We asked reader Bryan Haggerty to produce a brief writeup about the Free the Net initiative currently taking the city by storm. He accepted:
You’ve probably opened up your laptop at your favorite Mission cafe or received an alert from your iPhone about a wireless network called Free the Net. “Free” being the operative word, and one which we’ve heard for a few years now in regards to free wireless for all San Francisco residents. Many have tried and the most recent team to take on the challenge and garner some impressive results are the folks at Meraki, with their Free the Net service.
Meraki relies on volunteers to install their freely provided wireless repeaters in their homes and rooftops to expand the network and widen the range of the network’s reach. Free the Net was kicked off in the Mission last year, but there are still dead spots in our fair neighborhood. If you’ve got access to your rooftop or fire escape you may be a good candidate for one of Meraki’s wireless repeaters, and your neighbors will forever thank you.
Check out the Free the Net map to see if the network reaches your home or favorite Mission hang out.
Map is located here. Thanks, Bryan!
It claims there’s one that appears to be literally on top of my building – but I certainly don’t have any access to it from my place. (Liberty; between 20th & 21st/Valencia & Guerrero.)
Also, I’m currently sitting on Valencia between Liberty & 21st, where it claims I should be able to get some signal, and my wireless card finds nothing. Am I missing something, somehow? Shouldn’t it just show up as “Free the Net”? How close do you have to be to one of these guys in order to get the signal?
I tried to sign up, but their installation guys will only come in 4 hour chunks and only on weekdays. This doesn’t work for many of us as we have to work.
Or so they say… My area is under-represented on their map, and I’ve offered to put a repeater on my roof for them (or even let them share my wired T1 uplink) three times now, and I’ve gotten no response at all, not even a “no thank you”. So, yeah, not really impressed with their organizational skills so far.
@Jen, it really depends on the volunteer running the access point as it is possible they may have unplugged it, or it is in a location which is hindering it’s reception.
@jim, Luckily they aren’t like the cable guys and for me came right at the start of the 4 hour block they gave me.
Yeah, I had a very good experience with my meraki installation too. The guy showed up in the time window I chose, worked quickly and did really good work.
@jwz If you’re not near an existing repeater, then there’s no sense in having a repeater of your own because it won’t be able to join the mesh network. If your neighborhood is under represented, try to have a local cafe install a repeater – in that case, I believe Meraki will provide free DSL for the cafe and the repeater in the cafe will serve as a jumping off point for other repeaters in your neighborhood – at least that’s how I understand it to work.
Here’s the meraki cafe page:
http://meraki.com/cafe/
I see it all over, and love the concept. It’s great for laptops, but I can’t realistically use it on my iPhone.
Before you can get access, you have to click accept on the web page that comes up. Until then, you are on the network, but can’t actually go anywhere.
So say your iPhone is in your pocket and you have told it to remember FreeTheNet. When it sees a repeater, it will jump on and merrily try to check mail in the background over the purported WiFi network. But the iPhone won’t be able to get anywhere since you haven’t clicked on the web-based accept button. Mail will continue to try to hammer away over WiFi rather than use AT&Ts cellular network, draining the battery that much more quickly. All dressed up but no place to go…
I could choose “Forget this network” each time I am done using it, but needless to say this is not yet convenient or practical. I can’t afford to risk not getting work related email.
I love the idea, and hopefully they can get persistent cookies or certificates onto the iPhone (if they haven’t already – I had to stop using it several months ago and it could very well have changed since…) This is as much of a flaw with the iPhone as with Free The Net. Apple needs to fix the iPhone’s networking software so it falls back to 3G/Edge when it can’t get through on WiFi.
The map would indicate a couple links a short block away from me at 22nd & York, but I definitely don’t get it. I just signed up to have a repeater installed.
The kind folks at Free the Net seemed to have come across our post and want to make sure that any issues which people have are taken care of. They’ve passed along their support email to share. Definitely get in touch with them if you are having trouble, they will respond.
The support email address is ftn-support [at] meraki.com