2003 Seattle Wireless Field Day

propellerhead writes "Today is 2003 Wireless Field Day for Seattle Wireless. 'Similar to amateur radio field day, a mock emergency network will be created this summer using off-the-shelf 802.11b hardware, computers, and battery/gas power supplies. Network applications such as VoIP (Voice over IP or Internet Telephony), streaming audio and video, file sharing, chat, network games, and others will be implemented across a multi-hop wireless infrastructure. If resources allow, the goal is to connect this mobile network to the existing Seattle Wireless network, which currently exists in the Seattle area. This network can also provide access to the internet and our community network partners like Seattle Pacific University and Council House Projects.'"

Comments

Time to toss out my microwave

[EDA Wizard]

Great News!!!

I will no longer need to use my microwave to cook my popcorn. I'll be able to just leave it near the window and POP POP POP away!!!

Google Link....

[zippity8]

Time to karma whore cuz the server's getting slow ;)

Google Cache

This is a great idea though -- hopefully it doesn't get as annoying as mock emergency fire drills did back in residence at college.

Emergency network, eh?

[wackoman2112]

Network applications such as VoIP (Voice over IP or Internet Telephony), streaming audio and video, file sharing, chat, network games, and others will be implemented...

Like people are really going to need to chat, share files, and watch streaming video during an emergency.

Re:Emergency network, eh?

[jcdick1]

Well, as they said, perhaps with an access point at a hospital or emergency management center, they could demonstrate the feasibility of remote triage by video.

Re:Emergency network, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look back at history, the first need after food, clean water, shelter and clothing is porn. I think it's a little much to expect Seattlites to go back to clay tablets and cave paintings of doin' the nasty just because of an earthquake or nuclear attack or massive Redmond-centred software failure. No sheep would be safe.

You just have to learn what "chat", "share files" and "streaming video" actually mean.

Re:Emergency network, eh?

[poptones]

You're kidding, right? All three of those things would be extremely useful in an organizational structure. The only thing I see mentioned in the article that would NOT be "needed" in an emergency is one thing you didn't mention: games.

Re:Emergency network, eh?

[Glonoinha]

You miss the point, or more likely you are getting me thinking about a more important point.

Yea, kudos for being able to create an information network that can handle running without a power source (by providing your own power gen hardware.) As we saw when NY NY was under attack two years ago the problem isn't lack of electricity. The real problem is that during an emergency everybody tries to use the network at once (ie, phone system, cell phone network, etc...) and just overloads it. In the event of a real emergency it needs to handle a slashdotting of users trying to get through at once, and the system as described (an 802.11b network running hardware a bunch of hackers bought at Frys) isn't gonna cut it.

Neat experiment, though.

Re:Emergency network, eh?

[spoonist]

Like people are really going to need to chat, share files, and watch streaming video during an emergency.

Dude, I don't know about you, but in an emergency, nothing is more comforting than a high bandwidth link to download me some fine pr0n.

Necessary Systems

[TheVidiot]

... file sharing, chat, network games, and others...

"Power out... disaster... locusts... must... play... Unreal Tournament... critical..."

Because we all know...

[Fnkmaster]

That those 802.11b wireless access points will work really well when the power grid dies. Heh. The reason amateur radio is useful in these scenarios is that it only takes one guy with a generator to communicate with people far away, who can relay information to authorities and media agencies. Anyway, I guess I'm just missing the point, but it is somewhat comforting to know that the sky may be falling, but I'll still be able to bounce some HTTP requests for autopr0n.com through the emergency 802.11b network and get a last wank in before the world comes tumbling down.

Re:Because we all know...

[interiot]

It's true that you can get a reasonable amount of information across with a minimum amount of power and complication with ham radios.

But ham radios don't provide as much low-latency networked on-the-fly information access that data networks do. Eg. imagine a city could query every stoplight to see if it's out... and the computer could sumarize the findings on a map... you'd never want to do this sort of tedious data mining over voice or morse code. And things like video-streams from street cameras are nearly impossible without having a separate ham sit next to each camera.

I don't know that this sort of broad information access is necessarily required in an emergency now in most places, but still, there are a few parts of cities that are currently blanketed with street-cameras. And emergency information like this will only become more prevalent in the future.

Sniffing?

[Mrs. Grundy]

I'm no expert when it comes to this stuff so I'll just ask...

Are most people who enjoy using these giant, free, wireless networks still checking there mail with good old, send the password plaintext, POP? Are networks like this just a giant smorgasborg a free information floating around for anybody to grab? Considering your average Joe uses the same password for everything I would think this would be problematic.

What security mechanisms are place that makes this difficult?

Wireless Day 1, how about some advice?

[LibertineR]

Went to the Fry's grand opening, got the Linksys 802.11G/B Router and the G card for my laptop. Setting it up today, so how about some advice from those of you familiar with this stuff?

I did set the MAC address filter and I'm using WEP and planing to PPTP into my other firewall in front of my home network, instead of putting the Linksys behind my firewall. Any advice would be welcome.

Great event, had lots of fun

[RoundSparrow]

The point of this event is more to meet people than to do any real technical stuff.

The networking was not that difficult, getting computers / custom AP software to work seemed to take time. Doing the distance we did over open wawa was not very hard.

Too Bad Slashdot posting was 8 hours too late :)

Yes, you can get a sunburn in Seattle. Especially if you are bald at 35 and too stupid to consider it.

outcome with pictures

[adpowers]

Hello all. I attended the demonstration at the Alki site. I'll try and give a basic description of what it was like.

We used a 18(?) dbi Yagi to connect to someone in the Columbia tower (the big black building, the tallest in Seattle). We also used a 24 dbi parabolic to connect to the Magnolia site. First we got internet working by relaying through a guys office in the tower. I got over 250 kB/s at some points. It took us a while longer, but we eventually got the connection to Magnolia working. Actually, Ken Caruso did most of the work fixing the Soekris box on the Magnolia end (it was configured for a different network). We had a little bit of problems with the DNS for the internet access, but that was eventually fixed. We were all able to get into an IRC room and use iChat, but we weren't successful on getting iChat AV to work across the main link. I think it may have to do with the fact that all the computers were behind a NAT to the internet. Rendezvous, unfortunately, didn't work across the link because we were routing.

It was actually a sight to see. We had solar panels, batteries, a generator, lots of tables, tons of cables, video cameras, still cameras, cell phones with cameras, FRS radios, etc. Actually, you can see it. I have pictures on my website:

http://www.andrewhitchcock.org/gallery/2003wireles sfieldday

Andrew

first ground to air to air to ground link, almost.

[loraksus]

I drove up from Portland w/ a friend to attend - and we attempted the first ground to air to air to ground link - the intent was to get alki connected with the air craft, which would link to the heli which would link to magnolia. The two are a good distance apart - and were eventually connected using a couple ground based antennas.

Best part was when we got clearance to circle right in Boing Field's takeoff path. ATC was diverting 737s, etc around us. t'was great.

However, laptop batteries and equipment died and the idea with it. It was really fun, we learned quite a bit and have ideas to make it work the next time. We had taped an omni to the step of the airplane, and that was pretty interesting, worked surprisingly well.

I'd post pics as I was flying in the front passenger's seat, but I like my upstream bandwidth, thank you very much. I'm sure someone will provide a host eventually.