TWMN

Infobox wifi network
abbreviation = TWMN
full = Thessaloniki Wireless Metropolitan Network

url = http://www.twmn.net/
commercial = No (Non profit company)
country = Greece
area = Salonica
users = 503
operational = Yes
nodesurl = http://wind.twmn.net/

TWMN, short for Thessaloniki's Wireless Metropolitan Network, is a user community in the city of Thessaloniki, Greece. The purpose of the community is to promote the usage of wireless networking in the region of Thessaloniki and to create a city-wide wireless network that connects all parts of the city through multiple wireless broadband connections.

The Community

The TWMN community is a rapidly growing community of people who support the idea of wireless networking in Thessaloniki and are either already connected to the existing network, or are planning to do so.

The heart of the community is a forum that is accessible both from the wireless network and the internet. The forum already has 503 active members and 3,759 registered users with new ones joining daily. The forum provides a wealthy source of information about wireless networking and how to build self-made networks nodes, a discussion place for new technologies and news and of course a meeting place for social chat for the people of the community.

The community often organise meetings between its members to welcome newcomers, to talk about wireless networking and to discuss the expansion of the network and the future of the community. Special activities are also organised including large-scale equipment testing, city-wide wireless network scanning and new members' roof scanning (known as "Taratsa-Drive").

The Network

The network currently consists of 75 Access Points and approximately 500 clients (Due to the open nature of the network, it is very difficult to calculate the exact number of users). TWMN is also connected with the other 2 wireless networks of Thessaloniki (SWN and Wthess), thus increasing the number of users it serves through its infrastructure.

A map of the network can be found at http://wind.twmn.net
A live status of the network can be found at http://dude.twmn.net:86/

The History

Since we all have nicknames, the first backbone (or backhaul) link, was between Maax and Bakira, back in 2002.
The second one was between Maax and Lewis (December 2002), Bakira remained as client, and the network started to grow..
Steel made a bblink with his brother Maax, and Pargyrak made a bblink with Lewis
First client was Soumaxeridis, connected to Lewis's Access Point (AP).

A year later (December 2003), TWMN was founded as a non-profit organisation, to coordinate this mesh network.

TWMN participated 3 times in Infosystem (INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION FOR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, TELECOMMUNICATION AND DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY) (2003,2004,2006).

ee also

*Wireless Thessaloniki Network
*Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network
*Patras Wireless Metropolitan Network
*Imathias Wireless Metropolitan Network

Links

* [http://www.twmn.net Community's Web Page (TWMN)]
* [http://wind.twmn.net/ Wireless Nodes Database (WiND) of T.W.M.N.]
* [http://wind.twmn.net WiND - Wireless Nodes Database network map]
* [http://newbie.twmn.net Newbie's Guide wiki web page] (Greek)