Winter Holiday and people at guifi.net does not seem to slow down. They keep meeting on Thursdays (indeed, recently Tuesdays) at guifilab (sort of wifi workshop to learn and test new stuff with an open invitation to anyone interested) in Barcelona. They first started to meet at a hacklab called riereta.net, they moved to Infospai (a sociolopitical center) and some times to la Quimera: Kernel Panic (another hacklab). As such, guifilab is more likely to be a grouping of people that can be summoned upon different locations and that will start talking and making the agenda to foster free and neutral (as they put it) wifi networks.

One of these workshops dealt with the issue of network architecture and protocols for Barcelona. As many other wifi initiatives, guifi.net relies on nodes and supernodes transmitting / receiving data. These nodes are being set up with special firmwares (you can see a recommended list here; http://www.guifi.net/firmware. dd-guifi stands for a custom version of dd-wrt) and they usually follow a master-client approach to get linked via roof tops.

Nevertheless, as Barcelona orography is dissimilar to “rural” Catalonia ones, some wanted to try mesh networks to see if that worked better for a high density of nodes scenario. “Dit i fet” (“told and done”; a popular catalan expression).

Following previous experiences like people at freifunk, we profited from the visit of one of his members, Axel, to start tunning some routers / AP into mesh artifacts with BATMAN inside. Previously, in 2007, at the SAX annual meeting, they had Elektra sharing knowledge about it too.

As a result, between a lapse of one moth aprox., they have already started a working mesh network in some neighborhood (Gracia). You can see a map here; http://merry.biruji.org/gsf/mapa/ (Be aware that this map is not listing all guifi nodes, it only shows meshed ones)

The speeding up process these people are carrying out is really astonishing. If one thinks they started at a remote location in Gurb and now do extend to more than 7.000 km one can not stop himself wondering how

[btw, it is no secret they have become members of the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL) by now]

Now, how will mesh network be integrated to master-client already existing infrastructure? Will this technical innovation lead to more people connected to guifi? Does it simplify the connection process for non-that-expert users? It is a choice in the network routing protocols facilitating or hardening the way citizens can manage urban infrastructures -as wifi- by themselves?

Are Technological Zones (to use Andrew Barry  terminology) between freifunk (Germany) and guifi.net (Catalunya) being shaped at this particular moment when a protocol locally designed in Germany profiting form globally spread programming knowledges is actualized in local machines in Gracia neighbourhood? (languages boundaries, or zones, remain though… However, Germany and Catalonia are not linked, yet, by wifi, that is why I use the verb “to shape” as a means to state that it is not already there but somehow you can see the shadow of something being elaborated approaching)

RAX!

Planning to write a biblio static .html page to include some wifi references I am currently working on.

Having done a biblio research crossing some keywords such as “wifi” “social” “politics” “urban” at sage and sociological abstracts databases one can now tell how quickly researchers have catch up with wifi. There was not so much being done at the beginning of 2005. Hopefully enough, we will see more funds coming into wifi research projects dealing not only with the techie part of it

Biblio / References.. get it. coming soon…

PS: Btw, people at guifi.net [see about] use to end up their mails with SAX [which means "Salut, Amor i Xaraxa - translated as; Healh (aka well-being), Love and Networks"]. SAX is also the annual or biannual (depending on the remaining energies) meeting of catalan wifi networks. Maybe it is not a bad idea to end up my posts as RAX [Recerca, Amor i Xarxa - translated as; "Research, Love and Networks"]

RAX!

Talking about books; here is an image of a “bibliobus“. Sort of mobile library to bring book access (and it does also have a satellite broadband internet connection) to rural areas in Catalonia country-side (Berguedà). Want to talk about digital/access divides?

ok,ok… getting started. From now on, messing around with css stylesheet and php stuff. Hoping to start editing soon about citizen management of technology or, else, what I term in catalan; “Gestió Ciutadana de la Tecnologia”. Which is the topic of my Ph.D at the Department of Social Psychology in the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB).

So, if you are (very improbable though) reading my first attempt to test the editing tool of WP with this dull message, consider this blog as “under construction / replacement / disentanglement…” till further deletion of this draft post

THX!

PS: [I have finally decided to not erase the early shaping of this post]