DIY Networks – how to create your own Internet access The refugee crisis has revealed the limitations of the telecommunications market to offer internet connectivity to people in need. As is often the case when the market fails, citizen organisations have stepped in. Freifunk.net, one of the most successful such community networks, has come to fill the gap and provide vital internet services to refugees in Germany. This was made possible thanks to an innovative way of using communications technology: DIY networking. DIY networking is an umbrella term for different types of grassroots networking, such as mesh networks. According to Vice magazine, mesh networks not only allow wifi routers to provide signals to wifi-enabled devices, as usual, but also, “routers have the ability to connect to and talk to each other. By ‘meshing’ them, or connecting them together, you are creating a larger wifi zone.” Here is South Africa we have some large mesh networks built on this basis - see WUGs at http://ift.tt/2fLqlhL where Pretorai is the 5th largest wireless network organization in the world (in 2009). See http://ift.tt/2flY18m
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