Early project in rural areas thumb|right|250px|A volunteer installing a "supernode" of guifi.net. In July 2018 guifi.net had over 35,000 active nodes and about 63,000 km of wireless links. In 2000, guifi.net was founded because commercial internet service providers did not build a broadband Internet infrastructure in rural Catalonia. Guifi.net was conceived as a wireless mesh network, where households can become a node in the network by operating a radio transmitter. Not every node needs to be a wireless router, but the network relies on some volunteers being connected to the Internet and sharing that access with others. In 2017 guifi.net had 23,000 nodes and was described as the biggest mesh network in the world.
Early project in rural areas thumb|right|250px|A volunteer installing a "supernode" of guifi.net. In July 2018 guifi.net had over 35,000 active nodes and about 63,000 km of wireless links. In 2000, guifi.net was founded because commercial internet service providers did not build a broadband Internet infrastructure in rural Catalonia. Guifi.net was conceived as a wireless mesh network, where households can become a node in the network by operating a radio transmitter. Not every node needs to be a wireless router, but the network relies on some volunteers being connected to the Internet and sharing that access with others. In 2017 guifi.net had 23,000 nodes and was described as the biggest mesh network in the world