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!