Mega Public WAN In Sydney

Chris Meder writes: "As posted on CFGN - The Nation , gibed by the recent unreasonable price hikes in Broadband connectivity in Australia, which come already after a strained relationship between Broadband users and the major telco/ISP Telstra BigPond Internet, a group of people in the largest Australian metropolitan city of Sydney have decided to form a city wide amateur wireless network. The team behind this clever idea have also put up a detailed graphical database of people interested and are still looking for more numbers to get this off the ground." This last part reminds me of the Global Access Wireless Database, as featured here. Update: 01/23 18:53 GMT by T : Reader Peter Mann wrote to point out that "there's a mailing list for a similar wireless project in Sydney at http://sydney.air.net.au."

Comments

cripes

[Frothy Walrus]

i read that as "Mega Public WANG" at first.

hey, it's the Australians. you just never know.

who will be their provider?

[SonCorn]

Are they just going to buy a line from whoever runs the main line linking .au to the rest of the world? is that Telstra? I probably don't understand the situation, but how many companies are there in Sydney that you can buy an internet pipeline from? Just some random thoughts on the subject. Any answers?

Re:who will be their provider?

[Robotech_Master]

Well, the link didn't say anything about connection to the Internet as a whole, it seemed to focus more on creating a "humongous LAN".

Of course, they'll probably get Internet access somehow, whether it's buying a line legitimately or piggybacking on the broadband connections of the few people on it who still buy them.

Re:who will be their provider?

[arsaspe]

Telstra isn't the only internet backbone provider in Australia... They are the largest, only because they are the dominant phone company.

There is also Optus, who provide excellent service and are slowly taking over Telstras business.
Ozemail/UUNet, sucky, overpriced, but still alive and kicking
Primus - Small, but I'm pretty sure they have there own link
There was also one.net, but it recently went broke

Re:who will be their provider?

[TeraCo]

You are right, the majority of 'wholesale' bandwidth is still owned by Telstra. It is a monopoly, and would be a bad one, if the ACCC weren't watching them for signs of non-competitive behavior. This is why bigpond costs so much, they have to buy their bandwidth from wholesale at the same price wholesale sells it to all of the other ISPs.

There are very few other carrier grade links coming into Australia [excluding dodgy satellite stuff] it's still mostly owned by Telstra and Optus.

Ack!

[webword]

Sounds like an excellent opportunity for an unscrupulous individual. Sounds like a security cesspool to me.

Maybe I am too jaded. Maybe there is hope!

This isn't the first

[yobbo]

Melbourne has had it's own wireless network running, as have other cities in australia. Visit air.net.au for an idea of other projects which have been going for much longer.

Question on posibility of advanced networking

[chabotc]

What could you _realy_ do with a network like this? It seems obvious that a lot of nodes will go on / off, packets will get droped, and the optimal routes will be ever changing.

Would a good BGP routing setup deal with this? Preferable you would even setup multiple outbound gateways (thru ip-masq if need be for adsl/cable outbound routes)

Also a nice amount of squid clusters could realy help out here..

I think that if you would release a complete high-tech network design on this style of setup, you could truely create a decentralised, flexible and unstopable network.

Now imagine, if they would link up a lot of outgoing gateways (cable, adsl thru ip masq), and allow notebook users to link up @ any location in the city thats within the area covered.

Add to this some nice ftp mirrors, BBS style websites, and you would have a hackers dream ;-)

The post .com bandwidth era.

[wildcard023]

None of this 'we can't make any money on broadband' comes as too much of a shock to me. I mean, we've all known all along how little (if not negative) any given broadband connection pays.

Say I go home to my cable modem and suck down 2 gigabytes of data on my unmetered line. This isn't so unreasonable technologically. Maybe it'll take me a while to do, but hey, it's not that much of an issue for me. On the other hand, my ISP is now not making any money on me this month. ISPs depend on people getting broadband and looking at a few web pages just like all-you-can-eat sushi places depend on people ordering a few pieces and maybe some maki and going home.

As downloadable media becomes larger and more proliferic, we're likely to see more and more ISP's either closing down, raising prices, or capping/metering transfers to survive.

Re:The post .com bandwidth era.

[Rasta Prefect]

Because if you have a thousand users who each transmit a meg a day and say, a couple of gigs a day every so often, you need a lot less infrastructure than if you have a thousand users who all transmit a gig a day every day. You need bigger pipes and better routers at pretty much every step of the way.

Cool, but be careful

[foo fighter]

I know this is an amature/not-for-profit project, and I am clueless about Australian law.

But, I'd highly suggest the core people responsible for the administration of this project incorporate and seek legal counsel. If you search around you could probably find a lawyer to help you pro bono. I definetely recommend this approach for everyone thinking about doing this sort of thing in the US (I know several articles discussing that very thing have been on Slashdot).

There are significant risks to these individuals, both from individuals utilizing this service, and from the upstream provider who probably isn't aware that its bandwidth is being shared by an entire metropolitan area. When a user is hacked, or the upstream provider finds out these people are breaking the TOS lawsuits will fly.

This is really cool, and I wish them all the best, just use common sense and get some legal advice.

Shameless whoring

[Boiling_point_]

Other private networks exist around Australia, as brought to the collective (and my) attention by [JEB] in this post a couple of days ago.

Non-exhaustive list:

Adelaide

Brisbane

Gold Coast

Melbourne

Mudgee

Perth

Sydney

Western Sydney

Not Alone

[The Dread Pirate Rob]

Crikey - there's at least four just in Perth!

Perth: http://www.e3.com.au
Perth: http://www.innaloo.net
Perth: http://www.perthwireless.net
Perth: http://www.lwn.net.au

Never mind all the others around Oz
Brisbane: http://www.brishmesh.net
Melbourne: http://melbwireless.dyndns.org
Gold Coast: http://www.xtreme.net.au
Mudgee: http://hwy.com.au/~bigmoe/wlan

Just to name a few... Do some damn research you Monkeys! Sydney Wireless is just one of at least 20 separate wireless groups in Australia.

Great Idea

[Tyreth]

Projects like this are in the spirit of open source, but even more in the spirit of anarchy. It makes people feel that they have the power to live their lives, and be a partner in a great project rather than a pawn of someone else's project (as is seen in the business world).

It also encourages co-operation, sharing (in the positive ways the internet does), and community spirit.

If we could see more projects like this, perhaps internet (or the controls that ISP's and government have over it) will become redundant, and return to the loose connection of computers around the world that it once was.

Re:Free Censorship then?

[glwtta]

Why is it that so many people think that the internet is censored in Australia? Websites hosted in Australia are, not the net.

Looking At The Future

[ryanisflyboy]

This is absolutly the future of networking. Wireless topology can be constructed so quickly that the types of networks described in the story will flourish. Already several cities around the world have this type of grass roots movment happening in them. The best part about it is that large corporations really can't do anything to stop them. Hopefully it won't be too long before a central repository for information regarding these growing networks springs to life. The speed at which these networks can grow is truly the most important asspect. I suspect in five years or less these types of systems will be so common that one could visit nearly any city with a population over 50,000 and connect to a network.

Re:WAN Security

[Catbeller]

I have to agree with your last point. Despite all the panic, hackers really aren't doing all that much damage. There aren't enough of them, I think, of the proper idiotic mindset.

The internet existed for years as a network of trusted participants, exposed to attack, but somehow it never was inconvenienced much by such things.

Let's try building the Alternet, and see what happens. As you say, nothing much so far.

It's happening all over the place...

[Colin Smith]

In the UK: Consume http://consume.net/

In Seattle: Seattle wireless: http://seattlewireless.net

In New York: NYCWireless: http://nycwireless.net

etc etc.

For more info have a look at FreeNetworks: http://freenetworks.org/