[Tmpcommonsnet] Toward a federation of libre networks [Sep 4 notes]

Hey all, Better late than never, this is the temp commons net list to follow up from the conversation at sudo room on September 4th. It was really wonderful to meet you all - I for one learned a lot! Below is a fairly coherent summation.. ---------- *Attendees*: Mikaela, Isaac, Jenny, Roger, Pau, Mitar, Marc, Chris, Shaddih, Nader, Miguel, Rosalie *What we've been working on:* - Presentation on Saturday was rad! We now have video documentation. - Marc has been working on autogeneration of firmware / kit to be finished up in ~ a month; Fake captive portal by capturing inspection traffic - Pau from Guifi.net - working on the qmp firmware - clouds of about 50 nodes working on this system. Beginning to collaborate with Argentina and Italy on a new firmware project: LibreMesh - Using batman-adv, bu http://www.guidingtech.com/10346/transfer-android-apps-between-phones-bluet… t<http://www.guidingtech.com/10346/transfer-android-apps-between-phones-… 2 has problems with scalability, 30-40 nodes hit peak congestion through conflicting ARP requests. So they're using BMX6 (Layer 3) protocol to make connections between Layer 2. They discover Layer 2 clouds and join them. Layer 2 (batman-adv) still helpful to create continuity between nodes. - Shaddih working on an OpenBTS network in Papua, isolated community - 100,000 txt messages sent since February. Using hardware from range networks. Base station cost ~$4-5k. Cost is the biggest problem. - Isaac from Free Network Foundation/Kansas City - their community network is used daily by a few thousand people. Adapted qmp firmware to the Kansas City network. Has been playing with GNU MediaGoblin. Thinking about how to do diverse authentication. WOrking on a Network Commons license. - Mikaela interested in sharing tokens for access to the mesh - Nader working on building a network among the UC Berkeley co-ops - Miguel working on firmware - Mitar built slovenia network on top of an abundance of fiber; Nodewatcher *Funding:* - http://www.internetsociety.org/what-we-do/grants-awards/community-grants - OpenTechFund - Need to procure outdoor UV-resistant cable, colocation for the VPN exit node *Legal Issues / Network Commons License* - Ownership of the actual nodes to be retained by the people themselves - Enforceable agreement that gives the community the right to disconnect a problematic node - Industries want security on their investments (Guifi input) - Part 97 of FCC Rules - License by rule, any purpose that's industrial scientific or medical - 2.4 & 5.8 GHz - Creative Commons, pros and cons: - Pros: Umbrella definition of a spectrum of licrnses that share some basic principles; easier to change - Cons: Assumption that basic Creative Commons license is enough, when it really implies a wide spectrum; keeping it simple allows room for growth *How to interconnect a free network with a proprietary network?* - Guifi.net: Internet access as a service - all services must be allowed (net neutrality) - businesses make the network sustainable, so we need to accomodate them, too. - Organization that maintains and educates around use of this license - Distinguishing between the Foundation and the Network(s) - Internal Versioning Number for the NCL (Network Commons License) is at version 0.2 - Goal is to share definitions *Breakout Groups* - Present on federation - Do you know about this: https://github.com/freifunk/api.freifunk.net - Licensing: Marc, Isaac - Operational: Shaddih, - Firmware - Communications / Remote Participation for IS4CWN - Local DNS / Services: *Guifi.net Operational Structure* - Open project - no membership fee or policies - you're a member if you decide you are - Ownership of the network is distributed - License is also important - Tries to automate as much as possible, to avoid manual intervention - Use the tools available to solve problems, avoiding manual operation - Nodes have a physical location, and can become supernodes - Ad-hoc mode not really used. To propagate the network, you must have at least two radios to receive and propagate - this model is sim[ply more supported - No central point of authority - theoretically. Source code public and open, anyone can also set up a network infrastructure - Technology-agnostic - strives to be as inclusive as possible - Tools to check on the statistics of the network - Use BGP (+ OSPF) - Have routing problems - every day, hour, minute! BGP not meant for wifi - Funded by itself - those who want to join must pay the cost of joining it, in charge of upgrading hardware, etc - Up to the people themselves to keep up with maintenance - Normally if a supernode goes down, it will be fixed within the next 48 hours - They have a fundraising option to request money from the network - Mostly run as a web of trust - mostly one degree of separation from each other - Monopolistic mentality is internalized in Western culture - - When they first connected to the Internet, started receiving DDOS attacks - Guifinet Foundation is the umbrella of many small ISPs in the network, using GuifiNet Foundation to connect to the Internet - GuifiNet Foundation as an incubator for small businesses seeking to become their own ISPs - Interested in cultivating a fair competition within the network - Separating organization (run by benevolent dictator) from network (owned by community - can mutiny) - How to deal with legal issues : Refer to EU directives; Telecom directives; referring to govs to get permission to deploy fiber - more complicated because not a traditional ISP; need to keep IP logs - data retention policy - what's the information content of that Ip address, what's discoverable from there? - Who's the ISP, and how is that defined? Usually by size, or commercial interest *Ideas thenceforth:* - Give away nodes or sell them for $5 in exchange for attending workshop - The bigger you are, the more weird things you're going to face - CALEA: Comms Assistant for Law Enforcement Act -- local requirements for logging and reporting via industry best practices - Could say we don't log NAT because the technical requirements are too high *wlan-slovenia vs guifi.net* - People own the equipment - Slovenia has a lot of fiber - Overabundance of connectivity led to desire to share the bandwidth - What if someone takes my link? steals my data? makes a stupid thing on the internet and i'm blamed? - Solution: vpn tunnels - When a person donates a node, he hosts bandwidth - not IP - Had to develop their own VPN, as the throughput was too slow - 300 vs 21,000 nodes - but slovenia is very small :) - International link to austria and to croatia - Longest hop is 40km *How to get wider participation?* - Reach out to networks we don't even know about yet - Roger Proposal: Commons For Europe - Code For Europe / Bottom-Up Broadband - Org of Orgs - at the Euro level? nah - talked to some other communities (eg Ninux, Freifunk [difficult as they are separated by city], Funkfeur - toward creating an organization to federate amongst. - What sort of organization do we want? - What kind of participants? - International agreements for participation We concluded the meeting with a desire to set up a communications framework toward a federation of libre networks, and set up this mailing list in the interim. Cheers, Jenny http://jennyryan.net http://thepyre.org http://thevirtualcampfire.org http://technomadic.tumblr.com `~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~` "Technology is the campfire around which we tell our stories." -Laurie Anderson "Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it." -Hannah Arendt "To define is to kill. To suggest is to create." -Stéphane Mallarmé ~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`