From Team CUWiN: (more info at www.cuwin.net)
CUWiN Releases CUWiNware 0.7.0

CUWiN announces a new version of its flagship software, CUWiNware 0.7.0. CUWiNware enables neighbors and communities to create a mesh wireless network that can share Internet connections, establish local VoIP services, and utilize peer-to-peer connections to improve their broadband experience. CUWiNware 0.7.0 makes community networking easier to use than ever before. CUWiNware is free open source software, which makes it as much as 75% cheaper to set up networks than its proprietary competitors.

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Demonstrating a dangerous lack of understanding about the state of current technology and disregarding fundamental privacy and civil rights concerns, federal judges agreed in a 2-1 decision to require backdoor access for the federal government to wiretap Internet communications. Luckily a large coalition of folks is appealing this decision. More info below:

GROUP APPEALS GOVERNMENT EAVESDROPPING RULING

[SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Declan McCullagh]

A coalition of civil liberties groups and technology companies, including Pulver.com and Sun Microsystems, is appealing a federal court ruling that forces Internet service providers to create backdoors for government wiretapping. The coalition on Friday asked the full U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., to review a June 9 ruling that sided with the Bush administration. That 2-1 ruling said that Internet providers must rewire their networks and follow a complex scheme of eavesdropping regulations. The deadline is set for May 2007. The groups behind the appeal, called an "en banc" rehearing, say they're happy to comply with legitimate court orders. What they're upset about are the cost, difficulty and the privacy concerns involved in building in backdoors for eavesdropping. They argue that the Federal Communications Commission, when approving the requirements, went beyond what federal law actually permits. (The American Council on Education and some of the academic groups dropped out of the appeal, saying they believed the June ruling sufficiently protected their own interests.) No law enforcement agency has identified "any obstacles to intercepting Internet communications in the absence of (the FCC's regulations), and indeed as far as the record on appeal reveals, 100 percent of attempted interceptions of Internet communications to date have been successful," the brief says.

More info at http://news.com.com

July 20, 2006

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:

Sascha Meinrath, CUWiN Executive Director
217-278-3933 x30 sascha@cuwireless.net

Ross Musselman, CUWiN Outreach Coordinator
217-278-3933 x31 rgmussel@cuwireless.net

***

CUWiN/UIUC PARTNERSHIP AWARDED $500,000 NSF GRANT TO DEVELOP NEXT GENERATION OPEN SOURCE MESH WIRELESS TECHNOLOGIES.

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign partners with CUWiN to build high-performance, robust open source wireless mesh networking technologies.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $500,000 in grant funding to support a research and development partnership between the Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network (CUWiN) and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). This initiative, "Toward building a Performance-Predictable Wireless Mesh Network", focuses on the development of wireless routing protocols, network testing systems, and gateway discovery in open-source technology. The grant, part of the Network Technology and Systems Program of the NSF, provides support over a three-year period.

"CUWiN is building the next generation of mesh wireless technologies. Most importantly, CUWiN is releasing our software under an open source license -- allowing communities, municipalities, organizations, and individuals around the world to deploy low-cost alternatives to current proprietary systems." stated Sascha Meinrath, CUWiN Executive Director.

Community and municipal wireless networks have gained tremendous attention in recent years. The ultimate objective of this CUWiN/UIUC partnership is to incorporate research results and system prototypes into production code to be widely distributed by CUWiN. With the help of CUWiN, the research to be carried out by UIUC researchers will make a real impact and effect high-throughput, cost-effective broadband access both for the U.S. and worldwide.

"I am extremely pleased with the fact that NSF recognizes the importance of carrying out research on a real multi-hop wireless network. CUWiN provides us with a city-wide research testbed to understand how, and to what extent, wireless links are affected by PHY/MAC attributes and other environmental factors. All the measurements we make on CUWiN will help characterize the behavior of wireless links and identify control 'knobs' in the MAC/PHY layers with which the network capacity can be optimized." Principal Investigator, Jennifer Hou, stated.

CUWiN's mission is to help bridge the digital divide by developing low-cost, open source, wireless technologies and making them available to community and municipal networks around the world. CUWiN networks have been established in urban settings like Chicago, Illinois, and Washington, D.C., as well as rural places like the Mesa Grande Indian Reservation near San Diego, California, and Apirede, Ghana. CUWiN continues to expand its development testbed in Urbana, Illinois in partnership with the City of Urbana and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

"The wireless technologies being developed by CUWiN as a part of this initiative hearken back to the innovation and vibrancy of early Internet development."stated Ross Musselman, CUWiN Outreach Coordinator. "With a focus on maintaining Internet freedom, these new technologies support digital inclusion around the globe."

For more information on this initiative, contact the CUWiN team at:

E-mail: cu-wireless-support@cuwireless.net
Phone: +1 217 278-3933 x31.

Sign up for the once-a-month CUWiN e-mail news list at:

http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/cu-wireless-announce

Hi all,

For the past few days I've been increasingly swamped with scores of requests, questions, and ideas about CUWiN, New Orleans, and rapid deployment of telecommunications infrastructures in crisis situations. Here's very brief answers to some of the basic questions folks have been asking:

Q: Would CUWiN's system work as a disaster recovery telecommunications infrastructure?

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