[CUWiN] Community Hotspots:

[Sascha Meinrath]

Here's a really interesting article about neighborhood hotspots - a 
project that NYCWireless is helping with.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/21/technology/circuits/21spot.html?ei=5090&en=a2378a731fb21c01&ex=1256011200&adxnnl=1&partner=techdirt&adxnnlx=1098364007-RA/DRG5enEz3ftHLgYJcWQ

>From the article:

The group is encouraging people to set up their own hot spots and 
electronic bulletin boards to let communities of otherwise anonymous 
urbanites find one another...  Instructions, open-source firewall software 
called M0n0wall and other files are at www.nycwireless.net/hotspot... 
Mr. Kelley currently runs his Neighbornode hot spot on a Soekris 4511, a 
small single-chip computer without a hard drive that sells for about 
$200...  Another fear is that precious bandwidth will be soaked up by 
thirsty neighbors, and monthly access charges will skyrocket. Monowall 
permits the person who sets up the hot spot to allocate bandwidth and 
maintain a healthy personal reserve.  If these do-it-yourself nodes catch 
on, a new form of urban communication may emerge, taking advantage of the 
coincidence that a Wi-Fi hot spot and a city block are roughly the same 
size.  "Different nodes as they get set up can talk to each other," Mr. 
Geraci said. "They can forward information from one to the next. You get 
this grapevine of information at the street level."

--Sascha

-- 
Sascha Meinrath
Project Manager & Pres.   *   Project Coordinator   *   Policy Analyst
Acorn Worker Collective  ***  CU Wireless Network  ***  Free Press
www.acorncollective.com   *   www.cuwireless.net    *   www.freepress.net