Mataró Wireless Archive

Originally written in Catalan and translated into English with AI. The documents themselves are in Catalan or Spanish and have not been translated.

Mataró Wireless was a platform created by students of the Escola Universitària Politècnica de Mataró (Mataró Polytechnic University College) to spread knowledge of wireless technology (wifi), with the aim of building a free network in Mataró. Between 2002 and 2006 its members took part in several projects to build wireless networks, advising, supporting and sharing knowledge about the technology.

This is the archive collected from those days: the history of the group and some of the documents produced in presentations, courses and workshops, plus a few university projects. The information is presented as it was produced, without corrections, updates or any guarantee.

Note: if you are looking for information about the current wireless network, go to Mataró Sensefils.

A little history

It was born in February 2002 from an initiative of five students of the Escola Universitària Politècnica de Mataró who were concerned about the limits on access to information, caused mainly by the cost of infrastructure. They were basically enthusiastic about creating a means of communication run by its own users, open to anyone and not prohibitively expensive.

The idea was to create a free-access wireless network in the city of Mataró, managed by the users themselves. It would let anyone in the municipality with a wireless device reach a citizens’ network with its own content. At the same time, they wanted to have a way out to the internet, either from the spare capacity of ADSL subscribers’ connections or from public administration funding.

To carry out the project they presented the University with an ambitious proposal that, in six points, described different actions for rolling out the wireless network. At that time knowledge of the technology was very limited and the authors themselves were aware of how difficult the project was. For that reason, once the proposal had been presented, eight months went by while the initiators did their research and studied what the technology could really do.

At the time, wifi devices were for home use, indoors. Building a citizens’ network outside buildings was technically very complex: equipment transmitted at low power, buildings blocked the waves and coverage radii were therefore very limited. The equipment was also very expensive, did not offer most of the features we needed and did not let us make the configurations we wanted. In any case, to create a free citizens’ network run by its users, we first needed to make this technology known and encourage its use, basically because that is how the future users of the network would appear.

During this period we found two more projects in Mataró with very similar interests. One was Iluro Wireless, a group of people from Via Europa in Mataró who wanted to create a wireless network in that area. We also started to find people interested in using the wireless connection to share a single ADSL line among more people. From all of this came the Mataró Sense Fils project, which aimed to create a free wireless network in the city of Mataró, managed by its users. But although they had a project in common, each group had its own goals and kept its own identity.

With all this behind us, it seemed that the role and goals of the group were now clearer. In October 2002 the Mataró Wireless group was presented in the Assembly Hall of the Escola Universitària Politècnica de Mataró.

Documents

Here you can find most of the documents produced from Mataró Wireless’s talks, courses, workshops and seminars during those years, and some university projects by members of the group.

Presentations

• Introducción al 802.11b 2002. The group’s first presentation. Very general: it briefly explained how the technology works, the bands it uses, other wireless standards and why we chose wifi.
  By: Eduard Fernández i Frederic Monpeat
• Introducció Sensefils 2002. Presentation given at Mataró’s senior citizens’ centre. Derived from the first one, it stresses the history of wireless communications and the Mataró project.
  By: Eduard Fernández i Frederic Monpeat

1st Mataró Wireless Seminar

• In-seguridad 802.11b 2003. A presentation that goes deeper into the security mechanisms of the 802.11b protocol: WEP encryption, authentication and access control lists.
  By: Pau Oliva

2nd Wireless Seminar

• Introducción al Wireless 2004. An extended, updated and improved version of the 2002 presentation. It explains how the technology works, the bands, the modes and the basic security mechanisms. It was the most used and repeated presentation over the years because of its introductory nature.
  By: Frederic Monpeat
• Las Antenas 2004. More than a presentation, this is a long document with all the information needed to build antennas: how they work, their characteristics, properties and types. A Mataró Wireless classic!
  By: Toni Cervera
• Muntatge d’una xarxa 802.11 en un municipi 2004. A presentation that takes a town of about 5,000 inhabitants as an example and goes over the technical and legal aspects of building a wireless network.
  By: Frederic Monpeat

Atac Sensefils

• Segurització d’una xarxa sensefils - Part teòrica 2004. Presentation for the Atac Sensefils days, reviewing the theory of 802.11 security (WEP, ACL, Shared Key, WPA and WPA2) and its vulnerabilities.
  By: Frederic Monpeat
• Segurització d’una xarxa Sensefils - Part Pràctica 2004. Presentation for the Atac Sensefils days, explaining audit tools (the Aircrack-ng tools) and carrying out different attacks that exploit the vulnerabilities of the 802.11 protocol.
  By: Jordi Clopés

3rd Wireless Seminar

• Introducció al Wireless (802.11) 2005. An updated introduction to wireless technology, extended to include configuration on Windows and GNU/Linux.
  By: Xavier Sansebastian i Pere Mindan
• IEEE 802.11n Next generation Wifi 2005. An introduction to what was then the draft 802.11n, explaining the new bands, speeds and technologies that would define the standard.
  By: Pau Oliva
• Wimax, més enllà del Wifi 2005. An introduction to what was then the draft 802.16, going over some of the features that would define the standard.
  By: Frederic Monpeat

Antenna workshop

• Guia Ondas 2003. A document detailing how to build a waveguide antenna.
  By: Toni Cervera
• Bi-Quad 2003. A document detailing how to build a BiQuad antenna.
  By: Toni Cervera
• Taller d’antenes. General document of the antenna workshop.

Course

• Curs de Connectivitat Sensefils 2005/06. A half-day course introducing wireless technology and the world of communities building free networks. Among other uses, it served for the courses organised by the TecnoCampus in Mataró.
  By: Jordi Clopés

University projects

• In-seguridad en redes 802.11b. The document the security presentation at the first Mataró Wireless seminar was based on. It explains in detail the vulnerabilities of the 802.11b protocol and how to exploit them. Probably the most famous document in the archive.
  By: Pau Oliva
• TFC - Hotspot in a box. It gathers the key elements for building a HotSpot-in-a-Box based on the integration of different open source tools, and details the technical features of the final application: any of the three most common IEEE standards (802.11 a/b/g), several authentication methods, encryption, roaming and more. It discusses possible uses, in corporate settings and for the end user, and stresses that the whole HotSpot-in-a-Box was built with free software.
  By: Pau Oliva
• TFC - Entorn Pràctic de Wifi. A practical view of the 802.11 technology. The work is organised as a series of hands-on exercises that start from minimal knowledge of wifi and take the reader to an advanced level. All with as little hardware as possible and free software tools that do not tie you to specific equipment.
  By: Frederic Monpeat

Licence

Unless the document says otherwise, these works are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported licence.