About the network
Bridgeside is where LoTek began. In June 2008 a handful of neighbors put secondhand radios on eight roofs along a single block and mounted a relay under the old bridge, because from beneath it you could see every roof that mattered. The phone company had said for years that the block was not worth upgrading.
The network has grown street by street ever since, and now reaches most of the neighborhood. The relay under the bridge, N-0001, is still in service and is still called Heaven.
Schematic
Uptime
99.90% uptime over the last 90 days, with 1 day of degraded service or maintenance.
Governance
- Owned by
- Bridgeside Community Network Cooperative
- Legal home
- Cooperative corporation, owned by member households
- Members
- 1,947 households, one vote each
- Monthly assembly
- Last Saturday of each month, 11:00 am, at the union hall
- Annual assembly
- Every August
- Maintenance fund
- $9 a month per household, suggested. No household is disconnected for not paying.
Stewards
Elected by the members. Listed by first name and initial.
- Bernice O.Network steward · since 2023
- Molly M.Treasurer · since 2023
- Lorenzo K.Membership steward · since 2020
- Olga J.Training steward · since 2025
Backhaul
Links that carry the network’s traffic to the wider internet.
| Link | Medium | Capacity | Far end | Peak use yesterday |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LT-01-BH1 | Fiber | 10 Gbps | Newark internet exchange | 29% |
| LT-01-BH2 | Licensed microwave, 11 GHz | 2 Gbps | Lister Flats | 41% |
| LT-01-BH3 | Fiber, donated by the library system | 1 Gbps | Public library network | 41% |
Maintenance log
Firmware 4.6.2 rollout. Staged firmware rollout to every node, one hub’s area at a time. Each node restarted once.
Backhaul fiber cut. A construction crew dug through the fiber. Traffic moved to the backup link at reduced speed until the provider spliced the cable.
Annual assembly: 85 members attended and elected three stewards.
Radio on N-0192 replaced after water got into the enclosure.
Hardware refresh: 3 nodes upgraded to Gantry H5 over the year.
N-0064 moved to the other side of the roof to clear a new air-conditioning unit.
Hardware refresh: 34 nodes upgraded to Stoop R6 over the year.
Seventeen years of this network’s records published as part of Mesh at the Margins. Read the paper
Installer workshop: 11 residents trained and climbed their first roof.
JONES retired with honors after seventeen years of signal work, and its SQUID detector with it. TR-10544 TR-01981
Annual assembly: 103 members attended and elected four stewards.
Tree trimming along two backbone paths, with the city’s parks crew.
Expansion: four new nodes in 2024, mostly in grids B5, F3 and F4.
Radio on N-0859 replaced after water got into the enclosure.
Cable to N-1221 replaced; squirrels again.
Expansion: three new nodes in 2023, mostly in grids A3, E1 and G4.
High winds: 2 rooftop mounts checked and re-secured.
New hub on the recreation center roof: N-2668.
Mount on N-1131 re-secured after the host reported a loose mast.
Ice storm: 9 nodes offline until power was restored.
New hub on the apartment tower roof, twelve storeys: N-2555.
Hardware refresh: 31 nodes upgraded to Stoop R5 over the year.
Busiest day on record for a single node: 320 GB through N-0001.
Firmware 4.0 rolled out to every node.
Backhaul upgraded from 1 Gbps to 10 Gbps fiber.
Firmware 3.0 rolled out to every node.
New hub on the senior center roof: N-0108.
Members adopt a governance charter, modeled on the one Lister Flats wrote that spring, and elect the first stewards.
First purpose-built hub, a Gantry H1, installed on the branch library roof.
Network switched on: nine nodes, eight on the roofs of a single block and a relay under the bridge, N-0001. Residents named the relay Heaven within the week.
The signal-analysis system JONES licensed on the Turing Registry to work on the new network’s links. TR-10544