Boundless: Community Wireless Network
Hi All, I’ve been in ‘writing mode’ (AKA total hibernation) these days, so my apologies for not being around much or if I’ve missed anything. It’s great to come back and see so many of you writing about wild and wonderful things.
Speaking of which, there is a group in South London that is working towards providing community access to the internet via wireless nodes. They call themselves Boundless and although at least one of their founding members, James Stevens, has been doing similar kinds of projects for many years, they decided to become a coop last year. I attended one of their open sessions last night, and in addition to being a friendly bunch, the thing I found most exciting about the whole project is the emphasis on community participation and by extension, community building.
This map shows some of the 45 currently existing nodes. Basically, it works by bringing together people who are willing to host nodes, subsidizing the cost of the technical materials (including a 2 MB cable connection with unlimited download space) by charging those who use it a low monthly access cost. So locals can then connect to the wireless node rather than having their own cable connection. It is in this way that each node constitutes an actual community of people sharing not only a network, but also a neighbourhood. Their aims are to provide internet connections ‘at cost’ and provide an ethical alternative to faceles, corporate and for profit internet services. As I understand it, like the Urban Tapestries public trial, they are using the Locustworld mesh network.
Although I am still uncertain of a lot of the details (e.g. is it legal? how and who would regulate various community connections? what about governance, potential mis-use? etc.) Boundless, like so many locative media projects, has bottum-up, ‘for-the-people’, communty based objectives. One of the things that I think is so innovative about this group is that it has also set out (or is in the process of setting out) an achievable vision of how to realize these aims.
It’s not just a wireless or networking project, but one that is locally rooted, bringing together the social and the technical in a very powerful way - and adds a whole dimension to the terms ‘connectivity’ and ‘locative media’ generally. And it’s happening in my backyard! I’m intensely curious about how it is going to develop.
tulsi aart mp3 maharanimp3 act know you likebagirov abbas mp3ababa mp3 trioaashiq banaya aapne mp3aan alle vrouwen mp3mp3 aarti ambemp3 mc groove hammer adams Map
previews porn asianclips sex asian pornasian slideshow pornspreading asian pornlist star asian porntia porn star asianbio porn asian starsporn superstar names asian Map
April 29th, 2005 at 5:54 pm
I’m impressed they seem to have the mayor of Lewisham on board. I am curious to know what broadband providers they will be using and what those providers think about the project (if they know the use their bandwidth will be put to). I am guessing the pricing for residential 2Mb broadband would be different to the price of ‘business broadband’. I also wonder how tech support will work if non-expert users start connecting using this network. I hope it works, though, and I wish them the best!
April 30th, 2005 at 11:03 am
I agree, I also think it is a very interesting project. I have no idea what broadband providers they will be using, or if they will be using them in a uniform way… But as far as tech support goes, part of the idea is to increase tech literacy on a community based level - so people with little knowledge come and learn at ’surgeries’ and open meetings, from those with more tech savvy. Based on the one meeting I’ve been to, they are very welcoming to non-tech people. I’ll keep you updated as I learn more
June 6th, 2005 at 6:18 pm
I think that open wireless connections is a great thing, I have a 2 meg link from Blueyonder which I leave open (I’m guessing Lewisham may be covered them also). Bleyonder in the early days insisted that you registered MAC (media access control) address and would only allow this to attach, wireless routers (almost all) enabled the spoofing of this so that any wireless enabled device could attach.
Wireless cards / routers are so cheap that this is really a viable option for people - plus the learning by pulling up your boot straps is a great way to engage people, not having to sign up to a years contract will, I believe, mean that people using this will be a little more interested than they might.