Community Wireless Networks

Back in the summer of 2000, with the arrival of affordable 802.11b/WiFi gear, we started a part-time project called SeattleWireless The goal of Seattle Wireless, then and now was to create a network infrastructure not owned by a telco or cable company, with many owners, for the purpose of not only providing Internet access, but a platform for locally produced content and services.

Back then, off the shelf systems were not up to the task of mesh routing, or even designed for outdoor use. We cobbled together computers and wireless cards, hacked access points and made our own outdoor enclosures using what we could find online or at our local hardware stores.

We shared our knowledge at sites like SeattleWireless, and met with other like minded individuals all over the world through FreeNetworks.ORG summits (and more recently, the WSFII and IS4CWN).

In 2004, we started Metrix Communication LLC, a small company that would help people like us solve their wireless problems by providing quality equipment, designed the way we (as customers) wanted to see it, with open specifications and open source software, not constrained to a corporate or home network feature-set. At the time, this was mostly unheard of.

Our first products were the Metrix Mark I and Metrix Mark II, Single Board Computers enclosed in waterproof cases, complete with Power over Ethernet and high powered radios. The heart of the kit was our customized linux distribution, a small(ish) general purpose system based on Debian Linux. Over time, that has become Pyramid Linux, complete with web interface, wireless discovery and analysis tools, and a real (not busybox) shell environment.

Our customers those days were mostly Community Wireless Networkers, Researchers at Universities, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), Wireless security professionals, and a growing number of innovative Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs).

As WiFi products have become more and more robust over these past few years, and have drifted both towards open architecture (many access points ship with linux as the default OS now) and outdoor use due to the explosion of Wireless ISPs and Government/Public Safety networks, we have expanded our catalog, and now in addition to our customizable kits, we resell a variety of SBCs, Wireless Cards, Off-The-Shelf Access Point and CPE equipment , antennas and cables. Everything you could possibly need to build your wireless network, big or small, community or commercial.

Today, we are still involved heavily in Community Wireless, and host the SeattleWireless HackNights at our office in Seattle. If you feel like stopping by, it's at 7PM Wednesday nights (Usually not on holidays, but check out the calendar on SeattleWireless if you feel curious)