Experiences with distributed heterogeneous clouds over community networks

Abstract

Community networks [1] are decentralized and self-organized communication networks built and operated by citizens and for citizens. They are an emergent model of infrastructure that aims to satisfy a community's demand for Internet and ICT services. There are several large community networks in Europe having from 500 to 20000 nodes, such as Guifi.net1, AWMN2, FunkFeuer3 and many more worldwide. Most of them are based on Wi-Fi technology, but also a growing number of optical fiber links start to become deployed.