[occupyaustin-it] FNF Needs and You (money please)

[Charles N Wyble]

All,

A lot of folks have asked how to help the Free Network Foundation (FNF).
Here are some very concrete and near term needs:

Meta/national level
1) Spread the word of www.indiegogo.com/Free-the-Network EVERWHERE.
Tweet it, blog it, occupy radio it, linkedin, myspace etc. Get the word
out far and wide. Lean heavily on your social network to contribute. <<
CALL TO ACTION. EVERYONE PLEASE DO THIS. This is funding for network
operation centers that will let us link the towers together. That's a
big expense and we need everyones help to build and sustain for a year.
Towers / repeaters can (and are) being bootstrapped community by
community. However owning our own lines is a much bigger expense/project.

2) Back end for that funding. I need a couple people to help rework
thefnf.org content. Isaac/I are swamped with tactical problems. I need a
bridge between tech/early adopters and people who want to help and need
a little bit of guidance around why they should contribute. Talking
points/slide deck/blog re work.


Data center needs

Hardware:

1) Powered USB hub. (I've got some issues with the USB drives we are
using with the server dropping out. Without the powered USB hub FNF
doesn't have RAID or Backup capacity. FNF is rapidly becoming the
infrastructure provider of choice for a number of critical elements. I
feel very uncomfortable going into production without RAID and backup.

2) 2 DB9 Serial cable for router console access (active and standby) and
a USB to serial adapter (already have one set aside for the active
router console cable). 

3) SATA hard drive for standby router (brand new please. Can be small
capacity (50 gb or greater). Don't know if you can even get drives that
small anymore. The machine I'll be shipping has ram/cpu but no hard drive.

4) 2 2 port low profile Intel Gigabit NIC (one for active and one for
standby pfsense router). Right now I'm using the built in 100 mbps port
on the motherboard and a USB ethernet adapter. Kind of gimicky. Would
like to go into production with non gimicked setup.

Logistics:

1) Pre paid funding of VPS hosting for 1 year to act as a standby warm
fail over site for all of the services FNF is providing (from the
network noc, to hosting occupyatxtogether.org, to occupy national
virtual machines). Everything but the router functionality. Right now
our data center is a single point of failure for a lot of different
pieces. We built all of our infrastructure to be redundant at a
component level as much as possible.

2) Funding delivery/install of standby switch/router to Kansas City. I
have a secondary Cisco 2950 switch and a secondary Dell Optiplex system
for a standby pfSense router. If someone wants to pay to ship everything
and for the smart hands to install it that would be great. Otherwise I'd
like to rent a car, take the gear and hook everything up. It's a 12 hour
drive to KC and I wouldn't mind a driving buddy. We could visit OccupyKC.


Help with setup

I'm almost done with setting up the final base infrastructure pieces. If
anyone is an expert with Linux and wants to help with some outstanding
tasks, please let me know. I need to setup several pieces of software
and wouldn't mind delegating some tasks. I've been hesitant to provide
any access to additional people (outside of webapps) for security
reasons. However in the interest of time I'd like some help.


I think that's all for now. Sorry for the giant request for help/cash.
Just that FNF has been doing quite a bit and we need help to sustain the
increased scope of work that we have taken out of necessity.

Thanks all.