Wisper
long distance wifi internet infrastructure
Wisper is a concept (an idea) in the field of long distance wifi network infrastructures with a practical and concrete internet service provision goal. Wisper is the buzz word in order to stimulate concrete project proposals and cooperative initiatives focussed on creating a new mesh-type: solely based on wifi and IPv6 internet connections.
The access nodes in Wisper are projected to be low cost (US$ 100) wifi boxes some Public Domain (fully self-configuring) networking software (probably on Linux and/or BSD OS's). Access and usage to the Wisper network should be free of charge. The plan is to create clouds of Wisper nodes. And then clouds of Wisper-clouds, expanding all over the globe.
The Wisper idea is inspired by the in November 2005 initiative of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. Wisper could boost the OLPC target to provide internet access in development countries (and even in your neigbourhood).
MIT research develops Roofnet a wireless infrastructure for the town of Cambridge, MA USA. The number of nodes (currently 37) is much smaller than the target for Wisper. Other initialives, like Wireless Leiden attempt to on provide wireless internet access of large regions of towns. In these cases, the routers are connected by cable; these networks are not purely wireless.
- Wisper was announced in the October 2006 edition of Usenix' magazin ";login:" (membership required to read that publication)