Progetto Neco is one of the most important Wireless Community Network in Italy. Founded in 2008 in the small town of Vietri di Potenza, it built a mesh network to stop Digital Divide, which persisted for over 15 years and which is still present in many places in the south of Italy. The network is maintained completely by volunteers and it is self-financed by its supporters. According to the official website, about 200 families have adhered to the project in 2016.
Technology
Like all the mesh networks, the infrastracture of Progetto Neco's network makes predominant use of WiFi technology. In fact, it is built by a backbone in HiperLAN (5 GHz), which covers the whole urban center, while the final supply of the WiFi signal is built in RadioLan (2.4 GHz). The devices used for the backbone are called nodes, while standard Hotspots are used for the final distribution. All the devices in use run OpenWRT as operating system and employ OLSR as routing protocol.
Every node in the network is made up by two or more radio interfaces, so that is possible receiving the signal and replaying it to one or more node on a different radio frequency, in order to decrease interferences and increase throughput.