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The Internet

Wireless Internet Co-Ops? 205

Posted by Cliff from the tough-tasks-in-today's-broadband-market dept.
einstein asks: "How many other geeks out there are purchasing high speed commercial net connections to the remote areas they live, and then selling access to their neighbors to help cover costs? I know of a remote area with about 20-30 house all of which could access a wireless lan connection to share a 1.5 ADSL connection. I'm planning on bugging the neighbors to see if there interested soon, and I'd like to have some idea if this has worked for other people. So, who's doing this in a Co-Op fashion, and how is it working?" This probably won't be possible with most residential DSL providers, however would they let this fly on their commercial lines?"
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Wireless Internet Co-Ops? More

Wireless Internet Co-Ops?

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  • Doing it now.... (Score:3, Informative)

    by vwpau227 ( 462957 ) on Saturday July 20, 2002 @06:03PM (#3924083) Homepage
    I'm doing it now with my ISP's commercial connection and there seems to be no complaints on their part...

  • You need to be able to re-sell (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20, 2002 @06:05PM (#3924087)
    If you plan to do this, not only does it have to be a business/commercial class, the TOS will also have to allow you to resell the bandwidth. Just one more thing to check into.

    And you might want to make sure the 1.5 ADSL has a good upload speed, because if it's something like 90k, that's going to fill up really quickly. (One person uploading could bring the speed down for everyone quickly.) If you get DSL, I'd probably look into SDSL.
    • It should be illegal for ISPs to restrict what you do over the line. They should be protected from lawsuits for the content... and so should we if we choose to resell.

      Telephone companies are not liable for what people say over their lines. (I think... and hope) The internet is similar.

      I am trying to read the constitution again... I hope there is somethign that makes it unconstitutional to act like that, also hopefully there is at least a law that makes it illegal to have crappy TOS(terms of service) and not have the liability that promotes bad TOS.

      Reselling it should make you be an ISP, and that should (maybe: is) allowed

    • I speak for myself and not the company I work for, this does not represent them, etc, etc...

      This is very true for most cable-based ISPs. We have "busted" commercial customers who were reselling their connection without having a prior contract. We *do* allow reselling, for the most part, but we want to know about it and have a contract covering the asses of both sides, but mostly ours, I'm sure.

      Why?

      Just in case they inadvertantly allow a spammer on or some other less desirable bandwidth users.

    • If you plan to do this, not only does it have to be a business/commercial class, the TOS will also have to allow you to resell the bandwidth. Just one more thing to check into.

      Are you sure about that? I have residential class service from Speakeasy [speakeasy.net], and as far as I can tell my TOS [speakeasy.net] doesn't prohibit me reselling the service. If it's not prohibited, then I assume it's allowed, no?
      • Um, reread that TOS:

        "Service Location Restriction: Each circuit may only service a single location (residence, apartment, office, or place of business). If you connect your circuit to a neighboring premise without specific permission from Speakeasy, your service may be disconnected or terminated at our sole discretion."

        I'm presuming this includes all forms of reselling, including noncommercial/coop connection sharing.

        -Chris
        • Hmmm...well the service comes into your home and into a wireless access point.

          Ask the company to show you the connection between your location and the neighboring premise.

          Of course, it's a BS answer to them...but I would expect a new TOS real soon mentioning wireless :)
    • How is this moderated a three. The question is clearly about a CO-OP as in co-operation.

      obviously not someone from New York City where coop apartments got around many of the nasty housing regulations like rent control. Each tenant is not really a tenant, they purchase, for a large sum like a condo, a share in the company which owns the building. As shareholders, they can do whatever the hell they want. Kick out other members, turn away certain members, whatever.

      that is what is being proposed here. You and your neighbors go your bank and open a commercial checking account. Have the board of directors (you and your neighbors) pass a resolution naming company officers and have one of them order a commercial high speed line, and sign for it. The company will be in the contract, and won't be reselling it, it will only go to owners of the company.
    • A service like RoadRunner Business Class for Apartments/Hotels [rrbcaustin.com] sounds likely to work fine for a coop situation.

      Anonymous Coward wrote:
      If you plan to do this, not only does it have to be a business/commercial class, the TOS will also have to allow you to resell the bandwidth. Just one more thing to check into.

      In a coop, nothing is being resold. The members get together and contribute resources to form an organization. The organization purchases the bandwidth and makes it available to its members. No resale, no need for a resale term.

  • not in a remote location, but apartment. (Score:5, Informative)

    by dada21 ( 163177 ) <adam.dada@gmail.com> on Saturday July 20, 2002 @06:05PM (#3924089) Homepage Journal
    I recently did this with a DSL connection to my condo. I have mostly ghetto neighbors, we can only get IDSL here (144K up/down), and I only need it for e-mail and casual newsreading.

    It's $120 a month, a bit pricey, so I talked to a few neighbors, and told them as long as they won't leech or kazaa or download massive amounts of porn, they can jump in with me.

    I have it as a commercial account, asked if there is a limit to the number of users (no), and let about 10 of my neighbors on.

    Built a simple gateway that keeps track of ONLY the number of bytes take by each user (in order to see if anyone is abusing it). 3 months, no problem.

    I dunno what exactly I'd do if someone DID start leaching, since I have no real contract, but then again, I have the switch in my condo, so all I need to do is pull the plug.

    You'd be surprised how far a low-ping quality IDSL can go for as many people as are on it. Its definitely far and away better than ISDN or dial-up, even with 6 or 7 people browsing the web at once.

    Oh, and when I need to download something big, I remote access a client who has a few T1's worth of bandwidth, and download it there, then dribble download it to my PC at home.

    • I dunno what exactly I'd do if someone DID start leaching, since I have no real contract, but then again, I have the switch in my condo, so all I need to do is pull the plug.

      I have cable at my student appartment, and half a year ago I started wiring the building. There are four students using my connection. When one of them uses eDonkey, but it poses no real problem. I just went up and told him to limit his upload limit to 7k/sec. Since my ISP does not have quota, the more my connection is used, the better.
    • I dunno what exactly I'd do if someone DID start leaching, since I have no real contract, but then again, I have the switch in my condo, so all I need to do is pull the plug.

      The Linux traffic control stuff is amazing! See Advanced Routing and Traffic Control HOWTO [linuxdoc.org] for details on how to make a router that is good about prioritizing traffic. If you have a leech, you could just put his traffic as lowest priority; he could suck all the bits he wants with minimal problems for others.

      Also, the social solution can work pretty well. put together some MRTG [ee.ethz.ch]graphs of who's using what; then when people gripe, show them where to check who's using what. That way, you aren't the bad cop.
    • I have mostly ghetto neighbors

      Waukegan?

  • get a T3 and start a damed WIRELESS ISP for the area.
    • I'm sure that would be a nice goal, but I'm sure the price is prohibitive at that level. For 20-30 houses (even asuming that the all sign up, and all get online at one time) you're looking at a worse case scenario of 30 people sharing 45mb. Even if all of them are downloading at the same time large files from sites that can sustain maximum speed each person would still have a 180kB/s download. To me, that's clearly overkill. Figure at most you're going to have 15 houses sign up, then out of that more than likely only 5-10 using at a time. Now, most residential use is sporatic (web browsing) so more than likely one 1 or 2 downloading any files of any substatnial size. So, even at 1.5mb (about T1 speed on download) the people should be able to easily achieve a 60k download most of the time. Even if 5 people are downloading large files at once you'll still be able to recieve at about 20-30k, which I'm sure is just fine for the cost.

  • idea (Score:1, Troll)

    by Cardhore ( 216574 )
    If you're truly serious about bugging the neighbors, may I recommend www.spyworld.com [spyworld.com]?

  • Roadrunner supports this (Score:3, Informative)

    by millisa ( 151093 ) on Saturday July 20, 2002 @06:07PM (#3924097)
    I haven't looked up other providers other than RR-Austin, but I would guess that most allow the resale of their services. A quick look on Roadrunner's site in Austin found something related [rrbcaustin.com] in their business class of circuits. Though the writer isn't technically a developer or MDU it is sort of the same thing that he/she is wanting to accomplish. The drawback is the price; the business class circuits are always going to be much steeper in price (though this may be balanced out if enough people were interested). There are probably other more specific TOS's out there for other providers.

    Reselling high capacity commercial circuits is extremely common. I don't see the difference between what the author suggests and the regular ole' mom&pop local isp and their modem banks.

  • Risky (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20, 2002 @06:08PM (#3924100)
    I'd be concerned about liability. What if one of your neighboars does something sleazy and/or illegal like scanning for vulnerable servers and r00ting them or sharing tons of music or movies on a file sharing network and the RIAA sends a cease and desist letter? You might get your service terminated because one of these bozos does something stupid.

  • All I have to say is CYOA (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Typingsux ( 65623 ) on Saturday July 20, 2002 @06:11PM (#3924110)
    You will be the person using the connection according to your ISP. If one of your users go awry downloading kiddie porn for example, you better have some logging to back your ass up.

    • Re:All I have to say is CYOA (Score:4, Insightful)

      by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Saturday July 20, 2002 @06:16PM (#3924128) Journal
      Whatever.... It's also been argued that your best bet is not to log anything or make any attempts at restricting access based on content.

      If you're truly just providing the connection and not taking any steps that show you're able (and willing) to monitor what actually travels over the connection - you have much better legal ground to stand on if they come after you for a user's misbehavior online.

      (EG. Your mailman can't be arrested just because he delivered you envelopes containing child porn photos. He had no way of knowing what was in them.)
      • It's a different situation here, however. Your mailman is not responsible for the content of mail that travels through his name.

        An ISP, which is essentially what the person with the commercial account is becoming, is responsible for their users. So if his users hack something, people will come to him looking for answers.

        Taking a "I'm not going to monitor you at all" approach is a very foolish thing and is just asking for trouble, if said users abuse their connection.
        • In response to your sig:

          It means the printer is out of paper, I know HP Laser printers used that error. (Yes I know its a quote from office space)

          As far as the topic of the dicussion goes. Anonymous or non-anonymous usage stats are the way to go. Non-Anonymous would allow you to tell who's leeching though. Just usage stats though, and if someone hacks from the connection it is NOT your responsibility to stop it, only to punish that person after they have been caught.
        • If you're hung-up on the whole idea that the mailman is acting on behalf of a govt. agency and not a truly "private business" -- how about this scenario?

          I receive a phone call from a guy who asks me to assist him with robbing a bank. I agree, as long as I get 60% of the money.

          Afterwards, we're both caught. Can we name the local telco as an accessory to the crime? After all, it was their service that made it possible for us to communicate about the crime.

          I think not.

          Same with an ISP. I really feel that legally, there's no good reason they should be responsible for their users. Any legal cases ruled in this manner were wrong and subject to question.

          Sure, people will come to the ISP first if someone hacks a system using their service. The police may well come to the telco requesting a trace, or a list of numbers a customer called too.

          In the case of the telco, it happens that govt. already passed specific legislation forcing them to give police/FBI access to call traces/monitoring. Otherwise, the telco could simply say "Sorry. We just don't keep track of that type of information." and there'd be nothing they could really do about it.

          Being a govt. regulated monopoly, the telco doesn't get that option.

          Some of the Internet's most basic functions assume a lack of monitoring, in fact. Usenet newsgroups are probably the best example. If it was designed so the identity/location of original posters were always logged someplace - you wouldn't see much of the traffic it gets each day.
        • It's a different situation here, however. Your mailman is not responsible for the content of mail that travels through his name.
          An ISP, which is essentially what the person with the commercial account is becoming, is responsible for their users. So if his users hack something, people will come to him looking for answers.

          So I own a pizza joint and decide to put in a pay phone. I order a phone line and buy a pay phone.

          A couple weeks after I install it, someone comes in, drops in 35 cents, and calls the White House, threatening to kill the President.

          You think I'm going to get in trouble for that, just because the phone's in my name? (Hint: I'm not)

      • Your mailman did not provide you with a service for money or cost-sharing. I would much rather have a log to track where the file (kiddy-porn) in question went rather than have the cloud hang over everyones head. Ignorance is not going to fly if a serious violation took place without a written contract outlining your responsibilities as a reseller and your state law to back up that contract.
        • Yes, he and the post office is providing you a service. They're called stamps, and some people still use them.
          • The postman did not sell you the stamps. The United States Postal Service did. The USPS is a registered agent. Meaning they have no liability in the content which you request to be sent other than the laws handed down by the US congress. They are a monopoly. Buy providing me with a service for money and not having a charter/group of laws already laid out you are asking for problems. The USPS has a full set of rules and regulations which also dictate their liability. You selling me internet service without any sort of agreement or tracking are stepping on much less firm ground.

  • parable (Score:5, Funny)

    by jimberini ( 444533 ) on Saturday July 20, 2002 @06:12PM (#3924114)
    ...show a man your broadband connection, he will surf for an hour. Share with him your broadband connection, and you'll be his tech support for life!
    • Amen, Cuz! Go for it completely as a wireless ISP so you can charge for the inevitable, helping them. If you're not up for doing tech support, it's not worth the hassles.
    • ...but I can't resist sharing:

      Give a man a fish and you feed him for an hour. Hit him with a fish and he'll go away and leave you alone!

      Well Rob? You gonna remove "funny" now?

    • It's sadly true. I got stopped in the corridoor at uni a few weeks ago - just moved into summer accomodation. I was wearing a thinkgeek tshirt, and somone asks me out of the blue if I knew about computers. I didnt say no :(

      Friends are bad enough (why's my computer slow, I downloaded [spyware of the week], now it doesnt work. look FREE!! I need bonzai buddy!)

      And when they use my computer its always moans about why websites dont work in konqueror and how my computer is broken cause theres no start button.

      And virtual desktops with screen flop resitense real low? LOL!

      But friends you tollerate. Near strangers bugging you thoug, sheesh!

      • If you *really* want to confuse people using your computer... Pluck off all the keys to clean your keyboard, and throw them back on without much thought, causing half of them to be in the wrong place. Run something like Englightenment with no icons and no start bar or anything...

        People actually do surprisingly well if you sit them down in front of a computer, particularly if you have gaim and Mozilla running. At school, we have all Win2K boxes, behind a firewall blocking AOL IM. VNCed into a Linux box behind the firewall, a bunch of people wanted to use gaim to talk to their friends. They never commented on the fact that the interface looked COMPLETELY different (or the fact that the pixmap theme looked AWFUL over a low-bandwidth VNC session... The silver gradient showed up as a horrible bright-orange and black moire type thing...

        Someone should really do a more formal study into how well an average Windows user does when 'required' to use a Linux box with no explanation whatsoever. (Though we'll be fair and make sure the keytops are right *grin*)

  • Article about same idea, but free access... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zamboni1138 ( 308944 ) on Saturday July 20, 2002 @06:19PM (#3924135)
    Internet service has cool scruples [msnbc.com]

    This article speaks for itself.
  • "his probably won't be possible with most residential DSL providers, however would they let this fly on their commercial lines?"

    This would fly on a residential line. Depending on the distance from the CO/RT a residental user could get a 7/1M package from the ISP for around $300 and then split it with probably 10 people.

    From my experience with Qwest, they wouldnt care.
  • A UK newspaper, The Guardian [guardian.co.uk] published a story [guardian.co.uk] on June 20 about various groups creating wi-fi hot-spots for public access via satellite based broadband connections.

    80N

  • Shouldn't be a problem (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sandman1971 ( 516283 ) on Saturday July 20, 2002 @06:27PM (#3924162) Homepage Journal
    I used to work for a backbone company, and I have never seen a contract for commercial connections that do not allow you to resell the bandwidth, so this shouldn't be a problem.

    Just keep in mind that if one of your 'users' does something like send out spam or does illegal activites, you may be held responsible since it's your/company name on the contract with the ISP (hence get contracts drawn up for your users who will connect, in which case you'll need to do some type of monitoring in case the cops show up investigating a possible crime).

    In other words, cover your ass.
  • You'll need to check the contract very carefully- some contracts won't let you sell part of the service they give you to a third party.

    However if you start up a not-for-profit company, which is jointly owned by the people who want to use the service the ISP probably can't do a damn thing about it.

    The main problem you can face is leaching. If possible set up VPN software so that they have to log in with different passwords. If you monitor their usage, you should be able to ensure that nobody leaches or shares the bandwidth with their friends.

  • Tasmanian Public Airwave Network (Score:4, Interesting)

    by saveth ( 416302 ) <cww@deWELTYnterprises.org minus author> on Saturday July 20, 2002 @06:28PM (#3924167)
    A few of my friends in Tasmania are working on this sort of thing. It's meant to be a public access wireless network that allows users to be on the same network as everyone (theoretically) else in Tasmania. It doesn't have an internet access point, yet, and from what I've heard, when an internet gateway is established, at some point in the future, there will be a small fee for access. The URL is as follows.

    http://www.tas.air.net.au/ [air.net.au]
    • I'd be very careful doing anything like this in Australia. FWIK, The legislation is unclear, but suggests that if a fee is charged and/or if any of the equipment used between the isp and the enduser is partially or wholly owned by another party, then a (very expensive) carrier licence may be required. A licencee can sponser you, but I doubt you'd have any (free) luck at getting their support.
      I've spoken to 'Licensing & Infrastructure
      Australian Communications Authority'. I guess they get LOTS of enquries as there response was seemed scripted to me!
      Dan
  • Commercial lines have very few restrictions, so im almost 100% sure this would be allowed. With residential lines there are so many restrictions it's crazy.

  • Co-op DSL (Score:4, Informative)

    by RapterOfParadox ( 317576 ) on Saturday July 20, 2002 @06:32PM (#3924178)
    Check out Ruby Ranch Internet Cooperative Association at http://www.rric.net/

    there was also a story on /. a few months ago about ruby ranch.
    • Ruby Ranch bears no resemblance. They're basically a co-op ISP with their own T1 connection. Their big issue was not their upstream provider -- a bandwidth wholesaler that assumes most of its customers are reselling -- but forcing the local phone company to lease them the necessary local loops.

  • ADSL and Remote Are Mutually Exclusive (Score:4, Interesting)

    by John Hasler ( 414242 ) on Saturday July 20, 2002 @06:36PM (#3924187) Homepage

    I know of a remote area with about 20-30 house
    all of which could access a wireless lan
    connection to share a 1.5 ADSL connection.

    If you can get ADSL there it isn't remote.

  • Tried to get this going here, Still trying. (Score:3, Informative)

    by pcjunky ( 517872 ) <walterp@cyberstreet.com> on Saturday July 20, 2002 @06:52PM (#3924233) Homepage
    I own a smallish ISP in Florida. We have been looking at this for some time. The problem is the cost of getting the neighbors equipment. Wireless equipment starts at around $100 and goes up from there. With the Phone companies and the cable companies trying to knock each other out with signup free offers this is a hard sell. Comcast is offering free sign/equipment and $20 per month until the end of the year. $40 after the end of the year. Also as stated most cable and DSL providers prohibit sharing of any kind. Some even go as far as to say it constitute "theft of servervice". Also setting up the antennas and running the coax cable inside and hooking everything up is a a very labor intensive problem. Also the range of the low end equipment along with ever present "line of sight" problem would mean selling to a fairly small radius (1/2 mile is what I think would be safe). This would mean finding enough people within this radius to make it worth while. We tested a pair of Linksys WAP11's with homemade antennas in point to point mode and got a very solid connection at 1.1 miles (across the river where we had clear line of sight) We tried starting one of these in the neighborhood where my head tech lives. We distrbuted flyers inviting everyone (about 30 people) to come over to his house for a meeting to answer questions and see the equipment needed. No one came. I am about to try here where I live and use a door to door sales technique. Since I own an ISP (www.cyberstreet.com). I am aware of the need to log everything. We would assign everyone a static IP so we could quickly track down any spammers/ DOS attacks. This would even be easer than doing this with dynamic dialup. But make no bones about it, this is a lot of work. We are activly looking for people in South West Florida who want to do this in their neighborhood. We would supply the High Speed connection and the local rep would make contact with his/her neighbors. We would take care of logging and most other server issues. I will make a future post if this goes anywhere.

  • Tough to get started (Score:2, Interesting)

    by wex ( 209075 )
    I've been trying to set this sort of thing up in my neighborhood for about a year now, but it seems tough to get it started. The plan is to purchase a T1 line and split the bandwidth with the community up here using a wireless POP. The problems are basically:

    1. Cost of the T1 is about $1200/mo including the local loop, free setup and router.
    2. Cost of initial setup is about $10K for all the wireless antenna and equipment capable of penetrating the trees and such where we live

    We live in a rural community near Lake Tahoe that will never get DSL. Distribution via wireless is difficult because of all the trees (we live in a forest). This forces us to use high-gain antenna at both the POP and the client. With our startup costs, the costs of the T1 and the client costs of about $500, it is hard to convince enough of the locals to sign up. Most are second homeowners that only use their house on weekends and holidays and don't feel like coughing up $500 and $70/mo. We figure we need about 20 people to break even.

    One nice aspect is that the longer we wait, the better technology gets. The new Motorola Canopy system (check old Slashdot) seems interesting. The price of bandwidth also keeps falling. I expect that I'll probably end up splitting the T1 with just a couple of people using hand-strung fibre. It will probably be easier to find three or four people close by willing to spend $200-300/mo anyway. Besides, I have a real job and I don't feel like playing ISP with all my spare time!

    Dan

    http://www.doconnect.com
    http://www.flarg.com
  • I just moved into the area and figure if there one place I might find a wireless network to get in on it would be the Silicon Valley.
  • and I have a 1500/128 DSL connection that costs $52.00 per month. Four of us share this connection (and the cost of the DSL). Fortunately, when the condo was remodelled six years ago they used cat 3 wire for the phone connections. All I did was connect a 10 base T mini hub up to two unused cat 3 pairs going to each condo. The hub lives in the common area and is powered by an unused cat 3 pair. I plugged the hub into my Linksys router/switch, which provides firewall and DHCP. An added bonus for them is that they get to access my MP3 server which has 5000 plus songs on it. Each of us has broadband and it costs each $13.00 per month. All in all it seems to work out just fine..and we're even thinking about upping the connection to 7100/768 if we can get the fifth person interested. Alas, that would cost each of the five $40.00/month though.
  • I remember seeing an article somewhere regarding this exact issue. In a semi remote area of Colorado, 8 families set up there own ISP for themselves. After the initial equipment costs (with all the dead .coms, equipment can be found relatively cheap), it came to like 20 or 30 bucks a month to cover all costs. It really pissed of one of the baby bells, since they would be using the lines that baby bell installed. I believe that the baby bell tried to sue and lost since they have to share the lines according to the FCC rules. Anyway, if you are to worried about leeching neighbors, get a satilite connection. While not as fast as DSL or cable connections, it still beats the hell out of dial up. -Out the PC, over the LAN, through the server, down the T1, nothing but 'net-

  • Poetic justice (Score:4, Funny)

    by anthony_dipierro ( 543308 ) on Saturday July 20, 2002 @07:10PM (#3924289) Journal

    I know of a remote area with about 20-30 house all of which could access a wireless lan connection to share a 1.5 ADSL connection.

    Wouldn't it be funny if one of your neighbors agrees to split the ADSL connection with you and then sets up his own wireless network and convinces the other 18 neighbors to split his half with him.

  • Check out Joltage [joltage.com], This is exactly what they do... They have a software for Linux and Windows that lets you charge people for access to your broadband and they take a cut... Pretty neat..

  • Seattle Wireless (Score:2, Informative)

    by msichiti ( 590678 )
    Check out Seattle Wireless [seattlewireless.net] and NoCat [nocat.net]. They are quite advanced in similar projects.
    Good luck, and make sure it's legal before you do it.br. Mihai

  • Wireless in Silver Springs (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rawg ( 23000 ) <phill@ken[ ]r.com ['oye' in gap]> on Saturday July 20, 2002 @07:39PM (#3924372) Homepage

    I am getting ready to do this in Silver Springs, Nevada. Right now I have a Omni-Directional antenna on my roof and one connection about three miles away. We get about 5mbits/sec on the connection to my server. We are using Linksys WMP11 cards, a cantenna's at the client site. So far its working perfect.

    We have about 70 people interested in joining. I'm going to charge $35 per connection. The T1 is going to cost me $1313 a month with a $1200 setup. I have a 32 mile loop (included in price). I have all the server equipment to get started. I figure it will be about $150-200 for the customer to get hooked up. The linksys WMP11 is about $65-80. The Dish is about $45-60. The cable is about $20-40. We can setup cantenna's for most people. Since this is the desert, no trees. All I want is about 100 customers. That is about all I can handle.

    So far everything is working out great. I have a few more tests to do with more people on the line and if everything works, I'm ready to start.

    The main problem I'm trying to figure out right now is how to have user logins. I can go VPN or PPPoE. I am leaning to PPPoE right now. All I need is a login with password to verify people and not allow free rides. I think this is going to be the hardest part.

    I am going to write all the plans on how to get things going when I get things going so that other people in other places can do the same.
    • Used to live in Reno... used to go camping out at Lahontan, that would be cool driving through there knowing that all the little houses and trailers with antennas are getting a better connection than my cable modem...

  • I'm not the only one?! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by suwain_2 ( 260792 ) on Saturday July 20, 2002 @07:46PM (#3924399) Journal
    Quite a while ago, I grew sick and tired of my crappy cable modem, and learned about Cogent. Wouldn't it be cool, I thought, to have 100 Mbps at home? But then it dawned on me that, even as a geek who could probably find a way to fully utilize 100 Mbps, $1,000/month is just too much.

    Then it dawned on me... I've been thinking for a bit that I want to install a wireless LAN in my neighborhood (even using 802.11a, so I get 54+ Mbps, as opposed to the usual 11), and be a sort of ISP for the neighborhood. Places like D-Link offer "Turbo" modes that can do 72 Mbps; wouldn't you pay $75/month or something for a 72 Mbps "broadband" connection? Even if you use the $3,000/month figure for an "ISP" Cogent line, I'd only need to find 40 customers at $75/month, and I'm breaking even. And I bet that the actual bandwidth usage would be VERY small; even Slashdot doesn't pull 72 Mbps sustained.

    The nearest Cogent-served city is almost 100 miles away, and a lot of my neighbors are the "No thanks, I like my AOL" type, but if Cogent ever comes to town, this is something I'd very seriously consider.

  • I wonder if this sort of connection could eventually lead us to the "local nets" that Vinge describes in his new novella.

    Start with 'net connection sharing, and eventually add local services, if it got big enough small buisnesses might even join in, and provide the small scale comercialization that might work on a local net (as well as help support it).

  • see there. for business dsl, distribution seems feasible.
  • I am running a small wISP from my home using Linksys WAP11 (v.2.2) WAPs. I have one here at home, and am attempting to get the second set up at a small store I own roughly a mile (LOS) away. I have been attempting to increase my range (right now I have 3 customers, but I have very little coverage area, so I can't attract more), so I am working with external antennae.

    I have two 15dbi gain omnidirectional antennas that I'm attempting to use, connected to the WAPs by a 75' run each of LMR-400 (-3dbi every 40ft) cable. The antennas are from Comet, but are very similar to the Hyperlink 15dbi omni antennas for 2.4-2.45ghz. The issue I'm seeing is this: When I connect the 15dbi antenna to my WAP, I see no change in signal strength. Even if I don't use the 75' cable, and switch to an 18" pigtail, I see no change in the Signal Level on my Orinoco PCMCIA card. None at all. When I put the second antenna on the PCMCIA card (15dbi on the wap, 15dbi on the laptop) and it's all of 20 feet away, I see a marginal gain in signal strength. By marginal I mean my strength goes from -82 to -78.

    Considering what I know about wireless and radio, I should be seeing a better gain than that. I am currently waiting on a 5dbi omni to test with to see if it helps at all, in case the two antennas (bought concurrently and of the same make/model/manuf) are bad or were mis-labeled. One of the few questions that I have raised is as follows: I live about 75 yards from high-tension power lines. These are tri-phase lines, that should cause harmonic disturbance based on 60hz. I'm wondering if they aren't causing any problems. They shouldn't, (sixth harmonic and all that stuff) but I don't know what else to make of this. (I do plan to take the antenna and WAP and laptop elsewhere to test in the near future). In any case, short of buying a parabolic or patch antenna for the point-to-point to my store, or adding an amplifier (geez, those things are pricey), I am hoping someone can give me some idea what the issue is. I have submitted this to the BAWUG (www.bawug.org) users group mailing list, to no avail. I've also searched the web, high and low, for more information.

    A couple of other questions I have are:
    1. Does anyone know what the default power output of the Linksys WAP11 Version 2.2 is, and is there a way to alter it? (at 100mA my setup will still be FCC-legal).
    2. Short of pole-mounting the box (and pissing off my HOA) I am using long cable runs. Even if I shorten the cable run to 18", I see no change. Any thoughts on why that might be?

    Any help would be appreciated. If someone can give me the help to get this working, I might be willing to throw in a small reward of some sort.

    Thanks!
    • see the forums at http://www.rfglobalnet.com for another source on signal issues.
    • The WAP11 Ver 2.2 is supposed to put out 100mw. It's possible that your test setup is simply to close together and your saturating your receivers. Also make sure both are in the clear so you don't get reflections that could combine out of phase with the main signal. I had this trouble when testing helical antenna gains indoors. Moving outdoors into my yard seems to have fixed this problem. I have been able to get the older WAP11 Ver 1.1 to work at over 1 mile with great results using home made helical antennas. See picts at:

      http://explorer.cyberstreet.com/photos/antenna

      I have found some very small USB clients on ebay for $40 that I have had working through over 30 feet of USB extender cable. These unit are very small (smaller that a pack of cigs) and have a removable antenna (sma connector). I am working on weather proofing them for pole mounting.
    • Do your self a big ass favor and rid yourself of the LMR. Search the web for POE Power over Ethernet. Build a couple POE connectors and put the WAP11 on a short cable 6 in from the antenna. Of course you will need to put it in a waterproof container but that is easy to do as well.
      • Couple of points, two are confirmations of what others posted:

        -4 dB is a lot. It's over twice your power, although given the specs you stated you should be seeing 5-6 dB of loss (6 dB is losing 75% of your power) - The receiver saturation someone mentioned could be why.

        The question is: Does the system work at 11 Mbps? If so, don't bother. If not, you have two options:

        Both involve getting rid of the LMR-400. You mentioned HOAs - oh the joys of antenna restrictions. To those who suggested PoE, he likely can't do that due to various housing regulations. (He's lucky to be even able to use a helical - Well, they're small.)

        Maybe a hybrid solution: PoE to the entrance point of the coax into the building, and then coax outside to the antenna.

        The last solution: Get better coax. Unfortunately, this costs $$$. LMR-400 is amazing given its similarity to RG-8 (Same dimensions, compatible connectors), but it still sucks at 2.4 GHz. 6.65 dB/100 ft, more if you're using the Ultraflex variety (7.8 or so dB).

        You have two options, I'm not sure which will be cheaper: Get larger sized LMR, or Just Say No to braided-shield cable. Get some good semirigid, even better, get air-dielectric semirigid - It's a bitch to work with, but it is VERY high-quality and very low-loss. One of the biggest names in semirigid is Andrew Corporation (http://www.andrew.com/) - they make HELIAX, which is VERY well known to hams and broadcasters. Their 1/2-inch EFX-series foam dielectric cables have a loss of only 3.25 dB/100 ft at 2 GHz. Their 7/8" (warning, it's going to be VERY tough to work with and probably quite expensive) has a loss of only 1.86 db/100ft at that frequency.
  • With most APs now supporting 802.1x, authentication and billing, not to mention additional security, is quite easy to achieve. Look into 802.1x and various implementations of EAP which requires wireless users to authenticate with a RADIUS server. In the case of Cisco's implementation of EAP it's trivial to setup however for the most part if the AP supports 802.1x you can choose serveral different EAP implementations. Some suck (Microsoft's implementation is x.509 based and requires Active Directory) others as simple as specific client software and then the RADIUS server. This takes care of accounting too so you can track users bandwidth usage. Cisco's RADIUS server is called SecureACS and support's Cisco's APs in for EAP-Cisco (LEAP) which is one of the better implementations as several other vendors are started to say they will support it. Funk Software also has Odyssey [funk.com] which supports EAP-TLS (Supported by XP) and EAP-TTLS. TTLS is WAY easier to manage but not as easy as the Cisco solution. You can check out FreeRadius [freeradius.org] which supports both EAP-TLS and EAP-MD5.

    For a general overview on 802.1x security check out the 802.1x Blackpaper [arstechnica.com] at ArsTechnica.

    I just finished designing a LEAP (EAP-Cisco) implementation for a customer of mine only a few weeks ago. The ArsTechnica blackpaper is a pretty good read for someone who doesn't do this very often.

    The biggest benifit to all of this outside of the authentication is the RADIUS billing. This way you can very easily enforce bandwidth caps.

    Enjoy.

    Syn Ack.

  • Same thing Here But... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by drsir ( 512751 )
    I am in the same situation but I am one of the customers (wish to be anyway). There is a small wireless ISP a few miles away from where I am. The only problem and the reason I am still using a crummy modem is because of the bloody trees around my house.

    To get over all the trees, it was approximated that I will need to purchase some sort of tower that is about 70ft+. Only problem is a tower of that height costs a ton ($1000+). Atleast I could not find one at an affordable amount. So right now I am waiting until March when I get my bonus and I am going to buy the tower.

    But I must ask, is there some sort of antennae that would be powerful enough that trees would not matter? Or does anyone know where I can get an affordable tower?

    Please help a poor broadbandless family (with children I might add).

  • See the following link for an article related to the original question.

    http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/c n/ 20020709/tc_cn/942323

    Basically it states that it is illegal to share a connection your service with others outside of your immediate household. In some cases even with your immediate household. It is the same as sharing your cable service between others in your neighborhood. It also states how isps are cracking down on this with sniffers.

  • There are some cool providers... (Score:5, Informative)

    by mumkin ( 28230 ) on Saturday July 20, 2002 @10:56PM (#3924887) Journal
    The Personal Telco Project [personaltelco.net] maintains a list of ISPs' wireless policies [personaltelco.net]. It may not be necessary for you to purchase a commercial connection or set up a corporate shell etc. if your service is through one of the wireless-friendly ISPs.

    Of course, there are loads of wireless community groups out there, with varying methods of deployment/philosophies/etc. You might look here [personaltelco.net] and start browsing the different groups to see how they run things.

    NoVAWireless [novawireless.org] might be a place to look at -- they seem to be involved with organization of clusters of small, neighborhood-based WISPs.

  • Check out , they are providing broadband, relatively cheap. You might also consider Motorola Canopy for the wireless part , the equipment is small, no big dishes required.
  • I work in a rural area for a company that installs satellite systems - home and commercial. We're constantly asked for low-latency broadband (no DSL, no cable available locally) and are considering becoming a wireless ISP if we sign up enough people to cover the costs. We're pretty much Mom & Pop.

    I've looked into different solutions from non-line-of-sight systems to homebrew LOS solutions with pringles cans. The next step is to tour a few places and test these networks out in the real world. We're small and don't have a huge amount of cash to spend, and will initially support up to 50 small business offices, maybe 250 users at the outset.

    Anybody out there have a wireless setup (yeah, I've done a google search and have a few sites to visit on my list) they're particularly proud of that I should add to the list? East Texas and all of Louisiana are easily accessible.

  • If you can get ADSL, you aren't very remote. If you're kinda remote but still within ADSL range, don't expect 1.5mbit down.

    If you're actually remote(out of range for DSL, no cable providers), ADSL won't be an option, as I'm sure many other people have noted. We recently had a customer who was interested in doing something similar to this. Your best bet would most likely be to drag a T1 to a central location and distribute it via wireless. If this isn't the case, skip to the last paragraph.

    If you think that the cost would be prohibitive, you're right. You will need to slam down a wad of cash.

    The most expensive and painful part of doing it is the equipment cost and installation. If you do it yourself, you can get away with the loop+bandwidth(eSpire will stick you for around $1k a month for that with an additional setup fee, but the costs differ depending on loop length and provider, you can get better from a lot of ISPs) and for whatever retail or wholesale cost you can manage to pick up the needed wireless transceivers. (it won't be cheap for 20 of them unless you can find them surplus/from some company going under)

    If you go to a company to have them do the whole nine yards for you, you're probably going to get a $10k-50k estimate, depending how the site survey pans out.

    One last thing, if you do it, and you resell it. You -need- to have contracts for it. Not having them is a sure-fire way to be screwed, no matter what your intentions are.

    --mkithara

  • not only co-ops, but counties are doing this (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I happened to read an article about Allegany Co., MD, setting up it's own wireless broadband system - a rural county which has virtually NO chance of getting any broadband from a big telecom company in this lifetime. And this is the case with most of Appalachia as well. I just tried to remember where that article was and looked it up - it was in the Baltimore Sun and so if you try www.sunspot.net and search on Allegany and wireless it should pop up for the next week or so.

    I also remember reading over a year ago an article by Cringley about getting a wireless DSL connection by finding someone down a line of sight from him who he could pay to get it, and then setting up an access point and an antenna - I think his set up cost him about $1000 plus paying for the other guy's connection.

    Anyway, as long as you buy a commercial connection with a contract that allows you to resell, and set yourself up properly legally for your area, it should be no biggie technically to set up. Financially and technically, you have to cover yourself if your customer decides to oh...say do something illegal. Or set up a webcam and broadcast 24/7 and other fun stuff like that.

  • Wanna be wISP's (Score:2, Interesting)

    by CrackersnSoup ( 517698 )
    If your going to try and be a wISP, join in the isp-planet.com forums. isp-wireless@isp-wireless.com WAP11's work for some people, not for others. They are a VERY bad pice of hardware, random lock up, droped connections, search the BAWUG.com lists' for more information. Dont add antenna's to hardware that it is not FCC certifide for. That only makes more noise(thats bad) in the 2.4 ISM and makes it harder for a real wISP to fuction. Also the FCC gets upset and makes rules that prevent us from offering better service. ala 802.11a is very well stamped for indoor use only. If your going to be a service provider you have to have some form of QoS. WAP11's and cantenna's might be nice and cheap, work well today, but what about tomorrow? the day after?? You install crap, you get crap back. I would not use a cantenna for a paying customer. I am working the business model out for doing a community isp right now. They live out where they have no chance of getting dsl, 25 miles or so from town. I would rather pass them up then give them something thats little better then dialup. Remember 11b is much like a wired lan with a hub. 1 client talk's at a time, but the speed is much slower. 11b with cisco gear gets 6.5mbps. The cheaper hardware is lower, some doesnt do better then 2mbps. If you realy want to do this, get a consultant. Don't ruin it for the rest of us, keep it legal. CrackersnSoup

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