Editing Wireless community network (section)

==Technical approach==
[[File:Linksys-Wireless-G-Router.jpg|thumb|150px|right|A Linksys WRT54GS]]
There are at least three technical approaches to building a wireless community network:
* Cluster: Advocacy groups which simply encourage sharing of unmetered internet bandwidth via [[Wi-Fi]], may also index nodes, suggest uniform [[SSID#Service set identifier .28SSID.29|SSID]] (for low-quality roaming), supply equipment, [[Domain Name System|DNS]] services, etc.
* [[Wireless mesh network]]: Technology groups which coordinate building a [[mesh network]] to provide Wi-Fi access to the internet
* Device-as-infrastructure: In 2013 the [[Open Technology Institute]] released the [[Commotion Wireless]] mesh network firmware, which allows Wi-Fi enabled [[mobile phones]] and computers to join a wireless community network by establishing a [[peer-to-peer network]] that still works when not connected to the [[wide area network]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/commotion-wireless-free-open-network/story?id=18659257|title=Commotion Wireless: Free and Open Way to Network|author=Daniel Bean|website=[[ABC News (United States)|ABC News]] |date=8 March 2013 |access-date=27 May 2019}}</ref>

===Firmware===
Wireless equipment, like many other [[consumer electronics]], comes with hard-to-alter [[firmware]] that is preinstalled by the manufacturer. When the [[Linksys WRT54G series]] was launched in 2003 with an [[open source]] [[Linux kernel]] as firmware, it immediately became the subject of hacks and became the most popular hardware among community wireless volunteers. In 2005, [[Linksys]] released the WRT54GL version of its firmware, to make it even easier for customers to modify it. Community network hackers experimented with increasing the transmission power of the Linksys WRT54G or increasing the clock speed of the [[CPU]] to speed up data transmission.<ref name="Adrian Mackenzie 2010 https://archive.org/details/wirelessnessradi00mack_048/page/n113 110">{{cite book |author = Adrian Mackenzie |date= 2010 |title= Wirelessness: Radical Empiricism in Network Cultures |url = https://archive.org/details/wirelessnessradi00mack_048 |url-access = limited |publisher= MIT Press |isbn= 9780262014649 | page = [https://archive.org/details/wirelessnessradi00mack_048/page/n113 110]}}</ref>

[[File:OpenWrt Screenshot 18.06.1.svg|thumb|350px|right|The [[OpenWrt]] 18.06.1 login screen.]]
Hobbyists got another boost when in 2004 the [[OpenWrt]] firmware was released as open source alternative to [[proprietary firmware]].<ref name="Adrian Mackenzie 2010 https://archive.org/details/wirelessnessradi00mack_048/page/n113 110"/> The Linux-based [[embedded operating system]] could be used on embedded devices to route network traffic. Through successive versions, OpenWrt eventually could work on several hundred types of wireless devices and Wi-Fi routers.<ref>{{cite book |author = Adrian Mackenzie |date= 2010 |title= Wirelessness: Radical Empiricism in Network Cultures |url = https://archive.org/details/wirelessnessradi00mack_048 |url-access = limited |publisher= MIT Press |isbn= 9780262014649 | page = [https://archive.org/details/wirelessnessradi00mack_048/page/n115 112]}}</ref> OpenWrt was named in honor of the WRT54G. The OpenWrt developers provided extensive documentation and the ability to include one's own code in the OpenWrt source code and compile the firmware.<ref>{{cite book |author = Tod E. Kurt |date= 2006 |title= John Wiley & Sons |publisher= John Wiley & Sons |isbn= 9780470072714 | page = 301}}</ref>

In 2004, [[Freifunk]] released the FFF firmware for wireless community projects, which modified OpenWrt so that the node could be configured via a web interface and added features to better support a [[wireless ad hoc network]] with [[traffic shaping]], statistics, [[Internet gateway]] support and an implementation of the [[Optimized Link State Routing Protocol]] (OLSR). A Wi-Fi access point that booting the FFF firmware joined the network by automatically announcing its Internet gateway capabilities to other nodes using OLSR HNA4. When a node disappeared, the other nodes registered the change in the [[network topology]] through the discontinuation of HNA4 announcements. At the time, Freifunk in Berlin had 500 Wi-Fi access points and about 2,200 Berlin residents used the network free of charge.<ref>{{cite book |author1=Alessandro Aldini |author2=Alessandro Bogliolo |date= 2014 |title= User-Centric Networking: Future Perspectives |publisher= Springer |isbn= 9783319052182 | page = 38}}</ref> The Freifunk FFF firmware is among the oldest approaches to establishing a [[wireless mesh network]] at significant scale. Other early attempts at developing an operating system for wireless devices that supported large scale wireless community projects were Open-Mesh and [[Netsukuku]].<ref name="Springer"/>

In 2006, [[Cisco Meraki|Meraki Networks Inc]] was founded. The Meraki hardware and firmware had been developed as part of a PhD research project at the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] to provide wireless access to graduate students. For years, the low-cost Meraki products fueled the growth of wireless mesh networks in 25 countries.<ref name="John Wiley & Sons">{{cite book |author1=Vern Fotheringham |author2=Chetan Sharma |date= 2009 |title= Wireless Broadband: Conflict and Convergence |publisher= John Wiley & Sons |isbn= 9780470381595 | page = 139}}</ref> Early Meraki-based wireless community networks included the Free-the-Net Meraki mesh in Vancouver, Canada. Constituted in 2006 as legal [[co-operative]], members of the Vancouver Open Network Initiatives Cooperative paid five [[Canadian dollar]]s per month to access the community wireless network provided by individuals who attached Meraki nodes to their home wireless connection, sharing bandwidth with any cooperative members nearby and participating in a meshed wireless network.<ref>{{cite book |editor1= Andrew Clement |editor2=Michael Gurstein |editor3=Graham Longford |editor4=Marita Moll |editor5=Leslie Regan Shade |date= 2011 |title= Connecting Canadians: Investigations in Community Informatics |publisher= Athabasca University Press |isbn= 9781926836041 | page = 194}}</ref>

===Community network software===
By 2003, the Sidney Wireless community project had launched the NodeDB software, to facilitate the work of community networks by mapping the nodes participating in a [[wireless mesh network]]. Nodes needed to be registered in the [[database]], but the software generated a list of adjacent nodes. When registering a node that participated in a community network, the maintainer of the node could leave a note on the hardware, antenna reach and firmware in operation and so find other network community members who were willing to participate in a mesh.<ref>{{cite book |author = Adrian Mackenzie |date= 2010 |title= Wirelessness: Radical Empiricism in Network Cultures |url = https://archive.org/details/wirelessnessradi00mack |url-access = limited |publisher= MIT Press |isbn= 9780262014649 | page = [https://archive.org/details/wirelessnessradi00mack/page/n138 130]}}</ref>