Tools for Open Society

The Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network (CWN) is building and implementing a mesh-style Community Wireless Network that allows anyone within range of the network to receive Internet access, free from monthly fees, using off-the-shelf wireless hardware. CWN’s software is open-source (under the GPL license) and open-architecture.

Over the past three years, the Community Wireless Network has gone through three distinct phases of development: Phase I – initial research and experimentation; Phase II – initial software development and prototype network rollout; Phase III – software refinement and scalable network implementation (the current phase).

The software consists of a "mesh" routing daemon, an innovative "ad hoc" name service, a user interface, software for high-reliability, and on-line software upgrades. CWN’s routing daemon will be a major innovation in the open-source "mesh" world. It will be the first open-source implementation of Hazy Sighted Link State (HSLS) routing. HSLS enables exceptional scalability in the wireless environment, and yet it has an uncomplicated implementation.

CWN’s grant from OSI will allow Urbana-Champaign IndyMedia Center to complete a scalable prototype in Urbana, Illinois. Once tested there, CWN will form partnerships with two to three wireless groups in the South for prototype implementations of the mesh in a developing world setting.

Urbana, Illinois, USA |  wireless.cu.groogroo.com/index.html