OPN
OTHER PEOPLES NETWORK

Community networks must connect together through massive clouds of interference as a consequence raise noise floors in busy areas. By utilising OPN we can greatly condense this noise whilst building sustainable free networks locally that optimise existing RF resources.

Blue circles represent the standard consumer access point; no WEP, No MAC filtering, can be on any channel any ESSID.

Red circles and represent community network nodes that run with OPN enhancement.

Purple details suggest links created by the red network traversing the blue AP's in proximity, whose RF signal is otherwise considered as 'noise' in the band.

To achieve these links Red nodes must associate as clients to multiple networks simultaneously. Each Red network uses its own address space and does not use the blue networks resources for anything other than layer 2 transport.

In the pictured example a route is created over OPN from [A-D] [D-E] [E-C] etc. that by traditional methods would not be achievable.

The gory bit
To identify OPN set your adapter to monitor the local RF environment (essid mac address SNR etc.) and record its image to public servers via a back channel (telco or freenetwork) to inform the public mapping of other peoples network!

Once the environment condition is calculated it can then be referred to by Red wlan adapters operating as client to multiple Blue networks on managed IP and routing protocols set by Red nodes.

How
None of this is technically resolved at this moment, but it appears to be within reach with some driver hacking. Commercial exploration into how a single radio can become client of multiple networks has been carried out by Microsoft Research called 'Multinet' and may also be possible with BSD or Linux and Atheros chipset on free operating systems. In fact recent announcements from student development at MIT confirms this probability.

Using multiple networks with a scary/simple hack
'Packets are collected by the WLAN adapter which buffers the packets and sends a sleep frame to the AP The card changes channel and essid and empties the buffer..

This is not thought to be a definitive path to community or mesh networking, but will definitely present a favorable option especially in dense RF areas.

Articulated by Matt Westervelt and illustrated by James Stevens during freifunk.net