(2005-11-02) from the "unternet" keyword on del.icio.us, found Freifunk.net (German language only) and PicoPeer.net. Still not getting a sense of any real organization yet, I'm gonna have to get off my butt.
CommunityWireless.org seems to be an Unternet, but I've got to understand it better... the MeshAP from LocustWorld is its core component. I'd seen this on Slashdot a while ago, but lost the info until someone mentioned it again on April 29, 2005.
FreeNetworks.org is great too. They have a wiki that actually works, so I'm playing around with it when time and my other projects permit...
Addressing schemes, hmmmm... Seattle Wireless decided on the 10/8 network for theirs, but that would be difficult to scale to a worldwide unternet. I'm thinking more along the lines of IPv6, and I like both Tony Hain's draft spec and these Aussies' draft. Hain's is the most easily implemented, but takes up a larger chunk of IPv6 address space. Update: Tony Hain's spec is still changing drastically: version 7 gives a very different scheme than that referenced on the loadrunner site, and includes a Perl script to calculate the prefix for you. Now there's version 8 of the spec, which doesn't contain the Perl script but the script from version 7 still generates the right prefixes for the given examples I tried, so hopefully it's substantially the same.
Browsing IRC channels on freenode.net I found #bcwireless, which is a community wireless network in British Columbia. Looks like a good site for ideas for further Unternet development.
Bob Jonas tells me:
Eastserve is an all wireless neighbourhood network in Manchester, www.eastserve.com - nothing fancy but with a 5.8GHz backbone and 802.11b links to resident's homes. 1500 connected so far and 17 schools. There is plenty of local content but most people only get connected for the high speed connection to the Internet. This is just one strand of a community regeneration project.Connection to the network for residents is free (it costs the project approx £160). Local content and email is also free. Access to the Internet is charged depending on bandwidth required. The project aims to deliver a financially self-sustaining network so money has to feature somewhere. On our network about half pay to access the net; we need to connect quite a few more customers who want to access the net to get to sustainability.
A similar project to ours, although in a more rural area, is Cybermoor - www.cybermoor.org. [And] another project you may like to look at is www.redbricks.org.uk - they've achieved quite a bit with very little money.
And also see what Cringely has to say about the Linksys WRT54G; he's thinking in terms of people making money with it, but that's OK by me. The same idea can be used for the Unternet.
New links (to me, anyway) from Slashdot today: check out LessNetworks.com, NoCat.net, and SeattleWireless.net for more Unternet ideas. The momentum is building! [2004-11-24]