Freifunk (German for: "free radio") is a non-commercial open

grassroots A grassroots movement is one that uses the people in a given district, region or community as the basis for a political or continent movement. Grassroots movements and organizations use collective action from volunteers at the local level to imp ...

initiative to support free computer networks in the German region. Freifunk is part of the international movement for a

wireless community network Wireless community networks or wireless community projects or simply community networks, are non-centralized, self-managed and collaborative networks organized in a grassroots fashion by communities, non-governmental organizations and cooperatives ...

. The initiative counts about 400 local communities with over 41,000

access point In computer networking, a wireless access point (WAP) (also just access point (AP)) is a networking hardware device that allows other Wi-Fi devices to connect to a wired network or wireless network. As a standalone device, the AP may have a wi ...

s. Among them,

Münster Münster (; ) is an independent city#Germany, independent city (''Kreisfreie Stadt'') in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is in the northern part of the state and is considered to be the cultural centre of the Westphalia region. It is also a ...

Aachen Aachen is the List of cities in North Rhine-Westphalia by population, 13th-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, 27th-largest city of Germany, with around 261,000 inhabitants. Aachen is locat ...

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

Hanover Hanover ( ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the States of Germany, German state of Lower Saxony. Its population of 535,932 (2021) makes it the List of cities in Germany by population, 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-l ...

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; ; Swabian German, Swabian: ; Alemannic German, Alemannic: ; Italian language, Italian: ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, largest city of the States of Germany, German state of ...

, and

Uelzen Uelzen (; ), officially the Hanseatic City of Uelzen (), is a town in northeast Lower Saxony, Germany, and capital of the district of Uelzen. It is part of the Hamburg Metropolitan Region, a Hanseatic town and an independent municipality. Uelz ...

are the biggest communities, with more than 1,000 access points each.

Aim

The main goals of Freifunk are to build a large-scale free wireless

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for Wireless LAN, local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by ...

network that is

decentralized Decentralization or decentralisation is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those related to planning and decision-making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group and gi ...

, owned by those who run it and to support local communication. The initiative is based on the Picopeering Agreement. In this agreement, participants agree upon a network that is free from discrimination, in the sense of

net neutrality Net neutrality, sometimes referred to as network neutrality, is the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) must treat all Internet communications equally, offering User (computing), users and online content providers consistent tra ...

. Similar grassroots initiatives in Austria and in Switzerland are FunkFeuer and Openwireless.

Technology

Like many other free community-driven networks, Freifunk uses

mesh Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) is a comprehensive controlled vocabulary for the purpose of indexing journal articles and books in the life sciences. It serves as a thesaurus of index terms that facilitates searching. Created and updated by th ...

technology to bring up

ad hoc network An ad hoc network refers to technologies that allow network communications on an ad hoc basis. Associated technologies include: *Wireless ad hoc network *Mobile ad hoc network *Vehicular ad hoc network A Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is a prop ...

s by interconnecting multiple Wireless LANs. In a Wi-Fi

mobile ad hoc network A wireless ad hoc network (WANET) or mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a decentralized type of wireless network. The network is ad hoc because it does not rely on a pre-existing infrastructure, such as router (computing), routers or wireless acces ...

, all routers connect to each other using special routing software. When a router fails, this software automatically calculates a new route to the destination. This software, the Freifunk firmware, is based on

OpenWrt OpenWrt (from ''open wireless router'') is an open-source project for embedded operating systems based on Linux kernel, Linux, primarily used on Embedded system, embedded devices to Router (computing), route network traffic. The main components ...

and other

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

. There are several different implementations of the firmware depending on the hardware and protocols local communities use. The first Wi-Fi ad hoc network was done in Georgia, USA in 1999 as demonstrated by Toh. It was a six-node implementation running the Associativity-based routing protocol on Linux kernel and WAVELAN WiFi. But ABR was a patented protocol. Following that experience, Freifunk worked on standard IETF protocols - the two common standard proposals are OLSR and B.A.T.M.A.N. The development of B.A.T.M.A.N. is driven by Freifunk activists on a volunteering basis.

History

One of the results of the ''BerLon'' workshop in October 2002 on free wireless community networks in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

and

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

was the Picopeering Agreement. This agreement about rationales of free networks describes how the transmission of other people's data is handled in a free network and has become a core agreement of the community. During the workshop, participants also agreed upon regular meetings in Berlin to build their own free wifi network. Ever since, there have been weekly meetings at

c-base c-base e.V. is a non-profit association located in Berlin, Germany. Its purpose is to increase knowledge and skills pertaining to computer software, hardware and data networks. The association is engaged in numerous related activities. For exam ...

Hackerspace every Wednesday. At the same time, the German language site freifunk.net was started. In September 2003, Freifunk activists founded the non-profit association ''Förderverein Freie Netzwerke e.V.'' to support free communication infrastructures. In the following years, the initiative became quite successful all over Germany, also because it became easier to install the Freifunk firmware on off-the-shelf wireless routers. There is a yearly ''Wireless Community Weekend'' taking place in Berlin, at

Legal issues

In 2012, the Berlin Freifunk community got a lot of media attention for a project called ''Freifunk Freedom Fighter Box''. The project fights

secondary liability Secondary liability, or indirect infringement, arises when a party materially contributes to, facilitates, induces, or is otherwise responsible for directly infringing acts carried out by another party. The US has statutorily codified secondary li ...

: Secondary liability is the legal situation that makes the owners of open / non-encrypted

wireless access point In Computer networking device, computer networking, a wireless access point (WAP) (also just access point (AP)) is a networking hardware device that allows other Wi-Fi devices to connect to a wired network or wireless network. As a standalone ...

s liable for what other users do over their internet connection (i.e. guilty until proven innocent), as outlined in the law, part of the Act as last ratified in 2007. The owners can thus be forced to pay for copyright infringements of third persons just because they opened their network to the public. This legal practice led to fear and uncertainty and made many people and businesses close their Internet and Wi-Fi access points, e.g. in cafés or in public locations. The ''Freifunk Freedom Fighter Box'' was a preconfigured access point that sent all data from the public network to

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

over a

VPN Virtual private network (VPN) is a network architecture for virtually extending a private network (i.e. any computer network which is not the public Internet) across one or multiple other networks which are either untrusted (as they are not c ...

connection. In Sweden (as in most other countries), there is no secondary liability. The situation regarding secondary liability was only clarified in 2016–18 as a result of several legal rulings by the

European Court of Justice The European Court of Justice (ECJ), officially the Court of Justice (), is the supreme court of the European Union in matters of European Union law. As a part of the Court of Justice of the European Union, it is tasked with interpreting ...

(ECJ), and the ''

Bundesgerichtshof The Federal Court of Justice ( , ) is the highest court of civil and criminal jurisdiction in Germany. Its primary responsibility is the final appellate review of decisions by lower courts for errors of law. While, legally, a decision by the F ...

'' which drastically restricted the scope of secondary liability in Germany and therefore made it legally feasible to put up public Wi-Fi hotspots in Germany again.

Outcome

In 2013, the

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...

Freifunk community set up a network of more than 300 nodes, using VPN tunnels to the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

. Many new Freifunk communities emerged. In Berlin, the community is building a

backbone network A backbone or core network is a part of a computer network which interconnects networks, providing a path for the exchange of information between different LANs or subnetworks. A backbone can tie together diverse networks in the same buildin ...

based on

microwave transmission Microwave transmission is the transmission of information by electromagnetic waves with wavelengths in the microwave frequency range of 300 MHz to 300 GHz (1 m - 1 mm wavelength) of the electromagnetic spectrum. Microwave signal ...

over longer distances. This project is funded by the local broadcasting corporation ''Medienanstalt Berlin-Brandenburg'' and is still on-going in Germany.

References

External links

* * or {{youTube, 2Z12OjnPADA, Version in German with English subtitles
Freifunk firmware information
in the Freifunk wiki (German only)
Freifunk wiki (English-language category)

Wireless Networking in the developing world. A practical guide to planning and building low-cost telecommunications infrastructure
3rd edition, Feb. 2013 Community networks Custom firmware Mesh networking Wireless

Aim