The Vancouver BC Wireless Group hopes to establish a free WiFi network by installing Meraki WiFi units around town.
We had a good selection of folks come out, and I know I learned a lot. Joe Bowser is software and hardware hacker extraordinaire and taught us a bunch, while Mike West has already imported a stack of Meraki units so we can get started experimenting with mesh right away.
We talked a lot about some of the other solutions out there, from hacking Netgear units to MIT Roofnet. At the end of the day, the Meraki units “just work”, and we are at this point more interested in experimenting with good mesh coverage than diving into more hardware or software hacking. While Meraki isn’t fully open source, the firmware is open, and we’re confident that the Meraki software could be replaced in the future if necessary.
Mike shared with us his experiences in getting larger numbers of Meraki units into Canada, especially modified outdoor units from NetEquality. NetEquality is another organization out of Portland (the original FreeGeek started in Portland, too) that is a non-profit which “provide[s] planning, deployment resources and internet mesh products worldwide and install[s] free network hardware in qualified communities in the Pacific Northwest”.
We spent some time talking about working with other local groups: BCWireless.net, Vancouver Community Network, Free Geek Vancouver, and Mobile Muse.
Join the FreeTheNet Google Group to stay in touch.
Bob Cringely explains the Google Cube.
This is an access device that contains 700-MHz and WiFi radios, a tiny Linux or Linux-likeserver, and a few gigs of flash RAM memory cache. It’s these Google Cubes that will mesh together, acting as both WiFi access points and 700 MHz mesh backhaul devices. Throw in some local caching, video preloading, and truly local DNS service and suddenly you have a pretty substantial network infrastructure that is not only massive and self-healing, IT IS ENTIRELY PAID FOR BY CUSTOMERS.All Google needs to provide are several thousand points-of-presence (cell towers) to connect the local mesh to the Internet backbone.
Google couldn’t do this with WiFi alone, but with 700-MHz meshing and backhaul they could make it work fairly easily and the entire network could be deployed in a couple months.
Want to do it yourself? The Wifidog project from Île Sans Fil, is an open source captive portal solution. It was designed primarily for wireless community groups, but caters to various other business models as well. Users can send pictures to the portal pages of specific hotspots. Wifidog will grab them via Flickr’s API and present them on the portal page. RSS feeds from either the owner or other local sources can also be applied.
Wifidog is similar to OpenWRT and DD-WRT and can be flashed on Linksys or Buffalo routers for next to nothing. Scatter some Toughbook Touchscreens around your bus mall.
Of course, it’s not exactly a new idea. Moblin.org hosts the Mobile & Internet Linux Project which is an umbrella, open source project focused on the development of Linux for Intel-based devices. Nokia uses the same Hildon application architecture and Maemo.org open source development tools for their N770/N800 as Intel is using for their Linux-based mobile Internet devices.
Why not One Laptop for every bus stop?
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