ROOFTOPS 2001

A research workshop for MIT students interested in community-supported, sustainable urban wireless nets
Tuesday, Feb. 27 and Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2001
5:00pm to 8:00pm
Cube conference room (Media Lab Lower Level, through the glass doors into the Cube, and up the stairs)
Dinner provided
Open to Media Lab and MIT students, RSVP required

Challenge:
Design a community-supported wireless net that covers the Boston Back Bay, Beacon Hill and south Cambridge (MIT environs) with the ability to expand into the surrounding regions through the efforts of interested people in those regions. The network should grow into new areas as individuals power up new wireless nodes. The nodes should (?) serve not only the individual node owner, but others in the immediate area (such as a building (?) or block (?))

The total system should be financially and technologically self-sufficient. It should allow people to join the Internet without
recourse to wireline carriers, and without substantial work beyond the purchase and installation of the node. We presume a mix of volunteer labor and paid staff.

We don't know of a recent report that provides guidance about the best wireless architecture for such a setting, and technologies are changing rapidly. There are many opinions (and several partly- implemented projects) from the community-hacker and wireless-vendor camps. Possibly, the technology required to make the above a reality does not yet exist, or appears at too high a price point.

We want to survey current approaches using now-available technologies for wide-area (blanketing large contiguous regions) and long-range (spanning gaps) wireless technologies by some of the following means, or whatever seems interesting to the participants:

- case studies of 5-10 past and present community wireless projects
- discussion of successful wired, community-supported nonprofit ISPs
- tech analysis of what _can_ be done with off-the-shelf hardware
- sketches of original architectures for wireless urban Internet services, considering cost, capacity, feasibility, and ease of adoption

Key issues:
- mechanical limitations (such as restrictions or limitations of antennas)
- technical limitations (like routing, latency, wireless range, configuration and management, effects of urban obstructions and the brick buildings that make up the target areas, and the matter of how _dense_ the net must be)
- financial constraints (per-node cost, backbone and common costs, financial structure to sustain technical support, marketing, and operations)

DRAFT AGENDA
Tuesday Feb 27, 2001:
5:00-5:15 introductions
5:15-5:25 JIM/Intro to wired community nonprofit ISPs
5:25-5:40 TIM SHEPARD(LCS)/technological aspects of large-scale user-financed metropolitan-area ad-hoc networking
5:40-7:00 break into groups, study:
- wired community nonprofit ISPs
- current wireless projects using any technology
- summary of currently available possible enabling technologies
7:00-7:45 groups present their findings

Wednesday Feb 28, 2001:
5-5:30 discussion of the "design challenge"
5:30-7:00 break into groups and design
7:00-8:00 groups present designs to everyone, with discussion

Please note the meeting is open to Media Lab and MIT students who have RSVP'd Dana or Jim