[nflug] Buffalo Community Wireless Network

[Justin S. Leitgeb]

Robert Wolfe wrote:
> Justin and everyone else on the listing, you may want to check out 
> http://www.buffalowifi.org.  It's a pretty cool free community 
> wireless network here in Buffalo that pretty much has access points in 
> most places here in town.  I know that there is also an offshoot of 
> that project in Lancaster as well.
>
Hi Robert and others,

When I was considering starting a community wireless network, I did look 
at other efforts in the Buffalo area, including buffalowifi.org.  Since 
I'm not sure how clear my original email was, I wanted to outline some 
of the primary differences between what I envisioned for Buffalo through 
buffalowireless.org and the efforts of buffalowifi.org.

Basically, Buffalo Wifi sees themselves as providing free "access 
points" and the advocacy of broadly available access to the Internet.  
Although the issue of promoting open access to technology is important 
in both movements, community wireless networks such as that which I am 
advocating are achieved through a more comprehensive mechanism than just 
offering access points that are open to the public.  Specifically, 
through the creation of a "mesh network," (most likely with nodes 
running some variant of linux and a routing protocol like OLSR 
http://www.olsr.org/) I would like to see communities in Buffalo create 
their own redundant wireless network of interconnected nodes.  This is 
an approach that has generally descended from efforts like MIT's 
"Roofnet" project and is in use by groups like Personal Telco in 
Portland and Seattle Wireless.

I think that through the creation of a network such as those mentioned 
above, our organization can be less dependent on a single Internet 
service provider at any given point.  This should give us more control 
over the way that the network is run and more flexibility to share our 
services with those who need and want them.  Eventually it should also 
allow us to leverage our collaborative resources to buy bigger Internet 
connections, such as a T1, which we could share under terms of service 
that we decide on, rather than the extremely restrictive terms of 
service that Time Warner and Verizon have been using (specifically that 
which specifically disallows any kind of sharing).

Finally, I did contact Buffalo Wifi using the form on their web page 
concerning possible support or collaboration between an effort like that 
of buffalowireless.org and buffalowifi.org.  That was weeks (months?) 
ago and I haven't received any response.  While this may very well have 
been an oversight, I wanted to make sure that buffalowireless.org 
remains as open to discussion with the community as possible.  For this 
reason, I set up the home page of the group as a wiki which anyone can 
modify at http://www.buffalowireless.org and set up a list serve, which 
will hopefully facilitate open discussion about the creation of a strong 
network that benefits all communities in the area.

At any rate, I appreciate and find highly valuable efforts like that of 
Buffalo Wifi.  I hope that in the future buffalowireless.org and 
buffalowifi.org can collaborate and build off of each others' efforts, 
and that this email helps to clarify some of the differences that I see 
between the two projects.  Since I've received a couple of comments on 
the nflug list and off concerning groups of one type or another, I 
modified the wiki page on buffalowireless.org to reflect some of the 
different groups that are out there, and I added mention of buffalowifi.org:

http://www.buffalowireless.org/wiki/CommunityWirelessNetworks

Thanks for putting up with this long-winded email, and I hope to see 
many of you at http://www.buffalowireless.org.  I also wanted to let you 
all know that I appreciate the amount of interest that people in nflug 
have expressed, on the list and off.  My goal is to build up a critical 
mass on the buffalowireless list serve before we have a face-to-face 
meeting about the network we're setting up, perhaps in a bar or coffee 
shop in the Buffalo area.  Hope to see you there!

Best,

Justin
_______________________________________________
nflug mailing list
nflug at nflug.org
http://www.nflug.org/mailman/listinfo/nflug