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Just thought I'd point out another good source of information about the acx100 chipset, over at SeattleWireless.

Yeah that FAQ has changed a few times. I think there's a history of its comments on seattle wireless somewhere, rummage, rummage, here.

Initially they said a linux driver would be released december 2002.
In december that date was changed to Q1 2003.
At the end of december they then said there were no plans for a linux driver and customers should not 'hold onto cards in the hope of drivers' being written.

Then they added a link to the leaked binary drivers

Then they added a link to the oss drivers

Wonder what they'll change it to next?

Now that all of this has been released, I wonder if we will be seeing alternative firmwares with support for new features (detailed external logging, radius server, wireless VLANs like the cisco APs, traffic shaping, oh, and MeshAP could be cool too.) A friend of mine already bought his WRT54G and likes it, but after I found this out (and submitted the story to slashdot) I ordered mine from Amazon($130 with free shipping) along with the NetGear WAG511($85 - 802.11a, 802.11g, 802.11b) as recommended by a Toms Hardware review. I'm so excited that I am going to have a dope 54mbps wireless network in my dorm room for only $215. A little excessive, maybe, but hey I will probably keep this for another 5+ yrs. Especially the 802.11a 802.11g cardbus card. Oh hey, if you are shopping, check out the SeattleWireless Hardware Comparison. They have all sorts of info there and it made it easier to decide what to buy.

The easiest and highest-gain 802.11 antennas to build are of the waveguide + horn variety. Horns can easilly get you as much as 12-16 dB additional gain over just a waveguide (e.g. Pringles can).

For example, check out this horn build from cardboard and aluminum foil.

Yagis and other antenna element arrays are just too tough to build right, especially without a SWR meter. At 802.11 frequencies, just go horn. Save the Yagi's for lower frequencies, like 10MHz, where a horn would be nuts.

Many of the chipset makers feel that their 'drivers' are also their IP. In the wireless space, the first to market folks get to make the rules. In the case of 802.11a, Atheros was the first to market. There existed a 'binary only' driver that was built on a mandrake linux box. The bad news is the way it was built made it completely useless. I've not heard of anyone having sucuess using it. Rumor has it that Atheros built this driver & they would release 'formal' drivers for their chipsets. This hasn't happened yet. I doubt it will until they have somebody else providing 802.11a chipsets. To them, it's about getting market share & protecting IP.

Recent developments:

Reyk Floeter has started building a GPL driver. It's amusing based on the context of this article, because all this driver can do is SNIFF. That's right, RX Only. Progress has been very slow, and there have been several questions to the list as to how this driver exists, and how it's being built. It would seem that Reyk doesn't have any of the specs & hasn't signed an NDA. I assume he's reverse engineering the windows drivers, but he hasn't stated as much. The development progress has been _VERY_ slow, and this project needs help from OSS devs. Anyone up for a challenge?

Intellegraphics signed the NDA, and has a driver 'for sale'.

While the government has it's paws in everything, I doubt this is the case at this point. This whole article is based on FUD.

That's all. -Eric Johanson, SeattleWireless

Here is a great node on SeattleWireless.net's wiki that details the construction of an outdoor wireless access point, using relatively cheap equipment found at a hardware and/or electrician's store.

http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/WaterProo fBoxes

SeattleWireless, a community wireless network of which I am a member, are setting up something called SnowNet, which currently is a link from Seattle to an old AT&T tower in the Cascades. The link will connect Seattle to Tacoma and Olympia, and already other tower owners are being contacted to reach Eastern Washington. There's a decent chance of connecting Seattle to Portland via 802.11...

SeattleWireless, a community wireless network of which I am a member, are setting up something called SnowNet, which currently is a link from Seattle to an old AT&T tower in the Cascades. The link will connect Seattle to Tacoma and Olympia, and already other tower owners are being contacted to reach Eastern Washington. There's a decent chance of connecting Seattle to Portland via 802.11...

Funny that you just posted this to Slashdot.. We've been trying to figure out how to connect several locations (houses, apartments, and offices) in an urban part of Los Angeles, without having to pay outragous fees for bandwidth and even simply the wiring. We have an office in a centralized location that already has a T1, going back to one of our colo's with real bandwidth...

You could do copper, but you're limited to 300m for Cat5. Anything longer, and you'll have to do some sort of modem. I don't know if you can put ?DSL modems back to back..

You could do fiber, but that'll probably end up costing you some bucks, and you'll have to be sure that the lines are safe (like, no one will accidently dig through them).

You don't say exactly where in N. Florida you are, but knowing Florida you're probably in a relatively flat area with lots of pine trees. You said several hundred acres, so I put that in an area calculator and found 1000 acres = 1.56sq miles, so none of your points are really very far from each other.. I think you're definately a candidate for wireless, if the trees stay out of the way.

Check out fab-corp.com for antennas.. No, not an advertisment. I just bought some stuff from them last week, and they were easy to deal with. They're also located in Florida, so your order will be there quick. My order got to California in about 3 days. If you were to put a sector antenna (like, the first one in the sector antennas section) in the center of the property, you should have good coverage to the whole property. I'd recommend for the best connection, get a good antenna for the receiving ends also, such as a 24db parabolic antenna.. Make sure when you mount them, you bolt them down tight, and be *VERY* sure you do good lightning supression.. I lived in Florida for years, and survived the hurricanes, and daily thunderstorms. :)

To give an idea of what kind of range you can expect, I bought a "24 dBi Mag Grid Antenna" (bottom of the parabolic antenna list), and attached it to a "Senao SL-2511CD PLUS EXT2" card. From an upper story of an office building, I started sweeping around with this antenna just listening (to estimate range. honest.) With a 4.5db blade antenna, I could hear 6 AP's, but only had a workable signal to one. With the 24db antenna I could hear over 2 dozen AP's. None of them were named for what they were, except one that said "YMCA"..

I asked some of the people who know the area well, "Is there a YMCA in that direction"? I know there's one closer, but it was about 60 degrees from where I was pointing. Turns out the YMCA I heard was a few miles away. So, with my 24db antenna talking to something resembling a normal AP (I doubt they had a directional antenna pointed at my office), I had a workable signal.

Before you start buying cards, I strongly recommend you check out Seattle Wireless. They have a *GREAT* page comparing wireless cards.. I highly recommend the Senao SL-2511CD PLUS EXT2.. It has two external antenna jacks (external antennas are required on this one). They also show an AP with the same card built in.. The Seano cards are suppose to put out 200mw, as opposed to most cards and AP's that are only around 30mw (check their chart), so you'll get much better range with them.

I hope this helps.

Here in State College, PA I usually eat at a locally owned coffee and bagel shop called Irvings or a large regional grocery chain called Wegmans. Both places offer free wifi, the local Starbucks doesn't even offer wifi and if it did you would need to pay ~$6/hr.. If two places are of equal quality, but one offers free access, where would you go?

The LocustWorld Meshbox site
Seattle Wireless
Bay Area Wireless Users Grou BAWUG
Kingsbridge Link Community Wireless Network
Consume.net
Meshnet, low cost nodes

I think you mean Seattle Wireless (.net). seattlewireless.org doesn't resolve for me.

These people have whole communities meshed with free access!
Kingsbridge Link
Seattle Wireless
This guy has been putting out CDs for years now
MeshBox Central, Locustworld
More links and a project for low cost mesh platforms Gateway-AOL-Appliance, I-Opener, WebSurfer wireless
MeshNet Project

And what's so bad about filesharing without the internet at 2 to 4Mbs BOTH WAYS? (most cable systems limit up stream to 128Kbs or less, meaning your DOWN link sucks) put up a node today!

These people have whole communities meshed, and no big corporate investment $$ needed!
Kingsbridge Link
Seattle Wireless
This guy has been putting out CDs for years now
MeshBox Central, Locustworld
More links and a project for low cost mesh platforms Gateway-AOL-Appliance, I-Opener, WebSurfer wireless
MeshNet Project

I see a day where we no longer have ISPs, we are just all connected to each other in a huge mesh.

There are already groups trying to do this in various cities. One of the more advanced ones is in Seattle. Seattle Wireless is a not-for-profit effort to develop a wireless broadband community network in Seattle.

I think the critical factor is as much signal range as it is bandwidth. The Seattle group above is using the 802.11b devices with directional antennas to make their backbone. They've defined classes of nodes in terms of how dedicated the node is to serving just as a backbone. The better the range, the more "connections" happen and the faster the backbone will grow. Looking at their backbone node map shows they are just getting started, but it kind of makes me wish I lived in Seattle.

I see a day where we no longer have ISPs, we are just all connected to each other in a huge mesh.

There are already groups trying to do this in various cities. One of the more advanced ones is in Seattle. Seattle Wireless is a not-for-profit effort to develop a wireless broadband community network in Seattle.

I think the critical factor is as much signal range as it is bandwidth. The Seattle group above is using the 802.11b devices with directional antennas to make their backbone. They've defined classes of nodes in terms of how dedicated the node is to serving just as a backbone. The better the range, the more "connections" happen and the faster the backbone will grow. Looking at their backbone node map shows they are just getting started, but it kind of makes me wish I lived in Seattle.

The Wap11 Hack courtesy seattle wireless.

Basically using a different firmware/snmp agent for a different ap based on the same chipset you can up the signal strength at no charge. It is risky however, so I take no responsibility blah blah blah. Maybe thats all the amp does is up the built in power.. ;)

I do not know what they are using (as far as I know, unamplified 802.11b is 30 mW).

But, if you can see the other point (clear line of sight), 12 Km can be done with standard WiFi (802.11b) cards with reasonnable antennas (paraboles, horns, SlottedWaveGuide,... )

12 Km is a little bit out of range for tin cans, but we achieved 9.5 km with ...CardboardHorns ;-)
Yet a lighter version : the TetraPak horn is not bad.

But, to be sure, use paraboles like in one of the first long shots.

...And remember: You need 6 dB to double the distance (whatever it is).

I do not know what they are using (as far as I know, unamplified 802.11b is 30 mW).

But, if you can see the other point (clear line of sight), 12 Km can be done with standard WiFi (802.11b) cards with reasonnable antennas (paraboles, horns, SlottedWaveGuide,... )

12 Km is a little bit out of range for tin cans, but we achieved 9.5 km with ...CardboardHorns ;-)
Yet a lighter version : the TetraPak horn is not bad.

But, to be sure, use paraboles like in one of the first long shots.

...And remember: You need 6 dB to double the distance (whatever it is).

I do not know what they are using (as far as I know, unamplified 802.11b is 30 mW).

But, if you can see the other point (clear line of sight), 12 Km can be done with standard WiFi (802.11b) cards with reasonnable antennas (paraboles, horns, SlottedWaveGuide,... )

12 Km is a little bit out of range for tin cans, but we achieved 9.5 km with ...CardboardHorns ;-)
Yet a lighter version : the TetraPak horn is not bad.

But, to be sure, use paraboles like in one of the first long shots.

...And remember: You need 6 dB to double the distance (whatever it is).

Whoops, that's what I get for not checking the link. Seattle Wireless is a .net, not a .org domain. Sorry.

Also I forgot to make my real point in my rush to post. Basically I very much prefer the idea of WiFi networks growing as literal 'emergent networks' of volunteers and perhaps some local businesses to Ricochet or 3G, which can only be operated by giant faceless corporations.

San fransisco, Seattle, New York, Atlanta, Adelaide, Sydney, London, Rotterdam, And more

PureFiction writes "Peer networks are gaining some attention these days given advances in much more decentralized search architectures and swarming distribution networks. Research has indicated that these decentralized networks are resistant to legal and technological attacks. The continued proliferation of broadband and wireless networking will ensure pervasive deployment of distributed peer networking infrastructure that will drive significant innovations in personal and community digital communications services."

AND FOR THOSE OF YOU IN A HURRY... A- R- T- I- C- L-
E-. -- S-
U- M- M-
A- R-
Y-

Also see Seattle wireless which is a project that aims to do the same sort of thing.

You'll find that in a lot of places you won't legally be allowed to get internet access from nets sush as these because that would mean you become a internet provider, and there are legal ramifications of this. But as for sharing files and other applications, its quite useful.

cheers

Have you checked out http://www.seattlewireless.net? This might be a good starting place for researching such a project.

Right off the bat you will have to address two important issues.

1) Security -- 802.11b isn't the most secure technology on the block. Having a neighborhood wide network can lead to a lot of people sniffing packets you might not want them to sniff.

2) Dealing with your ISP. They won't be to happy about your plans to say the least. ;)

-gerbik

Similar projects for Seattle, Washington and Sonoma County, California can be found here and here, respectively.

-Kaos

Look at SeattleWireless' HowDoesThisWikiLookLike there are few pages with a lot of references to or from other pages, and many pages with few references. It seems to follow a 'power law' too(~ 'scale free').

So, the 'inside' of the web seems to follow the same rules. It is particulary interresting with wikis because of the unplanned, distributed growth (like the Internet).

As the belgian provider, where the pictures are, seems to be down. You can also see the pictures in ReseauCitoyen.be's TopologieDuWiki

I thing it would be a good idea to have a discussion on /. on the Wiki phenomenon (sites everybody can contribute to, like WikiPedia.com ( more than 95,000 pages!).

I know of only one book on the subject : "The Wiki Way: Collaboration and Sharing on the Internet" by Bo Leuf, Ward Cunningham (of c2.com, creator of the Wiki concept).

If you search Google for 'RecentChanges' (a good marker for wikis (?)), you get a lot of them, more and more (A survey by country domain sept->oct 2002)

There are some scientific papers at GaTech.edu

The Turtle Beach AudioTron has been tempting me for quite some time. I've looked at many other component systems and this seems to be the most solid in terms of support, build quality, and ease of use.

If you don't want to have to run a patch cable to it, simply use a wireless bridge like the LinkSys WET11 or get a wireless ethernet converter to tie it into your SAMBA server.

also for the legally inclined

Check out Seattle Wireless and NoCat. They are quite advanced in similar projects.
Good luck, and make sure it's legal before you do it.br. Mihai

Rolling out a community network is a great idea and probably any network geek's dream. But DSL, oh my! Many wireless community networks have proved 802.11b is the perfect technology for this. These guys in Seattle are trying to cover the whole city and IMHO they're very likely to succeed.

So you want to roll out a network in a small city ? UseNoCat Auth for authentication, connect everything to the net, and already you'll be able to read slashdot while sitting in the middle of the street.

Stuff like this is already happening, in some form, in several cities around the US. Check out Seattle Wireless, Austin Wireless, NYC Wireless, and FreeNetworks ...

Security? Seattlewireless has something to say on that... . . . tips for securing wireless networks.

A little bit on the history of the lightning rod.

Yeah, I know, pointless links. :)

http://www.seattlewireless.net/ is a good place to start... i know there are more around the country but im realla familiar with Seattle (i live there) so maybe someone can reply to this with other locations???

1. Don't get two Linksys WAP11's and put one of them in Access Point Client mode. You will have to reboot that access point nearly every day because of firmware bugs (even with the latest firmware). Not bitter.

2. Get as close to a line-of-sight path as possible. You need at least an -83dBm signal to do 11mbps, so shoot for -75dBm during install if you want to maintain -83 when people walk in front of it, it rains, etc. Shooting through glass or drywall doesn't hurt very much (I've gotten -75dBm between an Orinoco Silver and a Dlink DWL-1000AP with 10 sheets of drywall in the way and stock antennas) but thicker things like concrete really hurt. So do more than a couple trees (the drops of water that tend to hang on their leaves some of the time are opaque at 2.4ghz).

3. If the only way to get a usable line-of-sight is to mount something on the roof, then do it, but keep cable runs to an absolute minimum and use LMR400 coax. Install properly-grounded lightning arrestors where the coax enters the roof. As for the antenna itself, you can weatherproof just about anything by putting it in PVC pipe or you could get a dish, panel antenna, or yagi from any of these people.

4. Security - since WEP sucks, you'll want to do a VPN of some sort between networks. You'll probably want to spend a few weeks learning how IPSec works on the systems you'll be using as your routers to accomplish this. I would recommend against any of the VPN appliances as a lot of them are too stupid to do things like put the default route across the tunnel.

I did not read all the comments yet, but I did not found the word wiki in them... This is a powerful technology for building something together. It is sometimes difficult to keep the structure sound but some are used with success in wireless community networks seattlewireless is one, wireless-fr is another one (in french). General info about wikis can be found on Google directory/Wiki A lot of implementations now exist (I prefer phpwiki), the original one is on c2.com Some of them, like TuxScreen allow you to protect modifs with a login.

check out seattle's adhoc network.

As the link says check out NoCat. It provides a captive portal system that can implement both access control _and_ bandwidth limiting on the Linux 2.4 kernel. Additionaly there are some people interested in developing micropayment systems.

Then you have groups like SeattleWireless that aren't focusing on internet access but instead on local access to a MAN with the ability for internet gateways for those that do want out, or you simply connect back to your private node and use your own internet gateway.

According to the Seattle Wireless FAQ:

"How are clients authenticated to the network?
All access is free and unencrypted to all. Of course, you may tunnel through the 10.net LAN to your destination using any number of schemes. In other words, clients are not authenticated to the network, and security is up to you. Caveat emptor."

What this means is that they are creating essentially what the post office has created with the anonymous mailbox on every corner. Someone could connect up by driving by, drop the next big virus into the Internet and leave practically no trail.

Sirius' complaint just be another argument for what the government may already want to do.

According to the Seattle Wireless FAQ:

"How are clients authenticated to the network?
All access is free and unencrypted to all. Of course, you may tunnel through the 10.net LAN to your destination using any number of schemes. In other words, clients are not authenticated to the network, and security is up to you. Caveat emptor."

What this means is that they are creating essentially what the post office has created with the anonymous mailbox on every corner. Someone could connect up by driving by, drop the next big virus into the Internet and leave practically no trail.

Sirius' complaint just be another argument for what the government may already want to do.

So why am I sitting in an appartment in Bellevue (ie: close suburb of Seattle) reading this page over a 56k dialup link?

If the "last mile" ISP's don't get busy and do some inventing soon I, or someone like me, really will put them out of business.

There are a bunch of other projects like this. Including my own Ashland's Wireless Internet Project (AWIP) http://awip.truffula.net

Also there's....
http://personaltelco.net
http://seattlewireless.net
http://bawug.org
http://free2air.org
http://consume.net

a lot of these have been mentioned on slashdot before....

They're cool though :) (hence why i started another one...)

of a similer thing in Seattle. http://www.seattlewireless.net

It's too bad that I don't live close enough to help with it. That would be fun.

While I think your careful misspellings and self-conscious appeals to your own aesthetic superiority are a kitschy put-on--the tech folks you despise would call you a "troll", your ramblings about hypocrisy cry out for rebuttal.

As someone who remembers what it was like to surf the Internet when it was actually about something other than hawking the zeitgeist's itch (on a Powerbook 100 sometime in 93, I was a late bloomer), I can safely say you are full of shit. You "artistic" types discovered a whole new market for your retread images, and became "consultants" (who knew HTML stood for a mode that could be used in Frontpage97, if you were wanting to rough it), adept at convincing suits that information needed an "interface" over and above the inherent value it has to educate. Not coincidentally, I lost interest in the Internet right about 1995, as I witnessed you creeps create your own gold rush all the while disparaging the simple presentation the web excelled at as "primitive" and "ineffectual." You probably don't even know what gopher is, but you can certainly lecture us on how 15 years of "digerati" has given you the wisdom to be blind to your own self-interested self-justifications about how the web is better as a banner-driven channel of the Gap Network; so blind, in fact, that you have the temerity to call "mainstream hackers" (whatever the fuck *they* are) hypocrites.

It's alright, though, you can *have* the Internet. As long places like this exist, I know I'll be able to network without living your "lifestyle".

Either commercial interests will have to learn to live in balance with the public network or risk losing their customers. If they squeeze too hard, the smart ones move on.

Speaking of pringles cans, we just built a ton of them at the last seattlewireless meeting. We're seeing a 10 to 13db gain from a $5-10 antenna.

You can see pictures here:

http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/DecemberM eetingPictures2001

Don't give up fast net access! Complete that last mile your self using off the shelf 802.11b equipment. Can you see your office/friend's house/local ISP from your new house? Then you can share their net connection!
seattlewireless.net
Neighborhood Area Networks?
Wireless along the Main Coast

Intel has had these out for months. THey just had some promo stuff going on at comdex. Here at seattle wireless, we've been looking at these from september on...


http://www.seattlewireless.net/archive/ezmlm.cgi?m ss:3330:200109:jmocpdnheipoknihcbpa