[Fwd: Re: [NoCatNet] RE: sebastopolian! (fwd)]

Paul larkin at jps.net
Sun Apr 29 16:23:49 PDT 2001



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [NoCatNet] RE: sebastopolian! (fwd)
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2001 08:28:50 -0700
From: Paul <larkin at jps.net>
To: Rob Flickenger <rob at oreillynet.com>
References:
<Pine.GSO.4.31.0104271341160.29805-100000 at magic.songline.com>

At this point, what sort of help do you need, when do you need it, and
how does
contact happen (here, that is, this list; or "don't call us, we'll call
you;"
or something in between)?

Rob Flickenger wrote:

> Here's an old email I've been meaning to forward to the list.  We're very
> close to getting a 21 mile link up between O'Reilly and the hills northwest
> of here.  I have an article going online early next week with the details,
> but to sum up:
>
> * Five miles using 24db dishes is laughably easy with line of sight
>
> * Adding 12-18db of attenuation between one radio and its antenna, still at
>   five miles, worked great: this is more than the amount of loss we expect
>   to see at 21 miles (intervening weather patterns are another matter...)
>
> * We will be testing the live link in about a week, once we get all of the
>   hardware together.  When that happens, I'll be posting the complete
>   design and architecture
>
> There are some other points below that I'd like to settle with this crowd:
>
> * Are we interested enough in this project to have a "meeting of the
>   minds"?  If we have enough people, I can set us up an official O'Reilly
>   User Group (meaning we can use the facilities here to meet)
>
> * What is the general consensus on the importance of a common software base
>   for authentication and access control?  Is it worth spending the time to
>   enforce some amount of fairness, or would we rather just turn this junk
>   on and see what happens?
>
> --Rob
>
> Nate Boblitt wrote:
>
> > Just out of curiosity how do you do your point to point stuff.
>
> You can make a perfectly servicable point-to-point connection with two
> machines in IBSS mode, using directional antennas.  Just make sure they use
> the same network name, and same WEP password, and that's it.  Pointing the
> dish isn't too difficult using a signal strength tool (like wmwave, or the
> windows site monitor tool that comes with the orinoco drivers).  You just
> get it close, then nudge it around to fine-tune it.
>
> As far as a cheap source of dishes, you might look at this:
>
> http://www.wwc.edu/~frohro/Airport/Primestar/Primestar.html
>
> It details how to make a high gain antenna from a used DirecTV dish and a
> juice can.
>
> We're working on a much higher-end p-t-p link from Sebastopol to Mohrhardt
> ridge, about 20 miles northwest of here.  We're putting some equipment up
> in a radio tower on the ridge, and trying to get a link going.  If it
> works, it'll be tremendous (11Mbps to an area of California that has no
> good broadband access, for the cost of hardware and electricity!)  Aiming
> the dishes there is tricky business, though, as you can't actually see the
> other site.  I've logged the lat/long of each site using a GPS, and can
> calculate a heading and elevation to get it close.  Then, if we can get
> anything, it's down to fine tuning with the signal strength meter.
>
> > Another question that seems to come up a lot on the mailing list and on
> > your site is "how do we handle handing off people from one base to
> > another while they are on our sebastopol wide network?  As well as how
> > do we ensure that they should even be on the network? My first reaction
> > is that the handling of people from one base station to another I
> > believe can be done pretty easily with the Lucent products.
>
> True.  We're doing that at work with Lucent Access Points, but it only
> works when all the APs are on the same physical ethernet segment.  It's the
> same with every AP out there...  MobileIP is a difficult problem.
>
> > But when you pop open a browser and try and go to any webpage(didn't
> > matter what one) you are prompted with a page from the hotel.
>
> Yes, I've seen that.  We've been kicking that idea around a while as
> well...  Have you read our white paper on http://nocat.net ?  We're
> thinking of providing three classes of service: Owner, Co-op member, and
> Public.  The last could be completely unauthenticated, while the first two
> would require going to a website to 'log into' the network.
>
> An interesting implication of "grabbing" the first web page is that we
> could make it a per-node customizable start page, mentioning the fact that
> it's a community supported network, with links on how to participate, and
> with a great big 'click here to continue' button...  That would at least
> get the point across that there are people giving their time, effort, and
> bandwidth to provide wireless access.  Hmm...



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