About the network
Fordline covers about 48 blocks of Detroit’s north side, mostly bungalows and two-flats. The network was built by a housing cooperative’s board after a school district survey found students doing homework in fast-food parking lots for the signal.
Schematic
Uptime
99.91% uptime over the last 90 days, with 3 days of degraded service or maintenance.
Governance
- Owned by
- Fordline Community Net
- Legal home
- Cooperative corporation, owned by member households
- Members
- 1,544 households, one vote each
- Monthly assembly
- Third Saturday of each month, 2:00 pm, at the masjid’s community room
- Annual assembly
- Every November
- Maintenance fund
- $10 a month per household, suggested. No household is disconnected for not paying.
Stewards
Elected by the members. Listed by first name and initial.
- Beatriz K.Network steward · since 2023
- Fatima V.Treasurer · since 2023
- Ashley S.Membership steward · since 2018
- Ivan H.Training steward · since 2022
- Anthony C.Rooftops steward · since 2018
Backhaul
Links that carry the network’s traffic to the wider internet.
| Link | Medium | Capacity | Far end | Peak use yesterday |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LT-20-BH1 | Fiber | 10 Gbps | Detroit internet exchange | 23% |
| LT-20-BH2 | Licensed microwave, 11 GHz | 2 Gbps | Eastgate | 32% |
Maintenance log
Scheduled hub replacement. Planned overnight replacement of a Gantry H3 hub with an H5, midnight to 4:00 am local time. Rooftops served by the hub have been moved to neighboring hubs for the window.
Upstream outage. The network’s transit provider had an outage of its own. The mesh itself stayed up, and local services kept working.
Firmware 4.6.2 rollout. Staged firmware rollout to every node, one hub’s area at a time. Each node restarted once.
Storm damage. High winds knocked several dishes out of alignment. Stewards realigned them once it was safe to go up.
Annual assembly: 77 members attended and elected two stewards.
Hardware refresh: 29 nodes upgraded to Stoop R6 over the year.
Grounding on N-3177 redone after an inspection found a corroded lug.
N-0721 moved to the other side of the roof to clear a new air-conditioning unit.
Expansion: five new nodes in 2024, mostly in grids B3, F5 and G2.
Heavy rain: water ingress found and fixed in 3 enclosures.
New hub on the public housing tower roof, under a housing authority agreement: N-2941.
Hardware build night: 21 Stoop nodes assembled from parts.
Ice storm: 3 nodes offline until power was restored.
Radio on N-0700 replaced after water got into the enclosure.
Installer workshop: 13 residents trained and climbed their first roof.
Rooftop agreements reviewed; 2 renewed with new building owners.
Hardware refresh: 29 nodes upgraded to Stoop R5 over the year.
Backhaul upgraded from 1 Gbps to 10 Gbps fiber.
Firmware 4.0 rolled out to every node.
Hardware refresh: 13 nodes upgraded to Stoop R4 over the year.
New hub on the union hall roof: N-1223.
Expansion: three new nodes in 2015, mostly in grids F2, H3 and H5.
Network switched on: 33 nodes installed by 122 volunteers over a weekend.
Founding assembly: the Fordline Community Net adopts its charter and elects five stewards.