by JASON GONDZIOLA

The Internet brought us many things: seamless transnational commerce, quick access to vast amounts of information and a seemingly endless parade of promises for penile enhancement. But it also brought us something else: a generation of basement-dwelling computer users with little incentive to interact in real-time.

Île sans fil wants to change that. Aiming to provide free wireless Internet throughout the city, the volunteer-run collective hopes to encourage Internet users to get out of the basement and into Montreal's cafés and parks. They currently have six wireless Internet zones, or hotspots, and plan on adding another five by this fall.

"This is halfway between an open-source software development group and a grassroots community group," says Michael Lenczner, who co-founded the non-profit organization last summer along with fellow computer users Mina Naguib and David Vincelli.

Citing sociologist Ray Oldenburg's concept of "third space," Lenczner explains that there are three types of places in people's lives: the place you live, the place you work and the place you gather. The group is hoping to improve the latter - a concrete change stemming from a virtual network.

"Our dream is not to have people sitting in front of laptops surfing the Web and not interacting with each other at these cafés," says Lenczner. "We're going to work very actively to make sure that doesn't happen."

A captive audience

The technology behind setting up a café or a park is nearly identical. Volunteers from Île sans fil install a computer and wireless router at a total cost of $200, capable of serving an area up to 200 feet in radius, depending on obstacles. In the case of a park, the radius can be boosted slightly by using an amplifier. Interested users then bring their own portable computer equipped with a WiFi card into the range of the hotspot

User logins are accomplished via a captive portal, which routes wireless network traffic through a central server. Currently, the group is using an open-source application called NoCat, but has begun to develop a more robust program with the adversarial moniker of WiFiDog. The new application runs on a modified LinkSys wireless router - essentially a hacked piece of Internet equipment - and should lower the installation cost to around $100.

In addition to these costs, the café owner or home user who wishes to be an Île sans fil hub must foot the monthly Internet connection bill. Since most interested cafés and homes already have a high-speed connection, the cost is often negligible.

"Since we don't charge anything, it's not so much a business model as a social model that must be self-sustaining," says Benoît Grégoire, leader of Île sans fil's technical team. "So there must be something in it for the people providing service."

For reasons of security and preventing abuse, all Île sans fil users must log into the system before using it. The beauty of this process, according to Lenczner, is that it provides a captive audience - and a chance to tell them about their community. Small listings of local artists and events will be displayed on the login screen, each customized for its particular neighbourhood. There are also plans to use the login page as a medium for art distribution itself.

"With the Internet, geography was completely eliminated. You go to a page, you don't know if you're in Japan, or a server in Germany or next door," says Daniel Drouet, a member of Île sans fil. "One of the things we're interested in doing is making the geographical location important again."

Similar groups exist throughout North America, varying in size from two hotspots in Courtenay, British Columbia, to nearly 200 in New York City. The groups are united by a shared vision: to try to provide free wireless Internet to people in urban centres. The same can be said of Île sans fil, whose goal is to blanket the entire city in a wireless web, one café at a time.

"We're not trying to cover a complete grid with wireless coverage everywhere like cell phones. It's not workable, it's not economically feasible - not for free, that's for sure," says Grégoire. "The idea is to have an access point within walking distance of everywhere."

Île sans fil meets the first and third Wednesday of every month (general and technical meetings, respectively) at various hotspots throughout the city. Meetings are conducted in both official languages. Check out www.Ilesansfil.org for more info and a list of hotspots