Community

This page explains how 44Net works as a community of operators, maintainers, and contributors. It is also a directory of the main places where people ask questions, coordinate changes, and stay in touch.

If you are blocked right now and want the most direct support entry point, start with Get Help.

What we mean by “community”

More than just a block of IP addresses, 44Net is also a long-running technical community.

Much of the operational knowledge that keeps 44Net usable lives in the experience of the people who run it, troubleshoot it, write documentation, maintain software tools, and help newcomers get unstuck. The mailing lists and discussion groups are where that knowledge is developed and shared.

Asking for help is one of the first ways people join the community. As with amateur radio, asking questions and helping one another is how people learn about how things work and eventually go on to help the next person.

Where to ask questions

For most 44Net technical questions, start here:

• ARDC 44Net discussion group

This is the main public forum for:

• Setup questions that go beyond the documented quick starts
• Troubleshooting odd routing, NAT, DNS, or platform-specific behavior
• Discussing proposed documentation changes or shared operational practices
• Sharing working examples, lessons learned, and project writeups

Note that administrative issues like account access, verification, or requests that depend on Portal workflow should generally go through the Portal ticket system instead of the discussion group.

Groups.io and discussion channels

ARDC maintains a Groups.io presence with multiple public subgroups. The most relevant ones for 44Net readers are:

• ARDC Main: low-volume announcements and broad ARDC updates
• 44Net: the main 44Net discussion group for setup, troubleshooting, and operations
• 44Net Connect: discussions specifically about the 44Net Connect project
• ARDC Community: broader discussion about ARDC and its work not related to 44Net
• ARDC 44Net VPN: discussion related to VPN-style access systems not specifically related to 44Net Connect
• ARDC Developer Community: discussion related to software development and open source projects supported by ARDC
• ARDC Wiki: discussion related to the wiki and documentation work

There are other groups related to the grants program, committees, and more. See the ARDC Groups.io directory for a full list.

Social and other community resources

Official ARDC channels and resources that may be useful:

• ARDC 44Net page
• ARDC contact page
• Mastodon
• Bluesky
• Twitter / X
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• Vimeo

Other useful entry points:

• Get Help
• Getting started
• What People Build
• Contributing
• 44Net mailing list for historical context and legacy list references

Community norms

Fundamentally, 44Net is a federation of technical operators who share a common interest in building and maintaining non-commercial, community-run network infrastructure. The community is generally welcoming and supportive of newcomers, and encourages people to ask questions, share their experiences, and contribute in whatever way they can.

There is no one project that constitutes all of 44Net. It is not just RF networks, or just tunnels, or just a specific set of services. It is a collection of different activities that all contribute to the overall ecosystem. This range of disparate efforts is part of what makes the community interesting.

Asking questions

When asking a question, it’s helpful to be as specific as possible about the problem you’re facing and what you’ve already tried. This can help others understand your situation and provide more targeted advice.

For example, instead of asking “Why isn’t my tunnel working?”, you might say “I’m trying to set up a WireGuard tunnel on my Linux server using the configuration from the 44Net dashboard, but I’m getting an error message that says “Configuration Invalid”. I’ve checked that the private key is correct and that the config works on another device, but I’m still stuck. Has anyone seen this before?”

When asking a technical question, the following information is often helpful to include:

• Which operating model you are using: IPIP Mesh, BGP, or 44Net Connect
• What platform or device you are using, such as a specific router, Linux distribution, or cloud provider
• The exact step that failed
• Any error messages or unexpected behavior you observed
• Anything you have already tried

Sharing knowledge and experience

When sharing a project writeup or lesson learned, consider how it might be useful to others in the community. Include details about your setup, what worked well, and any challenges you faced. This can help others understand how your experience might apply to their own situation.

For example, instead of saying “I got it working by doing X”, you might say “I was able to get my WireGuard tunnel working on my Raspberry Pi by following the instructions in the 44Net Connect quick start guide, but I had to make a few adjustments. I had to change the MTU setting to 1380 because I was experiencing packet loss with the default MTU of 1420. I also had to make sure that my firewall was allowing traffic on the WireGuard port. Once I made those changes, everything started working smoothly.”

Collaboration and feedback

The projects that tend to succeed are those that focus on solving a specific problem, and that are open to collaboration and feedback from others. Projects that are less open to collaboration, that hold strict expectations for how things should be done, or that try to represent themselves as the “one true way” to do something, tend to be less successful and less well-received by the community.

For these reasons and more, it’s pragmatic to be respectful and considerate of others and to focus on the problem at hand and how to solve it, rather than on personal opinions or preferences.

Attempts to gatekeep or exclude certain types of participation are generally avoided and discouraged, except when bad-faith behavior or harm is involved. The community generally seeks to preserve and protect healthy, constructive, non-disruptive activity.

Contributing

ARDC staff help produce documentation and maintain software tools, but the community is what keeps 44Net running and usable. If you have a question, ask it. If you have an answer, share it. If you have a project writeup or lesson learned, post it.

If a recurring question appears on the mailing list, consider converting the answer into a short wiki update; see Contributing for guidance. This can help keep operational guidance searchable and reduce repeated troubleshooting cycles.

Note on licensing

Material produced by ARDC staff is generally released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license (CC-BY-SA) or the non-commercial variant. These licenses are designed to encourage sharing and collaboration, while also giving credit to the original creators. Others may publish material under different licenses or according to different terms, as is their right, but if such terms are not compatible with the CC-BY-SA license, that material should not be posted to this wiki.

Related pages

• Get Help
• Getting started
• Provisioning Methods
• What People Build
• Contributing
• Governance
• Policies

Older docs and notes

Earlier pages that may still be useful:

• 44Net mailing list
• Re: 44Net Digest, Vol 3, Issue 96
• K2IE
• ARDC
• Ampr.org
• See Archive for more.