Southampton Open Wireless Network
Encyclopedia
The Southampton Open Wireless Network (SOWN) is a non-profit
student led community wireless
network based in Southampton
, UK. Funded by the School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton
, SOWN aims to be a research and development group for wireless technology. It also continues to aspire towards the provision of community based wireless broadband
internet
coverage for the city of Southampton.
. In October 2002 SOWN became a research project of the School of Electronics and Computer Science
at the University of Southampton. The university provided funding and gave permission for two Wireless Access Point
s to be placed on the university campus. A third was placed in the home of Mike Saywell so that the network could have access to the internet. The three nodes were linked using WDS
. One of the nodes was placed on the student union building and the other at the northern end of the campus atop the ‘Zepler Building’. The node on this building was linked to the ECS network via a VPN connection; allowing students and staff access to the high-speed university internet connection. Due to the terms of the University's ISP, non-academics are not permitted to make use of this connection.
In 2004 the network was expanded by adding a node on top of the 15 story ‘Faraday Building’ to the east of the campus. This node allowed line of site access to the main student areas of Southampton and a further three nodes in peoples homes were connected to the network. All the links in the network were wireless because the university would not allow unauthenticated traffic to pass over their network and at the time SOWN was an open network with no authentication. It was proposed that the network be secured using 802.1x authentication which would allow it to tie in with Eduroam
and thus authenticate academics from around the world.
In order to solve the problems of low speed attributed to 802.11b, SOWN proposed the use of 802.11a for high speed links between major nodes. By 2006 the node atop of Faraday was fitted with an 802.11a wireless card and aerial. Unfortunately, despite promising tests in the New Forest, 802.11a failed to transmit more than a couple of meters. This combined with several key members leaving Southampton caused SOWN to fall into decline. By the end of 2006 the only operational node was Faraday’s 802.11b access point.
In May 2007 ECS, wishing to provide pervasive wireless to the new students moving out of halls-of-residence into the local area, provided Dave Tarrant with a budget. He employed Paul Dart, an undergraduate, to work on SOWN during the summer of 2007. At this point the direction of SOWN changed, rather than providing wireless links across the city small wireless nodes would be given to students to connect to their home networks and share their internet will other students.
are identical to the Meraki Mini. Rather than running the default Meraki firmware the nodes are re-flashed with OpenWrt
Kamikaze version 7.07.
to connect back to a central server and provide connectivity between nodes and to allow for the authentication of its users. The VPN connection also provides the node with an IPv6
address taken from the University of Southampton’s IPv6 allocation. The VPN also provides both IPv4 and IPv6 multicast
connectivity. The SOWN[at]home nodes are loaned out to people on a yearly basis.
Work is being continued on the possibility of 802.11a back-haul links. The current obstacle to this, according to the SOWN website, is the lack of signal strength, due to the limits imposed by the software (in accordance with US Federal regulations). SOWN, being a UK organisation, has a license to transmit on this band at a much higher power which, if realised, could solve the problem of back-links.
Other work being carried out by SOWN includes Wireless Location Tracking. SOWN runs a VOIP server running Asterisk
and an OpenTTD
server. It is hoped that Voice over IP will be useful when conducting testing of transparent mobility whilst holding voice conferences. All members of SOWN can apply for an account, which can be used with any SIP
client.
During the summer of 2008 two interns, Stuart Harland and Sean Hughes, were employed by ECS to undertake research into deployment of 802.1X and to test the newest versions of Xsupplicant
for its use in educational institutions. As part of this research, SOWN has now rolled out eduroam
access across most of its network.
Also during this period testing of IP Mobility
, specifically in the form of Mobile IPv6. This is still ongoing as SOWN is shortly to conduct intra-site tests among its peers.
Other work is being carried out relating to the introduction of Multicast traffic including possible trial services such as streaming television.
technology to its network. Whilst the details are still under negotiation, two base units are likelly to be deployed covering a large portion of Southampton. This would make Southampton one of only a handful of cities in the United Kingdom who have an active WiMAX deployment.
SOWN[at]HOME nodes also all have eduroam
access, and broadcast the eduroam SSID. This allows academics of a multitude of universities and other educational establishments to log into the nodes using their home institution's authentication details.
Any non-academic can also gain access to the network, they can apply for a "Community Account" which will allow them access to the SOWN network and internet on SOWN[at]home nodes, and access to the SOWN network (not internet) on campus nodes.
Non-profit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...
student led community wireless
Wireless
Wireless telecommunications is the transfer of information between two or more points that are not physically connected. Distances can be short, such as a few meters for television remote control, or as far as thousands or even millions of kilometers for deep-space radio communications...
network based in Southampton
Southampton
Southampton is the largest city in the county of Hampshire on the south coast of England, and is situated south-west of London and north-west of Portsmouth. Southampton is a major port and the closest city to the New Forest...
, UK. Funded by the School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton
School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton
The School of Electronics and Computer Science , generally abbreviated "ECS", at the University of Southampton was founded in 1946 by Professor Erich Zepler...
, SOWN aims to be a research and development group for wireless technology. It also continues to aspire towards the provision of community based wireless broadband
Broadband
The term broadband refers to a telecommunications signal or device of greater bandwidth, in some sense, than another standard or usual signal or device . Different criteria for "broad" have been applied in different contexts and at different times...
internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
coverage for the city of Southampton.
History
SOWN began as a project by the Southampton University Wireless Society in 2000 with the aim of providing pervasive wireless internet access to students on and around the University of SouthamptonUniversity of Southampton
The University of Southampton is a British public university located in the city of Southampton, England, a member of the Russell Group. The origins of the university can be dated back to the founding of the Hartley Institution in 1862 by Henry Robertson Hartley. In 1902, the Institution developed...
. In October 2002 SOWN became a research project of the School of Electronics and Computer Science
School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton
The School of Electronics and Computer Science , generally abbreviated "ECS", at the University of Southampton was founded in 1946 by Professor Erich Zepler...
at the University of Southampton. The university provided funding and gave permission for two Wireless Access Point
Wireless access point
In computer networking, a wireless access point is a device that allows wireless devices to connect to a wired network using Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or related standards...
s to be placed on the university campus. A third was placed in the home of Mike Saywell so that the network could have access to the internet. The three nodes were linked using WDS
Wireless Distribution System
A wireless distribution system is a system enabling the wireless interconnection of access points in an IEEE 802.11 network. It allows a wireless network to be expanded using multiple access points without the traditional requirement for a wired backbone to link them...
. One of the nodes was placed on the student union building and the other at the northern end of the campus atop the ‘Zepler Building’. The node on this building was linked to the ECS network via a VPN connection; allowing students and staff access to the high-speed university internet connection. Due to the terms of the University's ISP, non-academics are not permitted to make use of this connection.
In 2004 the network was expanded by adding a node on top of the 15 story ‘Faraday Building’ to the east of the campus. This node allowed line of site access to the main student areas of Southampton and a further three nodes in peoples homes were connected to the network. All the links in the network were wireless because the university would not allow unauthenticated traffic to pass over their network and at the time SOWN was an open network with no authentication. It was proposed that the network be secured using 802.1x authentication which would allow it to tie in with Eduroam
Eduroam
eduroam is a secure international roaming service for users in Higher Education. The European eduroam confederation is based on a set of defined organisational and technical requirements that each member of the confederation must agree to and follow.- History...
and thus authenticate academics from around the world.
In order to solve the problems of low speed attributed to 802.11b, SOWN proposed the use of 802.11a for high speed links between major nodes. By 2006 the node atop of Faraday was fitted with an 802.11a wireless card and aerial. Unfortunately, despite promising tests in the New Forest, 802.11a failed to transmit more than a couple of meters. This combined with several key members leaving Southampton caused SOWN to fall into decline. By the end of 2006 the only operational node was Faraday’s 802.11b access point.
In May 2007 ECS, wishing to provide pervasive wireless to the new students moving out of halls-of-residence into the local area, provided Dave Tarrant with a budget. He employed Paul Dart, an undergraduate, to work on SOWN during the summer of 2007. At this point the direction of SOWN changed, rather than providing wireless links across the city small wireless nodes would be given to students to connect to their home networks and share their internet will other students.
Current status
Due to the repeated failures of high speed wireless links and costs incurred, most of SOWN's wireless nodes are now ‘SOWN[at]home’ nodes. The majority of these are loaned out to students of the university on a yearly basis. Despite this two nodes remain on campus connected via the university data network. It is planned for a third node to follow later in 2007. This has been delayed until such time that a sufficiently high building is available, and after all other problems with existing campus nodes have been worked out.SOWN[at]home nodes
Whilst any user can build/buy their own SOWN[at]home node, as of September 2007, the main emphasis has been on developing and loaning pre loaded nodes to students. The nodes, purchased from MerakiMeraki
Meraki is a cloud networking company that provides hardware and software for building large scale wired and wireless networks. These networks are used by businesses, schools, and other organizations that need wireless access points, multi-site wired networks, or both. It uses a centralized...
are identical to the Meraki Mini. Rather than running the default Meraki firmware the nodes are re-flashed with OpenWrt
OpenWrt
OpenWrt is a Linux distribution primarily targeted at routing on embedded devices. It comprises a set of about 2000 software packages, installed and uninstalled via the opkg package management system. OpenWrt can be configured using the command-line interface of BusyBox ash, or the web interface...
Kamikaze version 7.07.
Features
The nodes connect to the internet through an individuals home internet connection. They also use OpenVPNOpenVPN
OpenVPN is a free and open source software application that implements virtual private network techniques for creating secure point-to-point or site-to-site connections in routed or bridged configurations and remote access facilities. It uses a custom security protocol that utilizes SSL/TLS for...
to connect back to a central server and provide connectivity between nodes and to allow for the authentication of its users. The VPN connection also provides the node with an IPv6
IPv6
Internet Protocol version 6 is a version of the Internet Protocol . It is designed to succeed the Internet Protocol version 4...
address taken from the University of Southampton’s IPv6 allocation. The VPN also provides both IPv4 and IPv6 multicast
Multicast
In computer networking, multicast is the delivery of a message or information to a group of destination computers simultaneously in a single transmission from the source creating copies automatically in other network elements, such as routers, only when the topology of the network requires...
connectivity. The SOWN[at]home nodes are loaned out to people on a yearly basis.
Current Development
SOWN is still very much active in its development of the service. Several projects are running within the SOWN Projects group, which are investigating various wireless technologies. Some of these projects are directly funded by the School of electronics and Computer Science.Work is being continued on the possibility of 802.11a back-haul links. The current obstacle to this, according to the SOWN website, is the lack of signal strength, due to the limits imposed by the software (in accordance with US Federal regulations). SOWN, being a UK organisation, has a license to transmit on this band at a much higher power which, if realised, could solve the problem of back-links.
Other work being carried out by SOWN includes Wireless Location Tracking. SOWN runs a VOIP server running Asterisk
Asterisk (PBX)
Asterisk is a software implementation of a telephone private branch exchange ; it was created in 1999 by Mark Spencer of Digium. Like any PBX, it allows attached telephones to make calls to one another, and to connect to other telephone services including the public switched telephone network and...
and an OpenTTD
OpenTTD
OpenTTD is an open source remake and expansion of the 1995 Chris Sawyer video game Transport Tycoon Deluxe. It is an "urban planning and simulation game" in which the player aims to earn money through transportation of passengers and freight by land, water and air.OpenTTD duplicates most of...
server. It is hoped that Voice over IP will be useful when conducting testing of transparent mobility whilst holding voice conferences. All members of SOWN can apply for an account, which can be used with any SIP
Session Initiation Protocol
The Session Initiation Protocol is an IETF-defined signaling protocol widely used for controlling communication sessions such as voice and video calls over Internet Protocol . The protocol can be used for creating, modifying and terminating two-party or multiparty sessions...
client.
During the summer of 2008 two interns, Stuart Harland and Sean Hughes, were employed by ECS to undertake research into deployment of 802.1X and to test the newest versions of Xsupplicant
Xsupplicant
Xsupplicant is a supplicant that allows a workstation to authenticate with a RADIUS server using 802.1x and the Extensible Authentication Protocol...
for its use in educational institutions. As part of this research, SOWN has now rolled out eduroam
Eduroam
eduroam is a secure international roaming service for users in Higher Education. The European eduroam confederation is based on a set of defined organisational and technical requirements that each member of the confederation must agree to and follow.- History...
access across most of its network.
Also during this period testing of IP Mobility
Mobile IP
Mobile IP is an Internet Engineering Task Force standard communications protocol that is designed to allow mobile device users to move from one network to another while maintaining a permanent IP address. Mobile IP for IPv4 is described in IETF RFC 5944, and extensions are defined in IETF RFC 4721...
, specifically in the form of Mobile IPv6. This is still ongoing as SOWN is shortly to conduct intra-site tests among its peers.
Other work is being carried out relating to the introduction of Multicast traffic including possible trial services such as streaming television.
WiMAX
According to the SOWN Website, SOWN has recently begun cooperation with bluenowhere to bring WiMAXWiMAX
WiMAX is a communication technology for wirelessly delivering high-speed Internet service to large geographical areas. The 2005 WiMAX revision provided bit rates up to 40 Mbit/s with the 2011 update up to 1 Gbit/s for fixed stations...
technology to its network. Whilst the details are still under negotiation, two base units are likelly to be deployed covering a large portion of Southampton. This would make Southampton one of only a handful of cities in the United Kingdom who have an active WiMAX deployment.
Users and Peering
Currently SOWN accepts any academic from the University of Southampton. This includes staff and students. When connecting to a node, they are confronted (once attempting to access a web page) with a login screen. They can login using their University of Southampton credentials.SOWN[at]HOME nodes also all have eduroam
Eduroam
eduroam is a secure international roaming service for users in Higher Education. The European eduroam confederation is based on a set of defined organisational and technical requirements that each member of the confederation must agree to and follow.- History...
access, and broadcast the eduroam SSID. This allows academics of a multitude of universities and other educational establishments to log into the nodes using their home institution's authentication details.
Any non-academic can also gain access to the network, they can apply for a "Community Account" which will allow them access to the SOWN network and internet on SOWN[at]home nodes, and access to the SOWN network (not internet) on campus nodes.