An ad-hoc group of local nerds is planning on changing the way that you think of your internet connection. If they succeed, it wont be your connection and my connection, but our connection. Their idea is to create a large “wireless mesh network” in Vancouver, and they’re doing so in a way that almost anyone can join.

Getting a wireless connection in this city isn’t hard. There are more than 300 “hotspots” throughout the city, and rumour has it that if you open a laptop on an especially clear day in Yaletown, you can find two hundred wireless routers within range. Most, of course, are password protected.

The difference here is that mesh 
wireless is explicitly open. The network is a grassroots effort by the nerds whose offices have converged in the exposed brick lofts of tech-riche Gastown.

But why, when they have fast, reliable, secure connections in their swankish offices and homes?

To answer this, I have to explain a bit about nerds. It isn’t so much that the internet is addictive as that it becomes assimilated and internalised, what Marshall McLuhann describes as “an externalization of the senses.” This external nervous system gets more useful the more readily available it is. As such, nerds have an imperative to spread it into as many corners of their lives as possible.

Mesh routers allow a community of users to pool their resources and construct an area of wireless coverage far greater than the reach of their individual nodes, and far more practical than having explicit or unspoken agreements about using each other’s WiFi when out of range of home.

These nerds call themselves 
freethenet.ca

The collective noun for more than 12 nerds in a room is “a wondering,” There were just under 12 at the first meeting of what was at the time tentatively calling itself the “Vancouver Wireless Cadre.” Our diminutive number was a lucky stroke; instead of sitting around wondering how to build a shared wireless network that could be expanded inexpensively and share bandwidth between users, something clicked. By the end of the week, vancouver.freethenet.ca had about a dozen nodes down Water Street, a smattering in the West End, and one or two on Commercial.

I met the participants of freethenet.ca downtown at the offices of Bryght, a local web company that’s keen on engaging the tech community.

Boris Mann, who describes himself as ‘the hand waving’ guy (tech-speak for someone who glosses over the details and gets right to the big idea) had sent the email earlier in the week to call a quick conclave before he flew to Barcelona. He’d wanted to start people talking before he left.

A wireless mesh network, in hand-waving terms, is a way of spreading a wireless signal over a larger area with a series of repeaters, and also a way of pooling internet connections to share bandwidth. It might sound complicated, but due to clever engineering all the hard work is hidden.

The technology that makes this possible is from a company called Miraki, whose tiny mesh routers automatically manage all the configuration and 
administration.

For those that have used BitTorrent, the idea is similar. Except here, instead of downloading pieces of a large file from others who are also downloading, you bridge gaps in other people’s network connection, and they bridge gaps in yours.

Use the network, all you need is a WiFi card and a mesh node within range, to be a repeater though you’ll need one of the Miraki mesh routers.

Joe Bowser—who’s enthusiasm for the project as well as his technological knowledge of radios, antennae and “chipsets” is staggering—was asked onto CBC’s early editon last week. He reported on the group’s discussion forum: “Went to the CBC today, and the first and seemingly only thing that they wanted to talk about was ‘What about Telus?’”

He’s expecting this to be a common refrain as the network spreads. Sharing one’s wireless, while common practice, is potentially in contravention of the internet provider’s usage policies.

This hasn’t stopped café owners from setting up wireless signals for their customers, nor has it stopped many people from sharing WiFi with their neighbours and tenants, but if freethenet.ca expands beyond the experimental network that exists at this time, then it’s users are anticipating some uncomfortable speed bumps.

So, with these hurdles, and in the face of the potential wrath of the large-pipe owning providers, why would these nerds do this?

There are several reasons, and hubris may be among them. Also, the belief that unwieldy rules get in the way of innovation and play.

The lofty ambition implied in the moniker Free the Net fits, serves as a kind of road map for where the participants wish to take the network. But the network is little more than a toy right now, connecting the members of a close-knit Vancouver internet business community and providing a basis for personal experimentation.

Miraki, is keen to prounounce its goal of “bringing internet to the next billon people.”

On Water Street, where the relatively inaccessible top-floor offices offer good sightlines that allow wireless signals to travel longer distances, the meshing has already begun.