[Cu-wireless] organize!

[David Young]

I like your proposal.  I suggest two changes:

  New participants' introduction/orientation occurs at the Tuesday
  seminar, which becomes our general meeting. Affinity groups may be
  give updates at that meeting.

  No general meeting Sunday. Let an affinity group use Sunday.

I would really like to hear what is going on with wireless in NCSA.

Also, if Mark who teaches at Parkland will teach about routing, that
would be great.

I would be pleased to lead a session where a Pringles can antenna
and the 5dBi omni antenna are built. Also, I can talk about NetBSD.
And very shortly I may be an expert on the 802.11 standard, whether I
want to be or not....

Dave

On Thu, Apr 25, 2002 at 01:37:46PM -0500, Zachary C. Miller wrote:
> We have a ton of volunteers and almost no organization. I think it is
> time to apply some structure to our meetings so we can leverage all
> our energy into getting concrete things done. 
> 
> I propose that we develop a schedule of _focused_ topic oriented
> meetings. We should have more than one meeting each week with the
> expectation that not everyone will come to all the meetings but people
> will come to the meetings that interest them.
> 
> Proposal: 
> 
> 1) Seminar/Theory Meetings - Every Tuesday at Zach's
> 
>   I propose we meet every Tuesday from 5:30pm-7:30pm at my house for a
>   different lecture/discussion each week from someone (typically from
>   our group) about a different technology or other area of expertise. 
> 
>   I would take care of organizing a speaker each week. We would combine
>   the session with a dinner which would be either potluck or order out
>   (e.g. pizza). 1 hour of eating, 1 hour of lecture. 
> 
>   Example Topics: 
>   * Structures for a CU community wireless network
>   * Basic TCP/IP and OSI network theory
>   * OSPF and other TCP/IP Routing Protocols
>   * NoCatAuth 
>   * Microwave Physics and implications for Antenna design
>   * Practical strategies for Antenna mounting on houses
>   * Wireless Roaming and Ad-Hoc Mesh networks
>   * Embedded router hardware overview
>   * Antenna design overview
>   * Wireless networking in a campus setting (NCSA's wireless network)
>   * NCSA's research on developing embedded wireless routers for ad hoc networks
>   * etc. etc. etc. 
> 
> 2) Affinity Group Meetings
> 
>   We should form affinity groups to take on specific tasks and the
>   affinity groups should determine their own meeting schedule. I
>   propose the following groups:
> 
>   1) Standard PC based wireless router development - work with the
>      Dell Optiplexes that are currently sitting at my house and make a
>      bootable CD-ROM based router that supports N wireless cards, N
>      ethernet cards, and is as self configuring as possible. Work done
>      on these platforms can be directly translated to various embedded
>      platforms like PC/104 or the linux STB or even just a regular PC
>      in a weatherproof container at a later date.
> 
>   2) OpenAP based wireless router development - work on developing a
>      linux/OpenAP based wired<->wireless router that is as self
>      configuring as possible and speaks OSPF. Modify the case to allow
>      the connection of an external antenna.
> 
>   3) Antenna R&D - research, design, build, test, document antenna
>      designs. Do the field testing of antennas. 
> 
>   4) Node installation and testing - Using whatever tools are
>      currently available from the other groups, install antennas and
>      nodes at various locations so that there is a real world testbed
>      platform to play with routing protocols and to test throughput
>      and antenna designs.
> 
>   5) Policy group - learn about routing protocols and establish some
>      policies for the wireless network. How will IP address blocks be
>      allocated. What routing protocols will be used. What authentication
>      schemes will be used? What traffic flow schemes will be used? What
>      aspects of the policy will be mandatory and what will be suggested?
>      How will channel usage be tracked/allocated? Develop a database for
>      information about nodes. What kind of statistics will we generate?
>      This is all network administration kind of stuff. Planning,
>      tracking, coordinating.
> 
>   6) Outreach group - Work on the website. Prepare snail mailings
>      soliciting interest/funds in/for the projects. prepare FAQs on
>      safety and other such issues for concerned members of the general
>      public. Work on acquiring grants or donations of equipment. 
> 
>   These groups need not meet every week. They can meet once a month, or
>   whatever. Perhaps groups can meet on a rotating basis after/during/as
>   the sunday meeting. Groups should make some effort to have their
>   schedules be non-overlapping so that people can participate in more
>   than one group. 
> 
> 3) Reportback and orientation meeting
> 
>   I propose that the first 30 minutes of the Sunday meetings be used
>   for orientation of new members and reporting by the affinity groups
>   of what they are working on and what their needs are. This part of
>   the meeting should only take up the first 30 minutes or so and then
>   perhaps we can have a rotating affinity group or two meet or have a
>   general work party depending on the scheduled the affinity groups
>   choose.
> 
> Comments? Support? Lame? 
> 
> -- 
> Zachary C. Miller - @= - http://wolfgang.groogroo.com/
> IMSA 1995 - UIUC 2000 - Just Another Leftist Muppet - Ya Basta!
>  Social Justice, Community, Nonviolence, Decentralization, Feminism,
>  Sustainability, Responsibility, Diversity, Democracy, Ecology
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-- 
David Young             OJC Engineering from the Right Brain
dyoung at onthejob.net     Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933