What is Seattle Wireless?
Seattle Wireless is a not-for-profit effort to develop a wireless broadband community network in Seattle and its surrounding communities.
The Project
The Seattle Wireless concept of a community network is a free, locally owned wireless backbone, built on the widely available 802.11 standards-based RF technology operating in license free spectrum. The network infrastructure consists of wireless point-to-point links that connect disparate parts of the city, that eventually connect to "hot spots" that allow the general public to connect to it at a variety of popular locations. The network is a fully-routed Metropolitan Area Network, where every part of the network is directly reachable from every other. As it is built on the open wireless standards, there is a very low barrier to participation, and there are no recurring fees for access throughout the network. Interoperability, open standards, and free participation are all critical aspects of the design of the Seattle Wireless Network.
While it is not a primary goal of the Seattle Wireless project, Internet access is also freely available throughout the network. The fully routed nature of the network brings tremendous opportunities for competition in providing Internet services, as anyone who is in range of Seattle Wireless can offer Internet gateway services to all of its members.
The Community
Participants in SWN are many and diverse. Our active members include men and women of varying technical ability, anywhere from 13 to 76 years of age. Our mailing lists currently reach about 800 people, many of whom are entirely non-technical. Some members are interested in pushing the boundaries of what is technically possible with wireless hardware, while others are working on providing low cost Internet access to low-income individuals. Seattle Wireless sponsors regular monthly meetings, which bring together people from all over the country, with interests ranging from the social effects of computer networks to home-brew antenna design. Some of our members are Amateur radio enthusiasts, many work in the computer industry, but all of us are interested in the same problem: How can we most effectively build a network to let us communicate with each other, freely and inexpensively?
Press
Seattle Wireless' efforts have been highlighted in a huge number of popular publications, including The Seattle PI, The Seattle Times, Seattle Magazine, The New York Times, Business Week, Playboy, CNN, The BBC, MSNBC, Forbes, USA Today, The Washington Post, and Wired Magazine (to name a few). People around the globe are watching the social and technical experimentation going on within Seattle Wireless.
Other SWN sponsored efforts
- SnowNET
- NodeSPU
