[UPDATE02] Once or twice a week I get the question, "I'm thinking about using Meraki's equipment, what do you think?" And I always start my answer much the same way. [As a disclaimer, I've known the Meraki folks since their time back at MIT -- my development teams used to collaborate actively with them.]

Meraki is a great system for quick do-it-yourself networking. The technology is elegant and the graphical user interface (mostly) intuitive. If you want a plug-and-play technology immediately deployed, it's a good solution. But that is far from the whole story.

As many of my readers know, I've been advocating for open tech for years and years -- so how does Meraki stack up? The core technologies in Meraki are open source -- but they've been smothered in a proprietary wrapper that makes Meraki little different from most "black box" solutions. Users can't easily view the code, change features (or add features, for that matter), fix bugs, or otherwise adapt the technology for their own uses. As a number of open source projects have discovered, even gaining access to information that was covered by existing open source licenses has become increasingly difficult as Meraki has become increasingly proprietary.

Most people think Meraki's back-end is free. They are wrong. In fact, Meraki plans tomay eventually charge for the use of their services. As a recent GovTech article reported, Meraki's founder stated that their solution "includes three years of its data center services in the price of the hardware." For those who forget, Meraki's hardware used to cost $49 for an indoor node, then the cost went up to $149 -- if you wanted more equipment, you had to pay a rate three times as much, and since Meraki's equipment is sole-sourced, you had to pay whatever they charged.

I fully expect that we're going to see the same problem with Meraki's back-end services. Most users (and certainly just about everyone in the general public) thinks that once you buy a wireless access point that it will continue to work indefinitely (or at least until the hardware fails). With Meraki, however, you're getting a package of hardware and software -- and you can't run a Meraki network without Meraki's proprietary back-end. So how much will the service cost at the end of your 3-year "free" period? I have no idea (though if you know, please let me know). [EDIT: As Meraki CEO, Sanjit Biswas, clarified on this blog (see comments), "the cost the hosted backend service is included for the lifetime of the device with the current line of products at $149/$199. We may decide to unbundle the pricing with future products, but it will be clear to the customer and not a hidden fee." So current hardware should remain free to use. And what happens if you've been a Meraki network over that 3-year periodand are now about to get a huge monthly charge? Probably you'll either have to pay whatever they cost or parts of your network will cease to work. I'm not sure that I would agree with Sanjit that this is not a hidden fee -- most Meraki customers are not aware of the possibility that future compatible hardware might carry additional fees.]

Hundreds of projects, organizations, and municipalities are rolling out Meraki-based networks, yet few seem to understand that they're buying a bundled service not just a piece of hardware. Over time, these initiatives will end up paying an unknown amount of money to Meraki just to keep their system running. It is, in fact, the ultimate bait-and-switch paradigm -- you think you have a one-time hardware cost, instead you get vendor lock-in, recurring charges, and path dependencies.

These and other reasons are why it remains so important to support and utilize truly open technologies. The simulacrums are getting better and better -- but inevitably you're getting a worse deal than you think.

A witty and irreverent take on my presentation at Freedom to Connect from the good folks at ISP Planet:

At the Freedom to Connect conference, Sascha Meinrath pitched the next way we're going to eliminate the telcos from the upstream. He was talking about the CUWiN Foundation (specializing in "Community Wireless Solutions"). (It was originally the website of the Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Net.)

He called the talk: Cooperative Networking (a.k.a everything else is stupid).

He pointed out that a 1 Mbps upstream connection is $10 per month in San Francisco, $80 to $90 per month in Chicago, $320 per month in Urbana, and over $1,300 per month in a town you've never heard of, Greenup. And a $1,500 wireless link can take bandwidth to almost anywhere.

"But if we had a free market, wouldn't someone bring bandwidth from where it's cheap to where it's expensive?"

It turns out that there is a network connecting all of Illinois, called the Illinois Century Network (ICN) (map .pdf).

It could provide cheap bandwidth to schools. "So why isn't it being done? Is it technology? Economics? No, it's layer 8 political BS!"

An attendee understood immediately. "Of course, this network can only be used for 'research.' But if we're doing research on how the network gets used (by all sorts of people), then all traffic has a research purpose. Clever."

There are plenty of other solutions to network the nation. For example, if community broadband becomes sufficiently ubiquitous, the local networks could all peer with each other and create a nationwide mesh.

So will it work? It's all being done on a case by case basis, as opportunities present themselves. But we're interested and hope to interview Meinrath in the near future as this project progresses.

In his introduction, Meinrath said, "I'm not about home networking. That's not what I do. I'm not talking about the mesh network. I'm talking about what's next. The next bandwagon that will eliminate the telcos. The telcos hated community networking, but now they're leading the charge. These networks are all over the place, but they're not connected to each other, and they're still relying on the telcos who hate them."

"Still relying on the telcos who hate them." That sounds very, very familiar.

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This week I'm in Washington, DC for the Freedom to Connect Conference and to talk with congressional staff about the need for research projects like COMMONS. I just finished up a panel where I gave a presentation on cooperative networking (AKA the COMMONS Project).

The worst state franchise bill I've ever read has just been introduced in Illinois -- ironically called the "Cable and Video Competition Law of 2007" -- this act guarantees redlining of un(der)served communities, the poor, and the rural. Among other horrendous provisions (which are far too numerous to enumerate), any service provider who fails to deliver even the utterly abysmal service provision requirements required by the law can get an extension or even a waiver of service for, among other things, "Developments or buildings being inaccessible using reasonable technical solutions under commercially reasonable terms and conditions" (Page 28). The terms of the state franchise deal are far worse than comparative measures introduced in other states (for example, Michigan and California).

Just about every single provision of this bill has been jiggered to maximize the power of telco incumbents -- whether redefining "low income households" so that they're not tied to the federal poverty level, but actually specifically defined as $35,000/year, or allowing providers to get out of existing franchise agreements with 90 days written notice. What's clear about this bill is that it was written by telecom lobbyists and signed off on my multiple legislators.

In taking away home rule power for local communities it creates situations whereby local disruptions (e.g., digging up streets, sidewalks, front yards, etc.) are taken completely out of local hands. In fact, even if local residents sue the provider (for example, for backhoe-ing their back yard), the law grants the power to telco providers to continue their use of the right of way -- so even if they lose the lawsuit, they will have already finished their project. In seeking some of the most invasive governmental regulations to date, these telco providers are also rewriting eminent domain laws to allow them to seize private property to deploy their networks.

HB 1500 is a wholesale giveaway of local power, local control, and individual autonomy to private corporations. It usurps community control over their own land and quality of life. It protects telcos from being sued for redlining and provides no meaningful protection and enforcement mechanisms to prevent these companies from yet again running amuck in Illinois.

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[UPDATE01] HB 1500 is a wholesale giveaway to corporate giants and one of the worst (perhaps _the_ worst) state franchise bills I've ever read (see: http://www.saschameinrath.com/node/516). This Bill was introduced by James Brosnahan, so I thought I would check the followthemoney.org database on the bill's sponsor... here's what I found, I'll leave it to all of you to help get this information out to folks:

James D. Brosnahan: number one sector contributor? -- Telecom Services & Equipment -- $13,750 (number 2 is Lawyers & Lobbyists $9,150) -- together these two groups account for over 25% of all of Brosnahan's funding. The question I would like Brosnahan to answer is, "Who wrote HB 1500?" If anyone can make it to the hearing for HB 1500 on Thursday, March 8 at 8:00 AM in Room 114 of the State Capitol -- please see if we can get an answer to that simple question.

Take a look for yourself here.

Over the past several weeks, I've been getting a tremendous number of e-mails asking what various community networks should do to be CALEA compliant. CALEA has generated so much worry, given it's complete nonsensicalness to many networks, that I felt that putting out a public statement and generating debate around these issues was certainly needed.

For many community wireless networks, CALEA, the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act, mandates hacking into privately owned hardware for many community wireless groups in order to be in compliance with its requirements. It is ironic that an act to aid law enforcement would insist on such draconian measures -- for many community wireless groups, the question arises, do I engage in civil disobedience by not filling out my CALEA forms, or do I hack into privately owned computer hardware?

Most of the problem arises from the FCC's decidedly narrow understanding of community networking and non-standard business models. As someone who went to DC and spoke with numerous FCC staff about these issues over the past couple years, I can state categorically that they've purposefully ignored the following massive problem:

CALEA is predicated upon the idea that you have a dichotomy between end-user, on the one hand, and ISP, on the other. As the FCC states:

CALEA was intended to preserve the ability of law enforcement agencies to conduct electronic surveillance by requiring that telecommunications carriers and manufacturers of telecommunications equipment modify and design their equipment, facilities, and services to ensure that they have the necessary surveillance capabilities. Common carriers, facilities-based broadband Internet access providers, and providers of interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service – all three types of entities are defined to be “telecommunications carriers” for purposes of CALEA.

The problem arises when you have any system that follows a slightly different business model than the single payer, single line norm used by telecom incumbents. What happens when a group of friends get together and buys a single line that is then shared among them? What happens when an apartment building buys a line and shares it? What happens when a community or neighborhood gets a line and shares it? What happens when a community, buys a whole bunch of lines, uses a whole bunch of independently-owned equipment, and shares bandwidth among all participants?

Who "owns" an ownerless network? Because that (non)entity is required by CALEA to provide surveillance capabilities on that network. One may as well ask, "who owns the Internet?" because ownerless neworks, whether at the local or global level pose much the same problem -- it's impossible to create centralized surveillance capabilities on a decentralized, often ad-hoc, network that spans numerous users, gateways, providers, and equipment owners.

The problem is that when the FCC drew up CALEA, they didn't take into account that alternative network infrastructures and business models other than the ISP/end-user one. This is rather stunning since the Internet itself doesn't follow the ISP/end-user model and simply doesn't apply for ownerless networks. I'm not saying ignore CALEA, I'm saying that it simply doesn't apply to these types of networks and technologies and that the only way to do what the FCC is requiring would be to illegally hack into the hardware and ISP accounts of ownerless network participants.

In the end, as anyone who has been immersed in telephony technologies knows, CALEA represents an unenforceable mandate. If anything, CALEA has sped up the development of VoIP encryption technologies, creating circumstances whereby it will be even more difficult for law enforcement officials to legally surveille their targets. What CALEA does, through its requirements, is create the circumstances whereby ordinary citizens -- the ones who may not be tech-savvy enough to utilize encrypted VoIP communications -- can have their conversations monitored wholesale. CALEA creates a de facto telecommunication panopticon while, at the same time, causing serious consternation among many of the most innovative networking initiatives across the country.