Freifunk (German for: "free radio") is a non-commercial open

grassroots A grassroots movement is one that uses the people in a given district, region or community as the basis for a political or economic movement. Grassroots movements and organizations use collective action from the local level to effect change at t ...

initiative to support free computer networks in the German region. Freifunk is part of the international movement for a

wireless community network Wireless community networks (WCNs) or wireless community projects or simply community networks, are non-centralized, self-managed and collaborative networks organized in a grassroots fashion by communities, NGO's and cooperatives in order to provi ...

. The initiative counts about 400 local communities with over 41,000 access points. Among them,

Münster Münster (; nds, Mönster) is an independent city (''Kreisfreie Stadt'') in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is in the northern part of the state and is considered to be the cultural centre of the Westphalia region. It is also a state distr ...

Aachen Aachen ( ; ; Aachen dialect: ''Oche'' ; French and traditional English: Aix-la-Chapelle; or ''Aquisgranum''; nl, Aken ; Polish: Akwizgran) is, with around 249,000 inhabitants, the 13th-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia, and the 28th- ...

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

Hanover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...

, and

Uelzen Uelzen (; officially the ''Hanseatic Town of Uelzen'', German: ''Hansestadt Uelzen'', , Low German ''Ülz’n'') is a town in northeast Lower Saxony, Germany, and capital of the county of Uelzen. It is part of the Hamburg Metropolitan Region, a ...

are the biggest communities, with more than 1,000 access points each.

Aim

The main goals of Freifunk are to build a large-scale free wireless

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wave ...

network that is

decentralized Decentralization or decentralisation is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those regarding planning and decision making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group. Conce ...

, owned by those who run it and to support local communication. The initiative is based on the Picopeering Agreement. In this agreement, participants agree upon a network that is free from discrimination, in the sense of

net neutrality Network neutrality, often referred to as net neutrality, is the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) must treat all Internet communications equally, offering users and online content providers consistent rates irrespective of co ...

. Similar grassroots initiatives in Austria and in Switzerland are FunkFeuer and Openwireless.

Technology

Like many other free community-driven networks, Freifunk uses

mesh A mesh is a barrier made of connected strands of metal, fiber, or other flexible or ductile materials. A mesh is similar to a web or a net in that it has many attached or woven strands. Types * A plastic mesh may be extruded, oriented, ex ...

technology to bring up

ad hoc network An ad hoc network refers to technologies that allow network communications on an ad hoc basis. Associated technologies include: *Wireless ad hoc network *Mobile ad hoc network * Vehicular ad hoc network ** Intelligent vehicular ad hoc network * Prot ...

s by interconnecting multiple Wireless LANs. In a Wi-Fi

mobile ad hoc network A wireless ad hoc network (WANET) or mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a decentralized type of wireless network. The network is ad hoc because it does not rely on a pre-existing infrastructure, such as routers in wired networks or access points ...

, all routers connect to each other using special routing software. When a router fails, this software automatically calculates a new route to the destination. This software, the Freifunk firmware, is based on

OpenWrt OpenWrt (from ''open wireless router'') is an open-source project for embedded operating systems based on Linux, primarily used on embedded devices to route network traffic. The main components are Linux, util-linux, musl, and BusyBox. All com ...

and other

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

. There are several different implementations of the firmware depending on the hardware and protocols local communities use. The first Wi-Fi ad hoc network was done in Georgia, USA in 1999 as demonstrated by Toh. It was a six-node implementation running the Associativity-Based Routing protocol on Linux kernel and WAVELAN WiFi. But ABR was a patented protocol. Following that experience, Freifunk worked on standard IETF protocols - the two common standard proposals are

OLSR The Optimized Link State Routing Protocol (OLSR) is an IP routing protocol optimized for mobile ad hoc networks, which can also be used on other wireless ad hoc networks. OLSR is a proactive link-state routing protocol, which uses ''hello'' an ...

and B.A.T.M.A.N. The development of B.A.T.M.A.N. is driven by Freifunk activists on a volunteering basis.

History

One of the results of the ''BerLon'' workshop in October 2002 on free wireless community networks in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

and

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

was the Picopeering Agreement. This agreement about rationales of free networks describes how the transmission of other people's data is handled in a free network and has become a core agreement of the community. During the workshop, participants also agreed upon regular meetings in Berlin to build their own free wifi network. Ever since, there have been weekly meetings at

c-base c-base e.V. is a non-profit association located in Berlin, Germany. Its purpose is to increase knowledge and skills pertaining to computer software, hardware and data networks. The association is engaged in numerous related activities. For exam ...

Hackerspace every Wednesday. At the same time, the German language site freifunk.net was started. In September 2003, Freifunk activists founded the non-profit association ''Förderverein Freie Netzwerke e.V.'' to support free communication infrastructures. In the following years, the initiative became quite successful all over Germany, also because it became easier to install the Freifunk firmware on off-the-shelf wireless routers. There is a yearly ''Wireless Community Weekend'' taking place in Berlin, at

Legal Issues

In 2012, the Berlin Freifunk community got a lot of media attention for a project called ''Freifunk Freedom Fighter Box''. The project fights

secondary liability Secondary liability, or indirect infringement, arises when a party materially contributes to, facilitates, induces, or is otherwise responsible for directly infringing acts carried out by another party. The US has statutorily codified secondary li ...

: Secondary liability is the legal situation that makes the owners of open / non-encrypted

wireless access point In computer networking, a wireless access point (WAP), or more generally just access point (AP), is a networking hardware device that allows other Wi-Fi devices to connect to a wired network. As a standalone device, the AP may have a wired co ...

s liable for what other users do over their internet connection (i.e. guilty until proven innocent), as outlined in the Störerhaftung law ( de). The owners can thus be forced to pay for copyright infringements of third persons just because they opened their network to the public. This legal practice led to fear and uncertainty and made many people close their access points, e.g. in cafés or in public locations. The ''Freifunk Freedom Fighter Box'' was a preconfigured access point that sent all data from the public network to

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

over a

VPN A virtual private network (VPN) extends a private network across a public network and enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network. The be ...

connection. In Sweden (as in most other countries), there is no secondary liability.

Outcome

In 2013, the

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

Freifunk community set up a network of more than 300 nodes, using VPN tunnels to the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

. Many new Freifunk communities emerged. In Berlin, the community is building a

backbone network A backbone or core network is a part of a computer network which interconnects networks, providing a path for the exchange of information between different LANs or subnetworks. A backbone can tie together diverse networks in the same building ...

based on

microwave transmission Microwave transmission is the transmission of information by electromagnetic waves with wavelengths in the microwave frequency range of 300MHz to 300GHz(1 m - 1 mm wavelength) of the electromagnetic spectrum. Microwave signals are normally limi ...

over longer distances. This project is funded by the local broadcasting corporation ''Medienanstalt Berlin-Brandenburg'' and is still on-going in Germany.

References

External links

* * or {{youTube, 2Z12OjnPADA, Version in German with English subtitles
Freifunk firmware information
in the Freifunk wiki (German only)
Freifunk wiki (English-language category)

Wireless Networking in the developing world. A practical guide to planning and building low-cost telecommunications infrastructure
3rd edition, Feb. 2013 Community networks Custom firmware Mesh networking Wireless

Aim