Greeks have created their own Internet with search engine and file sharing

While the weeks of paranoia on Habré continue , and the number of paranoids has doubled , I want to tell you about another successful project of independent telecommunications.

In an attempt to defeat the expensive tariffs of unreliable corporate telecoms, the Greek community in Athens created its own private Internet - Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network (AWMN). The AWMN project is a Mesh network of more than 1000 participants and is built on the basis of a Wi-Fi network of rooftop antennas.

The history of AWMN began in 2002 as a response to the poor quality of the Internet provided by officially registered telecom operators in Athens. However, 10 years later it became clear that this network has another important feature: namely, the protection of democratic values ​​of the Internet. Since the private network does not depend on the service providers, governments that want to control Internet activity cannot block access to AWMN for users.
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UPD Wanted to organize a Mesh network in the Moscow suburb

This “alternatively gifted” network community has become so popular in Athens that it even has its own services, blogs, and even its own internal search engine. Similarly, the world's largest mesh network “ Guifi ” provides Internet access to residents of the countryside of Spain. To date, it is more than 21 thousand participants.

Also, such homemade mesh networks allow you to hold the Internet in places that large providers can not - or do not want - to achieve. For example, such a network was built in Brooklyn, USA, after Hurricane Sandy destroyed the communications of major local providers. In this context, it is also worth recalling the GSM micro-provider created by the residents of the city of Villa-Talea de Castro with a population of about 2500 people.

You can see. that Mesh networks are an excellent alternative and / or addition to I2P and TOR . Or maybe in our case it is the hypertext fidonet that will shine with new colors and save the world?

PS Let's do Russian versions of articles for
1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athens_Wireless_Metropolitan_Network
2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guifi.net