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Saturday, Nov 7, 2009
Call it the "free-network movement": Grass-roots hardware hackers are creating a wireless wonderland with megabits of connectivity for all.
Dec 1, 2000 | Matt Westervelt and three of his friends had tinkering on their minds when they started building their own high-speed wireless network in June. Climbing on the roofs of their Seattle homes, building antennas and trying to make them work with Ethernet protocols sounded like fun. Plus, if the whole shebang actually worked, they figured they'd be able to access their home computer files from the local cafe, play Net-based games while sitting on each other's couches and stream video onto their personal data assistants -- all at speeds of up to 11 megabits per second, far faster than what cellphone operators or other wireless providers offered.
"To be honest, we just thought it was pretty cool," says Westervelt, a 28-year-old systems administrator at RealNetworks who spearheaded the effort.
Westervelt's crew isn't the only group of geeks who have caught the wireless Ethernet infrastructure bug, who are, as the Wall Street Journal put it, "taking indoor wireless technology outside." Community-based wireless efforts like Guerrilla.net of Cambridge, Mass., Consume.net of London and SFLan in San Francisco are steadily gathering grass-roots power. In Seattle, Westervelt's one-time summer hobby now has a name (Seattle Wireless), a Web site and over 30 participants.
"It's taken on a momentum of its own," says James Stevens, founder of Consume.net. "There has been quite a rush toward what we're doing."
Call it "the free-network movement" -- a bubbled-up-from-the-underground effort to spread high-bandwidth wireless connectivity everywhere. In their attempt to create a user-generated alternative to a top-down industry -- in this case, telecom -- initiatives like Seattle Wireless and Guerrilla.net look a lot like the original Napster, the Web itself or the world of free software. The free-software movement, in fact, is a working model for many wireless Ethernet pioneers. Many people involved -- including über-geek Brewster Kahle, founder of SFLan -- view it as free software's newfound twin: open-source development of operational antennas rather than operating systems.
But building what Kahle calls "a citywide wireless LAN that grows from anarchistic cooperation" isn't as simple as contributing code to Linux. Participants must have not just time and patience, but also the soldering skills of an electrician, not to mention the ability to work on rooftops without falling. Ultimately, "it's all a bit dangerous," Stevens admits.
It's also expensive. Although these networks send signals along the free public radio spectrum, Westervelt says that new users must have two computers to get started -- and then they still usually have to cough up about $800 to buy all the components needed to get hooked up. Even the fact that they use 802.11b protocols -- the wireless version of Ethernet, a standard used in most computers and almost all local-area networks or LANs -- hasn't managed to make the system all that cheap.
And buying into the network is no guarantee of stellar service. The signals flow in the range of 2.4 gigahertz, a frequency that microwaves and other devices like X10 wireless webcams also use -- thus "dirtying" the spectrum and slowing down connection speeds. Rain and walls also clog the pipes. If you're not in the antennas' line of sight, you may not get service at all since the signals can't pass through concrete.
But if the free-network movement is anything like the free-software movement, maybe these early obstacles are just bugs in the system that will be fixed by an ever-burgeoning community of wireless Ethernet enthusiasts. Wireless by the people, for the people.
