C/Hermanos García
Noblejas 5, Esc 1, 2B
Madrid
28037
España/Spain
sjmudd@pobox.com
C/Barberán y Collar
22, 1º D
Alcalá de
Henares
28805
España/Spain
shuodata@terra.es
Paseo de la
Estación 1, 1º C
Alcalá de
Henares
28807
España/Spain
c4n99@hotmail.com
Copyright © 2001 by Simon Mudd y MadridWireless
Copyright © 2002 by Simon Mudd, Ángel Moncada "c4n", Joaquín Béjar "ShuoData"
This is the Wireless Network Structure Document, a document which tries to give some general guidelines to groups which are building community wireless networks, enabling them to achieve a well designed scalable network which will be easy to connect to similar wireless networks worldwide.
The interest in wireless networks has increased enormously in the last few years, especially since recently when costs have decreased and the hardware has become more widely available. It is hoped that a document such as this will help combine the knowledge of those who have experience with building networks of this type and will avoid problems which may later make a global Internet of wireless networks difficult to achieve.
This document tries to give some guidelines about how to build a community wireless network. It explains the structure of the different wireless networks, how the nodes and clients are connected and how the IP traffic is routed between the different nodes organised by an individual or a group. Taking into account that the different wireless groups are working towards a common goal, to setup a wireless networks in various place throughout the world, this document also tries to give information about how the different groups could connect together or how they could connect to the Internet.
This document can not hope to answer all the questions related to building a community wireless network, but it does attempt to cover some of the more practical aspects which will be common to any group considering starting a project of this type. Most of these considerations if treated or at least considered at the beginning of a project can avoid mistakes which are difficult to rectify later. It is clear to us at the moment that there is an important interest in this subject, and that even if the growth of some of the current projects is less than their core members expect, that there is still a potential for creating extremely large networks, each of which will requiring some careful coordination to work effectively.
The use of common standards and network structures greatly simplifies the tasks needed to interconnect the wireless networks and also minimises the management effort which is common to each network.
Feedback and comments about how to improve this document are always welcome, so don't be shy. If you know more about this subject than I do help me out and get your name down in the list of credits.
I wrote the original version of this document in Spanish. Seeing that there might be a wider potential audience if the document where written in English I translated the Spanish version. As English is my native tongue and it is difficult to maintain a document in several languages further changes to this document will be made in English.
The latest version of this document can be found at http://www.pobox.com/~sjmudd/wireless/network-structure/. I will also add pointers to the latest version in Spanish.
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