Re: [gaia] Difference between FON and a "manyfolks CommunityNetwork"

...to me as a person entering the 'coverage' of a FON hotspot, I gain
connectivity where I don't have any otherwise. If I have FON enabled
myself, I don't even pay for access. It's an odd of separation. I think
we ought to tease out the technological approaches being used throughout
the various examples and separately tease out the operational/economic
models placed on top of it. Only then (if at all) would I start with
'name calling' (e.g., user extensible, community network, ...).

Dirk

-----Original Message-----
From: gaia [mailto:gaia-bounces@irtf.org] On Behalf Of Arjuna
Sathiaseelan
Sent: 20 June 2014 06:53
To: Rohan Mahy
Cc: gaia
Subject: Re: [gaia] Difference between FON and a "manyfolks
CommunityNetwork"

Hello Rohan, All,

  So talking about user-extensibility as a criteria for defining
community networks may have an issue -

I agree that FON may not be classified as a community network since its
an extension of an user's already paid service and its presence is in
areas where network operators have existing network coverage.

However, a system like PAWS (http://publicaccesswifi.org/) for e.g.
uses the same FON model - but it targets people with socio-economical
challenges to get broadband access and its run purely by the involvement
of the community, a local stakeholder who has a benefit of getting
people connected and they work with a network operator to do so. So a
PAWS type system has a social objective of helping connect your
neighbour/community who may not be able to afford to connect otherwise.
But it involves the three stakeholders: users, network operators and the
so called VNO.

Ofcourse the PAWS type model is extensible as well - I think Freifunk
does that. Other community wireless mesh networks does similar for e.g.
talking to the Sarantaporo.gr folks their entire network connecting 18
villages is backhauled over two ADSL lines volunteered by home broadband
owners (surprisingly with the blessings of their network operator - not
sure about their business objectives)..

Regards
Arjuna

On 19 June 2014 07:15, Rohan Mahy <rohan.mahy@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>
>
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> https://irtf.org/mailman/listinfo/gaia
>

--
Arjuna Sathiaseelan | http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~as2330/

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