On Sat, Nov 26, 2005 at 12:10:16PM -0500, Dave Sampson wrote: > Another WIFI project I would be interested in playing with is > trying to plan and design a route for a cross city, closed network > via WIFI. Like Seattle's effort, I believe. They essentially created their own city-wide no-telco Internet. I've been interested in such an idea myself, but have seen no such effort in Ottawa -- at least, none that survived too long. I have little interest in the whole "wifi for Internet access" thing myself, but that's more a comment on my lifestyle -- specifically my lack of a vehicle and not really liking coffee. For those exceedingly rare times when I really want to sit around on the net at a coffee shop, Bridgehead offers what I need. I can't see doing it at an actual restaurant. > This of course would use GIS (geographic Information systems) to > plan the optimum line of site path. It would also give people a > chance to test their home brew antennas, setup open source bases > hotspot capture points and practice Linux network admin on a closed > network. Yes. I'm mostly interested in the network admin part (particularly any routing protocols it might use), but the idea of a free community network with local content and people also appeals to me. Plus I work for a company that used to specialise in GIS. > The network could aslo be open, but that could encourage cheating on > spanning the network. In what sense? I think if it's a community network with community content, having some open APs would allow anyone access to it. Naturally, we don't want them spoofing routing protocols and rerouting the network, but that's no different than any ISP's concerns, and can be dealt with via packet filtering. Some of the braver points could even offer Internet access... but at their own discretion only, and I wouldn't want to make 'free Internet' the focus of such a network. > The process is the important part, not the end product with this > project. I disagree. The process is important, but I think the end product is equally so. A city-wide wireless LAN with no access / content / latency issues, ISP monitoring, or even a central authority. There's a lot of possibility there.
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