SOWN was originally formed back in 2001 by a collection of mainly Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) students in the University of Southampton's Wireless Society (SUWS) who wanted to deploy and provide free-to-use Internet access through what was at the time very new Wi-Fi technology.

Today, we run a number of projects, in particular an eduroam Wi-Fi deployment beyond the University campuses. These projects provide a low-stakes environment for members to practice skills highly sought after in industry.

Unfortunately, we can currently only offer Internet access on our access points to staff and students from institutions who are part of the eduroam, "the secure, world-wide roaming access service developed for the international research and education community." We are working on once again being able to provide community (@sown.org.uk) accounts, allowing anyone to sign up and then connect to the Internet through our access points using a new secondary network name (SSID).

As a first port of call you can either send us a email via our contact us form or join our Discord server.

SOWN hold fortnightly meetings and are looking for more people to become involved so please come and join the fun!

We also hold regular workshops that give the opportunity for everyone to get together and play with the network and wireless kit.

You can request to host a SOWN[at]HOME node (a bespoke Wi-Fi access point) by contacting us. Please be aware that nodes can only be requested by staff/students of the University of Southampton. Due to the University's regulations, students in halls are not permitted to host nodes.

If you already host a node, you can manage its settings through the public node admin system. Using your SOWN admin account.