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Lanlink Linking The Coasts
Dan Bricker writes "A guy in Parma Heights, Ohio has a website to promote an idea of linking the east coast to the west coast using standard off-the-shelf 802.11 equipment. He is aiming for a July 4th, 2006 first coast-to-coast ping. This project appears to be totally volunteer based, With no other stated reason than fun with pringle cans and bad weather, and do it just to do it. Can this be done? What real world applications does this have?"
How about, for starters, the number of open hotspots this could generate?
best web host ever
I was a Junior High student when they proposed hands across America, and it was stated it was impossible. As I recall it came off mostly intact. I seem to recall some guffaw about a gap or two, but in general it happened.
Question: Can we, the geeks, mobilize as well as that? My own sedentary nature tends to lead me to be pessimistic.
The problem with the pringle cans is that you get too much power out of the can, over the FCC maximum for unlicensed users on the band (ISM 2.4GHz). If you were to get a bunch of Ham radio operators, it might be more feasable.
As I walk through the valley of death I fear no one, for I am the meanest sonova bitch in the valley!
Yes. No. I would think the time and effort could be better spent trying specifically to get broadband (or at least WiFi) net access to rural areas.
Michael C. Hollinger
is now obsolete... And I just spent the past 15 minutes learning all the stupid glyphs!
Webmaster Wanted - Entropic Reactions
LanLinkup - The Great Experiment
Welcome! - Here is what we are all about:
Purpose - A project of this magnitude will undoubtedly take on new meanings and visions as hurdles are passed and obstacles are overcome, but today, the purpose of LL is to setup a wireless lan infrastructure in the homes of average people that spiderwebs and interconnects coast to coast using store bought wifi equipment and not at any point connect to the real Internet. A successful test of this experiment will be to ping remote hosts the farthest that is possible.
Why - Imagine, more privacy, free long distance, and no charge for Internet usage - that anyone can use, managed by volunteers. Can an experiment such as this shake up the telecommunication industry any more than it already is? This "Great Experiment" as a whole is not owned by any single individual or company. You own your own equipment and therefore are a part of the great link, in essence, your own ISP.
Who is the GE? - It's you, if you decide to participate. This is not a commercial venture but a venture in resourcefulness and education. By joining, there is nothing financial to gain. You are a volunteer and volunteer your own hardware and time. At the moment, there are no standards for this idea set in stone, mostly just ideas. I would like to formally request that those with networking backgrounds (ie Networks admins and engineers, etc) and/or wisp experience who are interested in getting in at the grass roots level of this project to contact me at once!
Timeline - By mid May, I would like to have hammered out a routing plan, lan ip block assignment, have a general idea about how things will be done, and have a growing population.
Requirements - May not at any point attach to the real Internet. To be part of LL, a member must abide by any rules or guidelines laid out. In order for a project of this magnatude to work, there must be standards and rules followed.
it JUST might work!
(my keyboad 'r' key is boken)
but this absolutely would be percieved as the first step towards a public controlled public broadcast venue for news.. and seeing as how the beiggest complaint in politics amongst the general public is the lack of interconnectedness between the east political environment and the west coast equivalent, I would see this as a milestone towards an ultimate goal of broadcasting bills, propositions, votes, general news, as well as the future forms of blogs.. i see this as not friv, but profoundly progressive and long due.
pm
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
Average range for a 802.11b base station: 150 feet
Distance between west and east coasts of the US: over 2000 miles
and ne'er the twain shall meet. This is a probably going to work out as well as the Babelfish idea in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The East Coast is practically another Galaxy to those of us on the West Coast. Putting up an extended LAN ain't gonna change THAT!
In principio erat Verbum.
A group of amatures has decided to prevent future energy problems in California. The plan is to route extension cords, connected serially, to California from a power plant on the east coast. When asked if the extension cords could handle the force, they said that it wasn't for everyone, mainly a proof of concept. They made no comment to the argument that there wouldn't be hardly any current left in California. They are taking donations of extension cords of all kinds. "Just as long as it has a ground pluggy thing"
Ok, as we all know there are some pretty desolate regions of the US. Now it would be possible to throw a bunch of routers in the middle of the desert, but they would have to be battery powered or something. The most significant problem would be getting everything to work correctly without even a single down router. Assuming each router covers a tenth of a mile, you'd need about 30,000 routers to make it across the US. Dozens will break or have problems every day, so you'll need at least two per site. That means a total of 60,000 roters. At $100 each that brings the total to $6 million. The battery powered routers for the desert will obviously be more expensive though. Also you'd have to stop people from stealing these somehow, which would be a serious problem.
In conclusion, it would be really hard and really expensive to do this, but it is possible.
Creating ex-temp webs like this might assist insurance adjusters and other computer-needing personnel to work better in emergency hot zones... it would be nice if a company out there started manufacturing the "cans" for emergency use and the FCC made some modifications to the rules for emergency usage ... so every little town could have a few "wi-fi" kits in storage to chain up when a hurricane has leveled everything.. you could also throw some authentication mechanisms on the idea and build a quick "emergency VoIP network" the same way.
Just a thought from the thoughtbrew:
www.bigattichouse.com
meh
Dude 2: Dude... that'd be awesome! We could like have our own network without that internet crap
Dude 1: Dude... That'd be cool
I'm still waiting for a reasonable ammount of WiFi hot-spots to check email. This falls under the category of pipe-dream.
-My 2 cents.
Something like 70% of internet backbone is owned by half a dozen companies. The RIAA & co are putting increasing pressure on businesses and universities, and backbone providers may be next.
The Government is, frankly, outright hostile to many forms of free expression, and some basic civil rights we've come to take for granted (abortion rights, for starters, never mind the Bill of Rights).
This project may teach valuable lessons about using open standards to form a non-owned, alternative internet backbone.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
But as long as they don't decide to use 100W transmiters and start frying people, I guess it won't hurt anyone.
Pppphht! to anyone who doesn't do things just because it sounds like fun. Who are you to judge?
my 2c worth...
I don't think this project will be a success.
My current project (located in the midwest)
release tons of energy, which will most likely
interfere. Sorry 'bout that!
; )
Sure, it was silly, but it was a fun thing to do. And besides, we'd recently spent an evening sitting on our roof looking at Comet Kohoutek being totally lame, so it was nice to have *some* big event happen :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
"Hands across America" in the mid eighties. But that was for a good reason (if you think those things are good). I recall in my county there were not enough people to go from one side of the county to the other. (Aside: My little brother had to sit through a teacher lecturing at school about how this failing signalled the downfall of society.)
The "Let's do it for-the-hell-of-it" mentality is not going to get a lan across from coast to coast. Now if Each person were asked to share one folder on a hard drive with a favorite song/movie/picture, then I think people would buy their own wireless paraphenalia to jump into this big p2p event.
Well, that's my intial comment. Off to read the article.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
1) Instant spammer access point - everyone can now become a spammer without being traced. Think of all the new revenue this will bring people.
2) Hostage demand messaging - now kidnappers can safely communicate with authorities about their ransoms demands, and do it anonymously.
3) Stalker sanctuary - need to cyberstalk someone, but those traceable connections just getting in the way? Well with a free wireless acees point, you too can now become the new John Hinckley Jr., hell you can threaten national leaders worldwide if you like!
Haaaannnndddssss Across A-mer-i-ca. I leave the kazaa links as an excercise for the reader.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
invest in some blue chip stock, but I think I'll ivest in some obscure potato chip company instead. :p
Granted a simple PHP-nuke load takes more bandwidth then a simpler layout (by about 100kb), it has nothing to do with a potential slashdotting. It be all about the pipeline my networking challenged brother.
As long as he's not obsessed with 802.11x, this is great! For the longer stretches, he should use IR lasers or something that can really throw the bits around.
If he can succeed, the long-term implications are fantastic. Internet will become too cheap to meter. Inexpensive laser and other types of LOS relays will join windmills and silos as familiar rural landmarks. AOL and Time-Warner can eat all of America's shorts. There is nothing to say the same economic forces that may eventually make proprietary software obsolete can't make proprietary networks obsolete too.
The hard part about free wireless has always been the "upstream". If this guy can get a viable continent spanning link, it may go down in history just like the link between... what was it... Duke and UNC? You know, the one that started the internet in the first place. Let's see... we have internet, internet 2, and now internet 3. I can't wait. I think Internet 3 could eventually replace internet 1 and make internet 2 jelous.
Give it the same amount of time we gave that first uucp link.
p.s., I'm surprised my subject line makes it through the filters.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Don't start the whole abortion thing. People have been screaming at each other over this one forever and it ain't really a /.'ing topic.
Darn it, my parent got modded negative, I'm seperated from my parent, and my negative one on BSD got posted at the same time as a dozen others... Karma Gods, please have mercy on me...
The real world application is, perhaps, psychological: getting people to realize that with a bit of effort each, we can all be networked to each other at high speed WITHOUT paying some company OR government for the privelege of just moving data around using equipment we own and airwaves that belong to everyone.
There is one hell of a lot of absolutely nothing between the Sierra Nevada and the Great Plains, including long stretches with dozens of miles between buildings. Even if this effort could get access points set up at every building with a power outlet, it'd still be difficult.
I wish this project well, and I think an open network of access points routing packets to one another is a far better vision of what the Internet could be than the backbone-oriented system we have today... but I am not at all hopeful that they will pull this off.
-Mars
It depends on what the gain and such is of the antenna. With an omni, maybe, but with a wave-guide cantenna you are probably safe.
See here for details
Besides, I think this is definately more doable that hands across america. With the possible exception of the rockies/cascades etc, just set up some cantenna's, and aim it off into the horizon. With GPS and such, it should be easy to coordinate. A handful of people at each horizon, should do it... How far away is the horizon anyways? I know I can see the buildings in downtown from here, and its like 20 miles from here.
with VHF packet systems years ago?
I think it's a beautiful idea... *teary-eyed*
Should boost range to a few miles
One of the guys with l0pht set up this site in an attempt to accomplish something similar: A LAN-based backbone independent of government and corporate oversight. I waited two years for someone in my area to indicate some sort of interest, but nobody seemed interested. The last time this site was updated was in 2002, so I guess the original author's interest has waned as well.
The point of this post, though, is to provide a link that does a good job of answering why such an independent backbone would be A Good Thing.
2000 * 5280 / 150 =
70,400 volunteers
Let me guess, you're one of those people who question the value of exploration of space as well, or the climbing of Everest.
Because it is there man, because it is there.
for once it would make all this diy crap on tv make some sense to me...
Timeline - By mid May, I would like to have hammered out a routing plan, lan ip block assignment, have a general idea about how things will be done, and have a growing population.
Well, it's mid May, and the site has a distinct lack of any sort of technical detail, plans, etc. Just the overall idea. While that's nice, it ain't gonna happen without a plan.
How can we comment on the technical or sociological feasibility without at least a minimal plan?
Here's my plan: Make lots of money.
Great idea, isn't it. By mid-June I hope to have a plan...
Bah...
So, does anyone want to make a prediction for ping time across 3,000 miles, and grid only knows how many hops? Does anyone know the record for most routers from one end of an IP network to the other today?
we tryed this in the 80's but with people. what makes you think that the radio waves care any more than we didn't???
...than if everyone involved with this project tested for their Amateur Radio Tech license, and simply used existing off-the-shelf components with power output several magnitudes greater than consumer-grade 802.11 equipment to do the same thing?
Hams have been communicating digitally in the GHz spectrum for a long time now. Why use inferior consumer-grade equipment to get the job done? Plus, as a licensed ham, you have the permission of the government to modify your equipment as necessary (as long as it falls within the power/interference limits set by the FCC).
Of course, transmitting porn and music would be against the regs, but if it's principle you're after, using amateur radio is just the ticket.
Coast2Coast LAN Party!!!!! East vs. West for TITLE OF THE BEST!!!
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
Are you male or female?
It makes a difference on this issue. I happen to be male.
Yes, there are large, often fundamentalist christian groups who consider that a woman can't choose whether or not to carry a child. I pity us if they ever come to power.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
They have computers in Parma Heights?
Sorry...I'm from Parma...had to say it
Isn't such a network going to have rather large latency problems?
And a few megabits may sound like a lot, but wait until you have a few thousand users even.
SSL Certificate
As long as he's not obsessed with 802.11x, this is great! For the longer stretches, he should use IR lasers or something that can really throw the bits around.
Fair enough. Although fiber throws the bits around better.
If he can succeed, the long-term implications are fantastic. Internet will become too cheap to meter. Inexpensive laser and other types of LOS relays will join windmills and silos as familiar rural landmarks. AOL and Time-Warner can eat all of America's shorts. There is nothing to say the same economic forces that may eventually make proprietary software obsolete can't make proprietary networks obsolete too.
Yeah. And if everyone laid fiber to their neighbor's houses and got routers for it, the same thing could happen. That'd be really cool, too, and probably about as cheap. But it's not gonna happen anytime soon.
The hard part about free wireless has always been the "upstream". If this guy can get a viable continent spanning link, it may go down in history just like the link between... what was it... Duke and UNC? You know, the one that started the internet in the first place. Let's see... we have internet, internet 2, and now internet 3. I can't wait. I think Internet 3 could eventually replace internet 1 and make internet 2 jelous.
There's a ping-time issue. The cost of receiving and retransmitting those packets is non-trivial, both in time and in energy, especially if you use WEP. Count on pinging across the network to take minutes. Like I said, laying fiber would be much cooler for free internet. But it's just as not-gonna-happen.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Save Roe is a site about the current Republican, Fundamentalist attack on abortion rights.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
For one thing, the midwest and desert areas of the US have multiple mile stretches without a house, or even an electrical hookup. You might be able to tap into the overhead powerlines but I don't think the power company would be too happy with that.
There's a little thing called TTL that will be exceeded well before the first packet makes it across Mountain Standard Time.
He is aiming for a July 4th, 2006 first coast-to-coast ping.
Considering the latency, I'd aim for July 4th, 5th, and 6th.
Please donate your spare CPU cycles to help fight cancer and other diseases
Yo nigga i be bussin mad respect fo any nigguh dat be on da dot preachin da virchews of bo-shin. I got 2 skanky wite bishes noct up wunce and i had ta take dem to dis nigga dat duz it himself. He be takin dis big niting neatle an putz it up her cunt an shakes dat shit aroun fo a minit. Den he putz won of dem searz wetdry vakyoums up n dare an sucks dat shit rite out! It wuz mad crazy YO! Bein dat dis is a sivil rite an all it means dat dadee MLK,jr an dadee frarakhan fights fo it 2!
much luv nigga! Much luv!
No more pringles cans.
This would be so much easier in Panama...
Last year, there was an article here about some old AT&T bunkers and towers for sale. While it would be impracticle (if not impossible) to use all of these towers for 802.11 sites, their routes across the country would come in very handy. These maps would give you a good idea of what kind of line-of-sight you could get in various regions.
While I'm at it, here is an excellent site with more AT&T long-line info links:
Towers in Utah w/ good links
The last time this was tried it was a complete success. The American Radio Relay League was delivering messages (about the length of a ping) coast to coast to places the wires didn't run, and they changed communications as we understand it.
The hitches are considerable this time. WiFi range and the line of site behavior of microwaves will be a significant impediment. Hands across America and the ARRL had methods of crossing large uninhabited distances.
I think if they are going to have any chance for bridging this, they'll have to bridge the tough spots with AX.25 using frequencies that carry. I would still consider it a success if 60% of the distance were to be covered with WiFi, and the rest more serious microwave hops, and even some longer waves (the 23cm band has space and decent speed). I can see the ocean from my porch and have a 30 foot high roof If they end up taking a NorthWestern route to the left pond, I'll certainly volunteer.
Best of luck to them.
Because a couple of hundred years ago, before explorers discovered the Great Plains, the settlers used to believe that North America was completely blanketed by thick forests and they had a saying that a squirrel could travel from the East coast to the West coast without ever touching the ground.
I don't know how LanLinkup plans to cross the mostly uninhabited areas with wifi. Are there any cheap consumer devices available that use low power lasers or microwave dishes to make long distance line-of-sight hops?
Its called packet radio.
Ok, its not out of the box 802.11 but so what. Anyone that wants to can get the equipment for about the same price as an access point. And better yet, you will have many more useless (well some think they are useless, but interesting still) uses for your packet radio, including tracking and connecting to open sattelites flying over your house. I know HAM radio has been pegged as old fashioned, but you have to admit, connecting to a sattelite with your computer is not something you hear your friends talking about!
I was recently involved in a fairly casual discussion of how to create a WAN link between computer labs at two different campuses of a university in Ghana. The main campus, in the capital city of Akra (sp?) has a limited satellite connection to the Internet costing something around a few thousand a month, supposedly. None of the other three campuses have or can afford a similar connection. This isn't a big enough gateway to share WWW access, but a WAN could allow Intranet and Internet-based email, as well as Intranet sites, file sharing, and perhaps even VoIP to augment the poor phone systems.
So the big problem was how to set up this connection. The telco system apparently isn't too good; only around 400 new lines are added per year, so getting ahold of a large number of leased lines would be virtual impossible. Obviously, setting up an independent wired backbone is financially out of the question. So we started toying with the idea of a WiFi link, which seemed like the only possibility.
The only problem is that if we are trying to set up a 200km link (between the main campus and one in the north; I don't recall the name of the city) we would need repeaters in some remote areas without consistent power, not to mention having to plot good line-of-site and build fairly secure base stations. What we realised was that we could attempt to piggyback the existing private cell-phone infrastructure. There is a cell system spanning the north and south, which means a stable backbone, on which we can either rent data bandwidth (probably expensive) or, better yet, on who's repeater stations (probably microwave antennas) we could rent physical space.
Our informal conclusion was that the University should consider renting space on repeater stations for their own WiFi hubs and create a WAN using long-distance line-of-site connections with off-the-shelf, inexpensive WiFi components. Projects like this pave the way to practical, inexpensive applications of WiFi technology.
What was the value of the first link in the DARPAnet? None you'd say, but then you're just complaining, you don't care much about facts.
HAM is regulated... 802.11 isn't. Read that sentence again, it has a great deal of significance. The fact that commercial uses are not allowed on HAM frequencies would be a very significant drawback. It is an even greater problem when you consider that this is something that is likely to piss every communications company off something awful. You can bet that if your HAM solution got popular, you can expect every telephone, data, radio and TV broadcaster to kick the FCC's ass, and get everyone's licenses revoked.
It would be nice if there were better, unlicened, wireless WAN solutions, but 802.11 is what were are stuck with at the moment, and it does good enough of a job that this certainly CAN be done with current technology.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
One way for this to happen would be to bounce the signal off the moon. Earth-Moon-Earth is a proven technology that Amateur Radio folks (de KD4BTC) have been doing for years. Check out this article.
wherever I go, there I am.
Are we talking about a giant, shared, 10mbs pipe across the US that we could all use together? Wow, that would really last for at least 10 seconds. Talk about /. effect....
The routes:
Eastern Section
Central Section
Western Section
Interesting side note: I was looking at the area around my hometown of San Antonio, TX (on the Central map) and noticed a spur of the route leading to LBJ's ranch near Blanco/Johnson City Texas. These tower routes were designed to facilitate cross-country communications for the public but they also had a wartime mission--keeping the President in commo during WW3.
The big problem is that the broadcast strength of an 802.11 transmitter cannot exceed 1 watt. Youre allowed more in other countries but in the US its 1 watt.
There are various ways to overcome this such as directional transmitters, but I think this guys idea is not feasible. Parma Heights is a suburb of Cleveland and Ill bet it isnt anywhere near as desolate as Brookings, SD, or anywhere else in this stretch of the midwest. Plus he has that whole "Rocky Mountains" thing that he has to jump a signal over.
The Midwest, the Rockies, the desert, all of that is going to be financially unviable unless a corporation gets behind it.
I think the only way it will happen is if some ISP/Telco thinks it's a good marketing idea. And in that case they'll probably run it along major highways through those desolate areas.
Advert example: Two Verizon trucks driving towards each other down a desolate road in the middle of the US. Each planting the very last (golden spike) wireless connection on each side. Shows family driving through the middle of nowhere USA with a kid in the backseat surfing the web - "Drive coast to coast wirelessly, Only with Verizon."
They come up with some great and crazy stuff in Parma Ohio...
cancer?
I'd be glad to volunteer an access point. I'd just need to buy a wireless router. I've had dreams for years of creating a LAN across my town. That would definately kick some ass.
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
A volunteer Fire Department in Yonkers has decided to form a bucker brigade from Coney Island, on the East Coast, USA, to Water World in Southern California, if for no other reason than to prove it can be done. They hope to have it in place by the 4th of July....2006.
Well, if they really get their act together, there would be more than one route from A to B... that might open up a little more bandwidth.
But, aren't there standards in the 802.11 family that are faster than 11MB/sec? By 2006, those should be cheap and available.
Overall, the idea sounds terrific, though implementation might be a bit dodgy. I like the idea of a truly public network.
Worlds largest (practically) untraceable P2P network.
Grabbing MP3s right out of the ether... Illegal song swapping passing right through peoples bodies....
Sweet...
Remember FIDO Net? I'm sure some do. Data passed from node to node in store and forward mode across the country using local calls modem to modem. It was way cool in its day. Doing it again with WiFi should be a real challenge but not impossible.
If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space.
I noticed that it said on the website that it wouldn't be linked to the internet. I assume this is because standard TOS for end-users with broadband prevent this. With the number of people required to complete a coast to coast link, maybe they should just chip in and buy a T1 access point on either coast.
pope is the antichrist. catholic pedophile priest scandal: http://home.fuse.net/gospel
Is a sort of 'take back the net' theme. Obviously with so much bandwidth in the hands of consumers, it really makes the wired Internet (and the RIAA, MPAA, US Govt, many others) kind of hover on the verge of obsolescence. No wonder the current regime in Washington calls it a terrorist tool! Like I always say, out with the old, in with the new =]
End of Line.
You are partially correct.... You cannot exceed 1 watt into the antenna. The antenna adds gain to give you a total signal strength. In a point-to-multipoint you can go a maximum of 4W EIRP. In a point-to-point situation you can go a maximum of 8W EIRP. Check out 80211planet.com, fcc.gov, and google for more info (search for EIRP).
Railroad Sponsorship.
Railroads are one of the few types of entities that aren't telcos that are likely to have continuous strips of land between metro/suburban areas.
Sell it to them as a cutting edge experiment: publicity, and maybe even a fledgling version of being able to offer passengers internet access, or internet-tracked cargo shipping, or something else.
In fact, I'm starting to wonder why I'm shooting my mouth off here on slashdot about it...
Tweet, tweet.
LAST POST!!
After the breakup of AT&T in 1984, some railroads got together and formed Sprint. They build customized trains which laid fiber optic cable next to their tracks. Good luck convincing those railroads to help the competition.
we just unroll a 4k mile roll of ethernet?
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Bill Weiking has done this on the Big Island on the Island of Hawaii.
message 1: But hey, if you want to try to do it you might think about the cost:
message 2 Then I started to think about making it a fixed mesh instead of just one long line, for reliability.
message 3 Senegal's only 500 km wide, so the costs will be scaled up accordingly. Still, I think that's pretty cheap.
<shameless plug>
I started a mailing list to talk about long-distance wifi/wireless/802.11b , called wireless long-haul. Check it out here. There's also a Wiki with links to existing long-haul wifi projects and resources.
</shameless plug>
simon
home page
You gave me an idea - how about calling it: "AlterNet"? Probably not original, but that's really what this is.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
So their goal is to re-create the transcontinental microwave relay network built by A. T. & T.?
Pringles are a product of Proctor & Gamble, currently #31 on the Fortune 500 list--no small potatoes!
We can reduce ideas to bits and people to genes, but "can" does not imply "should".
the factory is no more http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/ 20030505/ts_nm/weather_tornadoes_dc_9
Does anyone (a) know of an alternative known-good card that works, or (b) have a DLink DWL-520 (not 520+) that they wanna sell to little old me in Australia? :-)
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Am I the only person who thought that said Lancelot Link?
Here's a random google link if you don't know who Lancelot Link: Secret Chimp is.
http://home.att.net/~bubblegumusic/lancelot.htm
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
that was one example of a network whose structure could handle host disconnects. also freenet, which has redundancy built into its design. and gnutella, as you point out.
all of these essentially use P2P as their structure, but fidonet and freenet remind us that P2P-the-structure has a far wider range of uses than just downloading mp3's. right now the internet dominates "cause it's there" but even its structure was historically envisioned (by some, anyway) as much more decentralized than it is now. as it moves toward centralization it becomes increasingly unsatisfactory for many purposes, and momentum grows to build and use alternative, decentralized structures.
May 10, 2004 ... The day that the golden pringles can finally links the Union Pacific and Central Pacific kazaa servers through 802.11b.
>What happens when some 19 year old with black leather and piercings knocks on the door of some Iowa corn farmer and tries to explain all this?
Well, more like a chubby guy wearing a "Root This" t-shirt, but that's besides the point. Even with point to point 8 watt configurations that gives anywhere between 10-50 miles there will probably be lots of "rogue boxes."
Chubby kid climbs local t-phone poll, sets up cantenna, paints it black or orange so it looks "official" and no one will probably care. I do feel sorry for the obligatory call to homeland security and the evening "news" report on how hackers are setting up dirty bombs on our telephone lines, but that's also besides the point.
That's the worst case scenario. Also, why can't we use public parks and forest preserves to put up "rogue boxes?" Public land and public 2.4ghz arguably belong to the people. If Joe Camper can set up a DirecTv dish outside his camper why can't I set up an AP and leave it there?
Sure its doable, but its a lot of effort and I think they're doing it the wrong way. You need to work from the bottom up, not from the top down. I'd much rather see major/big cities connecting to each other e.g. Chicago to Milwaukee to Madison after each city has a decent or at least usable for volunteers wifi infrastructure. Then you can take these central hub cities and go for long distance tunnels to other hubs. That worked for the telegraph/railroad industry.
Also, 802.11a is really short on bandwidth. I hope they at least go with 802.11g.
Not to mention I'd hate to make this my primary net connection and then have it rain in some part of the country, thus killing my connection. Although a "net weather" app sounds very interesting.
"Hey its raining in Kansas City so don't expect much bandwidth if you're passing through there."
I'd like to contribute, but I don't have the cash for a nice outdoor rated wifi box. I doubt my $80 linksys will be of any real help to the project. (perhaps the el-cheapo WAP11 repeaters could be useful) Interesting if they could get some press and corporate backing. This project just screams "techno-cool" and maybe some of the big players in wireless could donate some equipment and expertise.
Games | ISOs | mp3s | distos | pr0n
Using the cheap 802.11b falls under inappropriate use of technology. It's like trying to hammer nails with a screwdriver.
Why would the radio frequencies/power levels
in use by 802.11b be "right" for such a thing?
If the target is "cheap distance", you would
think having everyone's computer make the furthest local phone call to another computer modem, would be farther reaching and more reliable. sure only 28Kbaud, but that's okay. (assume local phone calls are free)
Just need people with two phone lines and two modems and the right software. Or you could have the computer hangup and dial out to forward packets/receive packets from the other direction and
alternate back and forth! (if just one phone line)
Big enough buffers at each computer, would help deal with this extra latency....
Be funny to have a coast to coast ping of 24 hours!
Well, if any of you have ever driven across the US, it would be apparent that there is a whole lot of nothing out there. However, note that it is possible to bridge long distances with 802.11.
:)
Take note of the HPWren map. They've got a wireless node 45 miles away from their base tower, and they use off-the-shelf gear operating in the ISM band. In some places they have repeater radios powered by solar panels by day and batteries by night. Surely something like that could be utilized in such a project mentioned in the article, but who would put up the money to set up some of these stations and insure they don't get vandalized or destroyed by bad weather?
Such repeater stations would be required, especially if you want to get that signal to the California coast. We have some, erm, minor obstacles.
Anything is possible with enough thought and money. I have no doubt that under such a project, major networks could be constructed in metropolitan areas. Yes, it can be done with Pringles cans. I have constructed one myself and the gain I get out of it rivals most commercial antennas, except for a parabolic.
The biggest hurdle that this project has to overcome is awareness, getting people out of "that's cool" mode and getting them to do something, bridging the huge distances, and getting the signal over mountains. Other than that, it's a piece of cake
-R
and next up, alaska to tierra del fuego
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...
Imagine if you could plug into the net by simply buying hardware, rather than having have an ISP. Sure things like addresses could get chaotic, but at the same time no group of people or coorportations ever really control access to it. On top of that it would be self upgrading as people purchased more effective wireless equipment over time.
n2nhu again-
In the early 90s I could send e-mail, telnet to remote computers - all wirelessly - from my amateur radio station connected to a terminal.
North America has been linked for digital wireless by licensed amateur radio operators for years - all with simple coordination
http://www.tapr.org/tapr/html/Fpktfaq.html
OK, so the network is mostly 1200 baud for nodes, but it works - telnet, e-mail, etc.
What would be an acceptable ping time after a packet is passed through a few thousand WiFi routers? ;)
-phish
The advertising for Independence Day 2 has started already ...
... all it took was one ping, and now there back!"
*deep trailer-dude voice*
"In a world, where wireless networks span the country
Wouldn't it be smarter to have towns and cities WAN'd and setup to link with eachother through some sort of Internet service. I cannot see linking the entire country with 802.11b feasible considering you got the Rockies blocking the West Coast.
I remember seeing the famous Edward R. Murrow "See It Now" episode where a live shot of New York's Times Square was joined with a live shot of the Golden Gate Bridge. Live. For the first time. The coast to coast link used hundreds of microwave relays.
Using Wi-Fi (or Wi-Max) to cross the country seems a bit daft.
On the other hand, my Seattle to Portland Wi-Fi Proposal seems utterly practical. (www.dailywireless.org)
Somebody in Parma actually knows what a computer looks like, let alone knows how to use one?? I thought all they did in Parma was bitch about the Tribe/Browns and drink beer.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
Well, abortion isn't a topic for discussion on slashdot, but as long as we are here, why not bring out the geek solution to the entire debate... Cryogenics! Freeze the fetuses for later. Nobody dead potential babies, they just get "time shifted". And, just to give the more rabid anti-abortionists a little reality check, the female members are free to have one of the little buggers implanted in thier womb!
Am I the only one to notice that ethernet protocal does not allow for more then 3 consecutive networking devices off of the main switch? At least I don't think that it does. I seem to remember reading that in a networking textbook somewhere. So, how exactly is this going to work if wireless AP's treat points as switches... oh you say, were going to use NAT... well, yes, that would allow the internet to work, but, you can't ping across NAT. So, I don't see how that would work either. But lets just be a little conservative and assume that everything that I said above is wrong. Assuming that we need a 192.168.1.x or 192.168.0.x this only gives us (using standard otc equipment with built in DHCP) 256apx IP addresses... do you think that you can get coast to coast with 256 APs? Maybe 512 if we have a super cool AP... even then, can you even get across states with 256 points? Across town? I don't think that any way you look at it that it would be possible to remote ping a machine on the other side of the US. Of course, I might be wrong.
Why not put a router at every Rite-Aid, Walgreens, and Walmart... there's usually one of those around every freaking corner... line of site and all... Then on the more desolate highway regions... use gas stations or cell phone towers...
It's important that we bombard the citizens of this country with as much microwave radiation as possible.
am i the only one thinking that this will be slow as crap? even if it was 802.11g, its still shared bandwidth, and with that many nodes..
Ummm, I stand in front of 100W transmitters all the time and I don't get fried. I even have a couple 150Watters. They're called light bulbs.
I was born and raised in the Cleveland, OH area (Parma Heights is located on the west side). So in case you were wondering, YES, there is absolutely nothing to do in Parma.
Berto
I plan on doing the same thing for my home country of Luxembourg . We plan on crossing the country using six or seven relays. :)
Trollem mirabilem hanc subnotationis exigiutas non caperet
Standard 802.11b ethernet won't get this accomplished. There's no way. Can a packet ping from the east to west and back again in 255ms? with Wifi?
I don't think so. I think we should observe the way
Amature Radio Operators have ran packet radio stations. We'd need to write drivers that would
emulate a packet radio connection. There's will be
too many hops to implement a 802.11 WiFi solution.
We would have to go with packet switching.
We'd be able to use WiFi hardware, but all the drivers would need to be written to emulate packet switching.
---the idea is missing a huge segment of the population that has money, mobility,and camps out in weird areas. yas das right, I'm talking about retired geezers in RVs,people with a lot of spare cash and loot, who are into gadgets, have complete mobile power sources, and get bored silly and are up for a hoot now and then. You look at the number of campgrounds spread across the US and the number of RV's out there (where a lot of the "wireless internet" momentum and interest is coming from, believe me, they want the internet in those rigs) you might have another group of thousands, tens of thousands willing to participate, especially if it's billed as a way to start designing a permanent wireless internet.
Now, add in long haul truckers, who again are quite familiar with modding and hacking, use a variety of radios and computers now.
Add those two groups to the mix, I don't see any problem making the coast to coast jump, even across those scary "heartland" places with wild dangerous things, like cows and trees and 100 miles of corn.
Hey, here's another, biker clubs, they might be up for it too. Lot of guys who can afford 20 grand harleys or goldwings as toys *also* got computers.
There's probably more, but that's the idea, instead of trying to get one big "club" of people, most of those clubs already exist, enlist members in each, they'll find the other people inside their "clubs" to help out, if I can call long hault truckers and RVers as a club, or just a demographic group tyo be closer.
Except for large stretches of the west, hands across america is a large success ;-)
Since a large percentage of the slashbots are european, your remark is literally true.
Since you will NEVER have sex with another person in your life, why are you so concerned about abortion?
For the actual connection that joins the east to the west coast.
if one more idiot tries to make a 3db gain antenna out of a pringles can, i'm gonna go on a shooting spree.
if you're going to have any chance of getting real distance (20+ miles) you need a real antenna.
http://www.fab-corp.com/ has 24db parabolics for $70, they have an 8 degree beam width. A pair of these will get you a good signal over 15 miles.
If this network achieved enough coverage, wouldn't it basically render the spectrum useless for anyone else to use (ie. for non-LL purposes)?
Kudos to the idea, but good luck co-ordinating thousands of volunteers.
One other point... what is the standard range of this gear? 1-5km (up to 20km on steroids?). How wide is your country? 6000km or so? So you wind up with a minimum of anywhere between 300 and 6000 hops to make it coast-to-coast. And aren't we talking fixed bandwidths around 10Mbps? I'm sorry, but the people at either end of that network are going to get shafted by people using bandwidth closer to the center. You can't very well aggregate traffic (which is what a tree winds up doing - and which is what a linear network would be) without increasing the bandwidth closer to the root (centre of the country).
Remember the time when someone was trying to get everybody to point their laser pointers at the moon at a certain time on a certain night, hoping to light up the moon? A "reality check" turns up the fact that they wouldn't even make it through the atmosphere, diffused like headlights in fog.
Even so with this 802.11 idea.
802.11 can be stretched only so far. Let's be really generous and give it 10km. That means that quite a few volunteers would have to be willing to buy or build autonomous nodes to stretch across the more desolate areas... and likely they'd have to haul them into hazardous positions on their own backs to get maximum range (across mountains, for example). That equipment will have to be left in place for extended periods of time, without service... so that'd require solar or wind power too. How 'bout standing up to the weather? Most off-the-shelf equipment wouldn't take the extremes of hot and cold.
Now how likely does this project sound?
Many people have mentioned that one problem is with Mountains and with areas of large gaps.
One possible solution is to first make a system that goes from Key West Florida to the Maine/Canadian border. The east coast is more uniformly and densly populated.
Another problem was power. I remember on Slashdot recently someone posted an item about a portable 802.11 Security Camera snooper. The imporatnt thing is that it ran off homebrew 12 volt batteries. I have seen solar panel systems that produced 12 volt DC. Someone should be able to come up with a simple homebrew, rechargeable wireless router that you can stick out in the middle of nowhere.
Another power solution that comes to mind is wind power. Wind mills need to be high up to catch the breeze. Wireless AP need to be high up for lines of sight. A windmill with an AP built in would be great for the Great Plains states or isolated areas like Farms. I am sure that the local Farmer/Rancher might actually want to have this for himself. Put up a couple on his spread that connects back to his house as well as the rest of the US. He could email from a PDA while riding fences.
If the power thing gets solved and they do an East Coast thing, what might be cool would be to get Appalachian Trail Coverage. Put up nodes all along the Appalachian Trail. It could be used for emergency communications or just so people on the trail could update each other on their positions etc.
The last good idea I saw was the Fidonet/FreeNet combination. Even if the rules say NO INTERNET connection, people could put up gateways for Mail like Fidonet did. Email is more the killer ap that the WWW is anyway.
It would seem to me that it would be logistically more sound to start by making an intra-city WAN before working your way out to other cities.
When you write a program, you don't start from the big picture, you start by making the subroutines and functions that the overall program is going to run.
The functions and subroutines are the experiments to determine how viable the wireless second internet idea would work in an area where transmissions are practically flooding airspace, and once the bugs in that system are bashed out, then we start working on connecting with neighbor cities. Once this has been accomplished, we spread outward, using what we have learned in that intra-city process, and the short-range inter-city system.
The Penguin Producer
If you look at a long-haul fiber map, you'll notice most of the fiber runs the I-10 corridor.
A couple of people have mentioned transiting the Rockies. Not a good idea. Cellular systems don't do it. Living in Western KS, I've found that Cellular systems do not enjoy a two-way flow the length of I-70.
Eastern CO is supported from Western KS, via I-70. In KS, Salina sits at the top of a "T," where I-70 meets I-35. Head South, and I-35 turns into I-45. You get to Houston (which I-10 passes through). Western CO just doesn't have much coverage.
Then there's TX. Assuming you could get solid coverage to Kerville (a little West of San Antonio), it is a _long_ , empty haul to El Paso (ok, you have Junction, Sonora, Fort Stockton, etc). There just aren't that many people in West TX, till you get to El Paso.
Next up, NM, AZ, etc. Hot hot hot. Then, cold cold cold. Not a good environment for unprotected electronic gear. Going to need plenty of local Alternative Energy sources as well.
I know there are plenty of other state-level, middle-of-nowhere link-up issues. I'm just talking about the one's I know something about.
At a minimum, it is going to take the use of the Interstate Highway system (for communication equipment to be set up, and allow easy access to be repaired), and guys with their HAM radio tickets (at least Technician class) to be able to legally opperate equipment with enough grunt. Repeaters don't require call sign ID at regular intervals, I think.
Line-Of-Sight is about 9.2 miles, at Sea Level (IIRC).
Potentially a pretty neat hack.
I've been interested in packet radio.. I was thinking more of something they could drive up and drop off that would work with COTS hardware/laptops... you could equip all the emergency vehicles with one so the network comes with you. I imagine with a Mini-ITX and a little experimentation, it could be VERY small and cheap to make ($1000/unit)
meh
I dont think the East Coast Rappa's are gonna allow it...
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
I can see the sea (pacific) from here, does that mean I can be a last mile provider.
:)
Now all I need is the profit part
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Actually, solar power in many regions of the country could be "too cheap to meter". That isn't a speculation, it's a much-proven fact.
And solar equipment is expensive because economies of scale haven't kicked in. It could be cheap to buy. It hasn't had the enormous taxpayer investment that oil companies have enjoyed, if you use real cost accounting that takes into effect the roads, harbors, sanctions, and wars that taxpayers paid for.
And oil companies have indeedy bought up solar power patents and companies, and have shut them down in many cases. And other things as well: I've read (true?) that Texaco has bought up the IP regarding nickel-metal hydride battery technology.
Economies of scale and real technological progress (if it were ever funded properly!) would have made power "too cheap to meter" in sunny states, and probably moderated costs in the gloomier ones as well.
That hasn't happened because power and oil companies don't want it to happen, and ideological fanatics have taken over the Federal government who are ferociously opposed to changing the status quo.
Nuclear reactors, indeed. A cheap solar array, built into new homes roofs, and a nice NMH battery array would provide enough power to keep an electric car running for FREE, and keep some lights on in the house as well. People do this NOW, and are quite happy with the arrangement.
It isn't happening on a large scale because wealthy interests and radically conservative (?) politicians and citizens don't want it to happen.
And I do love the idea of a proto-antiInternet springing up. It can be done, and it will be done, if the men with the jackboots don't show up to stomp the hands of people trying to do it.
errr, yeah.
The same FCC that's giving more and more of the market to Clearchannel without waiting for public input (or even letting the public know what's going on).
The same FCC that at the same time it's allowing big business to build bigger monopolies, against the public interest, also quashed citizen-based micropower broadcasting.
These guys are supposed to manage a public resource for the public good, not line the pockets of the companies that give the most money to the Repubs.
I say FUCK THE FCC!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Wow, it's like what Amateur Radio enthusiasts have been doing since about 1979! Except less effective and with less range per node!
Way to be high tech and up to date! Oh, and with the low power levels you're permitted--good luck with the net latency!
JD
1. The first/last guy on line got an electric shock
2. They played telephone
3. Someone pushed the first guy on to the second guy, who in turn knocked over the third guy, who...
Hurrrm? ..... mabye something along the lines of a wireless FidoNet?
It will be difficult to tap. No Carnivore to watch over us all for our protection.
Kevin
"It's not the cough that carries you off, it's the coffin they carry you off in" O. Nash
Sounds like a Wi-Fi styled Fidonet, for those around here who remember old-school stuff like that...
I know this guy. He is a real fag. He does know his shit though (and he's not really gay).
Think "decentralised network". As gnutella and similar networks decentralise the higher layers of the OSI network model, this could bring about the same revoultion for the lower levels. And if the lower layers AND the upper layers are decentralised, then the network is virtually unstoppable!
...and I am so enthusiastic about all this that I get a woody just thinking about it. ;) )
In an effort to explain this better, and at the risk of being too wordy, let me put it like this:
If you run a gnutella/kazaa/etc node and share a lot of files (like a large enough amount for the RIAA to take note and come down on you), then you have an ISP to answer to. With a ubiquitous "lanlink", there would be no ISP; only your peers.
Right now, of course, this is unrealistic. 802.11b is too short range to be practical, and coverage is still spread too thinly to have a regular massive interconnection. But projects like these serve as a proof of concept of such possibilities, and get people to think about all of this.
(With apologies to Sir John Carmack
Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen
This simply cannot work, for a multitude of reasons. Assuming the network actually could be constructed, the number of hops to get from one place to another would be enourmous. Latency would be incredible, and routing would be a nightmare. How would a packet know where to go? Not to mention that 802.11 is a half-duplex system. It uses one frequency at a time, and cannot listen and receive simultaneously. Ponder this for a moment: A--------B----------C Station B is inbetween stations A and C. A and C cannot hear each other, but B can hear each one, and is supposed to provide a means for A and C to communicate. A starts transmitting and B listens. Meanwhile, C cannot hear A and ALSO starts transmitting at the same time. The result: Packet collision city. This will not yield reliable communication, espescially when the whopping megabit of actual bandwidth is filled up. With more than 3 nodes, the situation will get even worse. 802.11 was simply not designed with anything remotely like this in mind. Using several wireless radios at each node and careful planning, it might be possible to establish a long-distance network (though I highly doubt country wide). But the organization and planning necessary would be far beyond the reach of a volunteer effort like this one. I have also noticed the suggestiong of using 802.11 under FCC Part 47 (amateur radio license). Running high-powered 802.11 is not as easy as getting a ham license. You have to find or build rather a expensive microwave amplifier, and over a certain power level, you must automatically control power. Not to mention that under part 47, you may not use encryption, which is a serious drawback. Bouncing off the moon (as suggested somewhere on this page) will _NOT_ work! Earth-Moon-Earth is possible -- with narrow band morse code and huge amounts of power. Still, it is barely distinguishable from noise. There is not a chance in hell that a wideband signal like 802.11 could even come close to surviving the journey to the moon and back. I think this effort would have a much better chance of succeeding if it was directed in the direction of developing new hardware that is fit for this task. 802.11 will not be able to do the job. It is simply impossible. -Ben
I guess we'll have to find a way to use bowling
balls and white socks in addition to the Pringles
cans.
Wouldn't the curve of the earth make this impossible?
I don't know about the US, but in Australia a local phone calls are defined by what local government area you are calling in, or a designated greater metropolitan area (ie greater Sydney).
For example my families farm spans across a shire Boundary. My Parents and my Brother live on opposite sides and it is a long distance phone call between the two, even though they are only a 4 kilometres away and you can see my Brothers house from my Parents.
Your plan would have some poor bastards having to maintain a long term phone connection at metered long distance rates.
Hams have done something similar. There is a network of 14x.xx mhz repeaters that stretch across the country.
I have not heard of them ever being connected to stretch from coast to coast. But there are several states that have been linked.
The biggest problem will be jumping across the continental divide.
Check this page - from the hackers formerelly known as the l0pht http://www.guerrilla.net/
There might be a way to overcome the issues of power, land, security, and line of site problems with the coast to coast wireless network. NASA is working on a project called Helios, a solar powered airplane flying perpetually in the stratosphere around 100,000 feet. A link can be found at http://www.aerovironment.com/news/news-archive/std ryden.html
-Does anyone know if a standard connection would work at this altitude?
-What would be the range?
It's the radiation superhighway... ;)
perhaps also installing relays in vehicles on the highway and forming a dynamic network?
for instance, if every trucker had a mobile 802.11 relay with an enhanced antenna on his roof, then a highway of truckers could form a dynamically changing network. we could increase the range by using a directional antenna aimed down the highway. add fixed hotspots on the roadside to access the internet, and you could relay packets along the highway from car-to-car until you hit a fixed station.
this could be used in combination with the land-network...
Depends on your own elevation. For example,
l
I know that from the top observation deck on my
old ship (USS Belleau Wood), the horizon was
twelve miles. To a six foot tall person standing
in the middle of Kansas, the horizon is about
3-3.5 miles. Horizon to a 100 foot tall tower
would be about 13.5 miles.
There are a couple of nice calculators online that
provide various horizon figures. Try:
http://pollux.nss.nima.mil/calc/horizon.htm
Crocuta
Id have to buy the antenna as well. I have no use for wireless computer equipment right now (too slow, only have my desktop computer). Ive got more important things to spend money on.
I led a group of amateur radio network builders in the early 1990s to construct a 600 mile long wireless network. We had 300 network backbone nodes on line 24 hours a day and had digital communications without wires in Montreal, Toronto, London, Rochester, Albany, Buffalo, Syracuse, Springfield, Boston, Hartford, NYC, Philladelphia and a miriad of other cities. We built the network entirely on the backs of volunteers. We ran into several stumbling blocks.
1st: as soon as the network got large enough that it was better than what the local governments had, they wanted to partake. As soon as there was money available the leaches came out of the woodwork to block the spread of the volunteer network and promote that THEY were the keepers of the knowledge on how to use the government money to build something better than the mere volunteers would build. This affectively eliminated many sites and entire cities from the network.
2nd: About half the volunteers would only do the project if there was some amount of glory in doing it. Geeks get glory pretty easily so that wasn't a big deal as long as they were on the 'primary' trunk. This effectively eliminated the chance of building a redundant path between any two points.
3rd: It was way too easy in the late 90s to make landline connections via internet that short circuited wireless efforts. This hurt us because of #2 above.
4th: Most newcomers to the system after the system was big were more interested in using our 'free' network to short circuit the $20/month ISP fees than to actually build the wireless network. This put far more bandwidth on our network than we could handle.
5th: People found that establishing a link from point A to point C via point B worked just fine by putting 3 radios at A, B and C on the same frequency, paying no attention to the obvious ramifications of having A and C not hearing each other. Since it worked for the first PING, it must be good, right? Wrong. As soon as 3 or 4 sessions started the network went down. I called this Catastrophic Network Failure Due To Hidden Transmitter Syndrome.
6th: It was very difficult to overcome egotism in the network. This is especially true because we COUNTED on egotism (see #2). The trick is to construct a network Mandate Paper that effectively rewards good network construction (say, by listing the paths by their testable throughput and latency rather than by distance or claimed coverage area.
Our organization was called The North East Digital Association and had 1500 members in 1994. I was the editor and technical directory for various times during the 12 year life of the club (1989->2001)
I propose that we focus on delivering documentation on how to build a chunk of the coast to coast network. We should create a web site that documents sources for decent and inexpensive radios, antennas, switches, coax, enclosures, software, firmware, drivers , and et-cetera.
.. Blub falls right in the middle of the abstractness continuum. -- Paul Graham