[gaia] Difference between FON and a "manyfolks Community Network"

[Rohan Mahy <[e-mail]>]

Hi Everyone,

Just to briefly introduce myself, my most relevant experience to this group
is that I helped build a large portion of a long-range 5Ghz WiFi backbone
in Haiti with Inveneo; before that I was an active participant in the IETF
in the RAI space for many years; currently I work as a field logistician
for an international non-profit in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo.

To me the key difference between FON and what the authors call a community
network is the ability to actively enlarge the network. FON capitalizes on
an existing network. It does not extend that network, it merely allows
reciprocal access to that network by individual nodes. While this is
already a good and useful thing, I think what many of the authors of the
draft want to define is a user-extensible network. Below is my strawman
definition.

User-extensible network: A network in which any participant in the system
may add link segments to the network in such a way that the new network
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
extent of the network and the new extent of the network.

Note that this covers a large part of the Free Network Foundation's Freedom
1 as posted by Roger, but not all of it.

Practically I think this means that new segments of a user-extensible
network do not involve IP address translation at the boundary of the
network. This is important architecturally, so if someone has a good
counter-example, please respond.

For me it does not matter if the network is wired or wireless, licensed or
unlicensed spectrum, or what technologies are used. It does not matter if
the network has a fee structure or who administers the network. I agree
with Steve that commercial extensible networks should be included. In Haiti
and the parts of sub-Saharan Africa where I have lived (Benin, South Sudan,
DRC) a commercial entity has a better chance of getting off the ground.

Thanks,
-rohan