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Temporary Wireless Service For An Outdoors Event?
SBECK writes "I've been asked to come up with an estimate of how much it would cost to provide wireless internet service for a small convention being held at a campground. That would entail renting or buying enough wireless access points to give coverage to the area and getting temporary satellite Internet service. Unfortunately, I've never done any of this, so I'm floundering. I'd love to get some pointers from anyone who has any experience setting up something like this. What ISP services provide temporary satellite service for something like this?"
I don't know much about this kind of technology, but I know that there are similar setups going on at the Burning Man festival every year. Maybe it's worth looking around the site to see if you can find anecdotes and contact info for people who've done the same.
Also, the Mars Society uses satellite hookups to keep in touch with its field stations. Perhaps they can give you some pointers?
Depending on where the event is held and how well cellphone signals can be received, you might also want to try a mobile phone carrier. A lot of the larger UK events like Glastonbury are, I believe, getting support in this area from larger telcos. It may be more complex, and will probably involve getting everyone a new PCMCIA card, but it could be an option.
Sorry I couldn't be of more help; sadly IANA techie, but I hope these couple of snippets I've seen around the net are of use to you.
"It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue." -- Zork
It depends on the country that you are in..but most of the small sercice providers will be able to help sort something like that out for you.. try talking to them..if they can not help directly they most likey know a company that can.
Even if you offer them a stand at the event to allow them to show off their services, you can probley get them to help out!!!
I know the manager, but not sure if they have what you need.
http://www.eurorent.ie
Last year at the Mid Atlantic Star Party, directway was gatewayed into a field near Robbins, NC for a large group of amateur astronomers. www.masp.org now has the plans for 2004 and the 'internet' activity links to an invalid page. It worked quite well. They used an MS box for the gw, you could use the dw6000, I suppose, to better advantage. They also had multiple linux boxes running local web servering and the like. Not sure if they used squid or what but if so, it was a transparent proxy method. Cheers, Russ