About the network
Levee Ward covers about 24 blocks of New Orleans’s west side, mostly shotgun houses and doubles. The network was built by a group of retired telephone line workers after a provider’s fiber build stopped six blocks short of the neighborhood.
Schematic
Uptime
99.92% uptime over the last 90 days, with 1 day of degraded service or maintenance.
Governance
- Owned by
- Levee Ward Community Net
- Legal home
- Cooperative corporation, owned by member households
- Members
- 946 households, one vote each
- Monthly assembly
- Third Tuesday of each month, 7:00 pm, at the union hall
- Annual assembly
- Every November
- Maintenance fund
- $3 a month per household, suggested. No household is disconnected for not paying.
Stewards
Elected by the members. Listed by first name and initial.
- Sofia L.Network steward · since 2026
- Deborah R.Treasurer · since 2026
- Yusuf B.Membership steward · since 2025
- Keisha K.Training steward · since 2022
- Tomás A.Rooftops steward · since 2023
- Camila C.Secretary · since 2021
- Theo F.Network steward · since 2021
Backhaul
Links that carry the network’s traffic to the wider internet.
| Link | Medium | Capacity | Far end | Peak use yesterday |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LT-28-BH1 | Fiber | 10 Gbps | New Orleans internet exchange | 16% |
Maintenance log
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: 7 dishes realigned and one mast replaced.
Tree trimming along two backbone paths, with the city’s parks crew.
Annual assembly: 85 members attended and elected four stewards.
Hardware refresh: 18 nodes upgraded to Stoop R6 over the year.
Grounding on N-1146 redone after an inspection found a corroded lug.
Heavy rain: water ingress found and fixed in 6 enclosures.
N-1174 moved to the other side of the roof to clear a new air-conditioning unit.
N-1172 replaced under warranty after its radio stopped associating.
Battery modules replaced at 6 hubs ahead of winter.
Mount on N-1164 re-secured after the host reported a loose mast.
New hub on the community health center roof: N-2890.
Hardware build night: 8 Stoop nodes assembled from parts.
Steward training on monitoring and fault-finding: 8 attended.
N-1162 replaced under warranty after its radio stopped associating.
Hardware refresh: 14 nodes upgraded to Stoop R5 over the year.
Firmware 4.0 rolled out to every node.
Hardware refresh: 17 nodes upgraded to Stoop R4 over the year.
Network switched on: 32 nodes installed by 153 volunteers over a weekend.
Founding assembly: the Levee Ward Community Net adopts its charter and elects five stewards.