Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network
Encyclopedia
The Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network (CUWiN) is a special project of the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center (UCIMC)
. Started in 2000 by a group of developers wishing to take advantage of under-utilized Internet links purchased for public use (such as those in municipal offices, schools, and universities), it began a partnership with UCIMC in 2004, gaining its current special project status. CUWiN inherits UCIMC's not-for-profit status and is devoted to building a network architecture to cost-effectively and efficiently create a community wireless network.
The project has built a communications network using wireless networking equipment ranging from commodity personal computers to specialized Soekris miniaturized, fan-less computers with integrated networking. This is essentially the same "WiFi" equipment used in homes and offices, but CUWiN put it on rooftops to connect neighbors and form a high-speed community network. It is one of many localized community wireless network projects across the world and is developing a platform which can be reused by certain types of these projects, based on their community's geographic structure.
(OSPF), though they are in the process of implementing a much more amenable routing protocol named Hazy-Sighted Link State
(HSLS), and then, later, implementing a modification to it named Adaptive Hazy-Sighted Link State (A-HSLS). They estimate that the scaling properties of the hazy-sighted link state family of algorithms provide the ability to scale to thousands or tens of thousands of nodes in a densely packed metropolitan network.
named Expected Transmission Count
(ETX). ETX allows links to be weighted based on the performance of the link experienced over time. The ability to so weight wireless links is needed due to the dynamic nature of physical environments. Where a tree in the winter has no leaves, a wireless link passing through it will be strong. In the summer, the leaves will have grown back, causing the link to have a lower capacity.
ETX allows a node to dynamically adapt to the quality of each link, and HSLS/A-HSLS allows nodes to scale their knowledge of the network's topography relative to the distance between nodes.
Sascha Meinrath
Chief Engineer:
David Young
Outreach Coordinator:
Ross Musselman
Senior Network Engineer:
Daniel Meredith
Network Engineers:
Matthew Isaacs,
Joshua King
Senior Software Engineers:
Bill Cominsky,
Bryan Cribbs,
Zach Miller,
Paul Smith,
Brandon Bowersox,
Garrett D'Amore
User Support & VoIP Coordinator:
Stephane Alnet
Policy Advisors:
Victor Pickard,
Ben Scott
Project Webmasters:
Steven Mansour,
Chase Phillips
CUWiN Interns:
Tom Wiltzius
Development Team:
cu-wireless-dev@cuwireless.net
. They are building a community wireless network in west Chicago
, Illinois
using the software CUWiN produces. Wireless Africa programme of the Meraka Institute
managed by the CSIR—The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (in South Africa). The City of Urbana, IL. UIUC—The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Tribal Digital Village. Wireless Ghana.
Independent Media Center
The Independent Media Center is a global participatory network of journalists that report on political and social issues. It originated during the Seattle anti-WTO protests worldwide in 1999 and remains closely associated with the global justice movement, which criticizes neo-liberalism and its...
. Started in 2000 by a group of developers wishing to take advantage of under-utilized Internet links purchased for public use (such as those in municipal offices, schools, and universities), it began a partnership with UCIMC in 2004, gaining its current special project status. CUWiN inherits UCIMC's not-for-profit status and is devoted to building a network architecture to cost-effectively and efficiently create a community wireless network.
The project has built a communications network using wireless networking equipment ranging from commodity personal computers to specialized Soekris miniaturized, fan-less computers with integrated networking. This is essentially the same "WiFi" equipment used in homes and offices, but CUWiN put it on rooftops to connect neighbors and form a high-speed community network. It is one of many localized community wireless network projects across the world and is developing a platform which can be reused by certain types of these projects, based on their community's geographic structure.
Mission
CUWiN's three-part mission is to:- connect more people to Internet and broadband services,
- develop open-source hardware and software for use by wireless projects worldwide, and
- build and support community-owned, not-for-profit broadband networks in cities and towns around the globe.
Network architecture
The CUWiN platform intends to provide a meshed, ad-hoc, non-hierarchical network topology based on commodity infrastructure and technology. Historically, in such ad hoc networks scaling problems have arisen as the overhead involved in processing the routing information and maintaining a consistent link state among peers grows beyond the ability of the individual nodes in the network to track and forward it. In effect, once a network of this type has reached a certain size, the routing information alone uses all of the available capacity on the network.Routing protocol
Research into routing protocols has uncovered algorithmic approaches to handle and manage this complexity. While starting up, CUWiN relies on Dijkstra's Open Shortest Path FirstOpen Shortest Path First
Open Shortest Path First is an adaptive routing protocol for Internet Protocol networks. It uses a link state routing algorithm and falls into the group of interior routing protocols, operating within a single autonomous system . It is defined as OSPF Version 2 in RFC 2328 for IPv4...
(OSPF), though they are in the process of implementing a much more amenable routing protocol named Hazy-Sighted Link State
Hazy Sighted Link State Routing Protocol
The Hazy-Sighted Link State Routing Protocol is a wireless mesh network routing protocol being developed by the CUWiN Foundation. This is an algorithm allowing computers communicating via digital radio in a mesh network to forward messages to computers that are out of reach of direct radio contact...
(HSLS), and then, later, implementing a modification to it named Adaptive Hazy-Sighted Link State (A-HSLS). They estimate that the scaling properties of the hazy-sighted link state family of algorithms provide the ability to scale to thousands or tens of thousands of nodes in a densely packed metropolitan network.
Routing metric
As with the routing protocol, CUWiN is also experimenting with a new routing metric introduced by the Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyMassachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
named Expected Transmission Count
Expected Transmission Count
The ETX metric, or expected transmission count, is a measure of the quality of a path between two nodes in a wireless packet data network. It is used extensively in mesh networking algorithms.-History:...
(ETX). ETX allows links to be weighted based on the performance of the link experienced over time. The ability to so weight wireless links is needed due to the dynamic nature of physical environments. Where a tree in the winter has no leaves, a wireless link passing through it will be strong. In the summer, the leaves will have grown back, causing the link to have a lower capacity.
ETX allows a node to dynamically adapt to the quality of each link, and HSLS/A-HSLS allows nodes to scale their knowledge of the network's topography relative to the distance between nodes.
Project architecture
The CUWiN project consists mainly of two subgroups: one is directly concerned with the build-out and maintenance of the network in the Champaign-Urbana community and the other is directly concerned with the development of the platform and all that entails.Core Members
Executive Director:Sascha Meinrath
Sascha Meinrath
Sascha Meinrath is the Director of the New America Foundation's "Open Technology Initiative" and heads the "Internet in a Suitcase" effort to create ad-hoc mesh wireless technologies...
Chief Engineer:
David Young
Outreach Coordinator:
Ross Musselman
Senior Network Engineer:
Daniel Meredith
Network Engineers:
Matthew Isaacs,
Joshua King
Senior Software Engineers:
Bill Cominsky,
Bryan Cribbs,
Zach Miller,
Paul Smith,
Brandon Bowersox,
Garrett D'Amore
User Support & VoIP Coordinator:
Stephane Alnet
Policy Advisors:
Victor Pickard,
Ben Scott
Ben Scott (Policy Expert)
Ben Scott is Policy Advisor for Innovation at the US Department of State, where he works at the intersection of technology and foreign policy. In a small team of advisors to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he works to help steward the 21'st Century Statecraft agenda with a focus on...
Project Webmasters:
Steven Mansour,
Chase Phillips
CUWiN Interns:
Tom Wiltzius
Development Team:
cu-wireless-dev@cuwireless.net
Partners
CUWiN receives a large amount of assistance in software testing from the Center for Neighborhood TechnologyCenter for Neighborhood Technology
The Center for Neighborhood Technology is a non-profit organization, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, which is committed to sustainable development and livable urban communities. CNT, as an “innovations center for urban sustainability”, researches, invents, and tests urban strategies that use...
. They are building a community wireless network in west Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
using the software CUWiN produces. Wireless Africa programme of the Meraka Institute
Wireless Africa programme of the Meraka Institute
The Wireless Africa programme is a special initiative of the Meraka Institute managed by the CSIR in South Africa.The Wireless Africa group is researching ways and means to develop sustainable information and communications technology in developing countries...
managed by the CSIR—The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (in South Africa). The City of Urbana, IL. UIUC—The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Tribal Digital Village. Wireless Ghana.
Funding history
- December, 2003: Received a $200,000 grant from the Open Society InstituteOpen Society InstituteThe Open Society Institute , renamed in 2011 to Open Society Foundations, is a private operating and grantmaking foundation started by George Soros, aimed to shape public policy to promote democratic governance, human rights, and economic, legal, and social reform...
- July, 2004: Received a $50,000 grant from the Threshold Foundation
- December, 2005: Received $118,000 grant from the Open Society InstituteOpen Society InstituteThe Open Society Institute , renamed in 2011 to Open Society Foundations, is a private operating and grantmaking foundation started by George Soros, aimed to shape public policy to promote democratic governance, human rights, and economic, legal, and social reform...
- July, 2006: Received a $500,000 grant from the National Science FoundationNational Science FoundationThe National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...