[Cu-wireless] Re: Re: Are we making things too hard on ourselves?

[Ben Freid]

Hi,

I haven't made it to a cu-wireless meeting, but I have been actively 
watching the mailing list.  Paul brings up some very important points of 
creating a community wireless network.  Follow-ups to his message have 
mostly been about routing protocols, but as Stephane points out,
 > ...a discussion on how the "real thing" would work started a few times 
but didn't conclude because ...
 > ...different people have different ideas of what the objectives are....

Paul's idea of a connected wireless network seems to be a good place to 
start discussion of the overall community design.
To have a connected wireless network where external routing is only needed 
for information outside of the wireless network would be a great goal to 
work towards.  This may be more than we need, though.  From my 
observations, it looks as if the wireless network is going to be used 
mostly as a means of accessing information outside of the community 
wireless network (as in anywhere else on the Internet).  Using Paul's 
model, these are my observations and concerns:


>                        B-----C-----D---[Internet]
>                       /      |      \
>                      /       |       \
>     [Internet]---- A         E--------F
>                      \       |       /
>                       \      |      /
>                        G-----H-----J---[Internet]

1)  Routing of a network with cycles takes a lot of time and effort to make 
sure all packets get to any Internet portal.  With nodes/routers being 
maintained by a number of different people, having one corrupted node could 
harm the entire network.

2)  Creating a wireless network, as in the diagram, would require a large 
amount of hardware.  Each node would require one wireless card to cover the 
surrounding area for access.  Also, each point-to-point link would require 
another wireless card to be dedicated to that link.  For wireless nodes to 
be any sort of reasonable distance from each other (> 150 ft), directional 
antennas would need to be used to connect nodes with each other.  This 
would mean that node C would need 4 wireless cards for proper 
operation.  This sounds like a lot of money to put down to host a community 
network.

I would suggest a more loosely connected wireless network be 
designed.  Nodes with broadband Internet access could host wireless access 
for the immediate surrounding area.  If any member without broadband access 
wishes to host a node, a single point-to-point link with another connected 
node should be sufficient.

I apologize if I am rehashing anything brought up at meetings, but I am 
very interested to discuss where things are going with infrastructure 
planning.  Lastly, with the current discussion of meeting locations, is 
there a plan on where next week's meeting location will be.

Ben.


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[ Benjamin Freid.                         http://www.uiuc.edu/~freid ]
[ Curriculus Studius Maximus                  a.k.a. College Student ]
[ Computer Engineering                       http://www.ece.uiuc.edu ]
[ Marching Illini, Flugelhorn           http://www.bands.uiuc.edu/MI ]
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