A brief history of the Lewes Wireless Broadband project born out of Richies Consume node of yesteryear!

Richie several years ago had a Consume node up in Malling, and having met up with Ian, conjured a plan to try and network Lewes out to Chailey. The nodes Lewes1 and Lewes2 were born as were Chailey1 and 2 with Roger joining us. We called ourselves SussexNetShare with Lewes and Chailey wireless broadband networks as the local arms of a wider community project. We developed and grew and combined with Feeed and created a much larger community grouping covering many towns and villages. Around this time John Russell joined us from Lewes and brought in a stronger identity for Lewes and the other local towns & villages. Between us, we bought together all the town and village wirelessbroadband.co.uk's. Our constitution agreed by all admin was to be part of a whole and share support, share admin plus any grant funding . This is still the case... all sister groups be they in Lewes, Chailey, Burwash, Hastings, Rodmell, Eastbourne are all part of a whole, we each share support, admin and any grant funding we are able maintain. All SnS club members can share this support and can roam off any of our affiliated hotspots.

There is a slight hiccup in some parts of Lewes at the moment as 1 of admin broke away without warning to form www.LWBnet.org.uk. The equipment he is using SnS are not happy with. Basically although smaller and cheaper to deploy, the Meraki units have weaknesses and until sorted we cannot ourselves deploy in Lewes safely. 1st prob is all payments in dollars!! Meraki promise sterling shortly! We are still waiting! 2nd is security... Meraki can only monitor total user usage. Our early admin sought advice and "plod" at anytime may need much more detailed user usage. SnS at the moment can see if users have surfing habits which are not in keeping with our network policies. We can see the broad surfing habits of our users. Unfortunately with the meraki we can only see the quantity of the use! Thirdly meraki want 20% of any subs! At the moment £5.50 of every £6.95 collected goes to the gateway owner. The person who is kindly supplying the internet.Under a £1 goes to our admin and remainder goes in paypal fees! paying 20% to use merakis payment structure is rather large and will allow SnS nothing to develop if we are still paying the £5.50 to gateway owners! SnS do not want to have to rely on grant funding or sponsorship to survive! Also these meraki will not fit into our existing inhouse management system... but we are working on that!!

Hence the current situation with 2 leweswirelessbroadband community groups in lewes. We at SnS are the original and still are prepared to share and allow roaming to all SnS Lewes Wireless Broadband members in Lewes, Hastings, Rodmell, Chailey, Burwash or wherever. To date the splinter LWBnet.org.uk has set its sites purely on Lewes and is not currently in communication with its founders. It is receiving grants from The town council and disability organisations which by its original constitution should be shared by the whole group..SnS have turned a blind eye on this misdemeanour ..but feel its actions should be outed for all to see!

now lets pass you onto our main site below!! We still cover much of Lewes and welcome input from all existing Lewes users, existing node owners and potential future users and potential future node owners! We are run by volunteers. All admin are unpaid! We offer support and cover many towns and villages in Sussex, Devon, Norfolk and Essex. New groups are starting all the time. A new group is just starting in Mutley near Plymouth. We are all part of a whole!! We are quietly and steadily growing .....