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It's 2008, and you can get free wifi just about anywhere. The city is covered in little islands of Internet access provided for free or for pay. Every single one of these Access Points is usually connected to the internet through a telephone company or a cable company, and every single one costs money. Collectively, that's a lot, and there are more efficient and cost effective ways to build networks. Using the same basic technology that you connect to to check your mail at a coffee shop, you can connect to your neighbor, and that neighbor to their neighbor, and from this, we can build a city wide mesh network. From there, we can not only drive the collective cost of our Internet access down, we can utilize our localness to increase our speeds and make connections with local producers.

Seattle Wireless started in 2000, and back then it was simple idea, with huge technical hurdles, high costs and a hard (but novel) sell to the public. Now the technology exists, the hardware is cheap, and all we need are people to realize the dream of a locally grown network. This dream has been realized in many FreeNetworks all over the world, and is not only tested technologically, but has shown to be a sustainable model for cost effective network building.

Join us by introducing yourself on the MailingLists, or even better, in person at HackNight. Wednesday nights at 7PM at Metrix Communication.

We believe we can build a useful decentralized multi-owner mesh network in the city of Seattle

We know we can't do it alone

Our goal is ambitious, but good goals always are. We know the technology exists, we believe the will is there, and we know there's nothing more powerful than a crowd. Join us and help us build it.

SeattleWireless is a grassroots Community Wireless Network project in Seattle, Washington. Its goals include the creation of a broadband wireless metropolitan area network, as well as the creation of tools that help us achieve that goal.

We are a not-for-profit community of volunteers, and although we have many different motivations, we believe that ordinary people can build a network without recurrent fees that is not beholden to any commercial telecommunications provider.

PressCoverage - What other people think the project is about

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HotNews - Deals on Gear

HardwareComparison - A comprehensive chart comparing features of different hardware

HackingAccessPoints - Got gear? Take it apart and bend it to your will.

AntennaHowTo - Build your own Antennas