Alternative Wireless Networks

Elvis Maximus writes "Technocrat.net has an interesting piece on an effort in London to create a wireless alternative to traditional ISPs called consume.net. Similar projects discussed include guerilla.net, SFLAN and SeattleWireless." Interesting both from the technological and legal sides.

Re:If dirt world communities behaved like online o

you still have to use a Mac to use the AirPort base station

If the AirPort is truely IEEE 802.11 compliant (as it claims), you should be able to use _any_ vendor's 802.11 compliant hardware with it. And other vendors support other hardware and operating systems.

For you Linux types: Enterasys' [enterasys.com] wireless offerings [enterasys.com] include linux drivers [enterasys.com]

Look.ca is already doing this

Check out look.ca [www.look.ca] if you live in Canada...

They're doing full, bi-direcional wireless in test markets now - but they already have uni-directional with a modem for the uplink, which still works well with laptops.

Modem pooling

This sounds like what I wanted to do in my dorm 6 years ago when we only had dial-in connections, but we had a fast local network. I wanted to combine the bandwidth of the modems to produce a bandwidth pool that local users could use. This assumes that the local network is faster than the dial-up connection, and that the dial-up link is the weakest link between you and the internet.

One of the benefits not mentioned in the article is that there's greater reliability since each computer has many ways of communicating with the 'net.
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If dirt world communities behaved like online ones

If dirt world communities behaved like online communities, or even if the HAM "spirit" would spread a bit, we could have wireless networks all across the countryside.

This securitygeeks story [shmoo.com] covers how to setup a very basic AirPort wireless network that can communicate at great distances as well as 128 bit encryption.

As far as I know you still have to use a Mac to use the AirPort base station, but it does not look like it would be impossible to hack for UNIX use (perhaps it already has been and I just missed the news).

Anyway, the point is that the hardware and the software is already here, all we need to do is band together and use it.

Visit DC2600 [dc2600.com]

Interesting model...but can it work?

Interesting model...

Essentially they want to create a high speed and low cost wireless intranet within their area. It would be nice to have something similar to a local free high speed network in your home town. Fast file sharing and quick access to those within your networks limits.

However, I saw no mention of any type of bandwidth provisions... it would seem as if they would be relying on network providers to peer with them... If this is the situation, I would seriously doubt anyone would give away bandwidth for free.

This sounds like a nice idea, but I have a difficult time grasping of how you would get this to work properly. IMHO relying on others to contribute is usually a bad idea.

With a select and dedicated group of individuals who would give a damn if the network runs and maintain their part...this could work... so it would seem this is left to the hobbyist and small organizations to implement for themselves.

Re:Wireless Problems -BZZZZT

This depends largely on the frequency that you are transmitting at. Higher frequencies (i.e. microwave) diffract more and therefore you experience a major loss of signal during rain, or even high humidity. Lower frequencies (i.e. FM) do not diffract nearly as much and are more or less unaffected by weather. 2.4GHz is somewhere in the middle there, and the amount that weather effects it is mostly proportional to how directional the antenna is. omnidirectional antennae don't lose much signal in rain, but directional do (dispersion is bigger problem).

-Alison

Re:Arcologies

In a city where there are hundreds of possible receptors, how can I prevent someone from stealing my notes as I send them back to my computer?

That is not a technical problem. Just use public key encryption to exchange session keys. The real problem has been export limits and companies who figure that the stupid lusers they sell to won't know the difference anyway.

The first problem is less of an issue now in the U.S., the second just requires clueful users finding clueful vendors or Free software.

ISPs and Wireless LAN Technology

I work for a company that sell wireless LANs. I the past 9 months, over 75 percent of our sales calls have been from ISPs implementing wireless LAN technology to deliver internet services to customers. Unfortunately, most of them know little about the technology and are not interested in engineering a wireless network that delivers a constant bandwidth with high reliability. Most seem to want to only be able to deliver something faster than dialup and then don't car if they have to flood the spectrum with enough RF to bake a potato at 500 yards! The three unliscend bands are around 915 MHz, 2.4 GHz, and 5.8 GHz. THe 915 band has become so flooded with RF due to overlap by the paging towers that it is considered no longer reliable (at least by us, we tend to be more conservative). The advent of the 802.11b compatible 11 Mb cards abd caused a HUGE explosion in the amount of 2.4 GHz equipment out there. My humble opinion is that a few years down the road, the end user look up his ISP's number on his Bluetooth enabled PalmPilot, will call his ISP on his 2.4 GHz phone, and complain that his 2.4 GHz internet connection does't work worth a damn. The use of frequency hopping allows a network to be designed so that it can handle the interference better but there are distance limitation and (until very recently) bandwidth limitations. . The 5.8 GHz band is fairly open and there are several standards in the works that will open it up to high bandwidth, low cost products but right now there aren't too many out there. The distance limitations hurt too. Sorry for rambling. I just don't think that creating a city-wide 2.4 GHz network (I am assuming here, don't know if that is what they really are doing at consume.net) is really possible due to the sheer amount of 2.4 GHz equipement that is going to be around in a few years. The FCC never really intended for the wireless LAN equipment to be so prevalent in the world of ISPs, IMHO. It's great indoors and for bridging LAN's but the more people put it out there, the more interference we are all going to have to deal with eventually. If you are really interested in the wireless ISP arena, check out the archives at isp-planet.com. They have a wireless mailing list and there is a lot of info there. You could also check out wispa.org. Just my thoughts as a frustrated salesperson/tech support guy.