[ubuntu-us-nm] City wide wifi access?

[Nick]

Honestly, mesh networking wouldn't really work, especially if you're "daisy
chaining" more than two "levels" of APs. Something else would need to be
used for backhaul, whether that be wired connections or wireless (Ubiquiti's
900mhz networking equipment comes to mind).

Then, you have the question of how the APs will get power. Power from
powerlines would probably take longer to provision, so maybe solar would be
an interesting idea.

This would be an expensive idea to roll out, so I do support a higher paid
"tier" of service. Throttling even the expensive tier makes sense, as wifi
is a shared resource and a single person on BitTorrent can wreck everyone
elses experience. I think emphases should be put on the fact that this
shouldn't be considered a REPLACEMENT to fixed connections.

I also would support registration, as free wifi networks can be prone to
abuse otherwise. I would go as far as to require personal information for a
user to sign up, and maybe even as far as requiring credit card information
to verify the users' identity.

One thing I would be concerned about is interference. It could be a problem,
especially considering that wifi is over unlicensed bands.

I think the idea has a few kinks that would need to be worked out, but it
could work.

Cheers,
Nick

On Jan 13, 2010 5:27 AM, "Eric Krieger" <grammatoncleric at ubuntu.com> wrote:

Morning,

I just had a CRAZY idea and wanted to get some feedback and thought on
what everyone thinks about it.  While driving home last night I
selected the wrong app on my iphone and launched WifiFoFum.  I left
the app running just to see what wifi was out there. I was kind of
surprised to see how many wifi access points there where.  So I
started thinking that we should start to consider internet access as a
utility rather than a privileged service.  This morning still chewing
the wifi as a utility my thoughts turned to how the city could blanket
the city with wifi, of course my thoughts included a meshed wifi.  =)

Ok here's the idea: Using the library branches internet access as
gateways the city could extend each of the branches wifi with
open-mesh access points to cover the city.

I looked up where the branches are located and they are perfectly
situated to extend out to cover the city in wifi.

http://www.cabq.gov/library/branches.html

So I have several questions for you all.

Does this sound like a good idea?
What issues do you see wrong with Eric's crack pot idea?
Would you use a free wifi access that throttles bandwidth as not to
overwhelm the network or just to hog bandwidth?
Would any of you pay to have unthrottled wifi access across the city?
Would you be opposed to registerting and systems accessing the wifi
say by mac address?

Thanks,

- Eric

------------------------------
Eric J. Krieger
Ubuntu Member and Altruistic Network Ninja.

Email: grammatoncleric at ubuntu.com
Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GrammatonCleric
NM LoCo: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NewMexicoTeam

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