Meraki, the inexpensive mesh networking client/repeater, is teaming up with people in the San Francisco area to deliver free internet access.

Meraki is working with Bay Area wireless groups and will use this first network in San Francisco to showcase new features. Soon SF residents in the Alamo Square, Duboce Park, Castro, and Mission areas will start getting free wireless Internet access.

Meraki Founder and CEO Sanjit Biswas announced the new community WiFi network at the Freedom to Connect conference in Washington, D.C. The conference is a showcase of the latest in wireless technology and efforts to use new innovative wireless solutions to expand Internet access.

The Meraki Mini is a tiny 802.11 b/g wireless router that simply plugs into a wall outlet and an Internet connection, and can also work as a repeater for an existing Internet network. It was based on the MIT RoofNet project (but is not directly compatible with it). By placing Meraki’s $50 mini repeaters in their windows, the devices will automatically form a network to relay wireless Internet throughout the neighborhood.

Meraki’s Dashboard software can be used to monitor a network and limit bandwidth usage — and to monetize the network, letting the network operator decide how much, if anything, to charge a user for access. The money collection is handled by Meraki, which takes a cut before they send the operator a check.

On Saturday, at Portland’s PersonalTelco ‘playday’, four Merakis were gathered together, with two merakis tested in a variety of network architectures. Don Park, PTP president says;

“They worked as advertised for extending the reach of an Internet connection. It was amazingly simple to use with a useful status screen on each device.”

Portland-based Net Equality and Meraki worked together to develop a synergetic hardware/software solution. Net Equality’s management software helps manage different hotspot networks, drilling down to visualize and fix data flow problems in the mesh network. NetEquality’s management software is open sourced, explained Dave Cannard, co-founder of the non-profit organization. The Housing Authority of Portland and NetEquality are “unwiring” several low income housing areas across Portland. Stephouse Networks provides broadband connections to many of these projects.

Net Equality’s Dave Cannard spoke about the Meraki box at the January PersonalTelco meeting, explaining how they use it to unwire low income apartment complexes.
You can download the mp3 directly (117 minutes, 112MB)

NetEquality has built six networks in the Portland metro area using Meraki Minis. They range in size from 6 to 150 apartments. Netequality.org has general information about their services while Netequality.net has the technical nuts and bolts. Their Monitoring page has more information.

• Mariposa has 72 apartments and a single DSL
  
• Jardines has 43 apartments and a single DSL
  
• Clara Vista is a large, 1960’s era 150-unit complex built with 44 Repeater Minis and 3 Gateways, all in resident apartments.
  
• Trenton uses wall-mount Minis in the halls and covers about 25 apartments.
  
• Suenos / CV Townhomes is a 44 unit area complex just west of Clara Vista using a single Mini Gateway and 20 Repeaters.
  
• Cedros is a small 6-unit complex using 1 gateway and 3 repeaters. They used 4 nodes as there are 2 buildings each with 3 apartments, so we put one at each end of each building, creating very dense coverage.
  

NetEquality’s Online Store has the $49 Meraki mesh repeater and $99 ruggedized secured model.
NetEquality is a non-profit group of wireless network advocates that provide installation assistance, funding and design help for wireless networks primarily for low-income communities. It was co-founded by Dave Cannard and Michael Burmeister-Brown.

Here’s a video explaining PersonalTelco’s Free Community Wireless project in the Mississippi Neighborhood. Don thinks the Meraki box might be the basis of a free, independent network, built and run by users.

Posted by Sam Churchill on Monday, March 5th, 2007 at 12:35 am.