SCN: Grassroots Ethernet

[Steve]

x-no-archive: yes  

=======================  

Call it the "free-network movement" : Grass-roots hardware hackers 
are creating a wireless wonderland with megabits of connectivity for 
all.   

(Damien Cave, Salon.com)---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.    

Guerrilla.net has been around since 1996 -- but the growth in interest 
in creating community-based telecom has, by all accounts, exploded 
over the past year and a half. Not surprisingly, the spark for all this 
activity lies with advances in the realm of bits and bytes. People are 
building wireless Ethernet networks because they finally can, says 
Bob Metcalfe, the creator of Ethernet and a founder of 3Com. "Until 
recently, wireless Ethernets have been technologically undoable," 
he says. This is no longer the case because Moore's Law -- the idea 
that processing speeds will double every 18 months -- has struck 
again, seeping beyond microchips and into networks.    

Specifically, Ethernet's rise set the stage for the present rooftop 
dramas. When Ethernet gained enough of a critical mass about two 
years ago to become the de facto standard for all local area 
networks, the prospects for the wireless world changed drastically. 
Businesses and colleges started to consider campus-wide wireless 
networks at the same time as wireless modems began appearing on 
the market. Then, in the summer of 1999, Apple started bundling an 
AirPort wireless antenna into a handful of its laptops and the G4 
desktop. This decision to bundle, hackers say, changed everything. 
It legitimized wireless connectivity and made mainstream 
consumers aware for the first time that their laptops need not 
necessarily be tethered.    

It also gave hackers easy access to an otherwise hard-to-find piece 
of technology that they needed: the antenna connector. To date, the 
antenna connector remains the key ingredient to any successful 
wireless network, says Bob Keyes, a security consultant in 
Cambridge, Mass., who was one of the four founders who launched 
Guerrilla.net. It is the link between a home computer and the cable 
that runs to a roof antenna -- the glue that holds the network 
together. The 2.4 gigahertz antennas -- tree-and-branch wonders that 
resemble TV antennas but are small enough to fit in a backpack -- 
don't come with these little doohickeys, which meant that wireless-
obsessed geeks had to dig them up at ham radio boutiques or 
commercial wireless providers.    

Now they just have to dig them out of an Apple computer. This is a 
significant change. Whereas the old connectors were expensive, 
hard to find and difficult to make work with a computer as opposed 
to, say, a television, the new Apple connectors require far less 
hassle. "We usually just get the computers from friends, open them 
up and just pull out the antenna and the connector," Keyes says. 
Tape it to a cable, solder that to a rooftop antenna (through a more 
generic connector called an SMA) and the network is up and running. 
Simply tweak the network configurations on a Palm VII or another 
Web-enabled device like a laptop with a wireless modem and your 
home-based files are accessible -- via air, which as Keyes notes "is 
very cool."    

The total cost: about $800, a third of what it would have run a few 
years ago.    

The Net is also available through these networks, in conjunction 
with an established ISP. Free-software model or not, wireless 
Ethernet enthusiasts may be building their own alternative 
infrastructure, but they are not aiming to completely reinvent the 
Net. Westervelt, for example, says that Seattle Wireless wants to 
"coexist with ISPs." He envisions being able to use the home-built 
network when he's in town, a hard-wired connection when he's at 
home and a traditional cellular uplink when he's traveling. "We're 
not trying to put ISPs out of business," he says. "We need them."    

Still, Jupiter Research broadband analyst Dylan Brooks sees 
wireless Ethernet activity as a wake-up call, a creative protest 
against today's telecom status quo, and the more militant 
participants agree. They talk not just of fun and AirPorts but also of 
present-day problems that they'd like to see fixed -- like the nagging 
irritation that cellphones don't work in some conference centers or 
the widespread dissatisfaction that it takes some consumers 
months to get DSL installation.    

Just give them the chance, they argue, and they could fix all these 
bugs by applying their open-source development model. Everything 
that these groups do is open to the public. It's a teach-and-be-taught 
ideal that mimics how free software is created, but runs completely 
counter to the telecom business model.    

"The Internet grew because millions of companies added 
infrastructure to the Net," Kahle says, yet "the telco model is that a 
single company adds all the infrastructure." This is the reason that 
you can't get faster data service on your cellphone or connect easily 
in an office building. It's not that these tasks are technologically 
impossible; it's just that "the monopoly system gets good enough 
and then the incumbent plays defense," Kahle says. In contrast, an 
open approach "allows hot spots to be improved organically."    

Choice is what matters most to these wireless gurus. The goal is to 
give users power over their own forms of communication, says 
Keyes of Guerrilla.net. "The free-software movement made it so you 
could control your computer," he says. "This movement -- the free-
network movement -- gives you control over infrastructure. It gives 
you a choice of how you want to connect." And maybe someday, 
adds Westervelt, these networks will even be used as the model 
"so that if you live in a developing country and you want a network, 
you'll be able to build it yourself," he says. "All the information will 
be there."    

Of course, for now, these hopes are nothing but sci-fi fantasies. 
None of these initiatives has more than 30 antennas up and running, 
not nearly enough to cover their metropolitan areas.    

But people like Westervelt remain upbeat. Wireless notebook-size 
Web-pads using Ethernet connections will appear next year, and if 
the Federal Communications Commission allocated a specific part of 
the spectrum for nonprofit telecoms, the movement could take off. 
Plus, they argue, there are other, more subtle benefits. Setting up 
the network isn't just "cool" because of what it can offer in the virtual 
world, says Westervelt. Indeed, a large part of the fun derives from 
the fact that it's a healthy alternative to cyberspace's lack of a 
material reality. It's physical, a hands-on, "MacGyver"-like attempt 
to create giant brains, and thus, it's a lot of fun.    

"We sit behind screens all day," he says. "Getting up on a roof and 
sticking an antenna on is so great because it's a change. We're not 
just tinkering anymore, we're meeting new friends and getting some 
air."    

Copyright 2000 Salon.com  





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