Scientific American: Science Talk. FreedomBox Foundation. About. Don't log into the net - be the net! FunkFeuer is a free, experimental network in Vienna, Graz, in parts of Weinviertel (NÖ) and Bad Ischl. It is build and maintained by computer enthusiasts. This project is non commercial. FunkFeuer is open for everybody interested and willing to contribute. To be able to participate in FunkFeuer you need a WLAN router (starting at 60 EUR) or a PC, the OLSR program, an IP from FunkFeuer, some patience and motivation. We build our network on our own! Versatile! Contact us.
Mesh Networks Research Group. Internet Freedom Fighters Build a Shadow Web. Just after midnight on January 28, 2011, the government of Egypt, rocked by three straight days of massive antiregime protests organized in part through Facebook and other online social networks, did something unprecedented in the history of 21st-century telecommunications: it turned off the Internet. Exactly how it did this remains unclear, but the evidence suggests that five well-placed phone calls—one to each of the country’s biggest Internet service providers (ISPs)—may have been all it took.
At 12:12 a.m. Cairo time, network routing records show, the leading ISP, Telecom Egypt, began shutting down its customers’ connections to the rest of the Internet, and in the course of the next 13 minutes, four other providers followed suit. By 12:40 a.m. the operation was complete. An estimated 93 percent of the Egyptian Internet was now unreachable. Select an option below: Customer Sign In *You must have purchased this issue or have a qualifying subscription to access this content.
Digital Activists are Building an Uncensorable Network. Egypt's Internet shutdown during last year's Arab Spring played a significant inspirational role. Image: Scientific American Magazine With a "shadow" network configured, activists would remain able to communicate, even after central hubs have gone dark. Here's the online version of the article: The Shadow Web And here are some supplemental links from the print edition: • FreedomBox Foundation • FunkFeuer • Mesh Networks Research Group Another fascinating addition to all of this is Scientific American's Science Talk podcast: The Coming Entanglement [MP3].
In the podcast, SA editor Fred Guterl talks with Bill Joy and Danny Hillis about the need to build an alternative, hardier network due to the ever increasing complexity of our current Internet (which makes it ever more prone to unexplained failures). Joy and Hillis envision a simpler, more robust network as a way to shelter some of our critical infrastructure from entanglements.