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Advice On A New-School Old-School BBS
An anonymous reader asks I am thinking about setting up a local "community" network over WiFi minus internet connection. In other words, I would like to run a small server isolated from the web as an experiment in small scale networks (e.g., serving a café-heavy one-block radius.)
I have plenty of clever ideas -- discussion/gripe boards, weird artistic projects -- anything to bring back the old-school BBS memories where online users were drawn from a single geographic location. But everything I've learned so far is how to act as a small node on someone else's network. How can I make my own -- and make it wireless?
Google doesn't pull much up that I can find: it is mostly targeted towards those building a (free or profit) Internet access point." (Read on for more.)
" Does anybody have sources of information for how to learn about setting up the network I have in mind? Basic tutorials and those covering more advanced issues such as security would be very helpful. Finally, is there anyone out there with real world experience? Beyond imparting technical help, do you have suggestions for implementation? What worked, and what didn't? Did the lack of internet access make the project unpopular? (And if you did provide internet access as a teaser, how did you handle liability and financial issues?)"
(This reminds me of the Community Memory Project; can anyone point to some modern equivalents?)
The tech side to this is relatively simple. What you're going to want to do is to basically create your own IP-based network that isn't the Internet... that means your WiFi should have a DHCP server that hands out 10.x.x.x (unroutable) addresses to anybody who wants to get one to get them on board...
.com, .net, .org and for that matter any "real" web request to a "Hello World!" webserver that explains that your WiFi link isn't offering a connection to the Internet, instead it's a one-of-a-kind location that's offering...
Once there, your DNS universe is gonna be a bit funny. You should map all
From there, you just assign your own server names to whatever have to offer, and serve it using standard Internet technologies for web content.
I think your problem is that you're not searching on the right term on Google. What you want to do is called an "intranet"... and it's really nothing more than setting up Internet-designed IP-based stuff and forgetting to add the link to the outside world.
Now, how you're gonna promote such a thing... well, that's up to you.
I've thought of this myself for my own city. I'm not ready to take on such a project, but in the event that i change my mind, these would be the first issues i would adress:
1) who is paying for equiptment?
2) where is the equiptment going to be located?
3) how many people are acutally interested (is it going to be a wasted effort)?
4) servers to host content
5) Mesures to prevent people from causing problems (dhcp servers, hackers, viri and such)
6) will DNS be used?
7) Scale of network vs ammount of information being communicated
#7 is most important because if you have alot of people using this system as though it were a LAN, general broadcasts will be flooding your entire network. you will need *real routers* to segment parts of the network.
*real routers* means they're not intended for home use (ie: Linksys, d-link, etc...)
#4,5,6 & 7 all assume this network is large - predict this! its less work later if this really takes off for ya.
oh, and Seattle wireless has a network like this so you'll want to take a peak there to see how they have things set up.
You are confusing me with someone who cares.
You're gonna want to redirect all web requests to your BBS web page. The thing that people naturally do when they connect to a hot spot is to try to surf. If they get redirected, they'll see what your hot spot is for. You might also support various file sharing protocols with one visible machine. On that machine have one visible file that says README with instructions on how to surf to the BBS.
People are actually pining for the bad old days of the regional bbs, when we clung desperately to even the most tenuous connection to other nets?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Whatever software you use, make sure it supports the old online games like tradewars, pimpwars, global war, etc! I miss those old games and waiting to have to play my turn. I know there are alternatives on some telnet BBSs, but it's just not the same as waiting to dial in on Terminate or PCPlus and getting that busy signal. If I could be sitting at the local coffee shop, I would happily log in to whatever was available and check recent message boards and games, even though it'll never be the same as it was 15 years ago.
Of course if you wanted to be more old-school you could set up a public-access *NIX login, or even run an old-school BBS type deal via telnet. It would still be a good idea to route people to a website explaining how to get in. For that check out here and here, and here
But while it is not strictly connected to the internet, there is nothing stopping an individual connecting a rooftop access point to a router and then to a home DSL connection. You then create a VPN to the internet via community mesh. This allows you to log on to your own home DSL connection from any location that can access the wifi mesh.
In Australia there is a country-wide IP assignment mechanism to eventually get continent-wide community wifi.
This software provides an "Active Portal" which basically means any web traffic is redirected from wherever it was supposed to go to some specified machine.
Its not a difficult thing to do manually either with iptables. (from memory its something like: iptables -T nat -I prerouting -P tcp -dport 80 -d ! localnet -j DNAT --dest localbox). Just make sure you have a DNS server running that sends all requests back to your IP or else their browser will give them an error.
From there, you just set up and run apache on 'localbox' and you're off!
Ten years ago I ran a BBS with a friend, and it was fairly successful. A lot of it had to do with the fact that we had a lot of content that wasn't around elsewhere. One problem I forsee is soembody mirroring in real time to the web, then you won't have that unique content anymore. I mean you'll still have it, but it won't be unique.
So first off, you have to assume that anything you have will leak off to the larger network. That doesn't mean that all is lost, you just have to make sure that your content is compelling enough to grab people and make them connect up, post, and participate.
I would suggest a MUD as a possible hook to grab people. They're fun, they're community based by nature, and they're addictive. Or something like TradeWars 2002, etc... Back in the BBS days people would log in all the time to play the games, and then once they were on they'd also post messages, exchange files, and communicate.
I would also suggest having informal get-togethers every once in a while. In Ithaca, NY we used to have "geekfests" every month where you could meet and greet people from the BBS community, people would bring their computers and game or show off their latest programming projects, etc... That really anchored the community aspect. Lately Fark has been doing something similar, having parties for FARK users in various cities, and then the photos and some highlights get posted back to the main site. While I don't participate extensively in FARK, it seems like that is building some sense of real community there.
In essence, if you have enough content to hook people, and you facilitate the initial socialization period, you can build a community that will endure.
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Play Six Pack Man. I