Buy Broadband From Your Neighbor 207
infractor writes "Wired has an article about a wireless project delivering free broadband to a rural community. Using Linux based devices called meshboxes from Locustworld, they've created a local mesh network. More detail in this article. With Wi-Fi friendly ISPs talking about micro-ISP deals for wireless sharers this could be the accelerator UK broadband has been waiting for." Last year we mentioned the MeshAP-05, a bootable CD which "turns a single board computer or laptop into a mesh node and access point," since updated to MeshAP-06. Update: 02/13 19:52 GMT by T : I see from comments that -08 is actually the current version of MeshAP, with -09 soon. Thanks.
Groovy. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Groovy. (Score:1, Interesting)
Hell, P2P would be dead if that were the case!
Re:Groovy. (Score:1)
Re:Groovy. (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, according to my broadband ISP contract, I'm not allowed to run any server application of any type!
Not only does this mean I can't have an ftp or mp3 server, technically it means I can't run VNC, or even do JSP/servlet/webservices development from home!
When companies make blanket statements like that, they'll get blanket rejections as a response.
Re:Groovy. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Groovy. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Groovy. (wap) (Score:1, Offtopic)
--sex [slashdot.org]
Re:Groovy. (Score:1, Funny)
Connect through WAP? Surely you won't see much on that mobile phone screen...
The WIred Point of the Mesh (Score:3, Informative)
It is very cool that more HW and SW are becoming available to do this sort of thing. You still probably want a service provider that does the support, or a community based organization to fill this role (as in one of the links in the story). I'm going to keep watching this and looking for an opportunity to jump in.
Re:Groovy. (Score:3, Funny)
They don't?
Oops.
click
Re:Groovy. (Score:2)
telco's (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:telco's (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:telco's (Score:3, Insightful)
First you get clusters that are only linked via the established networked.
Then clusters of those get linked up with longer range networking techniques (Do I need to mention Pringles can antenas)
Eventualy you only need to cover the large geographic areas between population centers but thats where something like shortwave gets in.
Sure speed is proberbly going to be dependant on distance but the suggestion that one day we may do most of our global networking independant of the telcos sounds pretty good to me.
Re:telco's (Score:3, Funny)
At which point the network becomes self-aware.
Fortunately for us humans, its self-image will be that of a benevolent Englishman with a monocle and waxed moustache.
Either that or a finite series of savory hyperbolic surface segments. In which case we're screwed.
Re:telco's (Score:5, Interesting)
For long haul signal tranfer the best available technology is [DWDM] fiber (which there happens to be a bit of a surplus of it, at the moment). I suppose satellites could cut in on some of this action. As of now, all non-local backbone traffic (including voice, IP, etc.) is carried over fiber. This probably won't change anytime soon (if ever). Radio is nice, but it's short range. Microwave is really only good for point-to-point. High-energy (x-ray, gamma-ray) is exactly that, high-energy (read: expensive/unrealistic). The really low frequencies suffer from lots of interference. The only thing that may ever beat optical is some kind of quantum entanglement based system (such a thing may not even be "mathematically possible", and even if it is, it's probably unworkable for use by the masses).
This is one of the things about all this wireless networking that kind of bothered me. Aside from the issue of interference, when you have a huge number of users, you end up with a lot of "routers" in ad-hoc networks. This can become extremely cumbersome. I'd guess that data transfer rates drop at least linearly with distance from "static" (non-ad-hoc) routing nodes.
At best, I can see wireless technologies handling last-mile links. But, as the user load increases, these last-mile networks will need some good regimentation (to allow for optimized routing, like cellular BSC layouts). From what I know of 802.11 (and the competitors), it's really only good for ad-hoc networking.
Re:telco's (Score:5, Insightful)
Or the very very serious iron needed in switches and management systems to make sure it works?
And who gets to decide the routing priority in these networks?
Who gets to warrant the privacy of data? Telecoms companies are bound by some pretty strong laws to protect the privacy of the voice and data traffic they carry - home supported APs wont.
Accountability IS important (Score:3, Interesting)
No - I'm not. But I do make a value judgment, and that judgement is that I'd prefer my privacy to be in the hands of a legally accountable entity, rather than trusting someone who may not even be traceable.
I hold various radio licenses in the UK and I can show you the agreements I have to sign that make me legally accountable for protecting any information I am privy to in the use of those licenses.
In fact its one of the biggest difficulties in setting up internet tunnels and access points for radio packet data networks.
I also work in the service industry side of telecoms - I can show you some pretty stringent legal agreements that have to be worked within in this industry designed to protect your privacy.
Can you explain how my privacy is likely to be any better in a network run by hundreds of people with no legal accountabilty and no way to verify thier trustworthyness?
Or put it this way, would you be happy to hand your credit card details, home address, and other identity numbers on the back of your buisness card to every single person that attends a Linux Conference - because those are the sort of people who will be running those nodes, and that will be the kind of data you will at some point send via the systems under thier care.
A very great number of enlightened, trustworthy and down right honest people run linux/bsd systems for the good of the community, but then again its also the platform used by some of the most untrustworthy people on the net who would delight on being able to use your details to run up credit buying hardware for thier own purposes.
In all these discussions I never see any proposal to seperate the good geek from the bad geek. Assuming all geeks are rosy cheeked wholesome people is just as dangerous as believing every single government worker is out to get you.
Re:Accountability IS important (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever happened to encryption? Any one on a local network can packet sniff your information anyway, so handle it properly and no one can read it.
I can show you the agreements I have to sign that make me legally accountable for protecting any information I am privy to in the use of those licenses.
I'm sure Martha Stewart and the heads of Enron had to sign papers saying they would not embezzle, cheat and scam their way to fortune. It didn't stop them.
Re:Accountability IS important (Score:2)
What is the range? (Score:5, Interesting)
what is the practical range of a wifi card? I'm talking here about with real houses and stuff. mine does not seem to reach the room on the far side of the house. (I have concrete interior walls.) So I know it wont reach my neighbor on the far side of that room.
on top of this my 2.4Ghz phone does an excellent job of jamming the connection. I suspect the microwave deteriorates the signal too. Thus I have real worries about if networks based on wifi are practical at the micro-isp level.
Another question is if a wifi pcmcia card, and a typical link-sys or airport basestation unit have the same range. That is to say if I run software basestation on my mac does this have the same range and throughput as a real basestation?
comments?
Re:What is the range? (Score:5, Interesting)
Varies alot. I have cable modem connected to a LinkSys cable/wifi router. My lap top gets about 150 feet if the aluminum window frames are not directly inbetween the laptop and router. even at short distances (in my sunroom, 35 feet away) aluminum frame windows really screw with my reception.
I have a workshop 150 feet from the house that has a steel exterior. couldn't get it to access in there, so I bought an external USB wifi receiver (140 bucks), drilled a hole in the steel, place the transceiver in a clear watertight Tupperwear container, with fiberglass insulation surrounding it (to keep unit from getting hot in direct sun). Bolted this Tupperwear unit under the window unit AC to further protect from rain, and ran the cable thru the hole, where i could connect to any computer with USB. that one gets great connectivity.
It may seem like a lot to do, but it was much easier than running cat5 or bnc underground. It has been up over a year, never a failure.
As to your second question: my router and external tranceiver are linksys, my two pcmcia transceiver (my wife has one of these too) are D-Link. The pcmcia do not seem to have as good of range as the external unit. The pcmcia also seem to link at a lower speed than the external unit. Also, MY pcmcia unit seems to fade in and out of range more at a given distance than the wifes, even tho they are same brand and model (dlink dwl-650)
Your milage may vary, but this is what my experiences have been over the last year. All and all, I have been pretty happy with the linksys router, EXCEPT its not good for gaming (wired or wireless), since it appears to stall every few seconds for half a second. Just long enough to get your head blown off. So i have two ips, one for gaming, one for wireless.
Re:zdnet has info on WI-FI range and types. (Score:2)
The Preview button keaps yuo from makign misteaks
Re:What is the range? (Score:5, Informative)
Stanford had a guest lecture [stanford.edu] a couple of weeks ago from a group setting up a wireless network in Laos.
It's intended to connect about 5 villages with a town (the town has telephone lines to the rest of the world) on the other side of a hill/mountain. It allows them video conferencing with the rest of the world as they are using a verbal only language - so keyboards aren't much use. The gear is all battery powered, recharged using a modified exercise bike. They installed it a couple of weeks ago and are getting a couple of miles with it.
I seem to remember a couple of articles a few months ago about some academics managing to get about 20-50 miles with wireless over water - this of course is an idealised example as there are few areas that flat on land. And of course rain can screw up your signals a lot.
Re:What is the range? (Score:2)
Re:telco's (Score:2)
Re:telco's (Score:2)
I thought the coolest thing was the notion of the traffic on the freeway becoming a moving extension of the network. Basically an internet backbone feed in one town could be connected all the way to another town through a roving vehicular trail of access points. Although rolling nodes would be constantnly passing in and out of range of the network, a certain density would be enough to make a highway work as a data pipe, especially with QoS built into the protocol. Bizarre thought. The internal combustion enhanced wireless network.
Eventually places like Southern California and the Eastern Seaboard from Boston to Baltimore will have to become vast mesh wireless networks. It's hard to see how that couldn't happen without legislative interference and even then it's hard to imagine how it will be prevented.
Fools! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Fools! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Fools! (Score:2, Funny)
Anybody else think... (Score:5, Insightful)
A year or two ago I couldn't imagine it, but I can today. Two of the apartment complexes I've lived in I had neighbors that would have been interested in networking their computers with mine. If wireless had come around sooner (price-wise I mean) we would likely have done it.
Okay, I'm not really on topic. It's just this article put an interesting image in my mind of what I'll be connecting to within the next 5 years.
Re:Anybody else think... (Score:3, Interesting)
Almost on topic, and more interesting than most of the rest of this thread
I suggest you read Peer-to-Peer: Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies [amazon.co.uk]. It's a fascinating insight into the evolution of Peer to Peer networks, and makes the point that some P2P networks actually have a larger mapping of sensible information to IP address than DNS.
TCP/IP is designed for multiple routes, so (in theory) should work very well over a mesh topology, possibly more efficiently than it does now. What is really required for this to function, however, is a way of mapping IP address to geographical location, so that a sensible route can be guessed the first time. With the development of WiFi, it may be possible for base stations to determine the physical location of each other, and generate this information, at least on a local level. (You can't do it very well with cable, since the signal distance over cable is not the same as the straight line distance so knowing the cable distance from 2 points to a third point does not actually give you much information about the location of the third one).
Re:Anybody else think... (Score:2)
Sort of. TCP/IP does indeed work in the presence of multipath effects... but it works very slowly. To be specific, any time a packet arrives more than three packets out of sequence, the network is considered to be "congested" and the data rate is reduced.
Re:Anybody else think... (Score:2)
Re:Anybody else think... (Score:2)
History shows the Opposite Occurring (Score:3, Interesting)
The Internet is what it is... A massive, ever expanding community that encompasses to some degree or another, all heterogenous smaller networks. It transcends the "Geographic community" model, and allows for the stronger "Interest based communities" (Such as Slashdot) to form irrespective of Geography. Therin lies it's power.
How could an Apartment complex, or Neighborhood, ever rival that?
I certainly see some special purpose ad-hoc networks offering certain advantages, such as in a college dorm, for a gaming LAN, but even then, the community would only be as good as it's members. Even then, it's not like you'd disconnect from the Internet, or if you did, not permanently.
No, I don't think... (Score:4, Insightful)
While it is can be argued that the end points of the small-time user part of the Net may become free from certain ISP based constraints, there will always be a need for Telcos and their fat pipes for a majority of the mainstream content on the web.
-Donut
ps. Before you grip about homogenous content being the death of freedom, reflect on how much more diverse the net is to the bygone days of the Big Three TV networks.
"Free" WiFi access is everywhere. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:"Free" WiFi access is everywhere. (Score:1)
Great idea (Score:5, Funny)
Well... (Score:1)
Re:Well... (Score:3, Interesting)
So, I asked my neighbor who can get DSL and I offered to pay 100% of the monthly costs and do all the computer setup and wireless equipment purchases. Sure, it was a high initial investment, but it's been working well for over a year or so with no complaints on either side.
Go wireless!
Getting the broadband in the first place (Score:5, Interesting)
If this town already has DSL or cable modem, then sharing this with the townfolk who rarely use the Internet is great.. but if THEY can get DSL, then surely anyone in the town can? That's not solving a problem of availability! Just one of cost..
People want to use wireless networking to use broadband that is located elsewhere, but since a telephone exchange in the UK can cover more than a 20 mile area, and few rural exchanges have DSL, having wireless broadband is almost an impossibility.
What's worse is that the ISPs and telcos are focusing on wireless broadband in places that ALREADY HAVE DSL AND CABLE!!! Talk about oversaturation.
Re:Getting the broadband in the first place (Score:2, Interesting)
I could see wireless ISPs spring up around this idea... Buy a couple of T1s then plug them into these wireless boxes instead of modems.
-T
Re:Getting the broadband in the first place (Score:3, Informative)
Yes you can.
Several years ago, I had one win95 box with a 28.8 modem share access with the whole shop, 12 clients, including thru a quasi-wan that linked two buildings that were 500 feet apart. I COULD have added a wi-fi hub and share that access wirelessly, had they existed/affordable then. It used winproxy, stayed connected 9-6, and an ISP that issued permanant IP addresses ($30 mo.), so i could telnet and ftp into the winbox (thx Fictional Daemon).
It was slow and would suck more used wirelessly thus I conceed to your point, but I can promise you, it CAN be done
Your other option is to purchase a T1 and hook it up to the wireless network, if you could get a "coop" of local users to defer costs. IF its available.
Another choice is to use a direcpc satalite link (in the US), although that is against their TOS. but it works, albeit with mediocre latency. I used to do that, and never got caught.
Maybe these wont work well or at all in your situation, but there are a few options for many people, even those who live in the sticks, like me.
Re:Getting the broadband in the first place (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not? Apple's Airport base station has this capability. The meshboxes sold by LocustWorld (as mentioned in the article) are standard PCs adapted for use as low-power, low-heat, high-reliability base stations - I imagine that hacking the stack to route packets from a modem to the rest of the network would be trivial. Even better, forget hacking the meshbox - just set up a NAT with a dialup on the other end, and DHCP access to everybody else on the wireless end.
Sure, it'll be slow as hell. Maybe someone will cache commonly accessed stuff on a daily (or semi-daily) basis to reduce bandwidth load and access time. However 56k is more than enough for basic e-mail, and low-bandwidth web surfing. In the meantime, you build a wireless community that maybe, one day, will have enough users to pony up and put in a leased line, and retire that old 56k modem.
Over a modem... Sounds Fantastic! (Score:3, Funny)
You'll rue the day you hooked the AP up to your modem...
We're talking total rue-age.
Re:Over a modem... Sounds Fantastic! (Score:4, Interesting)
But connecting via modem can be done!
Re:Over a modem... Sounds Fantastic! (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, wait... That's not right. Here, try this one...
Ahhh... Much better.
Re:Over a modem... Sounds Fantastic! (Score:2)
I'm being totally naive and unrealistic, aren't I? :(
Re:Getting the broadband in the first place (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, since we're talking about ad-hoc routing meshes anyway, why not have every user with a modem dial out and let the routing software handle bandwidth allocation.
While the average bandwidth for all people with modems would remain the same (56k), there would be an aggregate max speed of 56k*$users. Based on typical usage patterns, this would be percieved by each individual user as significantly faster than the single modem speed. Thus, the percieved average speed will increase without actually changing. Nothing would have really changed but the implicit contract of sharing 'spare' bandwidth with your local mesh.
Amazing - an example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. All it requires is cooperation. And WiFi hardware. But we've all got that already, right?
Re:Getting the broadband in the first place (Score:2)
If the telco won't serve your community, then it falls on your community to do it yourselves.
Re:Getting the broadband in the first place (Score:2)
The only other option, which actually is a newcomer in the area, is Adelphia cable, which is only available in the more urban areas. Adelphia thinks of itself as a monopoly in Maine, so the quality of service is terrible, and the terms of service are worse.
This is an actual case of a smal ISP using WiFi to work their way around a system that protects these large, unfriendly corporations. And making quite a decent profit while doing so.
Truthfully.. (Score:3, Funny)
.. I'm disgusted with all these new fangled additions to networking and the internet. I think it would only be courteous to ask the father of the Internet, Al Gore, for his opinion before running ahead haphazardly.
Funny!! Funny!! Funny! (Score:2, Informative)
Informative rating: 0
Funny rating: +5
ffs ...
Clarification (Score:5, Informative)
The current version available for download is actually v8, with a major release in v9 imminent.
The newer builds are so far only for read-write media such as a hard drive or (as in the case of the hardware MeshBox) a CompactFlash card.
There is a lot of activity on the mailing list, and I recommend anyone interested in participating to subscribe.
/ David H
Re:Clarification (Score:2, Insightful)
I tried to find the answer to this myself but the downloads section of the site is a bit confusing.
Wi-fi ubiquitous in the US?? (Score:4, Interesting)
When did this happen? And why hasn't anybody notified any local Net providers? I'm still on dialup, and I'm just a few miles from the center of town. I know I'm not the last dialup holdout. Ubiquitous in San Francisco maybe, but not in the US. This author is off her rocker.
Re:Wi-fi ubiquitous in the US?? (Score:2)
Re:Wi-fi ubiquitous in the US?? (Score:3, Informative)
Nice one guys - slashdot a group of hard up people (Score:4, Interesting)
But if this group is anything like the small Amuteur Radio groups I used to work with thier budget is zip/nada.
So we link thier page, hosted at www.globalgold.co.uk, from the main story.
Anyonw here going to help out with thier excess charges??
Think people how you would feel if you had to spend the budget for your next 250 quid access point on excess hosting charges instead.
The commercial and news site links - fair game - but is it really fair to hit the little guys, did we really need that link on the front page?
Re:Nice one guys - slashdot a group of hard up peo (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh well, I expect this post to be ignored like all the rest by the Slashdot editors. They are not very professional when it comes to these things, but here I am again preaching to the choir.
Why not ask for pink elephants as well? (Score:2)
I mean, if a
How many dupes, fakes and blatant adverts have you seen in the last three months? 10? 20? more? It seems as if at least one story every other day is a dupe - how hard could it be to implement a basic system to weed these out?
The sad thing is such blatant unprofessionalism only hurts
It's a good thing (for Taco, if not anybody else) that
Re:Why not ask for pink elephants as well? (Score:2)
In Soviet Russia... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:4, Informative)
But general net bandwidth might get a slight impact from the additional network usage. Its unlikely it would be very noticable, and the widespread adoption of broadband would fund new technologies to provide the infrastructure all those new connected users are going to want. Its good for the economy.
Re:In Soviet Russia... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Seems to be doing ok so far (Score:2)
Done on a wireless neighborhood basis, the coop would eventually have to hire a fulltime tech or two to manage the system. Driving up the individual costs greatly.
I sell broadband to my neighbor (Score:5, Funny)
I've had to patch the cable 5 times because the dog got it. The last time she got it there were so many patches on the cable it would no longer work.
His son loves downloading stuff on kazaa, since we're on the same subnet, all his little kazza worms have no problems finding machines on my network to harass.
The worst part is, if anything goes wrong with any of their computers, it's MY FAULT. They forgot where they saved something? Ask toqer. The machine slows to a crawl because they used a newscraper to d/l pr0n until it ate up all their availiable space, ask toqer. Dog is scraping it's butt on the ground, ask toqer.
I urge anyone out there even considering sharing their broadband to reconsider unless it's with another geek.
Re:I sell broadband to my neighbor (Score:5, Funny)
I sell broadband to my neighbor too! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I sell broadband to my neighbor too! (Score:2)
Re:I sell broadband to my neighbor (Score:2, Informative)
Then toqer's response should be:
"That's not an internet issue, that's a client system issue. I'll be glad to come over and look at it for $80/hr., with a minimum charge of 1.5 hours."
If you aren't charging them out the butt for your consulting services, then of course they are going to abuse you.
And you should then cut off their access until they buy and install Norton Antivirus WITH the annual subscription.
the toker ISP, ha! (Score:3, Informative)
Stranger things have happened? Do you include a free bong with that installation or do they have to roll their own?
Hint, burry the cable in a 6" deep slit just wide enough to fit it where it crosses the yard and use enough water pipe where it comes up the wall to shield it from dog attack. That's what the cable guy did, only he called the water pipe a "conduit".
An easier solution (Score:2)
Shoot the dog.
Re:An easier solution (Score:2)
That would require a 2" trench just big enough to fit the dog. Surely it would be eaier to burry the cable?
Re:I sell broadband to my neighbor (Score:3, Interesting)
This was probobly pretty rare though, it's not that often you have a good neighbor who's relativly smart and friendly, without being a pain in the neck.
Re:I sell broadband to my neighbor (Score:2, Interesting)
THoughts (Score:2, Funny)
As cool as this technology is, people need to be able to download porn faster before they can use it!
Re:THoughts (Score:2)
Re:THoughts (Score:2)
Actually, this is a cool idea: if you can find an ISP that supports multilink (aka shotgun), you can get multiple phone lines and multiple modems dialed in simultaneously for a connection that would be much faster than a single 56k line, and then use NAT to share that connection on a LAN, which you connect to your neighbors (hint: 10base2 coax has a longer range than cat5). Each neighbor pays the same amount for a dedicated phone line that they'd normally pay if it was in their own house, plus their share of the ISP fee (which should be lower than a single dialup account, depending on how the ISP wants to charge for multilink access). However, each neighbor now has a semi-broadband connection available, as long as everyone isn't downloading simultaneously. If you want to download an ISO, just let everyone know, and do it when they won't be online.
By the way, I was recently in Sandpoint, north of Coeur D'Alene, helping somebody move. It's COLD up there! We were glad to get back to Portland where it's much warmer.
Sharing Broadband (Score:5, Interesting)
If several people get together, you can put together a lot of bandwidth in a hurry. Neato.
Re:Sharing Broadband (Score:2, Informative)
I would have done this with a neighbouring company, but all the interested parties left both companies :)
We wanted to each set up a squid cache so we could exchange cached objects between the caches. That way you don't have to be concerned about routing issues, or get pissy at the guys next door for using your bandwidth and theirs downloading binaries from usenet.
If we had tech-savvy neighbours where we are now, I'd still consider it.
The Reg (Score:2, Informative)
Quite ironic really (Score:5, Funny)
The only problem with the article and some thought (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The only problem with the article and some thou (Score:2)
What's really needed here... (Score:2, Insightful)
1) METHOD TO DEAL WITH PER GIG COSTS PER MONTH:
To have software installed on each of these computers that are connected to the broadband access directly to monitor how much traffic they've sent and received that month.This should be simple enough to accomplish. I say this because if this thing really takes off, it won't be long before Telco's clue in and start charging per gig per month for direct broadband users. With such software the user willing to share his broadband connection to a comfortable threshold limit... say 50% of his 'free-bandwidth-before-he-has-to-pay-additional-c
2) DONATION/PAYMENT AUTHENTICATION PROTOCOL: Imagine a wireless user turns on his laptop in an area with multiple shared broadband connections, a dialog box comes up displaying a list of 10 different connections he can choose from. This list would be sortable by: available speed, cost per gig, max users, etc. The laptop wireless user then can click on the cheapest connection, or the one with the most available bandwidth (if he has deeper pockets), and start surfing the net. The donation authentication protocol would allow the laptop user to automagically transfer funds from his paypal (or-insert-future-online- digital-fund-transfer-systems-here) to the broad band service provider (the user sharing his DSL/cable modem), and thus we have created:
a) A cost per use wireless network
b) A method to allow for individual directly broadband connected individuals to have free internet access (their monthly fees would be paid by their wireless customers)
A WIN:WIN for everyone? I think so... even the telcos could benefit if they choose to start charging per gig.. that would just end up eventually defining more precisely the cost per meg/gig a wireless user would have to pay depending on the area he's in.
I'm already doing this! (Score:3, Interesting)
The other benefit is that since we're all college age, it makes for one hell of a gaming network. It's like a 24/7/365 Lan Party.
The only downside is the load-balancing boxes I needed to buy
T1: Landlords as ISPs (Score:5, Insightful)
I have much better idea to propose to landlords of big appartment buidlings:
Make a deal with some good ISP, get a T1 from them to the building, put Linux server there in the building, and sell the connection to your tenants.
Most of modern building have enough of C5 phone cables, so the access media should not be a problem. Otherwise - wireless.
Tenants can have even own web servers. One option: if the landlord rents a class C subnet. Another option: use that Linux router as a frontend (NAT or proxy - your choice).
I hate DHCP of most of DSL and cable providers. And it's hard to find good ISP with static address, high speed and low price. I think it's realistic to calculate the business model in a way to share that T1 for $40 per tenant monthly.
Re:T1: Landlords as ISPs (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:T1: Landlords as ISPs (Score:2)
Re:T1: Landlords as ISPs (Score:2)
Seriously, if that building is in a good area of a megapolis (in some local mini "silicon valley") they can advertise the feature and meet many applications from students and geeks. Otherwise, I agree, it could be hard even to make people to use it.
So, I can add to my original comment - don't forget to choose the right place.
Re:T1: Landlords as ISPs (Score:2)
Re:T1: Landlords as ISPs (Score:2)
I thought (in my proposals) about megapolicies like Bay Area, LA, Boston, NYC, Seattle, GTA etc.
By the way, who is living in those appartments? Retired grandmas or students? Again, no offence to any social groups, but some social groups are more ready for Internet than the others. Was it in count by that landlord?
Re: (Score:2)
Authentication solution (Score:2, Informative)
passym wireless routers [passym.com] has a great device that allows people to authenticate when they connect to your wireless network via their browser.
They do charge a fee per month per router, but so far it's worked great for me.
Bandwidth vs. Latency (Score:4, Insightful)
So what is the performance of a mesh network built out of 802.11 nodes? Many people would say 11 Mbps to 54 Mbps minus the usual overhead depending on the type of 802.11 being used, but raw bandwidth is only a piece of the overall performance.
I would think that latency would be the main limiter of a mesh network. The nodes would have to be placed relatively close together if built with off-the-shelf 802.11 equipment, so it would take quite a few hops to traverse any long distance. Each node would have to analyze and route the traffic which adds further latency.
I also wonder what the scalability of a such mesh network is. As the mesh grows to a large number of nodes, I imagine that congested hot spots will develop which will add latency as traffic waits to be processed or has to route around the congestion. I wouldn't be surprised if packets could take minutes to get across country if only a mesh network is used.
For a small number of nodes, the mesh probably provides a reasonable solution for small networks and for providing the "last mile" from a conventional wired internet connection. For latency tolerant applications like email, a larger mesh might be acceptable (anyone remember Fidonet?). I have my doubts that a large mesh could be used as an equivalent replacement for a wired internet.
Where are the meta-moderators when you need them? (Score:2)
Now just calm down (Score:2)