Mobile and City-wide Communication Environment for Secure Internet Services

Municipal Wi-Fi networks aim at providing broad Internet access and selected network services to citizens, travelers, and civil servants. Such services can range from web sites to interactive tourist guides to remote meter read-outs and traffic monitoring. While establishing such networks is financially challenging for municipalities, Wi-Fi-sharing communities accomplish good coverage and ubiquitous access by capitalizing on the dense deployment of private access points in urban areas. However, lack of trust, security, and openness make community models unsuitable for municipal Wi-Fi projects.

The project Mobile ACcess is a collaboration of the chairs Informatik 4 and Informatik 8, and another seven municipal and industrial partners including the cities of Aachen and Monschau. It is a joint effort to show the feasibility and practicability of a city-wide network consisting of individual access networks united by a novel concept for Wi-Fi sharing communities. Mobile Access spans a number of problem domains ranging from networking and network security to application design and paradigms for disruption-tolerant mobile applications.

For more information on the project visit www.mobile-access.org