The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group
Wireless Culture
Armin Medosch

Basics of the Technology

A Wireless Local Area Network, also known as WLAN, Wi-Fi and Airport on Macintosh computers, makes it possible to set up a local network that connects computers with Ethernet speed without using cables. Via a router computers on this local network can also communicate with the Internet. The technology is relatively new. It has been experimented with since the mid 1990s. It was introduced as a standard by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (IEEE) in 1999. The 802.11 standard enabled manufacturers to build hardware that would be compatible across different platforms in terms of hardware and software.

The most commonly used standard is 802.11b which uses frequencies in the 2.4 GHz band for the transmission of data and achieves speeds of 2 to 11 Mbits/sec, which is considerably faster than most people's Internet connections. The technology was initially conceived for the personal use of individuals and for organisations. It is license free, which means that everyone can set up a wireless access point without having to ask any authority first.
http://www.ieee.org/portal/index.jsp
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/11/1st_page.html

Free Networking

During the New Economy boom in the late nineties Wireless got little attention outside geek communities. At the same time free network enthusiasts started already to use the technology to build community networks and open access points. This movement started simultaneously in cities in highly developed industrialized countries such as the UK, Germany, United States, Australia, Spain...
http://www.freenetworks.org/
http://www.freenetworks.org/moin/index.cgi/WirelessNetworkingProjects

Most of these initiatives prefer to speak about Free Networks rather than about Wavelan. Wavelan is just the technology of choice at this point in time, but the free network idea is the philosophy behind it. Free Networks try to build largely independent infrastructures for networked communications by inter-connecting small access providers.
 
Their model of growth is based on self-organisation - no single organisation owns the whole network; each individual node is self-managed by the user communities who run it; these communities are defined by shared interests and constitute themselves locally or translocally; they promote a supportive and constructive communication climate within protected online spaces; free networks are not necessarily free in the sense that no money has to be paid but because of their autonomy from state institutions and large corporations.

Free Networks found their best expression not with the supposedly global World Wide Web but with Bulletin Board Systems, in Germany also known as Mailboxes. Before the WWW became popular, BBSs already attracted communities of users in numbers of tens or hundreds of thousands. Some of them described themselves also as citizen networks or digital cities. Because their philosophy did not suit the agenda of the dotcom era their success was overshadowed by the commercial boom around the WWW. After the crash and facilitated by Wavelan technology free networks are now having a strong renaissance.

Trip The Loop

A most basic function that makes Wavelan attractive is its ability to trip the local loop. Failed or unfinished telecommunications privatisation resulted in a market that is still dominated by the former telephone monopolies. They control the last mile, the cable that runs into the individual household. This makes permanent Internet access in Europe still relatively expensive and also establishes large telcos and a few mass market providers such as AOL as gatekeepers who control access to networked communications also in terms of policy. They also enjoy a monopoly like situation in many countries as regards connecting users through ADSL technology, a form of high-speed Internet access that uses standard telephone copper cables. With markets in a deep recession many high speed networks based on fibre optics are lying unused. These conditions together have hampered the more democratic use of the Internet and the spread of broadband connections with richer and more interactive audio-visual services.

With Wavelan users who live in geographic proximity can hire together a high-speed connection to the Internet and share the cost, which makes it significantly cheaper. They also bypass the controlling ambitions and restrictive policies of large telcos and access providers.
http://consume.net/
http://www.free2air.org/

Build Community

Wavelan reintroduces locality into networked communications. Setting up an access point and making it accessible for other people helps to create awareness of who lives or works in a certain area. The access point becomes a virtual home that facilitates the creation of services targeted at specific needs of these communities. This can find many expressions, from ideas for small businesses to very small media and file sharing applications. Because all computers who use the same node can communicate with each other on Ethernet speed, this is not only fast but can also be very simple, as simple as opening a section of ones own hard disk for communal use. Users don't have to pass through the uncertain environment of the Internet but remain within the walled garden of their own network.
http://youarehere.metamute.com/twiki/bin/view/Home/YouAreHere

Make a Mesh

Some free networks such as Consume.net in London have wider ambitions than only the creation of individual Access Points. Consume aims at establishing wireless links between individual APs, a wireless meshed network that would cover large parts of a city. The benefits of community building and associated services which exist within the user group of one Access Points get extended to a much larger number of participants who would still remain within one network, bypassing the Internet and forming various interconnected data clouds.

DIY Power

Many free networks are created in a Do-It-Yourself spirit. Although more and more packages of commercial hard- and software become available and increasingly affordable, free networkers prefer to build their own stuff, from router to antenna to access point configuration. In London this happens with regularly held Wavelan workshops, also called clinics, where wireless enthusiasts, from the interested newcomer to the experienced techie come together to ask questions, share knowledge, show each other things they have made and discuss what they plan for the future.

The workshops contribute to the social cohesion within wireless communities and facilitate de-centralized growth of free networks without centralized governance. People teach each other the "How-To"s and the "What-For"s of wireless free networks.
http://www.free2air.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2002/2/20/213511/252
http://www.ambienttv.net/index_frame.html

On 12 and 13 October 2002 wireless free networkers met at bootlab Berlin for BERLON, the Berlin London Wireless Culture Workshop. Practical work on antenna and node building and talks about an agreement for wireless free networking were held, the so called Pico Peering Agreement, which should form the basis for a bottom-up model of peering agreements between free networks but also define the interface to commercial providers. With free networkers from Denmark and Spain also present, this formed an attempt to broaden international collaboration on the basis of the workshop model. 
For reports, photos, etc. see http://bootlab.org/berlon/

War Chalking vs. Cartography

Wireless free networks are a great thing - if you can find them. Recently there was much media hype about so called war chalking. The idea is that someone walks, drives or pedals around with a mobile computer device and tries to find wireless access points. If one is found a sign is made with chalk on the pavement, whereby different shapes signify different types of networks, open and closed ones for instance. The idea was given much media publicity but is almost certainly completely useless in helping people to actually find access points. Chalk on pavement is washed away quickly by the next rain or street cleaning services. Chalking on walls is illegal, like graffiti.

More helpful is a number of different ways of wireless cartography. Consume has a node database, where people who have created an access point can give their coordinates and a node description, which literally puts them on a map, an interface for Web investigation on location based information about wireless access points. The Australian based project nodedb tries to provide mapping services on a worldwide basis. It links street maps with wireless access points and information on meshed networks - wireless connections between access points - and offers node descriptions.
http://consume.net/nodedb.php
http://www.nodedb.com/ 
http://www.nodedb.com/active/europe/at/vienna/?
http://www.nodedb.com/unitedstates/ny/newyork/?

These projects have two disadvantages: they depend on users creating their own entry into a database. This can lead to distortions. For instance, nodedeb has, at the time of writing no single entry for London, even so there are many nodes on the consume map. The second problem is that the maps show where access points are, but not how far the signal that they emit actually goes. This depends on many factors, such as urban topography, signal strength, type of antenna used.

vortex from free2air.org is working on an advanced research project to overcome those limits to wireless mapping. He tries to map the actual size and shape of signal emission from a single node and, with a combination of GPS, geographical information systems, street maps, area photography and special software, tries to visualise the real shape of a data cloud, which he calls "air shadow". This type of cartography gives a much more reliable information about where a signal can actually be picked up. It also takes out the war of mobile mapping, the much hyped war driving as which mobile mapping is usually described in the media, bringing it into realm of hacker type activities. "Air shadow" is a much more useful way of mapping the electrosphere in an area that could benefit many user groups in different ways and has nothing to do with hacking.
http://www.free2air.org/?op=section;section=eastendnet
http://www.ittc.ku.edu/wlan/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1639661.stm

Different Approaches

Different wireless free nets in different cities tend to follow a very different approach. NYCwireless for instance focuses on providing free public wireless Internet service to mobile users in public spaces throughout the New York City area. Consume in London focuses more on creating a wireless mesh and promoting free network ideas of self-management of nodes, knowledge transfer and community building. Other projects work closely together with public institutions such as local councils and educational institutions. Wireless projects in rural areas try to attack the problem that telco providers have failed them altogether and that only self help will enable them to get cheap and fast access.
http://www.nycwireless.net/
http://consume.net

Commercial Interest

Since about a year or so mainstream media organisations started to report about Wavelan activities, at first mostly on a hostile note, pointing out the vulnerability of wireless networks for war driving hackers. Since then the tone has changed and wireless community networks got some favourable reporting in media such as The Guardian, BBC and Der Spiegel. The publicity around grassroots movements of free networkers has also woken up the industry. Some telco providers and analysts fear that Wavelan undermines 3G, in Germany UMTS technology, the next generation of mobile phone networks. Providers had to pay huge sums to governments to get a license to operate a 3G network. Now they struggle to finance the building of network infrastructures, while license free grassroots networks flourish. Mobile phone masts for 3G on nearly every tall building create unprecedented levels of electrosmog which more and more people fear have effects on health and wellbeing. My personal opinion about competitive rivalry between Wavelan and G3/UMTS is that it does not really matter. Technologies will become more complementary, combinations of 3G and Wavelan will be built into one and the same mobile devices. More important than the commercial race is the self sustained growth of free networks and the community enhancing applications and services that are being built on their shoulders.

Parallel (Gift) Economies

Shu Lea Cheangs "Rich Air" project recently conducted in New York presented a model for the use of Wavelan for trading of cultural goods in a money free barter economy. Inspired by the Argentinean truque clubs, Rich Air illustrates a number of benefits to be gained from establishing systems that exist outside capitalist markets and facilitate free exchange in gift economies.
http://www.rich-air.com/

Conclusions

Free Networks are the antidote to dotcom depression and Internet loneliness. They bring people together in the virtual and the real world, create a buzz and mobilise fresh energies in people to participate in communal activities. The motivation to do so is not really altruistic, which is a common misunderstanding. Maybe there will always be some people who only want to be freeloaders. But for the majority of those involved in free networking the result is that they get much more out of it than what they give. As in other gift economies such as free/open source software development people benefit from the multiplication of individual efforts. Each one gives something gets something back from the community at large. On a social and economic level there are obvious benefits for regeneration in deprived inner city and rural areas. The existence of wireless access points makes an area more attractive and, in connection with imaginative projects in cartography and application building, will develop new business and ideas, social and cultural projects. The future of wireless free networks cannot be foretold but so far their potential has hardly been tapped.

About the Author
Armin Medosch is a writer, artist and curator. He is a co-founder of the online magazine Telepolis - The Magazine of Netculture http://www.telepolis.de which he co-edited from 1996 to 2002. With Telepolis he was awarded the European Online Journalism Award (2000) and the Grimme Online Award (2002). Together with Janko R”ttgers he edited "Netzpiraten" (published 2001, Heise Verlag), a collection of essays which portray the Internet's underworld of hackers, crackers, virus writers, hoaxers and software pirates. In 2001/02 he co-curated the online art exhibition "Kingdom of Piracy" which was launched at the Ars Electronica Festival. His current work includes writing, research and art projects involving wireless technologies and the politics of art and code.

Armin Medosch was invited by the organisers of the 2002 UrbanDrift Conference in Berlin http://www.urbandrift.org to host a panel about wireless community networks. Urban Drift describes itself as a transcultural platform for new tendencies in Architecture, Design and Urbanism.
 
Armin had been researching wireless culture for many months, focussing mostly on http://consume.net in London. The text of his presentation that follows here is partly a result of research, partly it contains working hypothesis. For instance, as he puts it "A large meshed network of wireless APs is still more fiction than reality, but that does not matter, it will be done".
 
The other participants on the panel were James Stevens, http://consume.net, Simon Worthington (YAH/Metamute), Shu Lea Cheang, artist, http://www.rich-air.com and Wilfried Hackenbroich, architect.
 
The talk was well received by an audience consisting largely of architects and designers for whom this was something new. A few weeks later Armin posted the text on the mailinglist nettime. His reason for making the text public is contained in his explanation to PC Update, "Since the work had already been done I hoped a wider audience could gain something from it. The response has been very good, especially from people who work with Internet technology from an activist/civil society angle", he wrote.
 
An interesting point form or lecture note summary of this talk, with images, can be found on the Web at http://www.rich-air.com/wireless/. Armin's details are at the end of the main text above.

Reprinted from the December 2002 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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