Josh made a blog post recently about the Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network (CUWiN), and that project has been stuck in my head ever since. Through a series of PCs in people’s homes and businesses, and off-the-shelf 802.11 networking and cheap antennas, they link together a community broadband networking all through wireless. If some of these nodes also connect to the Internet, you could use this wireless community network (WCN) as your Internet source.

Their solution is completely dynamic, with no individual configuration of the nodes. You boot the software and go. You treat an old PC (or their special hardware,) like your cable modem. It has that same appeal as satellite TV has for “f you’ing” the cable company, their increasing rates, their limited services. This allows broadband to just grow, without huge infrastructure costs (which the cable/DSL customers absorb.)

It also appeases the geek in me for its routing and technologies. Unfortunately, I’m the wireless janitor for CS, and although I know a bunch about how it functionally works, I can’t imagine doing something like this. Dynamic routing in a truly dynamic network, etc. I’ve got a list of questions for them that I’ll eventually clean up and send in.

I found Josh’s link to them about the same time I read about a guy who made his wireless network ’safe’ by making it insecure (Salon 5/18/2004). It’s a wireless tech, like me, who opened up his home WiFi router to the world because it indemnifies him against being the one causing any problems. If they catch file sharing on his network, there’s no way the RIAA can prove it’s him and not an anonymous stranger using his network. I am not a lawyer, but I think that’s an interesting case, and tied into the CUWiN well. One of the questions I have for their project is how they justify sharing a cable modem or DSL line and doesn’t that break the providers Terms of Service.

I’m just throwing this out for other smart people to read, and think about. I would consider joining in my new house if I can do it affordably, I am not the only node in the area (a network of one is a strongly connected, but insignificant,) and I didn’t have to share my Internet (until I was convinced that was “a good thing.”) What do you think?