FabFi: An Open Source Wireless Network Built With Trash

As we've seen with recent protests in the Middle East, the information superhighway can all too easily be brought to a halt. Governments from Egypt and Libya to Yemen and Syria have, in recent months, cut Internet access to control troublemakers who utter such obviously dangerous terms as “freedom” or “basic human rights.” Most connections to the Internet are far from open commons, rather they are controlled by only a few entities, so putting the brakes on communications is an easy thing for a government to do.

But for those fed up with political repression, there is a new, simple, low-tech way around this. Bypass these entities completely and set up an alternative, more open Internet that cannot be intercepted or shut down.

Funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation as well as the personal savings of group members, residents of Jalalabad, in partnership with FabFi, a project that has close ties to MIT's Fab Lab and the university's Center for Bits and Atoms, have built a small-scale, open source system to transmit wireless ethernet signals across distances of several miles. And the main components can be built out of trash. Some boards, wires, plastic tubs, and cans can build you a FabFi node. The design of the node purposefully uses things that are widely available wherever the project takes place. Users in Afghanistan discovered that instead of requiring specialty made reflectors, they could use the metal from USAID vegetable oil cans because it turns out to be the right malleability and size for these reflectors.