[CWN-Summit] Installing a community wireless system

Joseph Bonicioli nettraptor at awmn.net
Tue Nov 23 09:13:19 CST 2010


Aaron at last some people have the chance to start the opposite way. 
There are many solutions to the problem depending what you want as a product
out of this net. 
If you just need to spread a few TBytes of traffic out of 1 or more internet
uplinks, then that is feasible and a very big community is not needed.  It's
merely a technical, project planning, human resources allocation task. Same
way a wisp would go around it, only hopefully you have access to the right
places. There are ready easily deployable and expandable solutions for this.
Eg. Open-mesh can serve a small network for internet delivery quite good. I
guess there are many more solution like that (wlanLJ has developed something
similar for their net)
If you are looking for a Community Wireless Network in its purest form, i.e.
a wireless network made by the users for the users, with service and network
life generated out of its own members regardless of internet connectivity,
then the bad news is you need a lot of social engineering. No budget can't
buy that easily, it takes a lot of your time, but it's may times rewarding
and almost certainly worth it no matter how successful it is. 

One way or the other you  are going to need all the roofs, all the best
clear view spots and all the access to needed areas you can get. That's the
first step. You can then start the backbone network plans. Maybe with the
aid of Geo tools (We can provide you with some, eg wind that we use) or
other calculation tools. Decide on the number and the location of nodes, the
structure of each node, routing protocols, Wi-Fi protocols, equipment that
will be used, hotspots (if they are going to be any) and maybe optimal
placement of services for optimal delivery of content. 

There are a whole lot of things you can get involved with but you have to
decide first what sort of network you need to be. This will point you to the
right direction as far as technical and community requirements are
concerned. :)

"Aaron are you up for it?" I wish this phrase could slip out of my mouth so
easy. Ohio is so far away. I would love to see a project like that grow and
I would love to be part of it just to see how good we could do if we started
the other way round.
Back to reality... I need to get some project details submitted here in the
office.

Keep us posted! We love to hear stories from all of you. 

-----Original Message-----
From: cwn-summit-bounces at lists.chambana.net
[mailto:cwn-summit-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of L. Aaron Kaplan
Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2010 5:59 PM
To: cwn-summit at lists.chambana.net
Subject: Re: [CWN-Summit] Installing a community wireless system

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On 11/18/2010 04:15 PM, ROBERT DIXON wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A local community here in central Ohio has received a grant to install a
community wireless system. Now they are looking for somebody to design and
install it.  They have asked me for suggestions.  Any info I could pass on
to them would be appreciated.
> 
> 

Hi Bob,

Well, the folks here on this list have years of experience with running
community wireless networks. Probably the first point to remember is that
you need a community [1] ;-) to run the wireless community networks.

Apart from this, some intro courses/workshops about RF planning, 802.11* and
TCP/IP networking all pays off (note: I don't know what the know how level
of your partners in this project).

Next comes link and node planning.

The networks in Europe have some very good experience with open source mesh
networks (mixed ad-hoc / infrastructure mode): OLSR, BATMAN and the newcomer
Babel seem to be the protocols of choice, even though I heard people even
using RIP (couldn't believe it when I heard it).
Anyway, I think I don't have to explain anything regarding network setup.
However, city wide Wi-Fi networks are indeed a different beast than wired
networks.

In case you have any specific questions, please ask...
I still have some sample spreadsheet calculations lying around for planning
big networks in case you need something like this.

Best of luck,
Aaron.



[1] helping hands and people who want to be part of the network, people who
will buy their own HW and connect to the network and pass on the signal to
other nodes up along the way. C.f: the pico peering agreement.



> Bob
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Robert S. Dixon, Ph D, PE           
> Chief Research Engineer
> Ohio Academic Resources Network (OARnet)
> 
> 
> Office Telephone: 614-292-1638
> Fax:              614-247-7096
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> CWN-Summit mailing list
> CWN-Summit at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/cwn-summit

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