Neighborhood Area Networks?

schmaltz writes: "Recent discussions about long-haul wireless on Slashdot seem geared mostly to benefit institutions, really, until this post on the peer-to-peer-oriented Decentralized list opened my eyes: "What will society do, when there are kits in every computer store and mall, for 802.11a neighborhood routers? What if you could buy a kit with four pole-mounting 15DB directional antennas, and a router in a sealed case that maintains mesh networks? ... There will be a great blooming of local gaming, IM, and voice/video telephony ... a lot of sharing of music and video on these NANs (neighborhood area networks) ... share a 2nd phone line ... we will all realize pretty quickly this is NOT the Internet ..." Maybe NANs could put the telephone company out of business. Seems like the equipment and software are either available or nearly so -can this be done today? I want to build the first NAN AP on my block!!"

Comments

A Sense of Community

[BluePenguin]

Could this actually get neighbors talking to eachother? And might the neighbors start to value geeks in the sense that the neightborhood plumber has always been valued? I mean, think about it. If you had NANs poping up, how long would it be before the geek (previously confined to his cable connection in the basement hapilly perusing slashdot) becomes a common invitee to neighborhood social events.

"He was so nice when I couldn't get xyz on the NAN all I had to do was message him and he solved my problem..." : Common comment by Annyonomous Grandma in the NAN era?

Or will this just pull the geeks out of their comfortable corners into social realms they don't want to be in? Will it force the geeks of the world to be more social?

What I'd love to see though... is Annyonomous Grandma taking a hand to the backside of the neightbor hood Script Kiddies... or better yet, DoSing them of the NAN herself!

:q!

Re:A Sense of Community

[geekoid]

AS someone who has been known as the neighborhood geek, let me assure you I don't ever again want anybody in my neighborhood to know I'm a 'computer guy'.
Nothing like people coming over at all hours because of some lame ass computer problem. The only thing that make this nicer is when they get uppity when you ask basic trouble shooting questions.
If I had someone who could return services(plumbing, auto repair, oral pleasure, etc...) then I might consider letting people in my neighborhood know that I know computers.

How Wonderfully Idealistic! ;)

[Scot Seese]

This certainly is a terrific idea! However, working as a network engineer at one of the nation's first widely deployed consumer wireless access companies, I'm all too familiar with the expenses involved in building such a solution.

Ultimately, while playing with the technology and the design of your "NaN" would be fun, we live in a world where bandwidth providers will not accept make-believe money for the pipe(s) to your "NaN" router(s). The issue would quickly become:

1. Who among your neighbors would be willing to shoulder the cost of the bandwidth, AP's, router(s), switch(es), and lend the time and expertise in the installation and configuration of same, and

2. Who is willing to face the inevitable slew of legal and/or licensing challenges in reselling or providing bandwidth for free to the neighbors on your "NaN". Are you willing to pay for a T1 out of your own pocket to feed the bandwidth need? If not, and your neighbors throw monthly contributions into the hat, you face a host of very real-world, non technical legal, tax and business issues.

Please don't misinterpret these points! I think it's a neat idea. However we must remember, regardless of the technology available, ultimately the twin evils of Money and Regulations drive the market; free or otherwise.

If an "Internet Bandwidth Commune" is your goal, don't lose sight of the inescapable truth that somewhere, sometime, eventually SOMEONE will have to pay for it. :(

Scot

Doubtful... but

[FatRatBastard]

Maybe NANs could put the telephone company out of business.

Doubtful it will put the telco's out of business, but I've always thought that cheap (over public spectrum) wireless is eventually going to be very, very big, and I think 802.XXX is where its going to start.

Like the beginning of ISPs, radio, TV and cable I bet that small, regional Wireless ISPs are going to spring up all over the place (because it doesn't cost all that much money to set up). Some will be non-profit, some will be small for-profit. I think we've just started entering that phase. Eventually the market will mature and there's going to be consolidation as companies start buying each other out, including the big telcos.

This is still good though, because as the tech becomes more refined its going to give traditional telcos, Cell phone companies (who are trying to push G3) a run for their money, and keep them on thier toes.

Shared Internet Connection.

[groebke]

The real problem that may be encountered with NAN's is when a neighborhood group gets together a NAN (and assuming there are no technical/ fiscal problems) and wants a connection to the Internet.

Okay, fine, it either gets routed through an ADSL, cable or wireless broadband connection, which works great... until the provider figures out that behind their ONE, $50/month connection lurks 5-10 households. I think they (AT&T, LEC's or Sprint Broadband, etc.) will react negativly to this; it violates the Terms of Use agreements I have seen for any of these services, plus they will be losing upwards of $500+/month in revenue.

Boom, the connection is turned down, and/or several nasty letters threating legal action are sent out. Maybe they insist on an upgrade to a costlier business class service, for a significantly higher rate (around $250/month minimum).

Never mind that one person is responsible for the connection to the Internet may move, or have a disagreement with another neighbor, and pull the plug. One could go on about the multitude of non-technical problems that could occur with this type of setup for days.

It would be interesting to see how all this will pan out. But, I do not think it will be more than a niche product until the bigger aspects of this (connection to the Internet, or other NAN's, can be worked out).

NAN?

[Bonker]

Not a Number?
Not a (real) Network?
Nanites against Nanotechnology?
NAK ACK NAK?
news.admin.net-abuse?
Nethack all night?
Nontrivial Address Nodes?

NAN is already overused, and might lead to confusion. I could go on for some time. Why don't we instead call these something like 'Residental Area Networks' or 'LANS for Blocks'.

Re:Ping times? Multiple routers?

[Wolfstar]

I'd imagine that either OSPF, or possibly BGP, would work just fine for this sort of thing. The problem is, you need a REAL router to do these things, not one of those $200 USD Router-In-A-Box jobbies that you can pick up from D-Link or Linksys. And even then, you're not going to be able to do that over DSL or Cable, because I don't know of ANY ISP that will provide a BGP table over those connection types.

More likely would be some sort of setup where their would be a central node that those gateways would report to, and the routers at those gateways would report throughput for their links back to the central node. That node would then distribute that bandwidth as equally as possible on a per-request basis.

This basically would be just like setting up any kind of NAT-based network with more than two connects to the internet, but without the benefit of BGP to help things along. It's possible, but sticky.

There's also the subject of the real routers. Netopias won't cut it here either; you'd almost have to have a Cisco. Alternately, you could set up Linux boxen to serve as your router; Zebra is supposedly pretty far along, and would work for internal traffic distribution. There's also LEAF and LRP, two closely related projects for doing a single-floppy router/firewall/NAT device. Find them at:

The LEAF Site

Or:

The LRP Site

It'd take a lot of effort, but if you happen to live in a high-geek-ratio neighborhood and you can share the implementation efforts across other shoulders, it should be easy enough.

wireless neighborhoods

[zerocool^]

Speaking of 802.11 antenna's, my friends and i at one point had a plan to get an uncapped ("business class") cable modem, and to share it out w/ wireless

The antenna we decided on was the SMCANT-DI135 (warning PDF). It has a 4.5 mile signal thru a 45 degree arc, 7 mile point to point, is 10 inches long, and weighs less than 20oz. We figured it could be put on the side of a house and hidden from view fairly easily, and with 3 of them, we could have wireless access throughout most of our city (it wasn't that big)

Course we never did it, i moved to college, and we're lacking money, but...

~z

Forget the Internet. Time to make a new network.

[Catbeller]

Let's see:

For peanuts, we can set up a NAN on our own block. We could link these NANs gradually, using directional 80211.x (Pringlenet), or even ruby lasers on rooftops.

Why hook this up to the Internet at all?

The Internet is going to be regulated and policed. Hysteria and business interests are gutting the thing 'til it dies and is reborn as a fancier cable TV network.

Build a new network on poles on rooftops. It's cheap, it's fun, it's not subject to regulation (YET).

Eventually repeaters are going to be tiny things you plug into wall outlets, so relaying the signals into the house past the chickenwire/plaster barrier is not a prolem.

Bandwidth? 802.11a has plenty for our needs at the moment, and higher frequencies will give even more capacity. Latency? Well. that's important for web sites and gaming, but guerilla Pringlenets really should be used as a simpler WWW (Neighborhood Wide Web? NNW?) or even a BBS and newsgroup connection.

Why in the world do this? Because newsgroups and web sites are getting censored preemptively by threatened lawsuits; anonymous posting is becoming impossible; EVERYone seems to want to know what we're doing and who we are.

Don't connect your NAN to the Internet. Connect to other NANs... they'll connect to others... and freedom comes back, at least until the FCC and DOJ enforcers come tearing the poles down.

But the DOJ and the various IP owners have already "torn down the poles" on the Internet as it is, so the Pringlenets give a little more time to think of something else (lasers? power lines? quantum encryption over the regular net?).

Someone here mentioned that someone has to pay for all of this, and I say: why? It costs money for the PC cards and for the wireless routers, but not much. And when you buy a can of Pringles, you get not only a directional focus for 802.11, but also yummy remanufactured potato chips.

Eventually the hardware itself will be regulated, maybe, but we get years of grace from the jackboots, and get to have fun at the same time.

If things go right

[HanzoSan]

As things have gone right for the open source free software community,the free net community should be just fine.

Things have to be setup in a way which promotes freedom, which does NOT allow a company to monopolize, and keeps the power in the hands of US and not companies.

Meaning we must keep this seperate from the internet, and keep it from becomming comercial.

I think its a good idea.

When things become comercial, then all the benifits of this community based shared internet access go down the drain.

I believe if this thing ran via the freenet protocal, it would be revolutionary for communications purposes,

or maybe not the freenet protocal, but it needs a protcal which cannot be censored or stopped by big business in the same way the GPL cannot be stopped by microsoft.

Because believe me, ISPs will fight this. be prepared to face AOL.

This is nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

This is nothing new. Windows 95 has had Network Neighborhood for years. You stupid linux geeks are so behind the times.