Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network

Despite the fact that the network was organized in Athens, the capital of Greece, its coverage and activities are no longer limited to one city. It covers an area of ​​110 km from North to South and 85 km from West to East, with the most southerly point in Palaia Epidavros (Epidaurus) and the most northerly point in the city of Nea Artaki on Evia Island. The network also includes the islands of Aegina, Salamina and other territories around Athens. ^[2]

The wide distribution of the network contributed to the accession of isolated areas with poor technical infrastructure to the Athenian network, thus providing access to many services at high speed. As of August 2010, the network included 1,120 main nodes and more than 2,900 connected computers to it and more than 9,000 people expressed their desire to join the AWMN in the future.

Instead of joining AWMN, small “islands” of wireless networks established in other cities and islands, AWMN provided technical equipment and network configuration information. The recently connected island of Euboea was provided with a large number of connections in order to ensure redundancy. The next step should be the accession of wireless “islands” located in Corinth, Lamia (city) and Volos. The plans are also joining more remote cities of Greece, such as Patras.

For those “islands” and communities that cannot be connected via wireless connections, they are provided with the possibility of connecting via VPN connections. This year (which one?), AWMN has connected most of the Greek community-networks and is going to cross the borders of Greece thanks to a VPN connection recently installed from the Ljubljana wireless network (Slovenia). In the future, AWMN is going to connect all wireless community networks in Europe into one network.

AWMN was created by the community in 2002. The reason for the creation was the significant shortcomings and problems of Internet service providers in Greece in 2002, the choice of which for individuals (home users) was extremely small. To solve this problem, the AWMN network was created as an alternative, which gave users the experience of true broadband access to the network.

In a relatively short period of time since the founding of AWMN, the goals and objectives of the network began to change. A growing number of people interested in this network expressed their desire to join the project. The number of network nodes began to grow exponentially, and the nature of the network changed from an alternative Internet service provider to a social network for people with interests in the IT and telecommunications sectors.

In the AWMN network, the community plays an important role in the development of the network, encouraging participants to be more active in the life of the community. Users are separated as access points (network nodes) and access point clients. Network nodes act as routers, and pass through other people's traffic - which was generated by other nodes and sent to other nodes.

Network members have different age, different education, including IT and telecommunication professionals, radio amateurs, students of IT specialties and fans of new technologies. They are driven by the community spirit and they provide their time, experience and equipment (to participate in the network as nodes and access points) on a voluntary basis. ^[3]

• PA Frangoudis, GC Polyzos, VP Kemerlis. Wireless community networks: an alternative approach for nomadic broadband network access // IEEE Communications Magazine. - 2011-05-01. - T. 49 , vol. 5 - p . 206–213 . - ISSN 0163-6804 . - DOI : 10.1109 / MCOM.2011.5762819 .
• FA Elianos, G. Plakia, PA Frangoudis, GC Polyzos. Large-scale Wireless Community Network // 2009 IEEE International Symposium on Mobile, Multimedia Networks, Workshops. - 2009-06-01. - p . 1-6 . - DOI : 10.1109 / WOWMOM.2009.5282458 .