I might leave the order till tomorrow to give people an opportunity to comment; but so far the order I intend to place contains:

• 7x Meraki Mini
• 2x Meraki Outdoor
• 6x Meraki +7 dBi high-gain antennas

On-sell prices:

Meraki Mini: $65 AUD
Meraki Outdoor: $130 AUD
Meraki Antenna: $30 AUD

Manifest has been updated four times since original publication.

They should be here in about a week after placement of order.

It’s a good question. You probably pay $20-$70 per month for your ADSL broadband connection - somewhere around 512kbps to 12mbps (if you’re lucky enough to have ADSL2). You’ve probably got a download allowance of 5-30 gig. You may have a wireless router but it’s set up so only you can use it - using WEP encryption; you may not even broadcast your SSID. You pay for it, so why would you share it with other people?

Let’s look at something that happened several decades ago, starting in 1983 with the Free software movement and the creation of the GNU Project by Richard Stallman … which later in 1998 evolved into Open Source Software.

When Richard started this project he said “I have decided to put together a sufficient body of free software so that I will be able to get along without any software that is not free” [source].

Nice - free software! That’s great for us … but why did he think people and particularly programmers would be interested in helping him in this mission? Why would people give up their own time without the payment they would receive developing proprietary commercial software? He believed that the commercialisation of software was breaking up the programmer community and was denying developers opportunities to interact with each other, to share … that it was removing the sense of community from the industry. He believed that this was so important that people would be willing to give up their time to bring this back.

And you know what? He was right. Because of that movement you can now buy your EEE PC for $500 because it’s running an open source operating system. Because of that movement Mozilla Firefox now represents 37% of the browser usage as at January 2008. You may use Internet Explorer still, but I believe it was the Mozilla project that has led the way and brought Microsoft back into line with supporting standards with the development of IE7. If you have a blog it’s probably running PHP and MySQL on Apache - all open source and free. You probably have several applications on your computer, even if you’re running Windows, that are open source.

Yet what have YOU contributed to this movement?

If you’re not a programmer, probably nothing. Yet the programmers who have given in some cases thousands of hours of their time into developing these desktop and web-based applications have done it for the community because they value that more than commercial remuneration.

Now we’re here in 2008 and we’re trying to get people involved in this wireless mesh network project - to open up their wireless networks at home, plug in a Meraki and let other people use your Internet connection.

This time we’re not calling for experience C++ programmers with computer science degrees to help develop the next Internet browser or next free operating system. We’re simply asking you take one of these wireless router devices and plug it into your network, to give something back to the community.

So what’s in it for you? You won’t make money out of this, no - but you will be doing something good. We’re only talking about sharing Internet here … but it’s a step away from the isolation of living in a house in a street of strangers. You will meet new people - people in your own street, in your own local community that you know you should already have introduced yourself to. I don’t want to get all touchy-feely with this post, but if thousands of people got on-board with the open source software movement there must be some value in it that means more to them than being paid.

The value of the dollar may fluctuate, the economy may go in recession … money is not everything. I encourage you to get involved in this project, get involved with your community, meet your neighbours! Drop me an email and I’ll be happy to help you come on-board.

Following on from yesterday’s coverage of Free Sydney Wireless with mention of other free wifi projects around Australia including our own Free Canberra Wireless in The Sydney Morning Herald (which I blogged about yesterday) we have been contacted by Association and Communications Events (ACE) who run Wireless World with an absolutely awesome offer: a free promotion stand/stall at Wireless World 2008 which is happening in Sydney on 2-3 April and also possibly a slot in the conference schedule to present - we’re currently in a mad rush to put together some ideas for our presence at the conference and line up a speaker; we have about 40 hours from now to get back to them with our response … but we’re definitely going ahead with at least the stall, which I’ve been told may be placed next to Google or Nokia.

I spoke to Chris from ACE this afternoon and talked about Free Canberra Wireless, Free Sydney Wireless and other similar initiatives around the country. I believe Matt also setup a Facebook group for Free Melbourne Wireless today. Also I explained BarCamp to him as he had heard that there was a BarCampSydney planned for the weekend before or after the Wireless World 2008 conference and was considering cross-promotion opportunities or perhaps some sort of integration.

He’s really keen on the idea of rolling out city-wide mesh networks at a community grassroots level (as am I, obviously) and it’s very cool that he’s managed to swing this for us simply because he believes in the concept and wants to support it.

I plan on going up for the conference to help man the stand/stall and be involved in anything else we get happening - although I won’t be presenting. Public speaking at that level is a little out of my league.

Very exciting times!

Also, in light of recent burst of interest and acceleration of the project I will be placing an order with Meraki next Thursday 21 February. I’ll be getting a few surplus units but if you’re interested please let me know just so I can make sure you’re covered. I’ll also be getting some booster antennas around the same time. Onselling price for the Meraki Mini units - which is cost price, no profit to me - will be $60 with this shipment as I should be able to get a discount on bulk shipping and by keeping it under the $1,000 import tax threshold (which we unfortunately invoked on the last shipment, cancelling out the discount we got on bulk shipping).

Free Sydney Wireless is probably organising a shipment soon too - drop by the FSW Facebook group if you’re interested.

I’ve been unusually busy the last few weeks with life events - sister getting married, interstate travel and various things and I was noticing that I’m starting to fall behind on enquiries coming in regarding Merakis and Free Canberra Wireless; don’t worry, I have your emails and I will get to them ASAP! Also busy staying on top of my Technorati search feeds to follow up articles about Merakis, particularly in Australia, and advertising the Free The Net campaign and the specific geographic projects here and in Sydney: Free Canberra Wireless and Free Sydney Wireless respectively.

Also I loaned a Meraki Mini to @timriley at last week’s CTUB2 and I’m onselling the last Meraki Mini in my surplus cache I had to @gnoll110 tomorrow. No profit is made from sales - I’m not running a business here, although I have been talking to Meraki about the possibility of a reseller/distributor capability in Australia to get the currently prohibitive shipping costs down.

However today there’s been quite a bit of talk on the blogosphere and on Twitter about the recent media coverage from The Sydney Morning Herald with their article today on particularly the Free Sydney Wireless Meraki wifi project but the other projects around Australia, including our own Free Canberra Wireless get a mention. It’s pretty awesome that these projects that have only been going a few months get a write-up like that.

The article was also syndicated on The Age.

Laurel Papworth also blogged about the today’s article, as well as Matt over at Free Sydney Wireless. It also got a mention at ABC Digital Futures and Lifehacker Australia.

This is absolutely fantastic that this initiative is getting such exposure and becoming recognised as a serious option for rolling out large scale wifi networks where other corporate and even government-driven projects have failed.

Also if you are the proud owner of Meraki devices and have set up a network please remember to head over to the Meraki Network Mapper and add your network to the map! @facibus - I don’t see yours on there yet!

Ian Woolf interviews Lachlan Hardy about Meraki wifi mesh networking devices, including configuration and installation and how it all works:

Lachlan Hardy interview (podcast)