In honor of One Web Day, CUWiN will host an open house and LAN party on Friday, September 22 from 9 am to 5 pm. One Web Day celebrates the openness and freedom that has made the Internet a vibrant and user-oriented part of 21st century life. One Web Day is being celebrated by community technology organizations around the globe to raise awareness of the importance of network neutrality and digital inclusion. For more information on global efforts, visit http://www.onewebday.org/.

As part of the festivities, CUWiN will be offering use of its LAN for gaming purposes. Users should bring their own games. CUWiN will also be available to talk about the technology that we are developing and how members of the local community can get involved.

CUWiN is also encouraging local Internet users to submit their Internet-related photographs to Flicker and tagging them "onewebday". The photographs will show up on the onewebday.org website and will be made into a collage.

For more information, contact:
Ross Musselman
Outreach Coordinator
cu-wireless-support@lists.cuwireless.net
(217) 278-3933 x.30

Brandon Bowersox, Urbana City Council Member and Project Manager for OJC Technologies, will facilitate a discussion about the community wireless network in Urbana at the September Hack Night. Over the past several years, the City of Urbana has helped CUWiN to create the community wireless network. We want to talk about this progress and provide a forum for envisioning the future of community wireless in Urbana and Champaign. People who would like to become part of the network are especially encouraged to participate. Hack Night will begin at 6 pm in the UCIMC Building, a.k.a. the Urbana Post Office, on September 24, 2006. The UCIMC Building is at 202 S. Broadway, Urbana, Illinois.

Hack Night meets on the last Sunday of the month and is free to the public. It gives people in the community a chance to learn more about the CUWiN project, to get involved with hardware and software development, or just to meet people in the community who are interested in wireless technologies.

We are also looking for videographers who would be willing to record the event. If you are interested, contact Ross Musselman at the address below.

As always, pizza will be provided.

For more information, contact:

Ross Musselman, CUWiN Outreach Coordinator,
Email: cu-wireless-support@cuwireless.net, Subject: Hack Night
Tel: +1 217 278-3933 x.30

Professor Haiyun Luo, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at UIUC, will present on "The PERM Project and the Future of Mobile Broadband Internet Access" at the August meeting of Hack Night. Hack Night will begin at 5 pm in the UCIMC Building, a.k.a. the Urbana Post Office, on August 27, 2006. The UCIMC Building is at 202 S. Broadway, Urbana, Illinois.

Hack Night meets on the last Sunday of the month and is free to the public. It gives people in the community a chance to learn more about the CUWiN project, to get involved with hardware and software development, or just to meet people in the community who are interested in wireless technologies.

As always, pizza will be provided.

For more information, contact:

Ross Musselman, CUWiN Outreach Coordinator,
Email: cu-wireless-support@cuwireless.net, Subject: Hack Night
Tel: +1 217 278-3933 x.30

August 1, 2006

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:

Daniel Meredith, CUWiN Senior Network Engineer
217-278-3933 x30 daniel@cuwireless.net

Ross Musselman, CUWiN Outreach Coordinator
217-278-3933 x30 ross@cuwireless.net

***

CUWiN PROVIDES FREE PUBLIC ACCESS TERMINALS AT THE URBANA-CHAMPAIGN INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTER AS A PART OF NEW DIGITAL INCLUSION INITIATIVE.

CUWiN has partnered with the Acorn Active Media Foundation (Acorn) and the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center (UCIMC) to provide Internet computers for the public -- the next step in spreading free broadband services throughout the local community.

CUWiN, Acorn, and the UCIMC invite the local residents to try out the new public access computers. The terminals, which use CUWiN's mesh network to provide broadband Internet access, are free and open to anyone who wishes to use them. They will be available during the UCIMC's open hours.

These Internet access terminals are part of an initiative funded by the Threshold Foundation to demonstrate the potential for Internet and multi-media Intranet services utilizing a community-owned wireless mesh network. CUWiN will also be providing free wireless hotspots in Lincoln Square Mall, the Urbana Free Library, and other public areas.

Community and municipal wireless networks have gained tremendous attention in recent years. CUWiN's software incorporates research from partnering laboratories, companies, and open source projects from around the globe with the goal of creating low-cost turn-key wireless networking solutions.

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. 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.

"The wireless technologies being developed and deployed 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

About the UCIMC: The Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center is a grassroots organization committed to using media production and distribution as tools for promoting social and economic justice in the urbana Area. We are dedicated to addressing issues that the mainstream media neglects and we do not conceal our politics behind a false objectivity. We will empower people to "become the media" by providing democratic access to available technologies and information.

About the Acorn Active Media Foundation: Acorn engages in software, website, and technical development in support of the global justice movement. The Acorn Active Media Foundation is an employee-run tech collective whose members are themselves activists; the projects Acorn staff work on are chosen based on members' interest in working on them.

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