[lug] Fw: Longmont Community Wireless Meeting

Sun Feb 13 21:56:12 MST 2005

 I wanted to post this to the Boulder Urban Radio Networking list
 (BURN) but I haven't heard from it in nearly a year, and the last web
 site I knew for it known it seems gone.

 So this is somewhat off-topic, but I think of interest to many LUG
 folks.

The Longmont Community Wireless group is off and running!
Nice story in the Longmont Times-Call yesterday:

 http://www.longmontfyi.com/Local-Story.asp?ID=461

Below are large chunks of summary message with a bunch of good
pointers on wireless in general (towards the end), and the specifics
in Longmont.

Cheers,

Neal McBurnett                 http://bcn.boulder.co.us/~neal/
Signed and/or sealed mail encouraged.  GPG/PGP Keyid: 2C9EBA60

----- Forwarded message from Joey Stanford <joey at stan4d.net> -----
Subject: Longmont Community Wireless Meeting

Greetings! 

Thank you all for attending the Longmont Community Wireless Meeting 
today.  We packed the coffee shop thanks to the Time-Calls newspaper 
article.  It was a wonderful feeling to see so many people interested 
in the project. 

Our website is:  http://long-wire.net/ 

A number of decisions were made: 

1) Marty with the help of Jim and Tom will try to draft up a more 
complete business plan including options such as a "pay for higher 
speeds" concept.  This was discussed as a primary way of funding the 
organization to purchase backhaul hardware and pay for possible ISP 
fees.  Jim also suggested that we look at a rebate plan which would 
reward nodes which share bandwidth. 

Needed for the business plan exercise is a base set of requirements. 
The ones we discussed were: 
	1) Remaining a Not-For-Profit company which operates similar to 
a CO-OP. 
	2) Providing free wifi access to the residents of the city of 
Longmont (with the caveat that we may need to charge an access fee for 
higher bandwidth so as to offset operational costs) 
	3) Decisions will be made on a consensus basis 

Please send any additional thoughts you might have to Marty at 
mmduey at earthlink.net
...
Thank you Marty for volunteering to lead this effort. 

2) George has volunteered to take over website and related content 
management.  This is needed to raise our professional appearance as 
well as to provide advanced features such as forums and email 
distribution lists (aka reflectors).  I will be working with George and 
Jason to get this going.    

The question of future hosting also arose.  Currently Jason and Ron of 
Brio Solutions (who unfortunately couldn't make it) are providing our 
hosting at no charge.  Matt offered to do the same at his local 
colocation.  I will work with Jason and Ron to see if they continue to 
provide the service free of charge as well as determine if they can 
provide the advanced features George will need to maintain the site. 

Brio solutions is located here: http://briosolutions.com/ 

Another hosting provider we've had quite a bit off success in the past 
with is Deafening Urge.  http://deafening-urge.net/ 

There is also the possibility that we could obtain a Net Box and use 
that in lieu of a full hosting package: 
http://www.axentra.com/products/multifunc_server_appliances/home_series_net-box/ 
 (there is also a more powerful SOHO box available). 

Thank you George for volunteering to lead this effort.   

3) Joey will continue to lead the technical evaluation team with help 
from Don and Jason.   Tom suggested we look heavily into the WiMAX 
(802.16) and Don mentioned he is a member of the working group.  WiMAX 
is part of the Metro Wide Area Networking effort.  We had hoped to take 
advantage of this technology when it became available.  A good reason 
to deploy a WiMAX solution today is that we could 'corner the market' 
in our area and help to insure free (or perhaps in this case, very low 
cost) WiFi is available to everyone.  If someone comes along in a year 
and deploys WiMAX in Longmont, it would be inexpensive and pervasive 
enough so as to reduce the need for our group. 

For a layman's description of WiMAX visit 
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/wimax.htm 
A great place to keep up to date on WiMAX is the WiMAX blog: 
http://wimax.weblogsinc.com/ 

If we opted for a non-WiMAX solution, the consensus is that we should 
find a lower cost mesh solution (as opposed to the LocustWorld Mesh 
system as well as a basic Linksys WRT54G system).  The current idea is 
to load mesh-enabled custom firmware onto the inexpensive WRT54G. 

A leader in this area is the  UK based Kings Bridge Link group. They 
use Sveasoft's custom WRT54G firmware with it's latest meshing 
capabilities:   http://www.kingsbridgelink.co.uk/admin/ 
A layman's version is located here:  
http://www.vonage.com/corporate/press_broadcast.php?PR=2004_05_27_0 

A  special firmware based upon Sveasoft's but FREE (and it includes a 
radius server too) is located here:  
http://sf01_32.ipx10813.ipxserver.de/dd-wrt/index.html 

We've been keeping an eye on MIT's RoofNet mesh network.  The software 
is now available but not yet small enough for the WRT54G:  
http://www.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/roofnet/ 

4) Several people asked for various links: 

a) Community Wireless Websites: 

http://www.freenetworks.org/  (list of several projects) 
http://www.seattlewireless.net/  (the leader) 
http://www.personaltelco.net/static/index.html 
http://www.bcwireless.net/ 
http://www.cuwireless.net/  (build their own custom software) 

and for comparison:  http://www.austinfree.net/ 

b) Voice over IP Sites: 

There are many but Vonage which is a full service Qwest replacement is 
the best one we can get locally (VoicePulse is often thought of as the 
best):  http://vonage.com/ 
For a complete list, visit: 
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-VOIP+Service+Providers+Residential 

If you are looking to try it out but not wanting to pay a per month 
fee, try SIPPhone: http://sipphone.com/      I've tried EVERY free VoIP 
service and I think this is the cheapest, easiest, and the best 
quality.  There are some features that others have but in my mind it's 
not worth it. 
You can also have a look at http://siphardware.com/    and   
http://www.sipsoftware.com/ 

c) Netrack is a good DSL ISP:  http://netrack.com/ 

5) Next Meeting: 

   We decided to meet twice a month for the time being to keep the 
momentum going.   I spoke to the owners of Dazbog's and they really 
want us to continue meeting there.  They will be bringing up a banquet 
table for our next meeting.  Meanwhile, we are also looking at a more 
private setting at the City of Longmont Library. 
So, the next meeting will be: 

FEB 27th  @  1pm   @ Dazbog 

If we change venues I'll be sure to let everyone know. 

Joey 

----------------------------------------------------------------- 

GPG Signed Messages Prefered 
Key ID: 4B7441EEA58EAE99 

Website:	http://stan4d.net 
Jabber:	joey at amessage.info 

----- End forwarded message -----
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