Private AP(s) in Carlow IT

s4dd

So, the number of people with laptops using the college intranet is growing quite a bit.

Just as a minor aside, but with wireless providers like "clearwire" providing out of the box internet access with those nifty wee antennas, what can ye see as the "major issues" against someone buying (perhaps) a couple of those access points and providing unrestricted wireless Internet access for student folk over their laptops in the LRC/College?

Cuchulain

s4dd wrote:

what can ye see as the "major issues" against someone buying (perhaps) a couple of those access points and providing unrestricted wireless Internet access for student folk over their laptops in the LRC/College?

Unrestricted wireless Internet access to us, sounds very nice. But I doubt it very much if it ever would be allowed. As you mentioned before, the LRC isnt an internet cafe and therefore unlikely to become a free-for-all mish-mash of connections.

s4dd

People have brought in their clearwire antennas in the LRC.. and accessed their own connections.

Also, if folk are using laptops they arn't using up machines for folk who wish to study. The only college resources they'd be using would be seats, tables and perhaps electricity to power their laptops.

My question would be "how could the college take issue with folk using another connection within the college walls?". I mean, the signal is already floating around the place, all you'd be doing is accessing it and sharing it with others.

Ivan

Hmm, I approached the college and Computer services with something along these lines when I was in first year. My idea was to connect to their External wireless connection. Originally, the head of computer services was all for it. He said he had no problems with students connecting to their network. However, I posted on this forum in an incredibly excited manner and in not so many words, implied that others could do the same.

However, the head of computer services saw my post on boards and withdrew any support he had for the idea on the basis that he never wanted non-carlow IT people using the service. Of course, I had never intended otherwise, but thats neither here nor there.

As for your idea, the only real problem would be with bandwidth, as far as I can see. Otherwise, it sounds like a pretty good idea. I would imagine there would have to be restrictions on it though. I sincerely doubt computer services just handing out a carte blanché access to the internet purely on the basis that "they are using their own laptops". I'd imagine the service would have to be limited at least in terms of bandwith and speed. Setting up a Linux PC Gateway/Router/Repeater wouldnt be that big a deal though, and would basically nip that in the bud.

Though I gotta ask, is this basically another nifty service you want to provide from the friendly, neighbourhood netsoc?

s4dd

Hi Ivan,

I think you misunderstand. There would be no involvment with the college network at all. It would be a purely 3rd party Internet connection.

Again, the only college resources being used would be the light and furniture in the LRC

Also, no.. nothing to do with bitbucket in the slightest. Also, it would only be an internet connection for browsing.. no p2p apps or anything to rape the connection!

Psycopat

i seen guys advertising clearwire and was wondering if it was any good in carlow? what kinda connection do you get with it? can you play games on it?

daithimac

sounds like a good Idea but, I'm sure the college will want to impose some restrictions such as on the type of material which can be viewed in the college. This could only be considered reasonable. I mean who wants to be sitting beside some guy going through porn thumbs

Cuchulain

daithimac wrote:

sounds like a good Idea but, I'm sure the college will want to impose some restrictions such as on the type of material which can be viewed in the college. This could only be considered reasonable. I mean who wants to be sitting beside some guy going through porn thumbs

I totally agree. It doesnt give us any huge benefits from a academic perspective, if we want to study, research etc, the college network is more than adequate. It'll also be slower than the college network. I just dont see the overall benefit

s4dd

well, the "overall" benifit is to use the internet purely for recreational reasons. so you can look at your bebo and your... whatever it is the kids are looking at these days.

obvoiusly, this wouldn't be sold as an "academic" service as ye have correctly pointed out, that is what the college connection/machines are for.

also, i'll point it out again, the whole reasons for such an endevour is to provide unmoderated internet access i.e. you wouldn't be viewing the internet through the CS depts filters.

elvis2002

.... is the idea to leave a machine connected to a wireless net like clearwire on all the time and then to share that connection using wireless to other laptops?

Ivan

Ah, I see. Sounds like an excellent idea then.

ShayK1

I have a clearwire subscription.... any info needed I'm happy to supply.... however I will not bring my modem into college.......

s4dd

well, the "idea" as i see it would be to secure a modem somewhere within the college in a secure location and have it connected to one or more AP's to allow user access.. again, nothing is planned.. just "throwing it out there" as it were

The_B_Man

s4dd: ur always throwing it out there! in fact, isnt that what ur indecent exposure charge was for? the poor women in that old folks home will never be the same!

so is this idea only for ppl wit laptops? will the techies be the ones in charge of it or will u be settin up ur own "network" within the college?

Kazu

throwing it out there and youll get raped (bandwidth)

s4dd

bman:

In this non existant idea/plan, the techies wouldn't be involved. The connection would be brought in from external sources and ran by student typse.

Kazu:

Some form of connection tunneling would have to be brought into effect to stop people from hogging the line. Also, i suspect that halting certain p2p services would also be disallowed. However, there are web based clients for a number of different p2p protocols.... if there was one central p2p hub for folk to use to download their legit legal stuff, that might be a possibility. But first and foremost, this service (which is just a figment of my imagination) would be for browsing the web.. and perhaps playing online games.

TomTom

It's a good idea, but you should try target it towards just unrestricted web browsing and gaming. P2P downloading and the like would pull the connection to bits. Traffic shaping would be required.

s4dd

Shaping wouldn't be much of an issue really.. Sides, that's something to raise in relation to implementation.. beyond the scope of the thread really.. just wanted to know what people thought and if anyone could see any major issues being raised by the college.

i said initially that i'd be against p2p, but there is a possibility of having the centralised node for that kinda thing. Again, the main purpose of the connection would be for browsing and/or gaming or IM clients and the like.

wheres me jumpa

You say there would be no college involvement but do you not need a "gateway" machine to allow others to access? This would surely be classed as college involvement.

While the college cannot object to people availing of wireless they can of course object to facilitating a machine that will in turn facilitate non academic purposes.

Who will moderate access to this network? Who decides whos in and whos out? Who accepts payment?

s4dd

wheres me jumpa wrote:

You say there would be no college involvement but do you not need a "gateway" machine to allow others to access? This would surely be classed as college involvement.

The gateway machine does not have anything to do with the college. It can be any old desktop, a laptop or even a pda+linux with a battery pack. So no "surely" it does not have to be classed as college involvement.

While the college cannot object to people availing of wireless they can of course object to facilitating a machine that will in turn facilitate non academic purposes.

Again, they wouldn't be faciliating anything.. i don't think i ever hinted as such. I have said constantly that the college would have no involvment.

Who will moderate access to this network? Who decides whos in and whos out? Who accepts payment?

Who knows.. as i've said about a squillion times, this is all just talk for now. Just i suspect the person who decides on access and moderates is the person who implements something and invests their bit of dosh in it... i mean, who else would?

wheres me jumpa

Im not knit picking. Not in the college at the moment so of no use to me and hats off for proposing the idea.

But if it is an old desktop it still has to be powered/stored within the college?

s4dd

aye, this is true.. this is where the idea of using a laptop, or more likely, a pda to control access. but you are right, using the college power wouldn't be completely independant of the college facilities.

however an other possibiltiy exists. using a house or apartment beside the college grounds as an access point with a decent antenna to provide a nice boosted signal... or even perhaps one of the offices around the back of the IT..

wheres me jumpa

The college wont be happy about this but there isnt really much they can do. But they can do something about it if any of their resources are being used such as power or even space in a room.

So you get in a wireless connection to this machine, say 2mbps(?). How many people would you hope to allow use this connection? If its unmoderated people WILL be downloading p0rn, movies, music etc. Open to abuse, who gets the blame if it somebody dloads something way beyone the rules of society?

s4dd

people won't be allowed to download everything all willy nilly. Read back through the other posts.

wheres me jumpa

Might be worthwhile asking around other college forums, guaranteed to have been attempted elsewhere.

s4dd

thanks for that input.

elvis2002

wheres me jumpa wrote:

So you get in a wireless connection to this machine, say 2mbps(?). How many people would you hope to allow use this connection?

And who's paying for it?? The college wont be anyways. I dont see any need for something like this really. If there's no pr0n, p2p, warezing allowed then there's no difference than using the college network except the speed will be snail's pace.

s4dd

No need? Unristricted internet access and the ability to play your online games?
The only thing that would be blocked is large file downloads.

I dunno, i think the kids would go for it.

elvis2002

but if its unrestricted, why will pr0n and the like be unavailable? Gaming on a wirless link? Maybe 2 people could use it.

s4dd

i never said porn will be unavailable.. i said large downloads (such as the like from p2p applications) probably would be. And depending on the game, you can fit a good few folk in on a 4Mb/s link.

elvis2002

A 4Mbps wirless link would cost over 150 euro per month from IBB. Who'll pay for it?

s4dd

havn't really looked into numbers, but this isn't a charity so the final cost will have to be incured by the users.

the alternative is getting a wired link and sharing access via wireless means... i think i'd like to have a chat with kelvin

Ivan

Wired link shared over wireless link, is definitely the way to go, imho. I've looked into such things and its roughly about a quarter of the price for wired over wireless, excluding inital cost of setting things up.

Plus you are talking much greater speeds/quality from a wired link.
As for then converting to wireless, I've read umpteen guides online about how to convert MMDS aerials (Horizon/Irish Multichannel/Chrous and ilk) to 802.11b/g compatible antenna. Its not easy, but for you Paul, I'd imagine a few hours on Sunday would be all thats required.

But the fact is, if you were to go this route, why stop there? Anyone ever/not heard of www.irishwan.org ? Something to consider.

P.s. Where's me jumpa, try to be a bit more constructive, please. There is no need to start poking holes in what is essentially just brainstorming. That comes later

s4dd

Aye, i have heard of irishwan indeedsicle.. not what i had in mind (as this whole idea was based on Internet access) but as another project, who knows

So what do you guys think would be the right way to go with respsect to a wired solution to distribute over wireless? for access to the Internet obviously.

Psycopat

right guys heres the story, if your gona get people to pay for this service your gona have to make sure you only sell it to a limited ammount of people, what happens if you have 10 people running of 1 connection and it takes 10 mins to load a web page, people wont be happy ie. i paid money for this thing and its not even worth it etc etc....

The_B_Man

that reminds me, didnt IBB enter Carlow in the last few months?

wheres me jumpa

Ivan wrote:

P.s. Where's me jumpa, try to be a bit more constructive, please. There is no need to start poking holes in what is essentially just brainstorming. That comes later

I clearly stated I wasnt knit picking. I didnt ask anything that doesnt need to be considered.

s4dd

Psycopat wrote:

what happens if you have 10 people running of 1 connection and it takes 10 mins to load a web page, people wont be happy ie. i paid money for this thing and its not even worth it etc etc....

if i was involved in anything resembling the above, there isn't a chance in hell that any user would be getting such crappy speeds. specially if money is involved.

daithimac

this strikes me as something resembling the independant college mag idea.
As in lots of talk which will lead to nothing

s4dd

aye, that wasn't my project.. neither is this though did anything actually get done about that? i recall the last word was a certain someone going to ask questions and meet with some people...

i mean, it wasn't even my project and i had a couple of meetings with the SU prez and set up a template website and then all interest disappeared.. nothing worse in my mind than people having ideas and then getting lazy and fudging off when a bit of hard work and committment is called for.

anyways, off topic. if he don't have anything constructive/destructive to add...

Ruaidhri

Interesting legal grey area tbh.
Since it would be a private network within the college, how can they control it?

Its the college network which provides you with internet access,and the college network which filters internet traffic.

As far as I can see, if its a private network being access from within the college ( akin to VPNing into another network tbh.. ) then you just have to abide by the rules of the AUP of the network you are connecting to.

In short, I cant see any problem with this, apart from permission to initially setup the network / AP