Re: [chat] Sydney Wireless Network

["Antony Clarke" <hrxunil@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> This one time, at band camp, James Peter Gregory wrote:
> >On Mon, 5 Nov 2001, Jamie Wilkinson wrote:
> >
> >> CSE at UNSW has had wireless for comp students and staff for a while
now,
> >> and the UNSW library also rent out wavelan cards to students who wanna
type
> >> up their arts papers on their ibooks whilst sipping latte on the lawn.
> >
> >who set up said system? Is there a site which has tech info about how
they
> >set it up? is it just inside the campus, or outside too?
>
> You could hunt around www.cse.unsw.edu.au, but I make no guarantees that
> they've documented any of it.   It's only on campus, the CSE wireless is
> only in a short range around the building.
>
The Seattle group seem to have a working set-up of sorts as well as some
mention of software. From the looks of their effort and the Melbourne effort
they seem to be having trouble getting it off the ground probably partially
due to different hardware components. It would probably be wise to set a
standard based on a tested card and antenna.

A search of some archives seem to identify the major problem with this
technology is LOS to the nodes. Someone would really need access to a tower
hooked up to a access point. A lot of providers in the US seem to be heading
this way as fiber to many offices and high bandwidth private users is not
available and/or too expensive as well as *dsl and cable are very sloooow
upstream.

Although quite expensive to set-up this could be a very viable project if
users pay a small fee per month. A licence still may not be required if it's
a non-profit community based project. As I stated earlier I believe to be a
success internet connectivity would have to be achieved with rules blocking
video, voice etc outside of  the wireless WAN. The biggest problem is still
the cost of data in Australia.

It would be interesting however too see the pricing of the equipment such as
bridges and access points too get something like this off the ground. Could
a splitter be used to provide both a bridge and an access point off the same
machine?