Community networking, together with the Bottom-up-Broadband initiative, is an emerging model for the Future Internet across Europe and beyond where communities of citizens build, operate and own open IP-based networks, a key infrastructure for individual and
collective digital participation. Although community based networks often extend or complement the coverage of networks of commercial ISPs, they differ in several key aspects: There is usually no central authority that is responsible for a precise network planning. Support is decentralized and open, provided by the community. The network nodes are often inexpensive off the shelf equipment and the network elements exhibit a high degree of heterogeneity in the hardware, software, and capacity. The network infrastructure belongs to the user and is shared to build the network. The network is very dynamic: the number of nodes may rapidly grow and change as new members join the network, or when nodes overload or fail. These community networks are usually built with low cost point-to-point wireless links, MANET networks, and an increasing presence of optical fibre links.

In these scenarios, the networking and systems research community has the opportunity to contribute with more sustainable, adaptive, scalable, integrated, autonomic solutions for those common traits in community networks.

The CNBuB 2012 workshop aims at serving as a meeting point for exchanging ideas, discussing solutions, and sharing experiences among researchers and practitioners, both from academia and community networks. The workshop solicits original papers addressing theoretical and practical challenges of community networks and bottom-up-broadband, including insights from other disciplines that contribute to the socio-technical economic understanding of the community network operation and growth.

Topics of interest for CNBuB 2012 include, but are not limited to:
- Wireless mesh networks
- Wireless MAC and routing protocols
- Services and applications
- Cross-layer designs
- Hybrid networks with wireless and optical fibre links
- Tools for bootstrapping and running community networks
- Performance modelling and evaluation
- Quality of service provisioning
- Quality of experience in community networks
- Community network security and privacy
- Large-scale management and data collection infrastructures
- Incentive models for users and businesses to participate in community networks
- Socio-technical-economic models for community networks


PUBLICATION:

Once accepted, papers will be included into the IEEE conference
proceedings published by IEEE Computer Society Press and will be
accessible via IEEE Xplore Digital Library.

WORKSHOP CHAIRS:

Roger Baig, Guifi.net, Spain
Felix Freitag, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain

PROGRAM COMMITTEE:

Christoph Barz, Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics FKIE, Germany
Harald Bongartz, Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics FKIE, Germany
Bart Braem, IBBT - University of Antwerp, Belgium
Llorenç Cerdà-Alabern, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain
Leandro Navarro, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain
Dirk Neumann, Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg, Germany
Ermanno Pietrosemoli, International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Italy
Tuan Anh Trinh, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary
Marco Zennaro, International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Italy