[wsfii-discuss] <nettime> Community WiFi in UK and Germany, a round-up

Wed Oct 17 14:24:52 UTC 2007

sorry - i missed the original mail.  But here's what Sascha (from
CUWIN) and some others are working on in in terms of long-distance
community fiber.

http://www.caida.org/projects/commons/

Pretty interesting solution.  Although it seems to be sustainable only
through research interests of corporations and the American gov.  But
I'm of the "progress, not perfection" attitude, so I dig it.  I know
that philosophy isn't shared by everyone on this list for good
reasons.

mike

On 10/17/07, Armin Medosch <armin at easynet.co.uk> wrote:
>
> hi mr morlock elloi
>
> I like that, good level of aggro and contestational spirit. finally
> someone speaks up against the myth of self-made infrastructures, they
> are never a good idea, unless they cover the whole globe, innit? and it
> was long overdue to bash up those community wifi-ers and their
> municipial siblings. it will all end up in google's hands and data
> vaults anyway, yes?
>
> actually, there is a point to be made about long distance
> infrastructures, I think it is true that this is an issue. but that
> no-one has yet found the magic to make this happen, this does not mean
> it is not being thought about it. there are a lot pof people and groups
> thinking about 'generic infrastructures' or free infrastructures and
> possibilities to do it on all levels and layers, from using packet radio
> to satellites.
>
> secondly, to describe citywide wireless mesh infratsructures such as
> freifunk in berlin and various other cities as well as similar projects
> all over the world where they really do have networks which cover
> cities, maybe not completely but like a wide mesh, as not really
> noteworthy (or masturbation in your own words), then that sounds a bit
> hollow, because to achieve this is not trivial and something very real.
>
> Besides the existence of real city networks with hundreds and thousands
> of nodes in even smaller cities such as Halle or Graz the free network
> scene as part of the larger free software communites have developed lots
> of other ideas which are already in the process of being coopted or have
> been coopted fully, by the industry with things such as meraki and fon.
>
> however, there are related areas where the world has still the catching
> up to do with things taht were talked about in the wireless community
> some years ago, such as to hijack leftover bands in the spectrum for gsm
> to make community cells happen and spread telephony over urban areas as
> well.Not to speak of all the new projects such as hive networks or
> netsufuku and grassroots cartography and so on and so forth. older
> people may remember still the drama about domain names with namespace.
>
> In principle having independent infratsructures has always been a hot
> topic and people once passionately discussed this on tis very list.
> regarding your post, I can only conclude that you are not very well
> informed and that in turn maybe means I and others should write more
> about this stuff as nobody else does it or only in negative terms.
>
> so, as a short further elaboration, community fibre exists in
> copenhagen, for instance and yes, infrastructural projects on a certain
> level become boring and projects trend to bear the hallmarks of the
> orgsanisational modus operandi of a certain period in time -- you cant
> be big without being a child of your time -- or is that what you meant
> with corporate? just look at xs4all or other successful internet
> companies like silverserver. to continue what they are doing they had to
> become more like any 'normal' company but I am still glad they are
> around and in times of real need I think they would sling me a
> lifeline.
>
> to sum it up, I dont know where really your strong anti-ness comes from
> but I thank you for the motivation this has given me to write this
> posting and hopefully more articles about free infrastructures in the
> near future as a lot has happened recently especially in the area of
> mesh routing protocols.
>
> tata
> armin
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, 2007-10-16 at 11:33 -0700, Morlock Elloi wrote:
> > I don't see anything particularly surprising in industry coopting
> > alternative (let's call them the real name: anti-capitalist) models
> > and movements. These days even bottled water is "green" so it's only
> > natural for the paid last mile wireless to be "free".
> >
> > There is a deeper problem in non-commercial connectivity in the
> > sense that there is no viable technology for competitive do-your-own
> > backbone, and without that free wireless is like giving free water
> > to passers-by and bitching about the water utility company wanted to
> > charge you for that. You see, no one cares about local water. What the
> > fuck do I have to communicate about with my neighbours? Even within
> > the same city. The real and only value of Internet is universal global
> > access. Think about it: suppose that someone offers you completely
> > free access that switches packets only within UK. How many people
> > would go for it?
> >
> > Up to day no one came up with a reliable "community" (whatever that
> > means) based long haul solution. Or do you see "community" fiber and
> > "community" high performance exchanges any time soon? I don't - I just
> > don't see how such entities would be any different from the commercial
> > model.
> >
> > Don't forget that Internet started as non-commercial. One had to sign
> > proper agreements to get uucp link from NSF (who ran the backbone),
> > for free. It didn't work in the long run, because evil capitalists
> > hijacked it.
> >
> > Until a technology is developed where I can have reliable
> > point-to-point link between Amsterdam and Buenos Aires for the
> > investment of few hundred euros and no mediators, a free last mile
> > is just another masturbatory domain for activists, frankly hijacking
> > energy better used elsewhere.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > end
> > (of original message)
> >
> > Y-a*h*o-o (yes, they scan for this) spam follows:
> >
> > <...>
> >
> >
> >
> >
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