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 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.

If you are blocked and want the clearest practical starting point, see Get Help.

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:

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?”

For a practical checklist of what context to include, see Get Help.

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 there's a need to address bad-faith behavior or the potential for harm. The community generally seeks to preserve and protect healthy, constructive, non-disruptive activity.

Community structure

The 44Net community is supported by several overlapping structures. If you want to understand how people participate, how decisions get made, or where stewardship responsibilities sit, these pages provide the next layer of context:

Governance: how decisions are made for shared resources, documentation, and unresolved questions
Roles and Participation: the broad map of who helps sustain 44Net and how those roles differ
Regional Coordinator: how local stewardship, mentorship, and regional continuity work in practice
Policies: the formal expectations that sit alongside community norms

Contributing

One of the ways community knowledge becomes useful is by turning answers, working configurations, shared practices, and lessons learned into documentation and software.

If you want to help improve the wiki, contribute code, test ideas, or share a project writeup, see Contributing.

Related pages

Older docs and notes

Earlier pages that may still be useful: