[CWN-Summit] Seeking advice on low-cost mesh node wifi in St. Louis, Missouri, USA

Tue Nov 18 14:27:59 CST 2008

i mean the wireless 5000 node part. what system is on those radios? and how 
many backhaul lines are there?

On Tuesday 18 November 2008 2:02:58 pm Ramon Roca wrote:
> When I said platform, I mean that we do use a suite of tools, not only a
> firmware family, routing protocol or so (which imho cuwin is about, my
> apologies if I'm wrong), we trend to support many, as well as
> provisioning other features.
> The platform is about sevelal things like a module for drupal which
> includes GIS tools, network and backbone planning, ip provisioning,
> bandwith/latency monitorizing, up to the self-configuration of the
> network devices for many firmwares/hardware (RouterOS, dd-wrt,
> openwrt....) and some other pieces. Since also includes a CMS, also
> provides a collaboration space (news, wiki, forums...). That is the
> "standard" things to provide user oriented tools "web 2.0 alike", plus
> extending the same concept to the communications infrastructure.
>
> Since is technology agnostic, doesn't rely on a single technology, is
> your choice if you want to play with experimental things or deploy a
> stable mesh combining infrastructure mode.
>
> The platform have been developed to meet our local needs, but last year
> have been reworked to allow support for any deployment worldwide and a
> distributed architecture. We're in the hope that by combining such kind
> of platforms with all the emerging technology and wider community
> support, that would revert in enhancing the platform itself.
>
> It can run either hosted by reusing our already parametrized servers
> (much easier - fast start) or take the software and setup a new LAMP
> server to run it, which could mean that you need some previous training
> since is about setting up an application, or build the server later on....
>
> As an example, my node with the map, connections, real time information,
> etc...
> http://guifi.net/en/elserrat
> At the devices list, the "unsolclic" column gives you the configuration
> of the firmware used at the node, etc, etc...
>
> A wider view of the network over a map:
> http://guifi.net/en/node/2413/view/map
>
> En/na Stelios Valavanis ha escrit:
> > wow what are you using? cuwin? how many backhaul connections for 5000
> > nodes?
> >
> > On Tuesday 18 November 2008 12:54:43 pm Ramon Roca wrote:
> >> The platform we've built at guifi.net is addressed to many of the things
> >> what you are asking for, which is about combining several features (wide
> >> hardware/firmware support, oriented to coommunity/self-managed but
> >> reliable open networks including residential access, monitored,
> >> scalable, provisioning for proxys, open source, etc...).
> >> We're running it here for a +5,000 nodes / +6,000 kms.
> >>
> >> We can talk deeper if you are interested.
> >>
> >> En/na Ben West ha escrit:
> >>> Hello all,
> >>>
> >>> I should first apologize if I am posing an oft-asked question, but I
> >>> find myself at an impasse, even after 2+ years of casual research and
> >>> spectatorship in the Mesh Node Wifi movement (not to mention twice
> >>> attending the CWN conference).  The diversity of participants in Mesh
> >>> Node Wifi is awesome, but it can make feasibility research difficult.
> >>>
> >>> I work/volunteer at an activist community center (CAMP, stlcamp.org)
> >>> in south St. Louis, and a local foundation just put out an open call
> >>> for proposals for investing a substantial sum into community
> >>> revitalization projects in the neighborhood.
> >>>
> >>> These 2 articles about an $8500 deployment of Meraki devices along a
> >>> 2mile corridor in Kentucky motivated me to pitch a similar idea for
> >>> this St. Louis neighborhood:
> >>> http://www.govtech.com/gt/377232?topic=117699
> >>> http://www.wireless-nets.com/resources/tutorials/low-cost_mesh_hotzone.
> >>>ht ml
> >>>
> >>> However, further research in Meraki has yielded some unpopular
> >>> business decisions they made just this year:
> >>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meraki#Criticism
> >>> http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/24/1318226
> >>> http://www.dailywireless.org/2008/11/05/meraki-diy-munifi-for-10kmile/
> >>>
> >>> I certainly understand Meraki's motivation to protect their market,
> >>> but my impression is that decisions to lock down hardware make their
> >>> products less viable in areas where wifi groups may face direct
> >>> competition from established ISPs.  (I.e. can't hack routers to
> >>> support QoS or customized captive portals).  The latter is actually
> >>> directly relevant to my proposal, since I'm aiming for a captive
> >>> portal hosting local ads to provide some operating revenue.
> >>>
> >>> So, assuming you have a $10-$15k start-up budget (including equipment
> >>> purchase. deployment, AND marketing) for installing wifi along a
> >>> ~2mile corridor with lots of 3story rooftops, what suggestions are out
> >>> there?
> >>>
> >>> Meraki, and take your lumps?
> >>>
> >>> Open-mesh.com, which is appealing since OpenWRT can be deployed to
> >>> legacy devices like residents' existing Linksys routers?
> >>>
> >>> OpenWRT + Kamikaze + OLSRd (i.e. roll your own)?
> >>>
> >>> Freifunk.net?
> >>>
> >>> WifiDog for the captive portal + OpenWRT?
> >>>
> >>> The basic, 1st order requirements for the Mesh network are such:
> >>>
> >>> - Robust & stable (this will be a funded deployment, and sadly not a
> >>> dev project)
> >>> - Low-cost equipment (population density of this neighborhood makes
> >>> antenna strength 2nd order)
> >>> - Capacity for centralized admin console
> >>> - MAC tracking and auth (i.e. how many unique wifi clients have
> >>> connected) - Quality of Service (we anticipate lots of folks trying to
> >>> run file sharing, whether sanctioned or not)
> >>> - Customizable captive portal
> >>> - Ability to route to multiple DSL connections from different ISPs w/in
> >>> the mesh
> >>>
> >>> 2nd order requirements
> >>>
> >>> - Support for legacy routers (e.g. able to flash old Linksys products)
> >>> - Good transceiver strength
> >>> - Integration with PayPal-like subscription payments
> >>>
> >>> 3rd order requirements
> >>>
> >>> - Mechanism to control per MAC access based on # bytes downloaded,
> >>> e.g. "We see you've downloaded 3GB this month w/o paying for your
> >>> access..."  This would be a very appealing way to provide limited free
> >>> access, i.e. make the service more competitive, but then enforce fair
> >>> cost sharing in case folks opt for sustained freeloading.
> >>> - Ability to dynamically divert sessions away from congested DSL
> >>> uplinks.  (I hope that having multiple DSL connections in the mesh
> >>> will give us composite reserve bandwidth we can actively allocate to
> >>> handle sporadic traffic peaks.)  Do conventional Mesh Node
> >>> implementations already support this?
> >>> - Ability for wifi clients to connect to each other (Meraki does not
> >>> support this)
> >>>
> >>> 4th order hopes and dreams
> >>>
> >>> - Support for integrating a centralized squid-like HTTP caching
> >>> server.  I.e. commonly surfed traffic gets cached within the mesh.
> >>>
> >>> I consciously anticipate this mesh node deployment to be a temporary
> >>> thing.  The goal is to establish a wifi-savvy neighborhood presence
> >>> that can use its collective buying power in the next few years to
> >>> transition to new technologies, White Space devices in particular.
> >>>
> >>> Any suggestions would be gladly welcome.
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> CWN-Summit mailing list
> >> CWN-Summit at lists.cuwireless.net
> >> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/cwn-summit

-- 
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stel valavanis  http://www.onshore.com/