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Community Network Research

This is a curated list of resources, organizations, hardware, apps/services, platforms, etc. for community/mesh/wireless networks. It draws from this public and editable spreadsheet from Wakoma. The list is pretty ugly right now, and there are plenty of errors and omissions, but with your help this will improve over time.

Contributions are very encouraged, as are suggestions for making this resource more useful.

Current Process:

Note: We've done things this way to make it very simple for anyone in the community to make contributions. We will soon generate a website out of this content using GitHub pages.

We also have a list of CN-related individuals, but will create an opt-in Sheet/Form for people to add their own names.

Credits

The approach for linking Sheets to GitHub was influenced by Gabriel Krieshok and his incredible ICT4D Guide.

Thanks to Dirk Uys for technical input

Please contact us at info @ wakoma.co if you would like something removed.

CC-BY-SA-4.0

ToC

Resources

^ back to top ^

Blogs

  • Many Possibilities — Steve Song's incredible blog. Posts on Spectrum, TVWS, Net Neutrality, Open Source, Open Content, Open Hardware, Open Innovation, Open Business… the list goes on.

Guides and Platforms

  • OpenTelecomData — This wiki gathers examples of good practice in transparency in the telecom sector. It also carries country profiles of regulations as they relate to community networks and small scale operators. Click on the links in orange to explore either theme.
  • OpenTelcomData Spectrum Chart — Prototyping a new comparative visualisation of spectrum assignments around the world

Educational Resources

Publications

  • Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch) — The 2018 edition of GISWatch focuses on local access models, specifically, community networks as self-organised, self-managed or locally developed solutions for local access, based on the conviction that one of the keys to affordable access is giving local people the skills and tools to solve their own connectivity challenges.

Awesome Lists

Books

Forums

Videos

Organizations

^ back to top ^

Academic

  • N4D Lab — The N4D Lab conducts research on understanding the fundamental challenges of providing universal Internet access and explores technological solutions to solve some of the challenges.

Consultancies

  • Where Innovation Serves Humans — A bottom-up co-creative CN/ISP and infrastructure incubator that has seeded 5 sustainable community networks so far, without any funding.

Private Sector

  • Wakoma Incorporated — Wakoma Incorporated is a capacity development and consulting firm empowering public, private, and civil-society sector stakeholders working with technology in emerging markets. Supporting Community Networks globally.

Civil Society

  • Internet Society —
  • Afchix — AfChix is a network of women in Technology who consider gender diversity in the Computer Science & ICT industry very critical for increased creativity and innovative performance of the industry.
  • VPUU — VPUU is an area-based community development organisation that aims at safe, sustainable, integrated communities, citizenship, pride and the improvement of quality of life for residents in their neighbourhoods through a comprehensive range of urban improvements and social interventions. VPUU has an ICT4D department creating innovative digitial solutions to these ends.

Community Networks

ISP

  • Converged Technology Networks — A small, locally owned WISP in Malawi that uses a combination of low cost network equipment and a homegrown content delivery network to deliver services to homes, schools and SMEs

Hardware

^ back to top ^

Servers

  • Banana Pi — Single-Board Computer
  • Orange Pi — Single-Board Computer
  • Raspberry Pi — Single-Board Computer
  • Rock64 — Single-Board Computer
  • Subnodes — The Subnodes project is an open source initiative focused on streamlining the process of setting up a Raspberry Pi as a wireless access point for distributing content, media, and shared digital experiences. The device behaves as a web server, creates its own local area network, and does not connect with the Internet.

Routers/Firewalls

Switches

Access Points

Antennas

NAS/Storage

Power/UPC

IoT

Apps/Services

^ back to top ^

Localized Content

Social Networks

  • Diaspora — A privacy-aware, distributed, open source social network. Main pod is at Diasp.eu.

Communications

  • VoluntaryNET — VoluntaryNet is an in-browser webrtc-based decentralized messaging platform on which social networks, marketplaces, and other applications can be built.
  • Wind — Wind is a network designed for opportunistic communication and sharing of local knowledge.
  • RocketChat —
  • Mastodon — Mastodon is a social network based on open web protocols and free, open-source software. It is decentralized like e-mail.
  • Manyverse — an implementation of scuttlebutt for mobile devices (android) - carry your social network with you, no internet required
  • Briar — Briar is a messaging app designed for activists, journalists, and anyone else who needs a safe, easy and robust way to communicate.
  • Mumble — Mumble is an open source, low-latency, high quality voice chat software. It can be used by projects and communities to hold audio conferences.
  • Jabber — Jabber (or xmpp) is an open realtime communication protocol, that many people use to chat. Our instance, gnu.gr, was created with users privacy in mind and it's open for everyone to use.
  • Cable — Cable is an encrypted communications application.
  • Riot.IM — Communicate the way you want with Riot - a universal secure chat app entirely under your control.

Mail/Email

  • Lokole — Lokole is a simple email client

Networking

Collaborative Web Editors

  • EtherPad — Etherpad is a highly customizable Open Source online editor providing collaborative editing in really real-time.

Filesharing

  • NextCloud — The self-hosted productivity platform that keeps you in control

OS

  • DietPi — DietPi is a extremely lightweight Debian OS. With images starting at 400MB, thats 3x lighter than 'Raspbian Lite'.

Media

  • PeerTube — Video streaming platform using BitTorrent directly in the web browser, with WebTorrent and Angular.
  • YouPHPTube — YouPHPTube is designed for easy video sharing

Browsers

  • Beaker Browser — Experimental browser. It adds new technologies for Peer-to-Peer applications while staying compatible with the rest of the Web.
  • Mozilla Firefox —

Protocols

  • Babel — a loop-avoiding distance-vector routing protocol
  • BATMAN —
  • cjdns —
  • Scuttlebutt —
  • Yggdrasil — Yggdrasil is an early-stage implementation of a fully end-to-end encrypted IPv6 network. It is lightweight, self-arranging, supported on multiple platforms and allows pretty much any IPv6-capable application to communicate securely with other Yggdrasil nodes.

Software

  • RightMesh — RightMesh makes last mile connectivity affordable by using smartphones to create mobile mesh networks.
  • eLimu — Nairobi-based EdTech app
  • MediaGoblin — GNU MediaGoblin is a free, decentralized Web platform for hosting and sharing many forms of digital media.
  • HomeAssistant (HASSIO) —
  • OfflineWiki App — This application saves and downloads a copy of nearly all of the textual content of the English Wikipedia locally so that it can be accessed without internet connectivity.
  • LibreOffice —
  • VLC Media Player —
  • SCRATCH —
  • Balena Etcher —
  • MediaWiki — Wikipedia's own wiki software for document collaboration
  • Transmission — Torrent Client
  • Deluge — Torrent Client
  • SyncThing — Syncthing replaces proprietary sync and cloud services with something open, trustworthy and decentralized. Your data is your data alone and you deserve to choose where it is stored, if it is shared with some third party and how it's transmitted over the Internet.
  • ResiliovSync — Resilio Sync is a fast, reliable, and simple file sync and share solution, powered by P2P technology
  • OpenStreetMap (OSM) — OpenStreetMap.org (OSM) is much like Google Maps, but more democratic and without advertising — anybody can change it, much like Wikipedia only for maps.
  • SHAREit — SHAREit lets you transfer files from different devices like phones, tablets, and computers. Using direct Wi-Fi connections
  • HTTrack Website Copier — Save websites for offline viewing.
  • Anydesk — Good TeamViewer Alternative. Remote Desktop Software.
  • TeamViewer — Remote Desktop Software.
  • Veyon — Veyon is a free and Open Source software for computer monitoring and classroom management supporting Linux and Windows.
  • Epoptes — An open source computer lab management and monitoring tool. Only for Linux machines.

VPN

CMS

Box

  • Forban — a simple link-local opportunistic p2p free software (or how to share files with your local neighbors)
  • Internet-in-a-Box — Internet-in-a-Box (IIAB) is a "learning hotspot" that brings the Internet's crown jewels (Wikipedia in any language, thousands of Khan Academy videos, zoomable OpenStreetMap, electronic books, WordPress journaling, Toys from Trash electronics projects, ETC) to those without Internet.
  • LibraryBox — Portable local server that offers up documents.
  • MedBox — Medical Version of IIAB
  • PirateBox — Portable local server built on the LibraryBox.
  • RACHEL — Fork of IIAB
  • SolarSpell — SolarSPELL is a Solar Powered Educational Learning Library that provides relevant, localized educational content to resource-constrained locations around the world.
  • Portable Network Kit (PNK) —
  • Hyrac Box — Fork of IIAB
  • MoodleBox —
  • IdeasBox — The Ideas Box is a program by the NGO Bibliothèques Sans Frontières
  • EduPi — EduPi is a light-weight content management Web application. This project is developed based on low-cost server Raspberry Pi2 for managing and serving education content.
  • Koozali SME Server — Koozali SME Server is a complete, secure, stable and versatile Open Source Linux Server distribution for small to medium sized enterprises.
  • BeeKee — Box
  • eGranary — Expensive offline education server
  • YUNOhost — With YunoHost, you can easily manage a server for your friends, association or enterprise.
  • NextCloundPi — NextCloudPi is a Nextcloud instance that is preinstalled and preconfigured, and includes a management interface with all the tools you need to self host your private data in a single package.