN activist.
Now Rob Flickenger and Tomas Krag have produced a new book; “Wireless Networking in the Developing World”, co-written by some of the world’s leading community wireless experts (list serve). It’s a complete How To for assembling and maintaining wireless networks in rural towns in developing countries.
As Boing Boing puts it:
The book addresses what Rob Flickenger, the book’s editor and lead author, calls a chicken-and-egg problem: “While much information about building wireless networks can be found on-line, that presents a problem for people in areas with little or no connectivity”.
The book covers topics from basic radio physics and network design to equipment and troubleshooting.It is intended to be a comprehensive resource for technologists in the developing world, providing the critical information that they need to build networks. This includes specific examples, diagrams and calculations, which are intended to help building wireless networks without requiring access to the Internet.In the developing world, one book can often be a library, and to a techie this book may well be a bible.
It’s edited by the top writer on Community LANS — and it’s absolutely free! You can download it here in pdf form. It’s available as either an entire book or as individual chapters. Printed copies will shortly be available from Lulu.com, a print-on-demand service, for a nominal fee.
This is a great book. Clear. Concise. Revolutionary. Get it.
