[gaia] Comments on: draft-irtf-gaia-alternative-network-deployments

[Mitar <[e-mail]>]

Hi!

I am participant in the open wireless network in Slovenia, wlan
slovenija (https://wlan-si.net/) and I am writing to provide some
feedback on the draft. I am glad people are working on it. My list of
comments is in no particular order, mostly in order of reading. I am
sorry if this will be long, but there are many issues with the draft.

Section 4.2. I think this is a very limited set of motivations. From
our network and from my experience talking to other community
networks, I would claim that many share also much more altruistic
motivations. For example, our whole network is build around principle
that some of us have abundance of Internet connectivity at home
(FTTH), so we can share part of that openly with everyone. More of us
will share it, more people will have access to Internet. Of course
there are other motivations why people participate, and everyone has a
different mix of those motivations, but I definitely think that the
list should be extended to include:

- free sharing of Internet connectivity, altruism
- various forms of activism (network neutrality guarantees,
anti-censorship, decentralization to minimize control, showing that
alternative is possible)
- building a new type of commons
- not being just a consumer, but active participant, wanting to have a
say in operations
- provide local services to local people, tighten/reconnect the
community (eg. http://tidepools.co/)
- provide alternative service in case of natural disasters and other
extreme situations
- wanting to have a space for experimentation and teaching of others,
empowering others to take their Internet connectivity into their own
hands

An example of another network describing itself with much more of what
I am writing than what is currently on the list:
https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Mesh

All those are goals and motivations (and those are just few I
remembered without much thinking) for many community networks. I do
not think the list in section 4.2 can ever be comprehensive, but I was
really taken aback from its economy-centric bias at the moment. Most
community networks do not operate on that level. It is of course
present, but there are some other primary motivations why people are
doing it.

Section 4.4, technologies employed:

"Low-cost optical fiber systems are used to connect households in some
villages."

Isn't this section about list of technologies? Why are those villages
mentioned? Optical systems can also be used elsewhere.

Moreover, in wlan slovenija we developed free optics free-space (no
fiber) system Koruza (http://koruza.net/), which are useful especially
in high-density urban environments because of no interference.

Section 4.5, typical scenarios:

I do not see usefulness of this categorization, because almost any
network I know of outgrow and changed through time inside all these
categories. Community networks maybe start somewhere (like urban or
rural area), but then they grow and spread over the whole country,
then start connecting with other countries.

Section 5, classification of alternative networks:

Introduction again focuses on incentives. That is a very limited
perspective. I would claim that most alternative networks go beyond
just incentives, but exist because of various beliefs: about how
networks should operate, who should have control over them, the
importance of commons and community stewardship of commons, etc.

Section 5.1, community networks:

As I explained, goals and motivation here seems a pretty limited list
and I think you should include at least ones I listed above. But
probably you should do a survey and ask community networks what are
their goals and motivations, instead of trying to guess them. (If you
have done such a survey, I would love to see data.)

Technologies used: TDMA should be there, Ubiquiti gear does it by default.

Typical scenarios: all

Community Networks are large-scale: not necessary, they can also be
small, city only. Some are large scale, some are small, some are
focused on one region, some are distributed around larger region,
connected with VPN together.

"There is a shared platform (e.g.  a web site) where a minimum
coordination is performed.  This way, community members with the right
permissions have an obvious and direct form of organizational control
over the overall operation of the network (e.g.  IP addresses,
routing, etc.) in their community (not just their own participation in
the network)."

This can be true, but it is not necessary so. There are community
networks with much larger focus on decentralization. Especially with
IPv6 a lot more autoconfiguraiton is possible.

Also, phrase "this way" is strange in this context. I do not see how
control over the routing of the network has anything with the
existence of the shared platform? In wlan slovenija network we also
use a web shared platform, but that platform does not control the
network. It just helps in coordination. Network would operate even
without it, just people would have a bit harder time coordinate about
use of IP space, and learning how to configure their nodes.

So having a shared platform can have very little to do with how core
network's resources (IP addresses, routings, peerings, DNS entries,
etc.) are managed.

"A Community Network is a network in which any participant in the
system may add link segments to the network in such a way that the new
segments can support multiple nodes and adopt the same overall
characteristics as those of the joined network, including the capacity
to further extend the network.  Once these link segments are joined to
the network, there is no longer a meaningful distinction between the
previous and the new extent of the network."

Isn't this definition of the Internet? Just replace "segment" with
"autonomous system" and "community network" with "Internet". :-)

So what exactly is the property which differentiates community
networks? Maybe there is none. Maybe community networks are simply
trying to (re)build the Internet, but this time having infrastructure
owned by participants, which are not just consumers, but are
participating.

I think this is the most important characteristic. Organic growth, and
that people own the equipment, and thus the emergent network. This
should be more clearly explained. So it is not so much about
technology in community networks, but about who owns and controls
equipment (people/users/participants), and who coordinates the network
growth (people/users/participants). The line between users, providers,
participants, people gets blurred.

"In Community Networks, everybody keeps the ownership of what he/she
has contributed.

Not necessary. They can also give it away (for example equipment for
backbone nodes). In general, mostly people do not really track
ownership of equipment, because they do not care about ownership if it
is operating according to common principles. And if it is not, it
should not be in the network no matter who owns the equipment.

Section 5.4, crowdshared approaches, led by the users and third party
stakeholders

"VNOs pay the sharers and the network operators, thus creating an
incentive structure for all the actors: the end users get money for
sharing their network, the network operators are paid by the VNOs, who
in turn accomplish their socio-environmental role."

I am not sure if all networks which can be grouped under this section
really do that. In the draft itself the https://openwireless.org/
movement is listed, but no shares or money or any incentive structure
is in place there for people to share their extra Internet
connectivity.

So I would change this paragraph to:

"VNOs can be organized to pay the sharers and the network operators,
thus creating an incentive structure for all the actors: the end users
get money for sharing their network, the network operators are paid by
the VNOs, who in turn accomplish their socio-environmental role. But
VNOs can also operate on gift-economy principles, where participants
contribute to the commons by sharing their resources knowing that this
benefits all."

Section 6.2.1,  Media Access Control (MAC) protocols for wireless links

"Wireless standards ensure interoperability and usability to those who
design, deploy and manage wireless networks."

Wireless standard ensure low-cost of equipment due to economies of
scale and mass production. This is the main reason I think why WiFi is
so popular in alternative networks. You can get a device for $10. And
you can get this because everyone is producing this hardware, and the
hardware is not just made for the alternative networks. In contrast,
traditional ISPs use hardware which is developed only for them. Even
if they are big ISP, number of units is still much smaller than number
of WiFi routers produced for the global market.

Question about list of WiFi standards in this draft. Why is that
needed? Why properties and descriptions of those standards should be
in this draft? They belong to Wikipedia, or their own standard. In
this draft we can just reference those standards. Like what of all
this text is relevant to alternative networks? It is general text
which is true for any use:

"802.22 [IEEE.802-22.2011] is a standard developed specifically for
long range rural communications in TV white space frequencies and
first approved in July 2011. The standard is similar to the 802.16
(WiMax) [IEEE.802-16.2008] standard with an added cognitive radio
ability. The maximum throughput of 802.22 is 22.6 Mbps for a single 8
MHz channel using 64-QAM modulation. The achievable range using the
default MAC scheme is 30 km, however 100 km is possible with special
scheduling techniques. The MAC of 802.22 is specifically customized
for long distances - for example, slots in a frame destined for more
distant Consumer Premises Equipment (CPEs) are sent before slots
destined for nearby CPEs.

Base stations are required to have a Global Positioning System (GPS)
and a connection to the Internet in order to query a geolocation
spectrum database. Once the base station receives the allowed TV
channels, it communicates a preferred operating white space TV channel
with the CPE devices. The standard also includes a coexistence
mechanism that uses beacons to make other 802.22 base stations aware
of the presence of a base station that is not part of the same
network."

Section 7.1.2.2, mesh routing protocols

"A large number of Alternative Networks use the Optimized Link State
Routing Protocol (OLSR) as defined in [RFC3626]."

Not really. Networks use OLSR as implemented by http://olsr.org/,
which is far from the standardized OLSR in RFC3626. For example, in
practice, ETX metric is used, which is not even mentioned in RFC3626.

Also Babel should definitely be mentioned, it is used in many
networks, and it is even (properly) standardized as RFC6126. So if you
want to include a routing protocol for alternative networks with IETF
standard, you should include this one for sure.

Section 7.2.1, traffic management when sharing network resources

It is interesting that so many people believe that there have to be
some special prioritization done for sharers to be able to use APs.
But it is not necessary true. Often people connecting to open AP nodes
will be much further away from the AP than the sharer. So often just
this distance already influences that the users of open network are
prioritized less (they have higher packet loss, lower bitrate, which
is also good to limit the lowest allowed bitrate).

In community networks is also pretty common to run the network itself
on different frequencies than the APs. Some first generation mesh
networks ran everything (backbone over ad-hoc) and client-serving APs
on the same channel, but with 5 GHz spectrum and cheap dual-band
devices this is often separated now.

Section 7.3., services provided

What is this section? A non-comprehensive list of services on the
Internet and networks in general? This looks pretty useless section
which would not inform anyone reading this draft of anything about
alternative networks.

If something, then it would be interesting to talk about specialized
services developed just for community/alternative networks:

- Inter-network peering/VPNs: https://wiki.freifunk.net/IC-VPN
- Local wikis like: https://localwiki.org
- Community oriented portals: http://tidepools.co/
- Network monitoring/deployment/maintenance platforms
- VoIP sharing between networks, allowing cheap calls between countries
- Sensor networks and citizen science build by adding sensors to devices
- Community radio/TV stations

What is interesting that some networks do not even provide Internet
access. For example, in Croatia, historically, there were wireless
communities which made networks in villages just to be able to play
games.

Section 7.3.2.1, web browsing proxies

"Other services (file sharing, VoIP, etc.) are not usually allowed in
many Alternative Networks due to bandwidth limitations."

That would go against net neutrality and anti-censorship principles
which are important in many other alternative networks. So the
question how informative this sentence is, because for some maybe this
is true, for some it is not, and some probably are build just around
this. Others probably address this with innovative solutions like
internal file servers.

At the end, a general question, how would DIY ISPs
(https://www.diyisp.org/) be categorized according to this draft? To
me is unclear.

Some more projects to look into, and think how they relate to this draft:

https://rhizomatica.org/
http://www.servalproject.org/
http://villagetelco.org/


Mitar

-- 
http://mitar.tnode.com/
https://twitter.com/mitar_m