[wsfii-discuss] fon/meraki/community meshes differentiated .. (was: Re: Fwd: wireless connectivity.. Is802.11n the end of ethernet?)

Tue Oct 2 11:27:49 UTC 2007

On Tuesday 02 October 2007 09:57:05 Vickram Crishna wrote:
> The real point is, are any commercial manufacturers making flashable
> routers/APs that are suitable for meshes, at price points where the FONs
> and Merakis of the world have a run for their money?
>
> If not, then the problem is how to create a 'business model' for community
> mesh that justifies 'subsidising' the real world cost of hardware/TCO to
> the end-consumer. For obvious philosophical reasons neither of these models
> is really the bee's knees,  but what alternate models exist whereby poor
> (3rd World, specifically) communities can hope to leverage themselves
> (without bankrupting themselves to get there)? Let's be clear,
> straightforward charity doesn't cut it. Does anyone know a model for
> altruistic venture capital? (We already have altruistic tech assistance,
> our listmembers and WSFII itself have richly proven it).
>
> Someone mentioned acquiring Meraki hardware on eBay or somewhere and
> flashing new firmware, this also sounds very close to piracy, rather than a
> clean honest approach. If Meraki stuff is priced low, it is because the
> company expects to recover its money from the inbuilt functioning of a
> Meraki mesh, not a clean Open mesh. Scamming them, taking advantage of
> their chosen architecture, does not ring right, and in fact if done on a
> large scale will only lead to closure for Meraki.
>
> I think this is very important to understand, and for WSFII to evolve, so
> that we do not end up in some new-fangled hi-tech Bretton Woods trap.
>
> I have taken the liberty of fixing the spelling in the subject line, and
> removing the [india-gii] that has had my filters clogged since this thread
> began.

There has been some good thoughts expressed in these threads.

Some further thoughts on "fon/meraki/community meshes differentiated"

FON is a well funded company offering a pyramid scheme of bandwidth and access 
control services utilising an AP model for maximum connectivity to potential 
income streams. Some FON firmware versions have been cracked (thanks to 
sven-ola and others) to allow freifunk mesh networks to openly pass thru and 
ride invisibily along side an otherwise operable FON AP [1]. They also claim 
to be the "world's largest wifi "community" [2] (we'll come to that "c" word 
in a moment).

Meraki is a moderately funded company apparently offering a managed wifi 
access service utilising mesh interconnectivity with each other (using MIT 
mesh routing) and AP connectivity for non-mesh clients [3]. It's service 
looks similar in essence to Locustworld's meshbox managed back end service 
[4]. 

Community. The "c" word. FON is a "community" network as much as "communities" 
are defined as merely collections of franchise agents and paying consumers. 
Like Locustworld, Meraki seems at this stage to have a slightly softer 
lustre, offering a less aggressive business model of back end web management 
services to help users control and customise the use and appearance of their 
network.

Freifunk'ed FON, Meraki and Locustworlds meshing techniques are all 
incompatible (OLSR, MIT, AODV).

In essense, it's my view that most *grassroots* "Community Wireless Networks" 
are local groups of people that are driven to directly network with each 
other to offer federated services and access as well as to defray 
installation and ongoing costs amongst the membership. The business models of 
FON/Meraki/Meshbox (to varying degrees) offer "value added" management 
services on top of network access (from CC charging facilities, to captive 
portals, to usage reports and access control). The true community value of 
this service is reducing daily, because open embedded firmware development 
has almost reached the point of providing the same featuresets as the remote 
commercial backend managed services [5] [6].

Planners and funders of wireless network deployments must balance any 
development time and cost of manual management and admin against the cost of 
packaged (perhaps subsidsed) mesh hardware and managed service contracts. And 
it should be assessed holistically. Hardware might be almost given away, but 
how will this lock the network into only purchasing the same branded 
hardware/firmware for replacements or expansion. Remote management might be 
initially easier (but there will still be training requirements), but on an 
on-going basis, will it be worth it? Most network costs are ongoing, not 
initial installation hardware costs.

What is the real worth (and the real risks) of reducing your reliance 
on "outsourced" centralised services? Are these company services and products 
really "members" of your community? Act appropriately to this appropriation.

shine,

.vortex

[1] http://berlin.freifunk.net/sven-ola/fonera/
[2] http://www.fon.com/en/info/whatsFon
[3] http://meraki.com/products/#
[4] http://www.locustworld.com/
[5] http://openwrt.org/
[6] http://dev.wifidog.org/