Tetaneutral In English (Corbett)¶

tetaneutral.net is a non-profit ISP build by volunteers in the Toulouse area. It advocates for solidarity, net neutrality, freedom of speech, participative and cooperative management of the network, and teaching telecoms to the general public.

It is a set of wifi based Local Aera Networks (LAN) set up on the rooftops of several cities, connected to each other, directly (like the Toulouse / Saint Gaudens fiber link) or indirectly to and via the Internet (WAN or World Area Network), through ADSL, fiber or wifi. In short, it is an hybrid set up of independent and inter-dependent LAN/WAN networks.

It is mostly used as an activist alternative in big in the cities, and mostly as a rescue solution in remote villages where ADSL connection is poor or non-existent.

tetaneutral.net is a member of French Data Network (non-profit ISP federation).

Numbers¶

• 291 suscribers as of May 2013
• 163 volunteers registered on the collaborative portal as of May 2013 : http://chiliproject.tetaneutral.net/projects/tetaneutral
• More that 12 squats are connected for free in Toulouse.

The network¶

Check out the Nagios map here (user=guest / password=guest): http://nagios.tetaneutral.net/nagvis/frontend/nagvis-js/index.php?mod=Map&act=view&show=Automap

Looks centralized (it is in some part) because the software can't draw crossed links.

Toulouse network¶

Map¶

Fiber¶

One of the fiber cable going from the first historical data center to the Cogent's infrastructure:

Wifi¶

Hardware¶

Most of the wifi connections are made with directional wifi boxes, like Ubiquity's AirMax: http://www.ubnt.com/airmax

Laurent, co-founder with Marc, showing a Nano box:

Several boxes at user's flat:

Rooftops¶

Here is a random database of pictures taken from the user's rooftops, if one can see his/her house from one of these picture, it means there is no obstacle to establish a radio link: http://pano.tetaneutral.net/data/tsf2/ (best spot with the most antennas here: http://pano.tetaneutral.net/data/tsf2/20121028_alex/).

Data centers¶

tetaneutral.net has several data centers in Toulouse adjacent cities. Users can bring their own laptop/desktop computers (price based on electricity consumption), or rent a Virtual Machine set up by the volunteers.

One of the data centers:

Funding¶

tetaneutral.net doesn't take any money from any governmental institution, it relies on members' participations, which are up to what each member want to give (usually from 5€ to 20€).

All the accountancy is fully transparent: http://tetaneutral.net/#Transparence

History¶

tetaneutral.net history begun with the collaboration of Laurent Guerby and Marc Bruyère via the [[http://tetalab.org/]] hackerspace in 2010. The hackespace happened to be less that 100m from a large Internet node belonging to Cogent wich allows to connect LAN wifi mesh networks to the Internet. There already were a non-profit organisation managing an amateur wifi network on the Toulouse rooftops (and author of the Europe's wifi connection length record, from Pic du Midi de Bigorre to Casrtes, about 200km), which merged into the project.