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title: '**Grow Your Own Network**'
---

![image](thefnf-logo.png)

**We envision a world where communities build, maintain, and own their
own share of the global computer network. Free networks, when properly
engineered, offer their users both a greater say in the governance of
their network, and more privacy in their communications. Being your own
service provider is the only way to make sure that your service provider
treats you right. We call this the principle of digital
self-determination, and have designed, prototyped and test deployed a
suite of network appliances that will facilitate the realization of this
principle.**\
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The free software community has developed a wide variety of software
components to address various network related challenges. Americans For
A Better Network, working with members of the community, is looking to
take those components and deliver a turnkey, self-administered
networking solution that will allow for cascading self-governance on
local, regional and global scales.\
\
Paired with a cooperative network management suite and integrated
cryptosystem, our tools will allow for the rapid, simple construction of
cooperative autonomous systems, with end-to-end encryption enabled by
default.\
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The entire suite is designed to be deployed using the principle of
emergence --- meaning that it can be organized in a way that is
bottom-up, top-down or middle-out. We call the network appliances
FreedomNode, FreedomTower, and FreedomLink. The management suite is
called AutoNOC, and the transparent cryptosystem is AutoTunnel.\
\
In addition to radically increasing network resilience, reducing the
price of connectivity, and making networks more responsive to the needs
of their participants, free network architectures will allow for
groundbreaking localized applications of network technology. The uses of
this technology are myriad, and the need is ubiquitous -- anywhere in
the world, the capacity for self-reliance and self-determination would
be enhanced by the emergence of a free network. Inverting the power
structure of our networks is bound to take a while, and we are still in
the very beginning, but no idea holds greater liberating potential than
this: computer networks should be funded, built, and maintained by those
that use them.