What I reckon - Infrastructure Thoughts

Below is a slightly edited version of a post I made to the Melbourne Wireless mailing list. I have a general concern that we are not quite taking the right approach to growing our Community Network. There are those who have strong opinoons about the technical details of our network - and that's fine by me. But what bothers me is that some believe that quite specific technical "rules" should be followed by everyone on the network. I don't believe that this encourages growth. We should be looking at a regime that allows individuals and groups the power to make their own decisions about how to run their own patch of the network. If they want to run their own routing policy, they should be allowed to. If they want to allocate IP addresses amongst themselves, they should be allowed to. If they want to create VPN tunnels to other parts of the network or to other cities, they should be allowed to. It's even theoretically possible that they could administer their own DNS subdomain or top-level domain name.

With this sort of local autonomy, I believe we will see a higher level of participation in the network overall, and it will give the members and participants a greater feeling of involvement in the building of the network. The network will grow more quickly as a result and this is a Good Thing.

Anyway, here's my post:

Wireless technology is still in it's infancy and is still changing rapidly.
Furthermore, as people use the technology, they find new ways of using it.
Community networkers, academic researchers and hardware manufacturers the world over are learning from past experience and are starting think in new ways about how to design and build self-configuring, scalable adhoc networks.

I think if we take a dogmatic approach to our network we risk being left behind. If we have too many "thou shalt nots" our network could stagnate and die - both because we will be using out-of-date techniques, and because our members will feel disenfranchised. I believe we need to look at a more open approach to our network design - to allow node owners and regional groups to experiment with their own routing schemes and generally give them more local autonomy. Melbourne Wireless Inc. doesn't own the network or employ the node-owners, so Melbourne Wireless Inc. should not consider itself the network administrator. Questions about routing protocols, VPNs, node design and such should not be set in stone, with changes allowed only allowed by a central committee. Let's face it - deliberating in committees isn't fun, but fiddling with the latest network hardware and software is fun, and fun is why the network builders get involved in the first place.

This approach may seem to encourage instability in the network, and in the short term, it the network probably will be unstable. But over I believe time this approach will encourage the best methods to emerge. People won't have cause to argue whether this or that method is better because we will have tried them all and decided for ourselves.

Melbourne Wireless has always considered itself to be the facilitating body to allow it's members to build a community network. I believe Melbourne Wireless does it's best work when it does just that. A network like ours still relies on static IP addressing, so we need an IP allocation system to avoid chaos. The system we have now could be improved but works reasonably well at the moment.

Basically I think Melbourne Wireless works best when it provides a basic framework for the growth of the network, and provides facilities and resources to empower its members to organise themselves. There needs to be less rules, both written and unwritten, and less pseudo-administration over the network structure. Networks like ours are not built off a master plan, but rather are grown organically. We cannot predict how or where it will grow. We are better off learning general principles as to what makes our network grow, and to create conditions that allow for maximum growth.

Rules and dogma are not attractive features of our organisation. We are not a church. There is no one true path. People should be allowed to experiment and discuss their activities without fear of being told that they are doing it the "wrong" way. We should celebrate innovation and reward those with the motivation to try something new. What have we got to lose?
We're not a commercial network. We don't have customers or service-level agreements. If things crash horribly, no-one gets fired, and no-one loses money. Instead we come away from the experience with more knowledge. I believe this attitude will make our organisation more interesting and fun, and therefore more attractive.

The sorts of people who like to build networks are those who enjoy being part of the process. Not necessarily just by building a node according to someone else's preconceived notion, but by having a real say in the future direction of the network. We need to attract these sorts of people most of all, and we will do it by letting them make their own decisions about how they grow their patch of network.