Improved Automation Tools for Wireless Community Network Management

The candidate is enrolled in a project called "Senza Fili Senza Confini", conducted by an association born on October 2014. The organization purpose is to bring broadband connectivity in remote rural areas applying a participatory approach. Nowadays its network expands over a large portion of Piedmont. The association has started his activity in a single municipality on the basis of an experimental project run by "Politecnico di Torino" from 2010 to 2014. During the years, the number of municipalities has grown and with them the number of base stations, which have increased from 10 to 250, and the number of radios which has increased over 3000. With such a fast growth the management of the network as well as the administrative organization has become more and more complex. It has not been possible to manage anymore the system by hand, so it has been necessary to automatize some operations to improve reliability and enhance management simplicity. The devices which compose the network are almost totally supplied by two producers: "Mikrotik" and "Ubiquiti". Both are accessible by SSH remote connections. After studying the critical issues of the system, the candidate has exploited remote control facilities in order to lighten the daily operations of the staff.