General Description
CASPUR (Interuniversities Consortium for Supercomputing Applications for University and Research) is a governmental institution under the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Scientific Research established in mid-1992 by nine Universities in central and southern Italy. CASPUR hosts one of the major network datacenters of central Italy, offering housing and colocation space to the second national Italian Internet Exchange Point, Namex (NAutilus MEditerranean eXchange point), and a wide range of national and international ISP Points of Presence (POP). CASPUR has collaboration agreements with some of the major research institutions in Italy.
Relevant Competence for the project
CASPUR’s mission in WiFi field is to apply innovative communication technology. One of the most important project that CASPUR is carrying out is the “Provinciawifi” that was born in October 2008 and aims to create the largest open and free of charge Wi-Fi network ever realized in Italy, with 500 access points in the main public squares of the Municipalities of the provincial territory of Rome. A research project conducted by the CASPUR consortium found its perfect application. In the course of 2009, it was necessary to develop appropriate software tools to improve the simplicity and speed of Provinciawifi network management. Using the experience gained with Provinciawifi, CASPUR has been chosen for built up both the “SurfInSardinia” and “PratoWifi” technological infrastructures. Last but not least CASPUR is maintaining the IX-WIFI, the technical infrastructure for Italian Public Administrations’ WiFi networks federation .
Main role and activities to be carried out
Existing or new Wi-Fi networks based on our software can provide georeferential information about users that can be used by PTA. Our Wi-Fi Access Point firmware is already used to provide Internet access on trams and buses in Rome. We’re willing to consolidate and improve the stability of this solution. We are proposing to improve our software in order to provide the community with an open and open-source basic infrastructure that can be used: as a “trait d’union” between cities backend interfaces and mobile applications; to build a connectivity infrastructure that can be used for both municipal services and Pubic Internet Access