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Facebookers net wi-fi

A group of socially networked geeks hopes to bring free wi-fi to the masses.

FRUSTRATED by the NSW Government's stalled free wi-fi project, a group of Facebookers have decided to start their own.

It was inspired by futurist Mark Pesce to create a free wireless network, which the group hopes will one day cover Sydney and make it easy for anyone to enjoy the convenience of free internet access for quick tasks such as checking email.

Known as Sydney Free Wireless, the group is using cheap mesh network technology from a Google-backed US start-up called Meraki to start a network of free neighbourhood wi-fi hot spots and promote such services through a grassroots campaign.

Jean-Jacques Halans, a web developer who created and maintains the group's website, says the network "grew from a Facebook group, which grew from a presentation by Mark Pesce".

Mr Pesce, inventor of the Virtual Reality Markup Language, occasional New Inventors judge and futurist, made the speech at the Web Directions South conference last September. Dubbed "mob rules", the speech explained the $US49 ($55) Meraki Mini's ability to create wi-fi mesh networks that link Meraki to Meraki until the devices find an internet connection.

Mr Pesce concluded Meraki's product means ". . . we all have the capability to create our own large-scale, low-cost wireless networks . . .", a notion with sufficient appeal that Free Sydney Wireless formed quickly, partly because, as Mr Halans says: "It would be nice if you were walking around town and could connect with an iPod touch and browse a bit."

The NSW Government's plan for free wi-fi in Sydney's CBD and other business centres around the state has similar aims but "has taken a long time and nothing has happened", Mr Halans says.

The Facebook group started to discuss buying a large number of Meraki's devices together, to reduce the purchase price and shipping costs and set up its own free wireless. The group eventually made a joint buy of 30 Meraki devices, most of which have been installed around Sydney.

Mr Halans has installed a device and says he has had only one cynical user among the 56 who have taken up Meraki-enabled free access to his personal internet connection. "I had a neighbour who was downloading 500 MB an hour," he says, adding that he was able to contact the neighbour and stop the downloading and could have automated the process had he bought the $US100 Meraki Pro with its more sophisticated management features.

The idea of grassroots wireless networks is not unique to this group. There is also a Free Canberra Wireless network using the Meraki hardware, and other Meraki pioneers in Melbourne and Perth. On a more ambitious scale, last October British Telecom struck a deal with the Spanish FON company, which has a similar idea to Meraki. BT's 3 million broadband customers can join the FON network by turning part of their home wi-fi system into a public network.

Free Sydney Wireless' aim is to spread its network. "It would be nice if the whole of Sydney gets covered," Mr Halans says, and hopes grassroots tactics can help it reach this goal.

"We should get our neighbours involved by sending them flyers. If that gets a couple of people and they get a couple of people on board it should start growing organically."

That kind of growth is not overly ambitious. More than 50,000 San Francisco residents already use Meraki networks.

The Sydney group's Facebook members are already planning another group Meraki purchase.

Free Sydney Wireless' next recruiting drive will be in March at Barcamp, an informal web developers' get-together. "We will try to set up a wireless net at Barcamp using Merakis," Mr Halans says, in the hope that it spurs more people to install their own Meraki.

"We are a grassroots movement and a bit disorganised," he says. "We just want to see how far it goes and along the way, try to have a bit of fun."

LINK

:: http://blog.freesydneywireless.com

:: http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/?p=39


What is Meraki?



Meraki's mission is "to bring affordable internet access to the next billion people".

It began as Sanjit Biswas' PhD research project at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then extended to a low-income housing community in the US.

It is being used in 25 countries, from London apartment complexes to Indian villages.

The idea of a "mesh" is that rather than using one internet gateway for every user, the individual radios in the Meraki network link together to find the best path to carry a user's traffic to the internet.

To extend the network, just add another repeater - it doesn't necessarily have to be connected to the net.

It is claimed to be able to scale to thousands of simultaneous users, with intelligent traffic queuing and packet prioritisation.

The hardware is plug-and-play, configured by Meraki's hosted back-end system, which also tracks usage statistics and sends out router software updates.

A basic wireless repeater cost $US49, $99 gets an outdoor version with optional power-over-ethernet support, and there's even a solar-powered version in the works.

Access can be restricted to approved users, with bandwidth throttling to prevent leeches from abusing the system, and a second "owner tier" without limitations. There's even a facility to add advertising, announcements or news updates in a bar that runs across the top of any page browsed over the Meraki network.

LINK

:: http://meraki.com