Experiences from building an outdoor testbed for community wireless networks

Community Wireless Networks are an emerging networking model, offering people the opportunity to build and manage their own network without being dependent on telecom operators. The strength of this type of networks lies in the involvement of the whole community, as each person benefitting from the community wireless network somehow contributes to the design, deployment and maintenance of the network. This model has resulted in large community wireless networks growing all over the world, connecting people in the local communities to each other and the Internet. Because of the rising popularity and demonstrated success, researchers are also becoming more interested in community networks. This paper presents guidelines and experiences from creating an outdoor testbed targeted at community wireless networks, based on experience and feedback from community network members.