Villagers dig 15 miles of trenches in the name of faster Internet

Michaelston-y-Fedw, located between Cardiff and Newport in the United Kingdom, has a population of around 300 people. They were all putting up with shitty internet, with speeds as slow as 4Mbps. It was possible to pay for high-speed broadband service in Michaelston-y-Fedw — someone is always willing to take your money — but the infrastructure to pipe the bandwidth into the village didn’t exist. Sick of their internet connectivity being caught in the late 1990s, some of the villagers got to drinking, which led to talking and, after a bit more drinking, resulted in a plan: They’d sort the mess out themselves.

From The Guardian:

A community interest company was set up and grants secured from the Welsh government but to keep the costs to householders down it was decided that as much work as possible would be done by villagers themselves.

Local farm workers have been hired to help dig, but villagers have done much of the work, including excavating trenches from the boundaries of their properties to the external wall where the fibre enters their homes.

Thanks to the villagers’ efforts, 90% of their community will be able to enjoy broadband connection speeds of up to 1,000 Mbps by the fall.

The project is a wonderful example of how even just a few individuals getting together for a common cause can change the world for the better.

source

Becoming your own ISP for fun and profit

Rather then simply rely on the connection provided by the data centre, they would instead rely on forging their own connection to the ‘net, essentially becoming their own Internet Service Provider.

This is known as creating an Autonomous System. To do this involves several challenges, the first of which is understanding just how things work at this level of networking. [Kenneth] explains the vagaries of the Border Gateway Protocol, and why its neccessary to secure your own address space. There’s also an amusing discussion on the routing hardware required for such a feat and why [Kenneth]’s setup may fall over within the next two years or so.

Continue reading “Becoming your own ISP for fun and profit”

Volunteers Around the World Build Surveillance-Free Cellular Network Called ‘Sopranica’

Sopranica is a project intended to replace all aspects of the existing cell phone network with their freedom-respecting equivalents

“Taking out all the basement firmware on the cellphone, the towers that track your location, the payment methods that track who you are and who owns the number, and replacing it so we can have the same functionality without having to give up all the privacy that we have to give up right now. At a high level, it’s about running community networks instead of having companies control the cell towers that we connect to.”

All you need to do to join Sopranica is “create a free and anonymous Jabber ID, which is like an email address.” Jabber is slang for a secure instant messaging protocol called XMPP that let’s you communicate over voice and text from an anonymous phone number. “Next, you need to install a Jabber app on your phone,” reports Motherboard. “You’ll also need to install a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) app, which allows your phone to make calls and send texts over the internet instead of the regular cellular network.”

Lastly, you need to get your phone number, which you can do by navigating to Sopranica’s JMP website. (JMP is the code, which was published by Gingerich in January, and “first part of Sopranica.”) “These phone numbers are generated by Sopranica’s Voice Over IP (VOIP) provider which provides talk and text services over the internet. Click whichever number you want to be your new number on the Sopranica network and enter your Jabber ID. A confirmation code should be sent to your phone and will appear in your Jabber app.” As for how JMP protects against surveillance, Gingerich says, “If you’re communicating with someone using your JMP number, your cell carrier doesn’t actually know what your JMP number is because that’s going over data and it’s encrypted. So they don’t know that that communication is happening.”

Could this be used in black spots?

William builds a power-generating windmill from junk parts, transforming his life and catapulting him onto the world stage.

With only a library book as his guide, 14-year-old William Kamkwamba builds a windmill in his Malawian village that changes his life forever. Using junk parts and an inexhaustible imagination, he harnesses enough energy to power a generator that saves his family from famine and resuscitates his dying farming community.
http://williamandthewindmill.com/