I think the idea of some small, local meetings with some how-to and general discussion sounds great. There's a great place in downtown Campbell, Orchard Valley Coffee that I am sure would love to have a group in there- they have been providing free wireless for a while now.
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2004 10:22 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: wireless Digest, Vol 8, Issue 26 Send wireless mailing list submissions to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://lists.bawug.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can reach the person managing the list at [EMAIL PROTECTED] When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of wireless digest..." Today's Topics: 1. tech help meetings - Handout on creating free hotspots (Joshua Marker) 2. Community meetings (Joshua Marker) 3. Re: Best hardware for cheap/fast bridging? (Jim Thompson) 4. Re: tech help meetings - Handout on creating free hotspots (Eric Walstad) 5. Re: Good SFLAN node (Eric Walstad) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 17:28:19 -0700 From: Joshua Marker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [BAWUG] tech help meetings - Handout on creating free hotspots To: Bay Area Wireless Users Group <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm thinking the best way to start this stuff off is to start locally, with small meetings. If I had an evening in Noe Valley, for example, where everyone was welcome to come chat about what they were doing, who would come? There is a new place on Dolores that has free wireless that would love the business - I think that would be my first choice. We should be able to provide, on our website and in print, simple documents explaining to Joe Public how to make his NAP free to the neighborhood, and include all sorts of guerilla good-network-neighbor stuff -- how to pick a channel, how to name your network so people can contact you (without endangering yourself), etc. So this is two questions: How many people would show up to a basic wireless techfest and meet 'n greet in Noe/Mission next week, say Tuesday? If I could get a couple people to show up and answer questions, I'll go talk to the cafe and put up a sign. Second, what tips would you give Joe Q Public about opening up his wireless? What questions should we answer? I'll collect them, and prepare a doc. Does BAWUG have a decent logo, or do I have to generate some travesty of something based on the golden gate bridge and wireless radio waves? Don't make me do it; I will. -- Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance. -- Sam Brown, Washington Post -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/pkcs7-signature Size: 3781 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.forko.com/pipermail/wireless/attachments/20041027/787157f4/smim e-0001.bin ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 17:31:18 -0700 From: Joshua Marker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [BAWUG] Community meetings To: Bay Area Wireless Users Group <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" It seems to me that BAWUG/SFLAN have some enormously technically talented people involved. But that their development has both stalled, probably because only the terribly technical people originally involved have reached their carrying capacity in terms of attention. I think, however, that wireless in the bay area has a ways to go. Those guys in Portland are seriously showing us up. To this end, I suggest we take a look at what they're doing that we're not. I'm looking for input on getting more _user_ involvement to take the burden off these guys and get the local network going, both in terms of increasing the number of Joe Publics making free hotspots and increasing links to SFLAN. A glance through Portland's site shows what they're doing: 1) Meetings, both user-level and developer-level 2) Organization. I'm not sure how much org there is. I think quite a lot in SFLAN, but it seems to be tightly held. I can't, for example, find any info about what IP layout they use, etc, etc. It seems to me the goal of a wireless group should be to encourage any kind of adoption, from getting people to put up SFLAN nodes (clearly a big win) to simply sharing their DSL. To this end, we need to make it _easy_ for people to walk up the wireless path. First, we need simple hand-holding explanations of what Joe User can do to put up a WAP and share his connection with his neighbor. This entails getting an ISP that doesn't mind, buying the tools, choosing the best channel, and securing their own machines. I think there will be a hand-out document* in the future here on this topic, but the best way to do research is to start helping people. Second, I know I'd like to see more of a plan, more info on what SFLAN is about and what their future direction is. It's hard to know it right now. To this end, Friday, I'll go down to archive.org and bother the fine gents at SFLAN, if I can find them, and see if I can fill the gaps in my knowledge. I'd like to see some network infrastructure plans, get a sense of how this all goes down. Ideally, this should be semi-documented, but I'm not sure how best to go about it or what they have done already. Third (I lied, there are three, I just thought of this): Recognition. Nobody knows to whom they should turn if they want to set up a wireless link. Many of the local cafes are already starbucked, which is a shame, because they both advertise and encourage if you get them in. A logo? Something to add to warchalking (does anyone warchalk anymore?) How can we let people know about what they could do for/with community wireless? I think if we get a little bit of organization, we could arrange an interview by eg the Guardian, and drive up membership or interest. We'll need an active group before that's smart, though. In the mean time, I think we need to light a fire. Mr. Pretorious has offered a meeting spot for a bigger, full-scale meeting, in Freemont. Does anyone have one in San Francisco? I think we'd get more people. -- Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps. -- David Lloyd George -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/pkcs7-signature Size: 3781 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.forko.com/pipermail/wireless/attachments/20041027/bec9716e/smim e-0001.bin ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 22:58:24 -1000 From: Jim Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [BAWUG] Best hardware for cheap/fast bridging? To: Eric Pretorious <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Eric Pretorious wrote: > On Tuesday 26 October 2004 03:40 pm, Chris Weiss wrote: > >>We're looking to connect our office LANs on two adjacent floors using a >>wireless connection (the current cat-5 snaking out the window is not >>going to cut it when the weather _really_ gets sour). > > > Omnidirectional antennas are *generally* optimized to focus their beams in the > horizontal plane. i.e., The beam radiation pattern looks like a squashed > donut. Therefore, two devices directly above/below each other will not be > able to communicate efficiently because they will be in each others' > donut-hole. This is typically an effect of increased gain, not any "optimization". Further, the path loss between two devices (antennas) placed directly above each other will be quite low, so even with the loss in directivity, communication will probably still take place. > >>Amazon's got the Linksys WRT-54G for ~$60/ea... > > IMHO: An excellent piece of equipment for residential use but I don't know > about commerical applications. WPA (TKIP or AES), DHCP, detachable dual > antennas. It has all this. (Not that I think its much of an AP...) > >>We'd also like to keep our existing wifi access, which leads to another >>Q - I've heard that just the presence of 802.11b devices in an 802.11g >>environment will drop everyone to b speeds, is that right? For sure if an 11b device associates to an 11g AP, then the AP and its associated 11g STAs must start sending protection frames before any data frame(s). While this doesn't drop everyone to 11b speeds, it does slow throughput down quite a bit. The alternative is massive interference for everyone. > > Set the different networks on different channels: > > http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1152281,00.asp What you don't know can hurt you. Most 11g devices don't have enough ACR at the higher modulation rates to allow simultaneous operation on ch11 and ch1. (Anything closer is a bigger mess.) ------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 09:56:59 -0700 From: Eric Walstad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [BAWUG] tech help meetings - Handout on creating free hotspots To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" On Wednesday 27 October 2004 05:28 pm, Joshua Marker wrote: > I'm thinking the best way to start this stuff off is to start > locally, with small meetings. If I had an evening in Noe Valley, > for example, where everyone was welcome to come chat about what > they were doing, who would come? There is a new place on Dolores > that has free wireless that would love the business - I think that > would be my first choice. Count me in. I'm in Bernal Heights, so Noe would be a nice bike ride for me. > We should be able to provide, on our website and in print, simple > documents explaining to Joe Public how to make his NAP free to the > neighborhood, and include all sorts of guerilla > good-network-neighbor stuff -- how to pick a channel, how to name > your network so people can contact you (without endangering > yourself), etc. Consider me Joe Public. I'm happy to be the test case. I've done some of this stuff, but I've done so in a vacuum and would like to see how others are doing it. > So this is two questions: How many people would show up to a basic > wireless techfest and meet 'n greet in Noe/Mission next week, say > Tuesday? If I could get a couple people to show up and answer > questions, I'll go talk to the cafe and put up a sign. I'll show up, but I'll likely take the role of student rather than teacher. I'm happy to talk about my current setup but it would be a short talk (using SFLAN to provide a network connection at home). > Second, what tips would you give Joe Q Public about opening up > his wireless? I've not done this, although I have emailed SFLAN requesting info on how to use my Soekris 4521 to create a new SFLAN node. No response yet. > What questions should we answer? - What's needed to setup an SFLAN node - Are two different radios needed (b & g)? - What's the difference between a node and a repeater? - Must I have a good connection to certain SFLAN nodes to create a new node? Eric. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: signature Url : http://lists.forko.com/pipermail/wireless/attachments/20041028/86278d10/atta chment-0001.bin ------------------------------ Message: 5 Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 10:01:52 -0700 From: Eric Walstad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [BAWUG] Good SFLAN node To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" On Wednesday 27 October 2004 05:19 pm, Joshua Marker wrote: > Can anyone recommend a good SFLAN node accessible from street level > from which to examine the network? My local (47) never seems to > show up; I fear it may be high above. FWIW, I've been able to connect to 47 (I think) every time I've tried. But, I do have a little altitude. Presumably you've seen the node map: <http://woody.archive.org/nagios/cgi-bin/statusmap.cgi> which may help. It looks like 6, 37, 44 and 11 are all up right now, according to the status map. Eric. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: signature Url : http://lists.forko.com/pipermail/wireless/attachments/20041028/d951a315/atta chment.bin ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ BAWUG's general wireless chat mailing list [unsubscribe] http://lists.bawug.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless End of wireless Digest, Vol 8, Issue 26 *************************************** _______________________________________________ BAWUG's general wireless chat mailing list [unsubscribe] http://lists.bawug.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless
