On Fri, 2002-06-21 at 15:54, Dave Hartzell wrote: > Should running high-volume servers be discouraged on a wireless access > network? I would think that a high-volume systems on a mobile/portable > access network should not be allowed. I don't see why they should be discouraged. If you want to get a well-connected enough AP to do it, you should be able to.
At first, I think, the network would grow on an all-volunteer basis. People would donate usage of their APs for relaying packets. Some people would donate use of Unix boxes to do all the smart switching. They'd do this because in return they get the ability to roam around and access their home connection, their servers at home, etc. Bandwidth limitations would be enforced by cooperation and (occaisionally) people rate-limiting their own equipment. Next, I think commercial internet connections would come along. A commercial ISP could provide significant value by having a few well-connected APs providing an internet gateway to their customers. The network would support best-path anycast through ARP, so people would automaticly use the closest AP. People rate-limiting their equipment, especially the smart switches, will become important here. Lastly, the network would grow large enough that it would become its own legal organization, and could pay people for use of APs. In addition, it'd have subscribers, etc. Rate limiting would be done by charging by the bit (but bits would be cheap). At this point, it'd probably be large enough that with multipath, there would not be many congestion issues. And when there were, a couple of 802.11a links could help quite a bit. > > It makes sense to me to build a layer 2 wireless network (as suggested > by another's email in this thread), and have that network attach at a > few point to the public Internet for transit. Instead of each access > point terminating at a DSL/CABLE/T1 point, by not use some APs as > repeaters to the APs that have points on the public Internet? That's part of my idea --- the other part is that much of the traffic would not be to the internet. For example, I may want to get to a file server at home. Put it on an AP, and I can get to it from my laptop while I walk around. Without using the Internet. I plan to type up all the plans for the network soon. But just in case I delay that indefinetely, I have placed scans of my hand-written notes at <http://l2net.derobert.net/> Beware, the PNGs are huge. And the color calibration is attrocious. Uploading those pings with a 128kbit upstream cap was painful.
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part
