Building Wireless Networks – Again.

What if a disaster wipes out your community’s wireless infrastructure?  Would you be able to get it back online using whatever was left of the original equipment?  No matter what caused the disaster – natural or man made  -  if your communication links are severed, your chances of recovery and getting assistance drop to nearly zip.

In thinking about being prepared for said disaster, I find myself thinking about the communication problem first and foremost.  Of course there are immediate needs like medical supplies, water, food and shelter to consider first, but without a communication system, however rudimentary, even those seemingly standard survival issues could be too difficult to coordinate.

A few years ago, I came across an interesting site who’s mission is to provide knowledge and expertise for building wifi networks in developing communities around the globe.

As part of this, they put together a very informative book (free PDF download, 425 pages) called Wireless Networking in the Developing World – 2nd Edition

This is a great book to have around.  Keep it stored locally on your computer or – probably smarter – print it out.  In the event you lose your connectivity to the web, you can most likely use the information in this book to re-establish that connectivity.  It is full of basics as well as advanced, practical DIY how-tos.  It walks the reader through the entire design and installation of various 802.11 infrastructures with the goal being to get a fairly advanced communication backbone using available resources and equipment up and running quickly.  There is even a section on using solar power to run your mesh, complete with some basic circuits that will provide a nice AC-DC, regulated output as well as sizing panels for a given output.  All fairly important things to know when nice, conditioned 120V or 240V RMS sine waves have stopped flowing out of the wall.

Why 802.11?  Because the equipment will be strewn everywhere.  It is by far the most popular protocol for wireless networks and most people will have access to basic network gear that can connect to this protocol.  The idea is to quickly get the infrastructure back up.  You won’t be inventing a whole new state-of-the-art communication system here.  You and your neighbors are trying to survive.

I’ll bet this:  No matter what your level of hacking ability is, this book will include  information you have never thought of or used in a real-world setting.  I have a lot of respect for the authors of this book.  Many of them are leaders in community wifi projects as well as researchers and elite hackers.  There is a vast amount of engineering experience crammed into these pages.

The book was obviously intended to assist those with limited resources and without access to expensive, brand new commercial hardware with a means to create and use a wireless network in their community.  The book is really not a “survival guide” or “disaster recovery” plan per se.  But, looking at recent events such as Katrina and Haiti, the need for this type of information to translate to the idea of citizen-powered disaster recovery is not only vital, it is probably a skill any good hacker or engineer should keep a close eye on.  I believe in the power of connecting to the developing world and giving everyone fair and equal access to the world wide web (and that’s ABSOLUTELY NOT for the FCC to decide but that’s another matter…).  The author’s cause is just and good.  I just think, the way this book has approached the problem of building an ad-hoc infrastructure in third-world conditions will be very similar to recovering a destroyed network after a natural disaster or worse.

One more thing:  There is a link on the http://wndw.net page that points to http://wirelessu.org/.  Follow this link.  And learn.

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