However the story on how I got there starts a few years earlier. I myself growing up in the countryside of Austria was very fond of the idea to experiment with anything network related and also undertook several attempts to wire up my neighborhood friends, whom I could only convince to do so in order to play CounterStrike together in times where no DSL or other high speed internet was anywhere on the horizon for this village. We pulled coax cable through the attic of our apartment building and ate a lot of dust. But in the end we had a 10Base-2 network which connected about 5 computers. All this was far from a community network as one would describe it today and neither did we have the intent to build one.

A bit later I remember stumbling upon an article describing a network using Wave LAN technology in suburban Sydney to connect up the neighborhood. Back then it didn’t strike me how much alike our attempts actually were. I then also tried to start a wireless network in a small town close to where I lived when the whole community network initiatives got traction. Back then however setting up such network was way to techy and it was therefor hard to convince even the young crowd to join in.

Shortly after I moved to Vienna I started to look for community wireless networks. There were a few strange webpages mentioning another initiative that I could not really get hold of. Then some day I found FunkFeuer which back then only offered a Wiki which vaguely described what it was about and that there was a meeting every Monday in a location called VIVI in the center of Vienna. I quickly checked if there would be a meeting the next Monday and got that confirmed from my now dear friend Andreas. Arriving at a stormy winter day somewhere in January 2005 at the “Montagstreffen” I met Aaron and Mihi. Mihi held an inspirational speech about OLSR and I was at first a bit turned down by no real structure after which I could get started in all of this (I guess it’s an Austrian thing ). However when I got home I started reading up on the various topics discussed in this 2 hour session and quickly started to like the idea more and more.

Fast forward 5 years and I have spent countless hours around FunkFeuer. We have spent nights in basements trying to get fibre links up and running and there was lots of frustration but I dearly believe that FunkFeuer in Vienna has reached a critical mass by now that the project is self sustaining and will take more and more shape as we move along. Personally I still like to keep a few tasks around the backbone close to my heart but have let go on lots of things others have picked up and probably done a better job than I ever could. At the same time it is interesting to see that some things do not change in a voluntary project like FunkFeuer. Our homepage as on my first day is still a kind of mess but nonetheless it seems that we attract people and I am very proud having and being part of this. What united us back then and what keeps impressing me about FunkFeuer is the drive to build something on our own.

I have attended both international summits (in 2007 and 2008) so far and have to say that it is always refreshing to see the various different approaches communities take to build their networks. At the same time it helps in finding solutions to common problems (both technical and social) that communities encounter. I am especially proud to to see this event hosted in Vienna where i have been part for many years in the build-up of FunkFeuer.

I certainly recommend you to attend this event and hope to see you there.

If you find the time to be there, drop me a line and we might arrange a meet-up.

Update: I’m so sorry to say that i won’t be able to attend. A project deadline has to be met.

FunkFeuer registered for a LIR membership with the RIPE NCC some days ago. To finish this process the paper contract had to be signed and therefor was sent to the association “office”. As there are no office times and only sporadic meetings DHL couldn’t deliver it there. Okay, no problem so far – gave them the address of my office to drop the shipment there. Next day the deliverer phoned me that he is at the office and asked where to drop the shipment – as i wasn’t there i told him to hand it over to my colleague. When i came to the office some hours later no shipment there, asking my colleague he never heard of anything. Good. Phoning DHL they tell me that the shipment was delivered to the original office location to a woman i’ve never heard of before. Okay, so i went there and had a look – no person in the whole building by that name. Take a deep breath. Phoning DHL again they can’t tell me any more, but will try to reach the deliverer to find out more – in 2 hours or so. Great i don’t want to wait here and twiddle my thumbs. So i phoned my colleague if he could have a look if the named person was somewhere at the UniCredit staff. And, bingo – indeed there was a person by that name in the post department. Phoning him he told me – yes he has the shipment, but it’s in a office on the other end of Vienna. GREAT! So, travelling there took me another 40 minutes – but in the end, i had the shipment in my hands – for real!

But, to take up the cudgels for so i’ve got to tell that the reply shipment was delivered over night from Vienna to Amsterdam. At least according to the online tracking which also said that my shipment was delivered hours before i found it.

I really look forward to meet Sascha Meinrath and KC Claffy from CAIDA again. Also i hope to get a lot of new input from other freenetwork initiatives. Current considerations are that Andreas Marksteiner and Aaron Kaplan will also attend. Probably Aaron will give some workshop or presentation about OLSR NG which he is currently working on. Andreas and me will probably go for a presentation of our FunkFeuer Housing project which finances the bandwidth for FunkFeuer in Vienna currently. I assume this as a good way to get the necessary financial backing to keep the freenet really free of any charge. At least in Vienna this is working quite smoothly now.

I’ve followed the progress of Open Root Server Network since 2002. While supporting it by using their service since then i switched on operating the node B in September 2006. This node is sponsored by FunkFeuer in Vienna as a successor of ATnet which closed it’s service for that node after it was sold to EUnet.

Currently, in my opinion – ORSN is a proof of concept. This means that we’ve shown that it’s possible to run an independent root server network which sticks to the zone principles of ICANN. But it has still to be considered experimental and needs some further steps to get interesting for the big ISPs too. While talking to operators of UPC, SilverServer and some others the main issue they are concerning about is the stability. They don’t think we’re poisoning the zone but somehow hessitate to switch before other big players did so. So we’re currently having an hen and egg situation. Questioned how to break this most of them came up with the idea of a legal entity focused on the development of the future network. The outcome of this should be some kind of mission statements which show exactly where we are and where we want to go.

As Markus Grundmann is currently very low on his spare time i’ve choosen to take the lead of the project for a while and will try to get following challenges a bit futher.

• Legal entity
  We’re currently thinking about an appropriate aproach for this. There needs to be considered that we don’t want to fall in the same position ICANN currently is (controlled by one government). Also we don’t want to be based in one country nor in one continent. But question here also is, what will keep our organisational costs minimal.
• DNSSEC
  Although there is at least one open issue (“Zone walking”) on DNSSEC itself, it’s probably good to do the first step into a more secure DNS.
  Personally i don’t consider zone walking as a blocking issue for the introduction of DNSSEC because i stick with the “DNS is public”-argument. I am more concerned about the performance issues this might cause.
• Anycast
  Currently the load on our servers is not that high as we would need Anycast structure, but if we head forward in providing service to big ISPs the stability will be a big issue – as said. Considering the importance of our service we will get a more interesting target for attackers too.

I hope this gives people interested some insight on my planned steps for the further development of ORSN.