Projects: Free Open Node Public Wireless

Saturday, June 12, 2004 - 12:20 PM

A Free Network is a network freely available to anyone. With proper computer/wifi equipment you can send and recieve data from any point/node in the network to any point/node in the network without paying transit fees. A Node is a user computer/server with a wireless-network interface card that can be acting as a hot spot. A hot spot is a place where you can access Wi-Fi service.

This does not mean that a freenetwork cannot be connected to other networks which charge for transit (such as the internet), however while exchanging data within the bounds of the freenetwork there shall be no cost for transit or peering other than the cost of the required equipment.

Free Networks is a voluntary cooperative association dedicated to education, collaboration, and advocacy of the creation of free digital network infrastructures.

Here's a list of free networks:
• California, Bay Area. BAWUG
• California, San Francisco. SFLan is an experimental wireless community network. We aim to build a wireless network with LAN characteristics on a metropolitan scale.
• California, Sonoma County. NoCat
• Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. CUWiN
• New York, New York. NYCwireless
• Oregon, Portland. PersonalTelco is a volunteer group, who believe that 802.11 (wireless networking, or "Wi-Fi") technology is both cool and empowering. We started out by turning our own houses and apartments into wireless hot spots (also referred to as "nodes"), and then set about building these nodes in public locations such as parks and coffee shops. Currently we have over 100 active nodes, and we eventually would like to cover the entire city with even more.
• Texas, Austin. AustinWireless
• Texas, Houston. HoustonWireless
• Virginia. NovaWireless
• Washington, Seattle. SeattleWireless

• Worldwide. NodeDB
• Australia, Sydney. SydneyWireless
• Canada, British Columbia. BCWireless
• England. WlanOrgUk
• England, West Yorkshire. Consume.net
• Hungary. HuWico
• Spain, Madrid. RedLibre

• E164.org a directory of telephone numbers that can be reached over the Internet.

WARCHALKING is the practice of marking a series of symbols on sidewalks and walls to indicate nearby wireless access. That way, other computer users can pop open their laptops and connect to the Internet wirelessly. OR Collaboratively creating a hobo-language for free wireless networking.