Austin Becoming Wi-Fi Hot Spot

Omega1045 writes "The Austin Chronicle is running an interesting article on how Austin is fast becoming the Wi-Fi Capital of the Free (as in beer) Wireless World. With the industry standardization board Wi-Fi Alliance moving to Austin earlier this year, and groups like Austin Free-Net helping local businesses, the article quotes Austin has having more hotspots 'than anywhere else on the planet'. While this article does quite a bit of bragging about Austin, it also does a great job of highlighting how businesses and local non-profits can work together to promote and profit from free Wi-Fi Internet access. This provides an excellent model for other cities to follow using tools like Less Network."

Comments

Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm moving to Austin. Err, once I move out of my parent's basement.

They'll need to do some catchup :-)

[dirkx]

http://www.wirelessleiden.nl/english/ is well in the lead with over 50 nodes (not just hotspots) on churches, schools, offices and other tall buildings :-) And all open source to boot (fetch yours at http://wleiden.webweaving.org:8080/svn/node-config ) or persue the configuration http://www.wleiden.net/cgi-bin/g_list.pl and actual status: http://uuu.wirelessleiden.nl/nodemap.jpg.

Dw.

Urm what?

[gotr00t]

You have obviously NEVER EVEN been to Austin. This city itself is enormous, with a population of well over a million by now. The UT campus is a mere 500 acres north of downtown (not counting the other properties), with a total population of less than 100,000. Sure, its a huge university, the largest in the world, but it is still just one part of a much larger city.

What you're saying might be true for towns say, Bryan College Station in Texas, where Texas A&M is located.

Re:Urm what?

[Omega1045]

Totally with you, except the population. Austin is at around 656,562. I bet if you add Cedar Park, Pfluegeville, Round Rock, and all of the others, you might have close to 1 million.

Re:Urm what?

[Glonoinha]

I've been to Austin, it is massive. Takes an hour to get where you want to go, driving full speed on the freeway. And yes the city is a hotbed of open WiFi.

If Hanlon had a corollary, however, it would be : 'Never attribute to good heart or generosity that which is easily explained by ignorance.' Just because a city has a Fry's (electronics wholesaler, sells wifi dirt cheap) and ten thousand unsecured wireless access points, don't think for a second that ten thousand people all decided to to donate bandwidth out of the goodness of their hearts. More likely scenario : get home / to the office, plug it in, watch the blinkenlighten, It Works!, drink beer, surf Internet.

Then again, Texans (and Austin'ites) are pretty good at heart people, some of them may know they are open and leave it so people can use it.

Re:Saturation

[LostCluster]

The abundant Wi-Fi saturation in the area is actually causing interference between access points. The over-propagation in the area is incredible.

WiFi's collision domain is with anything else that's transmitting on the same frequencies within the 2.4gHz/5.8gHz bands. It's not just your subnet anymore, it's everybody transmitting there.

Just like how these new "Turbo WiFi" devices are suggesting using the entire 2.4gHz range instead of just 1/3 of it like the proper channel-based protcol suggests, it's a tragedy of the commons waiting to happen. When too many people are using WiFi, it'll become unusable for everybody.

Oversaturation is a big issue. WiFi shouldn't be painting a whole city in places where it wasn't asked for.

Re:More to the point

[Omega1045]

The University of Texas at Austin makes up about 90%

That may have been closer to true 15 years ago, but not now. With the huge expansion of Austin during the dot com years, the UT Campus doesn't make up anywhere near 90% of the city. Heck, it didn't make up 50% 15 years ago. Have you been to Austin, and if so, did you make it out of downtown?

The "Northern Coridor" up highways US 183 and IH 35 are where many of the tech companies are located (IBM, Motorola, Dell), and where many of the techies live. It is hard not to find a coffee shop in the this area that doesn't have wi-fi, at least from my experience. And I would be willing to bet most of those campuses are WiFi.

In closing, RTFA.

Not quite the world's WiFi leader

[node 3]

Portland's Personal Telco Project has well over 100 free hotspots throughout the city. Austin Free Net has 36 (based on their listing of hotspots which have libraries listed from 1-22 and other places as A-O). The city of Portland is also working, in cooperation with the local university, the city government, and various megacorps (such as Intel) to blanket the entire city with free WiFi (see Free For All).

But, it doesn't matter much who wins. What's great is that independent groups are popping up all across the country (and presumably, the planet). I know that Portland, Boston, and Austin all have growing free WiFi organizations, and I'm sure there are others.

Do you know how nice it is to take your iBook, Vaio, whatever, down to the local park and have free high-speed WiFi access? Thanks to these people (and others!), some day you will.

Let me tell you, it's nice. It's the sort of thing you'd expect from the 21st century.

Re:I don't get the Wi-Fi buzz.

[jwcorder]

Dude, the buzzzzz is there is NO WIRE! No one every said it would replace a wired connection. If you are trying to get speed, stay with a wire. But you want to enjoy surfing the web from the recliner, or while taking a dump, wireless is more then a convient way to access the internet.

802.11 B isn't the way to go anymore either. Move on over to 802.11 g and experience faster data transfer. The basics are that you have to know what kind of monster you are trying to attack here. What kind of building do you live in? Do you have copper pipes? What about plaster walls? Do you have a microwave oven and a keg-a-rator next to where you are going to be surfing the web? If so, you need to step you the transmission a little. Do some googling on boosting your signal.

I don't want to flame you, but you can't kill a technology that has tons of potiential and may alter the future only because you have had some bad experiences. For all you know, it could have been that 2.4 ghz cordless phone you bought at Best Buy that killed your connection. Or maybe you may leave in a nuclear fall out bunker. I bet a Wi-Fi WAP wouldn't transmit 10 ft in one of those.

its true.

[rebelcool]

a friend and i were driving among the streets of austin (not just downtown or near UT, but in and around other places) and it is possible to simply jump from hotspot to hotspot while waiting for the light at an intersection or while driving around.

They're everywhere. Virtually every decent pub, restaurant and coffee shop here has free wireless.

"wireless"?

[Twid]

I chuckle every time I hear about "wireless" networks because every time I wander into starbuck's or any other spot with wireless everyone with a computer is jockeying for the power outlets. There usually aren't nearly enough outlets for the number of people who need power. Heck, when people bring laptops into one-hour meetings in my workplace they are usually jockeying for outlets too.

So, maybe we're seeing a large deployment of "one less wire" networks, but until battery life gets much better, I don't think it's fair to say wireless. Most laptops and pda-type gadgets are lucky to get two hours of "real" usage in the field. By "real" I mean actually using the laptop or gadget on the wireless to surf the internet while, for example, playing music. (Everyone in these coffee shops seems to have headphones plugged into their laptop when I see them.)

Just an observation, not a critique on the article.

Re:"wireless"?

[Twid]

Sorry to reply to my own comment, but I looked closer at the picture in the article of Richard MacKinnon, captioned as part of the Austin Wireless City Project. He has a rather conspicuous power cable plugged into his laptop.

Wireless? I think not. :)

Re:"wireless"?

[eggboard]

This is a neat part of the design of newer restaurants and coffeeshops: they have to plan for more juice!

A coffeeshop that opened last July in Seattle near my office had put in several outlets before they opened, and they have free Wi-Fi. About two weeks later, overwhelmed with laptops -- and doing great business -- they installed a whole strip of outlets and changed their table layout for more two-person tables. The place sometimes has 8 to 10 people working in it, all of them buying coffee and contributing to a nice air of comradeliness.

Re:Saturation

[randyest]

You do realize that WEP can't magically remove interfering signals, right? It will prevent you from connecting to them, but it can't remove the impact of the interference (collisions, reduced bandwidth, and in extreme circumstances, no bandwidth.)

Oh, and I think other OSes support WEP as well. Not just windows :)

Re:Give me a better reason to move to Austin!

[Sponge Bath]

1. Crushing traffic gridlock
2. Rebulican redistricting that disenfranchises Austin voters.
3. Expensive housing (maybe not as bad as Portland)
4. Large pool of technical talent chasing fewer jobs

I live here, and I actually like it. But in the last 10 years or so this city has a developed desperate, almost pathological need to pimp itself with dubious claims of superiority. "Live Music Capital of the World"! "Wi-Fi Hotspot!" It gets a little old, and should be taken with a grain of salt.

Why? Lightning!

[Temkin]

Having just moved to the Austin area from Silicon Valley....

Wireless is very popular here because they get more lightning strikes per week than Kali gets in a year! Having everything connected with wires is like playing russian roulette. I'm going to need at least 3 more APC UPS's.

On the upside... The BBQ is excelent, and gas/diesel/rent/food/etc... is cheap. :)

Re:free = profit?

[chia_monkey]

It's not as baffling as it sounds. Setting up a WiFi hotspot doesn't cost that much these days. A company that provides free wireless can obviously have an advantage over similar companies that don't have free WiFi when catering to patrons that are looking for WiFi. Just as some travelers may want to stay at a hotel that has a free pool as opposed to a hotel without one, a hotel (or coffee shop, or...) can draw more people simply because they have free WiFi. So for minimal cost, you can fill that room in your hotel or have more people stopping at your restaurant. Profit!

They should exploit Austin's unique advantage...

[gojomo]

...and WiFi the Austin Moontowers.

Wardriving Austin?

[drewzhrodague]

For those of you interested in wardriving or what's out there, here's a look at Austin Texas from a wardriver's point of view.

Re:Saturation

[randyest]

You still don't get it. OP said:

Oversaturation is a big issue. WiFi shouldn't be painting a whole city in places where it wasn't asked for.

Then you said:

I think the key to oversaturation isn't to stop people to making these cities 100% covered. If I am reading you correctly, I infer that you are saying that you don't want to be sitting if you house and having the free connection overlapping your DSL or Cable Modem. Well if you set your WAP up with WEP encryption, you won't have this problem.

And that's where you were wrong. I'm sure the OP knows how to select the SSID -- that's not the problem. The problem is the nagative perfomance impact of collisions from loads of wifi signals overlapping, especially high-bandwidth "g" networks, and new implementations that reduce the number of channels available to improve bandwidth on one link at the expense of everyone in the area.

Your post flat-out said WEP would eliminate the problem. It doesn't. Hence the (well-deserved) +4 Informative.