sascha's blog

From CUWiN's partners at Wireless Ghana just sent in this update on their use of VoIP services over a CUWiN network:

November 2006 - Wireless Ghana is pleased to announce that we have successfully implemented VoIP onto our flagship network in the Akwapim district of Ghana's Eastern Region.

The VoIP is available at three locations, and allows communications between two community centers in Akropong and one in Apirede, spanning a 6km distance. An application called SJPhone is running the frontend and doing IP to IP dials across our CuWIN-based WiFi mesh network. VoIP marks the first service Wireless Ghana has implemented to work solely on its LAN. The service is available at all times that electricity is available, even when our satellite Internet uplink is not.

As VoIP technology becomes more mainstream the teams at Wireless Ghana aim to deploy such services with greater scope.

CUWiN Team members Ross Musselman (Outreach Coordinator) and David Young (Chief Engineer) are on the ground in Dharamsala, India at the AirJaldi summit. Ross has been blogging at:

http://nsneedle.blogspot.com

CUWiN Executive Director, Sascha Meinrath, is blogging from the Alternative Telecom Policy Forum in Ottawa Canada today and tomorrow. He gave a plenary session last night on Community and Municipal Wireless Networking and the COMMONS Project (to create a collaborative fiber peering network among participating networks) -- and hopes to have the slides from that presentation up on his blog momentarily.

Meanwhile, Sheila Copps, former minister of Canadian Heritage, just presented. Ile Sans Fil Co-Founder, Michael Lenczner blogs about it here.

Meanwhile if you'd like to "join" the forum -- live video, audio and (occassionally snarky) commentary is publicly available here.

More blogging updates will be available here.

July 20, 2006

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:

Sascha Meinrath, CUWiN Executive Director
217-278-3933 x30 sascha@cuwireless.net

Ross Musselman, CUWiN Outreach Coordinator
217-278-3933 x31 rgmussel@cuwireless.net

***

CUWiN/UIUC PARTNERSHIP AWARDED $500,000 NSF GRANT TO DEVELOP NEXT GENERATION OPEN SOURCE MESH WIRELESS TECHNOLOGIES.

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign partners with CUWiN to build high-performance, robust open source wireless mesh networking technologies.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $500,000 in grant funding to support a research and development partnership between the Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network (CUWiN) and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). This initiative, "Toward building a Performance-Predictable Wireless Mesh Network", focuses on the development of wireless routing protocols, network testing systems, and gateway discovery in open-source technology. The grant, part of the Network Technology and Systems Program of the NSF, provides support over a three-year period.

"CUWiN is building the next generation of mesh wireless technologies. Most importantly, CUWiN is releasing our software under an open source license -- allowing communities, municipalities, organizations, and individuals around the world to deploy low-cost alternatives to current proprietary systems." stated Sascha Meinrath, CUWiN Executive Director.

Community and municipal wireless networks have gained tremendous attention in recent years. The ultimate objective of this CUWiN/UIUC partnership is to incorporate research results and system prototypes into production code to be widely distributed by CUWiN. With the help of CUWiN, the research to be carried out by UIUC researchers will make a real impact and effect high-throughput, cost-effective broadband access both for the U.S. and worldwide.

"I am extremely pleased with the fact that NSF recognizes the importance of carrying out research on a real multi-hop wireless network. CUWiN provides us with a city-wide research testbed to understand how, and to what extent, wireless links are affected by PHY/MAC attributes and other environmental factors. All the measurements we make on CUWiN will help characterize the behavior of wireless links and identify control 'knobs' in the MAC/PHY layers with which the network capacity can be optimized." Principal Investigator, Jennifer Hou, stated.

CUWiN's mission is to help bridge the digital divide by developing low-cost, open source, wireless technologies and making them available to community and municipal networks around the world. CUWiN networks have been established in urban settings like Chicago, Illinois, and Washington, D.C., as well as rural places like the Mesa Grande Indian Reservation near San Diego, California, and Apirede, Ghana. CUWiN continues to expand its development testbed in Urbana, Illinois in partnership with the City of Urbana and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

"The wireless technologies being developed by CUWiN as a part of this initiative hearken back to the innovation and vibrancy of early Internet development."stated Ross Musselman, CUWiN Outreach Coordinator. "With a focus on maintaining Internet freedom, these new technologies support digital inclusion around the globe."

For more information on this initiative, contact the CUWiN team at:

E-mail: cu-wireless-support@cuwireless.net
Phone: +1 217 278-3933 x31.

Sign up for the once-a-month CUWiN e-mail news list at:

http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/cu-wireless-announce

From Dan Meredith:

I don't know about you but I would like to see another hack night soon. Following the National Summit for Community Wireless Networks that took place last weekend I know I have lots to talk about. I think it would be a good to identify what people want to get out of their involvement with this project and hopefully find items they can participate in. With the weather warming up and days lasting longer there is lots we are able to do outside with nodes to work on and clouds to connect. Seth is talking about making a Menards run to build a biquad or two for our primestar dishes. David has quite a few cool things going on with the CUWiN software development. Wendy wants to work on sprucing up our documentation. We are about to upgrade the IMC to a 6mbps downstream 1mbps upstream connection which means the mysterious media server is one step closer to getting out there. Don't forget, showing up gets you some free pizza and a free dose of geekness. Please reply with what you would like to see at the next hack meeting.

Here's the details:

When: 6pm-??? on April 19, 2006

Where: The IMC -- 202 South Broadway Ave. (AKA "The Post Office", AKA "The big neo-greco-old-federal-looking-building with the big pillars) -- enter through the main door. Downtown Urbana.

What: CUWiN Hack Night

Who: CUWiN experts and neophytes, tech-geekery & Luddites, the wirelessly curious, interested & addicted.

Please come, bring all things interesting. RSVP if you'd like pizza.

Hope to see you then!