Structure and evolution of a large-scale Wireless Community Network

In recent years, we have witnessed a trend towards open wireless access, mainly driven by the low cost of IEEE 802.11-capable equipment and its operation in unlicensed spectrum. This trend has many faces; municipalities set up free Wi-Fi hotspots for Internet connectivity in public spaces, while Wi-Fi access is provided as an extra service to customers in other venues, such as restaurants or hotels. Also, in many metropolitan areas worldwide, community-initiated wireless mesh networks have emerged. Their members use inexpensive technologies to build multi-hop wireless networks and communicate autonomously. In this work, we document the structure and evolution of one of the largest community wireless mesh networks worldwide, the Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network (AWMN). We focus on how the network has grown in size, complexity and service offerings in the last few years. To be able to dynamically discover the structure of such a network, we have developed a suitable topology discovery methodology.