Program Overview
Waves is for the people, by the people. Internet access & digital literacy is paramount to success in the 21st century, which is why I strongly believe that every single penny should go towards this effort. Money should be invested and then reinvested into communities where Waves takes root. This is a movement. It’s not about any one individual, it’s not about any one organization, but rather, the collective.
Waves is a community driven project focused on providing high quality, high-availability, transparent internet to the Baltimore community in a scalable, cost effective manner.
Access: Over one third of the baltimore city population is without Internet access. In order to bridge the gap, Waves will build relationships with community organizers across the city and focus on lighting up access to residential areas that are classified as Internet Deserts. This will be done in parallel as Waves lights up small businesses(e.g Bunshop/Red Emmas), to build awareness in the community.
High-Availability: Currently in a franchise agreement with the City, Comcast offers no SLA to customers for either residential or business class plans. What this results in is With the resiliency of a built out MeshNet, we’re initially targeting a 99.9% Uptime SLA(eight hours of downtime), eventually moving to a 99.99% SLA as the network connects more users to the mesh. This will also depend on our backbone provider’s SLA.
Transparency: With Net Neutrality being in the news cycle once again, it’s more important than ever to know where an ISP stands regarding the access on the web, as well as the manipulation of traffic. Waves not only stands for Net Neutrality, but is also committed to making all members of the network aware of any potential changes. Minor changes(e.g New rooftop Access Point installed at Mothers Grill) will be documented via ChangeLog updated to the Site daily, whereas major upcoming changes that may potentially affect users will be documented in the form of Technical & Community Blogs with chances for the community to give input via Livestream Q/A(Youtube/Periscope), Reddit AMA, Slack, etc.
Integrity: Unlike ISPs like Comcast that inject forged packets, whether they contain advertisements or redirects, into customer datastreams that both bog down user experience and tamper with integrity of sites searched, Waves will implement a zero tolerance policy for usage of RFC 6108. Data Integrity for our users is extremely important.
Community: A digital stewardship program will be formed, with members of the community going through training courses either done in-house(e.g I run the program), or sponsored potentially by non-profit makerspaces. This program will allow for people in the baltimore community to have the skills necessary to feel comfortable with taking ownership of the infrastructure in their neighborhood. The Baltimore Digital Stewards will aid in new wireless deployments, and aid with support of the network both physically, and within a team collaboration chat room(e.g slack). Most of all, they will be the representatives from their communities, and will help lead Monthly Meetups within their neighborhoods to talk about infrastructure changes, and address community issues as it relates to internet access.