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Build a Wireless ISP on Linux

Posted by Zonk on from the do-it-yourself-kit dept.

JuiceMan wrote to mention an article that goes into the the specifics of setting up a Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP) using Linux and a few easy scripts. From the article: "Wireless clients will have questions, and the Linux-based management tools I'll discuss will help you answer them. Here are some quick examples of how you can answer typical user questions - Question: 'Is the Internet down today? Why can't my browser find www.flakyhost.com?' Solution: First, check your wireless network with the scanap script; it will tell you about the wireless signal quality of all associated clients, including the one that's giving you problems. Then, check IP connectivity with the pingall script; it will tell you about the latency to your ISP's gateway, the DNS, and all your clients, including the problematic one. If these two scripts establish that your network is OK, try www.flakyhost.com."

6 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. I'm a bit torn. by mikeophile · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Another WISP provides (expensive) connectivity from a nearby mountaintop, so I decided to subscribe to that service and share the bandwidth and cost with my neighbors.

    On the one hand, yay for him, he's giving his neighbors bandwidth cheaper than his competition.

    On the other hand, I wonder how long he'd be able to resell that bandwidth once his upstream WISP found out what he was doing?

    1. Re:I'm a bit torn. by anthony_dipierro · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Isn't it great that we live in a society based on free market capitalism yet when someone tries to compete with an ISP immediately someone worries about whether or not they're doing something wrong?

    2. Re:I'm a bit torn. by anthony_dipierro · · Score: 2, Insightful

      In order to make a tower site cost-effective, "overselling" the bandwidth is the only way to go at low cost consumer prices.

      Or you could just limit the bandwidth per day/week/month.

      The internet was designed to be an ad-hoc peer-to-peer network. ISPs need to keep this in mind when they try to restrict reselling. It won't work, because the network wasn't designed to allow it.

  2. Hacking the Linksys WRT54G by herve76 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Remember this previous article:
    http://slashdot.org/articles/04/06/01/0640250.shtm l?tid=126&tid=137&tid=193&tid=215&tid=95

    I think the best way to install a wisp is still with WRT54G.

    Hervé Fulchiron
    Zinside, Provider of Open Source solutions
    http://www.zinside.com/

  3. Re:How about by uglyduckling · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Actually, I think it was about 3 scripts... Doesn't sound like you have any experience running a network that's purely wireless with client machines that you have no direct control over. I did do that for 18 months, and never put the time in to write scripts like that - I had to log in to each access point, look at the signal strength to each client, scan through the logs to see if the connection was being dropped. I did all of that by typing a few simple commands at a prompt, but it was a pain in the a**.

    I'm not sure why you think this guy's networking skills are poor, but you seem to have overlooked the fact that he *wrote* those scripts - so he invested some time to save himself some time - sounds like a pretty standard geek response to me. If I every ended up running community wireless again, I would definitely spend the first few weeks writing some simple maintenance scripts before letting the neighbourhood know that there's (nearly-)free wireless available.

  4. Re:www.flakyhost.com by Super+Nicko · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You can guarentee that you will be able to reach it soon. Surely some /.'er (or evil spam host) will pick it up now!