WAN Ideas

bkehoe

Hi,
I've been thinking a good bit about setting up a WAN in the Wexford area recently, and have come up with a few ideas, some of which may seem far fetched.

Does anyone know if any permission is needed to put a very small wireless base station on a hill or mountain? I've made a few plans in my head (nothing on paper) for a totally unattended base station. Basically it would consist of a normal base station (they sell for around £200 - 300), a car battery, and solar panel. The battery alone could keep it running for over 2 weeks I beleive without charging, and when there's sun, the solar panels would charge the battery and power the station. It would have a fairly small omnidirectional antenna, and if necessary, a directional antenna to link it to another base station, which would probably work for around 20miles. I'd expect reliable connections at 11mbit to work for approx 10 miles assuming the normal user has a directional antenna.

Assuming a basic backbone was established, and a few members came onto the network, the next task would be getting a connection to the net. In this area, Chorus won't have powernet till next year, and probably no adsl for a century, so the only decent net access it could have it through Beam, which at the moment is better value than €ircon's adsl (400k down, 128k up, no transfer limits, for £125/month and no phone needed). If friaco came out, one way satellite i.e. Satnode (300k approx) could be used to provide a connection (satnode is €40/month plus phone costs). If friaco does come out, then some kind of isdn setup could be used as a gateway for people wanting to play multiplayer games on the net. Of course if some ISP would sponsor it, and say give a leased line for free, then that would be a reliable and low ping solution.

For network services, I'd devote a server to it, probably running game servers for UT, Q3A, e.t.c. so that members could join it at any time, and also a local messaging service (can't remember the name but it's like icq, but for a 'private' network).

Speeds; currently 11MBit is the max speed of wireless networks, but there is a new standard being made, which will allow speeds above 50MBit.

If there was good interest, then numerous unattended base stations could be set up, and users on different stations would be able to communicate with each other via a dedicated 11MBit link, but would probably have little load, as I'd hope that each base station would have its own net connection somewhere.

I know none of this will happen unless there is sufficient interest; probably need 10 people interested, and within range of the first base station to make it worth while, and to make it affordable (each home setup would probably cost around £200 at a guess (sterling) ).

Brendan

yellum

Good idea. Was thinking of doing something like that in Cork, but use the schools as stations. Give them the use of it during the day. Schools would be a handy way of linking up large areas.

A license would not be needed if its non-commerical.

bkehoe

I know that no license is needed, but was more concerned about the legality of just putting a small box, and antenna on top of a hill or mountain. The Blackstairs come to mind as a suitable site that'd cover some of wexford, kilkenny, and carlow.

I've had a WLAN going before with a friend using directional only antennas, and had no problems (around 13KM).

rymus

Originally posted by yellum
Good idea. Was thinking of doing something like that in Cork, but use the schools as stations. Give them the use of it during the day. Schools would be a handy way of linking up large areas.

A license would not be needed if its non-commerical.

Id be quite interested in getting in on that plan too. I'm south of Cork city (bout 10 mins) but unfortunately the terrain is very hilly. Great of course if u wanted to setup some base stations. Schools is a good plan also, I'm sure most schools would be happy with a permenant connection for less than average per month. Im fairly certain my old secondary school would go for it anyway.

If you can get a rough price for equipment let me know. If above doesnt work out, maybe we could get involved/suggest some methods for the SCTV wireless rollout thats supposed to happen some time toward the end of this year.

Matfinn

Lo all,

Brendan in rleation to your plan for setting up a WAN in Wexford maybe i can make some suggestions. Regarding you placing a WAN router on a hill in Wexford, you would first want to ascertain who the land belongs to. If it is privately owned then you can ask the permission of the owner if you want to place a router there. If it belongs to the Irish government then you can seek the permission of the local county council and Im pretty sure that there would be no objections. Just be careful that you put it somewhere where no lads can damage it coming home from the pub, or no animals will start to nest in it .


I think another great idea for setting up a WAN is if we setup routers on the roofs of schools, police stations, hospitals and other government and public buildings. In return we can give them free unmetered internet access. Our current and only internet infrastructure is under the control of a tyrannical company, so it makes sense to start up our own. Think about it people. Which would you rather have????

1: To pay Ericom for DSL, £90 a month ( remember a minimum 12 month contract!! thats at least £1080 ), and to pay them £150 or thereabouts for equipment fees, and then a further £99 for installation!, not to mention having to pay also for the regular phoneline rental. That adds up to IR1329 incl Vat, for a crippled internet service for one year!!!!

2: To pay around £300 or less for an 802.11b compliant wireless network card and a long distance antenna. You would also have to pay for a router ( you pay your share for this with other users ), and you would also have to pay for the intenret connection ( also you share this cost with other users ). The price for the two afformentioned items would vary according to the number of users on the WAN. Paying this cost would result in unmetered, high speed, always on internet access, for life!!

3: To continue to pay the average £100 internet phone bill that turns up on our doorstep monthly or bi-monthly to haunt us, dusgruntled that you will never get a good deal on internet access.

I know this has been talked about before, but if we play our cards right we can achieve this. I know esat have their mobile phone masts on police stations all over the country. In exchange for this, esat gave the Gardaí some communications equipment. If we could mount our routers on the national radio transmission poles, on 3 rock mountain in Dublin, on the Silvermines in Tipperary, on the McGillycuddy Reeks in co Kerry, on the Sperrin mountains in Co Tyrone, or even on the ESB power masts.


Think about how far we have come in our campaign. Are you willing to go a little further and surpirse everyone. As far as I know this will be the first ever undertaking of building a new infrastructure of this kind that the world has ever known.

Think about it. Seriously.

Thanks for reading if you got this far

Matt

pertinax

Yes i'm interested in this shtuff
But how is it this base station really connects to the internet.
I yet again show up my intelligence

bkehoe

Hi,
There can be problems regarding the positioning of routers. If they're mounted on the same mast as a high power mobile phone transmitter, or near it, they won't work (I'm sure we all know what happens when a low powered mobile phone is put near a badly shielded speaker; imagine the power from a mast). Also, the ESB high voltage lines can disrupt the signal, if it has to sortof pass through a few wires.

I have no idea who owns land on the Blackstairs...I guess it would be the government, but only guessing.

Putting base stations on schools could be a good idea, but remember wireless requires LOS, so putting a base station on a school in a hole won't be much good.

I estimate, provided the stations were in a direct line, and almost even distances from each other, that around UK£5000 once off would allow someone at Malin Head to send files at approx 11mbit to someone in the South. As an estimate, I'd say that maybe £100,000 would give countrywide coverage. Obviously we wouldn't be spending this kind of money though, but if every NoLimits customer who got kicked for 'overuse' invested their usual monthly fee into a WAN, we could probably get coverage in their area for a wan and have money left over for net access. Just an idea, but with some support, it could become reality.

Brendan

cmkrnl

You'd want to be careful & keep it quiet, otherwise you will have the local wingnut greenies out protesting that your microwave transmissions are giving their poor babies cancer.



greg

bkehoe

hehe. 100mw (max legal output; from Compaq cards) is hardly a few hundred watts that come from a mobile phone mast

Dr_Teeth

There's mailing list that's been in existence for some months now for discussion of this very topic!

Click here: http://lists.boxhost.net/mailman/listinfo/wan-dublin

For subscription info or to look through the archives.

Teeth.

yellum

I was thinking of using schools as it would be an ideal test bed for a future metronet and also they might be allowed to use the heanet for internet access since its for academic and research use. Librarys could also join on to this. I would document everything that was done and any bugs encountered and ironed out.

Once a schools wan is up and running, additional equipment can be then set up to power a seperate community network where bandwidth comes from another source such as leased lines from generous people. Corporation and county council buildings would be good places to have linking stations too.

I know if I got adsl or a good sat link I would readily share it with the community around me, hopefully there would be others with the same attitude and so small nodes of the community net would have their own line to the net.

Large caches can then be stored on the network to prevent duplicates being downloaded from the Internet. Proxy servers and the like can be set up too. An internal messaging system can also be built as well as a community intranet with noticeboards etc.

Chaos-Engine

This topic is of great interest to me
I would love to start work on a Wireless WAN in my community...

I live in Goatstown, Dublin 14...
If there is anyone else near by please contact me

We could link the WANs together sooo easily in the cities then get a access to dedicated lines and link the cities... Costs could be covered by the shear numbers ))

cmkrnl

Originally posted by bkehoe
hehe. 100mw (max legal output; from Compaq cards) is hardly a few hundred watts that come from a mobile phone mast

Not forgetting the square law w.r.t power & distance from the transmitter :-). Jaysus, brings me back to the good old days of CB radio.


Breaker 1 - 1 for a copy come on back.


greg

yellum

Looks like we've got ourselves a convoy. Sorry....

jaarius

Yellum...

i think the folowing would be good places in cork

bruce... would cover the city almost and north cork
Colaiste spiorad naoimh... would cover bishopstown
the central statistics office would cover mahon and douglas

would you agree?

jaz?

yellum

Yes, I'd agree with you Jaarius. I don't know what range the CSO would have though. Might go down and have a look. Beaumount school might be able to see other places too. On the Northside the COPE foundation schools have a very good view of most of the city.

The Science building in UCC has a great view of the city and the wilton area, I'll try and go up on the roof tomorrow and see what I can see. They already have wireless connections to the Univeristy Hospital so Spiorad naomh wouldn't be too much further. It all depends on if they would allow a repeater on the building. Insurance etc.

jaarius

i would be interested in this kind of network in cork. post what you find out here...

if you can:)

cheers


j

Balfa

Originally posted by yellum
Large caches can then be stored on the network to prevent duplicates being downloaded from the Internet. Proxy servers and the like can be set up too. An internal messaging system can also be built as well as a community intranet with noticeboards etc.

My god! it's Wireless AOL!

heh, seriously though, it sounds like a plan... i'd be interested, but i'm skeptical as to how far the idea will get. I live in Bray, Co Wicklow, btw.

timod

FWIW - I'm behind any attempt to set up some sort of Wireless WAN in Cork.

Any further developments Yellum?

yellum

Hey Tim,
I'll let you know soon when I have a chance to get some info and funding together. The locations shouldn't be a problem. The cost of the equipment would be.

As for a Wireless AOL, it will not be any such thing. The service for this will be good. Was also looking into the idea of streaming local radio and tv. There should be enough bandwidth for it.

jaarius

YEAH! stream freakfm so we dont have to suffer that hospital radio interferance or have to stand on one foot while holding
a wire clothes hanger to get a couple of song in.

hell i know somebody who might be interested in making this part of his college project. i.e. have a station in CIT... mmmmm funding.

will think more.


j

Praetorian

Has anyone done the maths on this??

How many people in my area would I need to make it reasonably feasable financially?

Also I live in Balbriggan Co Dublin (we have no hills). How strict is the line of site problem?

yellum

What do you mean by strict ? It will have to be direct line. You will need to see the other aerial. Going through any trees will all but block it out. Trees are bad, well in this situation anyway.

rymus

Yellum > if u have a proposal or plan drawn up for a cork wan could u send it to me? I know a few people (businessey types with money to spend) that have been looking to setup an ISP (of sorts) for a few years. I think this is the type of thing they would be likely to go for. What I'm mainly looking for is prices. position of masts isint important for the moment. we can work out the logistics after the finances are secured

If you could give me a rough estimate for coverage of city & a couple of suburbs for starters we may be able to get a trial going in the next few months. Cross your fingers

yellum

Oooooooh. Hehe.

Okay, I shall really get cracking now then. I'll start gathering equipment costs and everything else together while at work tomorrow. I wonder would an isp be up for helping us with this too ?

I was offered the use of a 2mb line for testing before but the location was not in my line of sight so I could do nothing about it. Pity.

Right.

Thanks Rymus.

phaxx

Sounds pretty cool, shame I'm not in cork
What's the maxiumum range for something like this? How far can you stretch it and still get 2mbit/sec or something?

Oughta be on the net/comms board, eh?

bkehoe

Depending on distance, direct LOS is not required...

Some trees won't matter much, especially in winter, if you're only around a mile from the nearest base station. I did several tests through various layers of vegetation. It won't work through evergreen trees at any distance over quarter a mile I beleive, though it should work fine through a thinish layer of leaves for around a mile, which I tested.

Also, before I do anything serious here in wexford, I'm going to wait for the new faster standard of cards to come out; probably in the next 3 months, which will probably give speeds over 5 times faster in zones nearer to the base station.

If the Cork ppl get a network going, pop a base station onto some of the Comeragh mountains that can see towards the east, maybe near to the south coast tv transmitter, which has a view to the east, so that they can be joined together.

yellum, make sure you price Compaq cards, as they should be the best. Also, the cable is very expensive, around £3 - £4 per meter. If you're looking for antennas, there are lots of surplus galaxy tv mmds antennas from australia, which can be converted with a little modding. The gain isn't as good as a real antenna, but its only around £5 per antenna.

Brendan

nahdoic

Lol ... can you imagine the likes of Eircom reading this thread?

"Oh crap, they realised they don't need us at all! ... but who is going to give me money now?"

Keep up the great work guys, keep us posted

kamobe

A lot of talk about wexford and Cork. Would anyone in Dublin be interested, and have the technical ability to set something like this up?

This is the kind of action that will really scare the likes of eircom. A non profit organisation "by the people, for the people". Not only will this force them to drop prices, we can then afford to turn the tables, and give them the proverbial middle finger.

I'm from Blanchardstown, Dublin 15. I have little knowledge that could be of assistance, but I would love to be involved in setting up a service in my area, and certainly know plenty of friends and colleagues who would also be interested .

fixer

Here are some links of other places, mostly the States, that are working on similar projects:

http://bookworm.sdsu.edu/sd_clubs.html

http://lists.nycwireless.net/pipermail/nycwireless/2001q3/000294.html

http://news.independent.co.uk/digital/features/story.jsp?story=89393
http://nocat.net/
http://nocat.net/ezwrp.html
http://sandiego.citysearch.com/profile?id=111251
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/09/12/1242213
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/08/15/0150255&mode=thread
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/08/23/1837218&mode=thread

http://www.arrl.org/catalog/?category=Antennas%2FTransmission+Lines
http://www.bawug.org/
http://www.freenetworks.org/
http://www.live.com/wireless/unix-base-station.html
http://www.lns.com/papers/FCCPart15_and_the_ISM_2.4G_Band.index
http://www.milehighwireless.net/wiki-moinmoin/moin.cgi
http://www.netstumbler.com/
http://www.nycwireless.net/
http://www.nycwireless.net/articles/enclosure/index.html

http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2000/12/01/shirky_freeloading.html
http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2001/08/02/openservices.html
http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/448
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20010712.html
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20010823.html
http://www.personaltelco.net/index.cgi/AcceptableUse
http://www.personaltelco.net/index.cgi/CategoryLegal
http://www.personaltelco.net/index.cgi/CheapAssSetup
http://www.personaltelco.net/index.cgi/PrivacyPolicy
http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0129/tech-fleishman.shtml
http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/SecurityIssues.html
http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/SecurityIssues.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/21177.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/18285.html
http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,46187,00.html

nahdoic

Originally posted by kamobe
I'm from Blanchardstown, Dublin 15. I have little knowledge that could be of assistance, but I would love to be involved in setting up a service in my area, and certainly know plenty of friends and colleagues who would also be interested .

ditto

Blanchardstown Dublin 15 here and very interested. I have one other friend who'd be very interested who is in Blanch too. But again, I wouldn't have the technical experience, although I'd very very willing to learn!

Chaos-Engine

Originally posted by Praetorian
Has anyone done the maths on this??

How many people in my area would I need to make it reasonably feasable financially?

Answer: Not many. And it will be alot cheaper than anything currently on offer. And the BONUS. WE would own it and control it.

11-50 MB/s

rymus

I wonder would an isp be up for helping us with this too ?

Good in theory for financial backing & infrastructre, but we want to keep prices as low as possible. Id say any ISP involvement and they'd be searching for profit margins and so on.. I think if we need funding in the long run with this, we could just lease the service to businesses (cos business users ALWAYS pay more than residential ) Theres always plenty of investors excited in new developments in tech sector anyway. And lets face it, theres nothing as new as the users themselves forming their own ISP

I was offered the use of a 2mb line for testing before but the location was not in my line of sight so I could do nothing about it. Pity.

whereabouts is this line located? Just because its not in your line of sight doesnt mean its not workable There will probably be a few base stations anyway (funds permitting of course) so we may be able to use that line after all in a short term testing capacity (before we get our own ) Anyway, I'll leave you to your drafting, good luck!

Matfinn

Lo all. Found a really good page with tonnes of info on setting up a WAN, aswell as pages that people who run a WAN have setup.

http://bengross.com/wireless.html

Have a look and I hope its of some use. Makes a good read:)

Gluck
Matt

yellum

Fixer thanks for all the links.

Brendan, is there any way you can put up some online documentation for the network you set up and more info on those aerials and such ? First hand user experience is invaluable.

Getting some hardware hackers into this discussion would prove invaluable as well I think. Theres some in Cork that have made some interesting things. Theres prob a few in your area too.

Wonder could we get a forum set up for all things wireless and hardware hacking/tweaking ?

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=31580

Go there if you think its a good idea.

Matfinn

Im from Dublin myself, and I live in Howth. On top of the hill of Howth is a good place to put some Antenna's, because there are already some up there, and Howth is the only really hilly place in this part of Dublin. Id say that a good few houses in and around Kilbarrack, Sutton, Baldoyle, Portmarnock, Malahide, Coolock, Bayside, Killester, The city centre, and maybe even parts of South Dublin along the coast would have a good line of sight.

These antennas also have good range ( upto 20km ), so all these areas would be well covered. Anyone living in these areas drop me a mail if your interested.

matfinucane at eircom dot net


Gluck

Matt

phaxx

I doubt there's enough interest for a whole new section, net/comms is quiet enough anyway. Off ye go.

yellum

Originally posted by rymus


Good in theory for financial backing & infrastructre, but we want to keep prices as low as possible. Id say any ISP involvement and they'd be searching for profit margins and so on..

Well I was thinking of the backing of an ISP maybe just for a leased line or something like that. Not actually paying for the hardware. If Esat was used to get the leased line they might give a hand in the planning of the sites. They do have planners in Digifone with very good maps and equipment. You never know.


I think if we need funding in the long run with this, we could just lease the service to businesses (cos business users ALWAYS pay more than residential ) Theres always plenty of investors excited in new developments in tech sector anyway. And lets face it, theres nothing as new as the users themselves forming their own ISP


Well if you were to rent to a business you'd have to have an agreed quality of service etc. That can spiral into litigation and everything else. Once the technology has calmed down and good quaity, reliable standards and practices are brought in you could look at giving it to a business then. Home users would be so much easier to cater for though.

Personally I'd be more into the community idea of it. I'd set up an independent network if I was to offer this kind of service commercially, but with access gateways so the two networks could talk.


whereabouts is this line located? Just because its not in your line of sight doesnt mean its not workable There will probably be a few base stations anyway (funds permitting of course) so we may be able to use that line after all in a short term testing capacity (before we get our own )

The line is in the city centre. It was only to test my equipment and theirs. I'd prefer to try and get some proper commercial sponsorship. For example getting some company thats thinking of doing this to give us a small bit of money and we'll test away and find little problems and workarounds and other things that were not catered for in advance. We would then provide all this information to the sponsor so they could use it for their trials.

Anyway, am wasting precious time.

kamobe

If you start selling to buisnesses, don't you need a license?

I am personnally interested in setting something up for a local community, non-profit. I think selling it will lead to corruption :}

Anyone else in the Dublin 15 area who would like to help, please get in touch

yellum

Have you tried the WAN Dublin mailing list ? You might find a match there.

kamobe

"Have you tried the WAN Dublin mailing list ? You might find a match there."


Having tried that list, I'm told what's proposed is illegal, even though it's non-profit.....

Can someone verify this?

yellum

I think the ODTR allows this now without a license. http://www.odtr.ie

ODTR Press Release 04/09/2001

Regulator to permit short-range public access services using
technologies such as bluetooth, Hiperlan and IEEE 802.11

Etain Doyle, Telecoms Regulator today ( Tuesday 4th
September 2001) confirmed that she will permit the provision of short range public access services in the 2.4GHz and 5GHZ bands using technologies which are exempt from licensing under the Wireless Telegraphy Acts.

The Regulator also announced that the ODTR is to conduct a full review of the Fixed Wireless Access in Ireland with a view to licensing further FWA spectrum.

Commenting on the licensing of short range public access
services she said " this will enable network operators and their
customers to gain full advantage from emerging high speed data standards such as Bluetooth, Hiperlan, and IEEE 802.11 series of radio local area network (RLAN) products, many of which are now readily available in the Irish Market place. It may also suit some private uses such as campus connections.

Operators will be free to use these bands subject to certain
technical restrictions, on a non-exclusive basis. If offering services
to the public they will need to have an appropriate telecommunications service licence. This facility may be useful either to complement their existing icensed services or to provide localised services in areas not currently served."

pencil

Hi All,

I have been following this thread & reading the archives @ WAN-DUBLIN. I live in Dublin 7 (Drumcondra - Phibsboro) and would be very interested in getting involved in anything that's happening in this area.

Unfortunately I have no tech knowledge in the area, but willing to learn (can anyone recommend a link or book along the line of 'WAN for dummies')

People seem to have been trying to get a site together on the WAN-DUBLIN list, this I can & would be willing to do.

;P

Me stuff @ www.neonsoup.com

IKiigan

Originally posted by Dr_Teeth
There's mailing list that's been in existence for some months now for discussion of this very topic!

Click here: http://lists.boxhost.net/mailman/listinfo/wan-dublin

For subscription info or to look through the archives.

Teeth.

Yup, I advise anyone interested to take this discussion over to the WAN DUBLIN list which my right honourable colleague Dr. Teeth has just advertised

No reason why we can't discuss WANs elsewhere in the country too.

The list traffic has been somewhat slow ... mostly daunted by the expense of equipment, along with difficulty of getting decent line-of-sight in Dublin, and of course legal issues. Read the archives, and post - it'd be good to continue those discussions.


Regards

Ian

bkehoe

hmm, hate mailing lists

I beleive a "telecommunications service licence" would be needed if you were to be selling a wireless internet service. In my opinion, calling it a public non profit network that does not guarantee service in any way would probably dismiss the need for this, and still let you charge people for the hardware, and if you wanted to, split the charge of the bandwidth between the users, at cost price.

I'd be happy to allocate some server space and an ip address to host a site for a wan in ireland. If some people would like to contribute, I could set up sections for each community wan, as well as a message board, e.t.c.

Also, I've just ordered 4 of the galaxy tv antennas from australia. They're AUS$15 each, and its costing AUS$75 to ship them here. Amazingly good value at £60 inc shipping for 4 antennas.

Here are some other prices; http://consume.net/buy

A brand new 20db gain directional antenna designed for wan costs around £75 excluding shipping in australia.

yellum

Brendan,
You seem to be the most clued in person as regards whats needed. Can you recommend what gear to get, cards, antennas, wiring etc. Is Australia the cheapest place to get the hardware ?

As regards the website. I think this is a good idea a very good idea. Maybe there should be a form on it that people can fill in which will upload their details to the website. Might be easier then to find someone nearby to link to without having to trawl through months of archives on a mailing list.

If you had a some sort of register too of people that wish to buy cheap hardware a group discount could be negotiated if the number of interested partys is high enough.

I may be wrong but I think people are reluctant to jump in because of uncertainty rather than cost. The only public working wireless lan at the moment that I know of is the wapprofit.com one in Killarney. Does anyone know of other wireless lans ?

bkehoe

Hi,
Yep, Australia is probably the cheapest, with the US coming in second. Many of the antenna companies are, or started off in australia because MMDS tv was big there till satellite came in.

I beleive that the Lucent wavelan/orinico (sp?) cards, or clones (such as Elsa Airlancer), and the Compaq WL2xx cards would be the best choices. The compaq is supposed to have a higher output than the Lucents, but most people use the lucents, due to driver, and third party support, e.t.c. All the cards can be got from dabs.com (works out a little cheaper than from australia due to shipping; you could get 1000 cards from dabs and still only pay £20 for shipping )

The best choice for antennas would of course be ones designed for it. The galaxy antennas which I'm getting, when modified should give approx 15db gain, whereas a proper one from Pacific Satellite for around £75 would give 20db, and need no modding.

Cable is expensive, and 20 meters (from australia) costs approx £60.

You also need a pigtail adapter to connect from the wireless card to the larger cable. They cost approx £25 from australia.

If everyone who is definatly interested could say so for definate, I'll try to get a quote, including shipping for a bulk purchase.

For the following kit:
Compaq WL210 PCI
20db gain directional antenna
10M of cable
1 pigtail adapter
Cost = £300 inc VAT EXCLUDING shipping (which I estimate to be around £60 for 5 - 10 day air).

So just lets say £375 to be sure, for each home setup.

If a PC Card is used, the cost is around £50 less.

I'd hope to get discount on stuff like shipping if a few orders were sent in the one package.

BTW, 20KG is the max weight per package.

I'll get a website set up either some evening this week, or at the weekend, where people can enter their location, see if anyone is nearby, and so on, as well as a dedicated message board if anyone wants it??

Brendan

pencil

I'll get a website set up either some evening this week, or at the weekend, where people can enter their location, see if anyone is nearby, and so on, as well as a dedicated message board if anyone wants it??

Good stuff Brendan.

fixer

I am loving this idea. I love new tech projects, and miss my days in San Francisco where a lot of these hardware hacks are coming from. I sent email to some of my old friends, namely CLiff Skolnick who is quite involved with the Bay Area Wireless Users Group. I'll get his current recommendations for hardware.

Also, I've been doing my internet programming at The Internet Exchange off the Western Rd, and the owner here is interested in this idea as well. They are also associated with the Web Workshop or somesuch name, next to The Long Valley (don't know that street name, but between Oliver Plunket & Patrick Streets). Those might be two good bases to start from, since they already have a high-speed line in each, roof access and power.

We could also approach any other businesses with high-speed lines - especially since a lot of the heavy usage would be after work for most of us, when the business's high speed connection lies dormant.

If we were to buy a pre-made solution from Lucent, there's this: http://www.lucent.com/press/0198/980126.nsb.html at $3k USD suggested retail price. Not a great solution...but a few hacked up Airport's with sntennas probably won't give us the performance we want/need.

HaVoC

I am from cork too but i live 16 miles from the city . Whats the range from the base station to any user ?

SkepticOne

Originally posted by fixer
Also, I've been doing my internet programming at The Internet Exchange off the Western Rd, and the owner here is interested in this idea as well. They are also associated with the Web Workshop or somesuch name, next to The Long Valley (don't know that street name, but between Oliver Plunket & Patrick Streets). Those might be two good bases to start from, since they already have a high-speed line in each, roof access and power.

We could also approach any other businesses with high-speed lines - especially since a lot of the heavy usage would be after work for most of us, when the business's high speed connection lies dormant.

This is very interesting! Another group people might like to get in touch with might be the MIT MediaLab Europe. These people are very aware of the internet access situation in Ireland. They probably have rooftop access in the Guinness Hop Store and might be interested in linking up with libraries and schools. They might even be interested in funding part of the project.

Is anyone in Dublin interested in meeting up and discussing these ideas?