Community Networking

I wanted to pass along some information I gleaned from the Linuxfet Northwest presentation by Russell Senior of The Personal Telco Project Inc.  While it does not involve Amateur Radio, it IS about RF communications serving the public and I found the seminar very informative.  I want to enumerate some links that I found of interest.  In a nutshell, “The Personal Telco Project” is based in Portland and institutes and supports free open access WiFi to the masses.  Russell brought along a lot of neat hardware for the attendees to examine.

The Personal Telco Project A non profit organization.

Atheros- WiFi hardware provider. Components integrated in to some of the following gear.

FCC ID Database - This is way cool and I don’t know why I had never heard of this before.  Every RF device sold in the US has an FCC ID code (look for a sticker with some fine print and a snappy FCC logo) that you can plug in to this website and retrieve user manuals, photos, test results and other detailed info. Just go to the website and put the (split) FCC ID in the first two fields.  Leave the rest of the fields blank and submit the form.  Good stuff!

TPTP Uses a lot of Linux PC’s to control their wireless access points, but they have been making more use of embedded Linux based routers as self contained devices with no external PC needed by re-flashing the units with Open WRT and using products such as WiFi Dog.

Mesh Networking technologies were discussed and devices from Meraki Networks were passed among the attendees. Look at the Open Mesh website for an open source alternative to proprietary Meraki systems.

The Metro Flex from  Ruckus Wireless and the $79 Nano Station from Ubiquiti Networks were displayed as very useful high gain directional WiFi gear for difficult reception areas.

One of the attendees was with a Vancouver BC group called Free The Net that is promoting free open access Internet in Canada.