Wireless Networks to Native Reservations

akb writes: "Interesting article entitled Native Networking Trends: Wireless Broadband Networks describing a project which provided three Indian reservations near San Diego with wireless broadband connectivity. The collaboration between UC San Diego and the Southern California Tribal Chairman Association has attracted additional funding from HP's Digital Village Program doubling the original NSF allocation, which will allow the network to expand to connect 18 reservations to the Internet and educational facilities. The network sports a 45mbps wireless backbone with 802.11b uplinks." The HPWREN pages have a lot of interesting information, including specifications for their 45 megabit solar-powered relays.

Online casinos

Is this meant to take their casinos online? IMHO that would be a good way for the natives to finally get some revenge on the white man.

USA out of America! :-)

Wireless and 3G

These sorts of projects are a kick in the teeth to the wireless companies who will soon be trying to sell 3G tech. Or is it that these will become redundant with the advent of 3G.

Personally I can't wait till the day when my laptop has a wireless 3G card that can connect at high speed whenever and where ever I want.

And once they have this highspeed access...?

Build infrastructure and let 'em go at it, doing whatever they want? The reason I ask is, although this is all planned to be a "good thing", I worry that it could lead to a "not-so-good-thing", i.e. Virtual Indian Casinos (in competition with brick-and stucco casinos, Vegas, etc.)

In six months...

You'll see banner ads for the new Online Indian Casinos..But really that's quite a task considering some reservations are the size of RI. My question is do the network cards in the computers or devices need to be attached to an external antenna as well? I gained another 1000ft when I attached a standard CB antenna to my access point. I could get Internet access from my apartment across the highway from work. What are some other (cheap) way's to improve distance? Maybe I could get a Seti tower..hmmm

Cool Stuff

See, now this is cool. Obviously the uses for this developing mode of technology go way beyond the Native American sphere. My favorite thing about it is that it doesn't rely on wires for power OR transmission. A handful of solar-powered relays looks a lot nicer, is a lot cheaper, is much less intrusive, and is much more easily scalable and robust than a bunch of wires strewn everywhere(and thankfully people are finally starting to appreciate that with solar and other distributed power generation).

Security?

If you look at these pages [ucsd.edu], we are talking about $3000-$5500 worth of relay equipment sitting out in the middle of nowhere. What happens if someone comes along and decide they'd want some of that for themselves?

Of course no one would ever want to steal from the Indians... Oh, wait, nevermind.

Coming Soon!

Gambling at your favorite online Indian Gaming casino!

Actually, I'm serious...here in California tribes have already gotten permission to run casinos on their land (although I believe the matter is still going through the courts) so then could the same tribes run their own online gaming?

Do Indian tribes have to abide by the Hague Convention or the Berne treaty or whatever that copyright protection treaty is?

Think about it...Indians are desperately seeking self-reliance, which is pretty much impossible given the crappy ass desert land they were given. So what if they built a few wind turbines and ran a data haven? Do you think Disney et. al. could really bully them?

I would be really intersted in finding out about this. We have been looking for safe havens and if we put Indian reservations on the Internet that sounds like it might fit the bill?

- JoeShmoe

I work for a company that does this...

We [corpranet.net] have been planning this for a while and recently rolled it out this year. We have 3 towers for a mid-size city (Springfield Missouri, USA). You can use it anywhere in the city - even in your car. There is a small antenna that hooks up to a special network card.

Our transmission rates are way above T1 and because there is no cost of leasing lines or anything we can provide it cheap (comparatively).

We also put up 1 tower in a nearby town. This one tower covers the whole town. We got funding from the county because the county court system sits in that town and needed to be on broadband but couldn't get to it in the traditional ways.

We just rent space from radio stations on their towers - so the setup is minimal. It really is a great system

Fried

Wow!

Now you won't need to wire a head for a reservation!

(Sorry, it's a reference to a very bad old joke. I just couldn't resist the opportunity.)

Wampum?

From one journalist to another, this is probably not a good term to use the way you did.

I'm not wanting to be a PC thug, but here's the entry in the AP Style Book:

Indians American Indian is the preferred term for those in the United States. Where possible, be precise and use the name of the tribe: He is a Navajo commissioner. Native American is acceptable in quotations and names of organizations.

In news stories about American Indians, such words as wampum, warpath, powwow, tepee, brave, squaw, etc., can be disparaging and offensive. Be careful and certain of their usage.

-Peter

Kevin Costner's latest movie...

...Dances with Wireless

could this harken an Indian re-emergence?

Imagine, online casinos create a positive cash flow for Tribal governments, the capital allows for real social change - illiteracy and alcoholism and domestic abuse decline - and every Res in America connected via wireless VPNs to every other Res in America. Best of luck, its a long road.

Rural networking

The great thing about rural networking is that RF spectrum is easily available. You can run megabits for miles without much interference. It definitely beats putting up hundreds of telephone poles per subscriber, which you see in some rural areas.

Smoke signals can be tough to read.

It's so hard to tell what's a 1 or a 0 with smoke signals, thank god for 802.11b!!!

Re: Selling New York

the embarresment of selling new york state for 3 trinkets and small pox blanket.

It was goods worth about $20, and had they been able to invest it in some sort of compound interest generating fund at the time, today they'd be able to buy all of Manhattan, including the buildings. A fair trade, I'd say. Besides, if they'd turned Manhattan into a maximum security prison in 1997 like they were supposed to, it wouldn't be worth very much,would it?

Re:Native Americans -- an old timer's perspective

Listen, sonny, my name is Elijah Peckinpah, and I'm 116 years old this year. Born in 1885, I came to South Dakota on a wagon train when I was just a tot. We saw injuns alright. They would stalk the train, nights, we could hear their horses whinnying in the distance, and now and then, we'd see the whites of their eyes gleaming in the inky darkness. Made us powerful nervous, let me tell you.

It was early one morning, my mammy had just woken me, and the sun was shining into the back of the wagon, when we heard the whooping. I'll never forget that sound as long as I live. They came down on us like God's own vengeance, slashing with their machetes and raining burning arrows on our wagons. The camp was in chaos, half-dressed folk running every which way, guns firing, wagons burning. My mammy grabbed me and in all the chaos, ran free of the camp, and hid in a gully. When she came out, everyone was dead. We holed up in a nearby cave - more like a crack in the rocks - and when the sheriff's posse rode in from the next town, we was rescued.

'Course, that was a long time ago. Nowadays, I mostly sit around, trolling on /. and writing perl code. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. When I get bored, I go down to the injun casino near here - I figure one of these days, I'll win big on the slots, and that'll show those redskinned sons of jackals!!

So don't you be tellin me there ain't no injuns. I seen em, alright, I seen em...