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Rural Oregon Leads the Way for Large-Scale WiFi

atkulp writes "While cities and incumbent telecommunications operators are fighting it out over municipal WiFi, it looks like rural Oregan is leading the way for large-scale deployments of WiFi and WiMax." The privately funded $5 million dollar wireless network services a modest 700 square miles and seems to be the only show in town.

21 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Political bribes are accepted practice nowadays? by RKBA · · Score: 4, Interesting
    "Similar wireless projects have been stymied in major metropolitan areas by telephone and cable TV companies, which have poured money into legislative bills aimed at discouraging such competition."

    Doesn't anyone care that our politicians accept bribes (aka; campaign donations) to pass laws that are against the interest public interest (ie; the people the politicians are supposed to represent)?

    CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, Article. II., Section. 4:
    The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

  2. Surveillance? by ChrisGilliard · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "Internet service is only a small part of it. The same wireless system is used for surveillance, for intelligent traffic system, for intelligent transportation, for telemedicine and for distance education," Uhhh, I don't know about this. I don't like the idea of the feds using my internet traffic for "surveillance".

    --
    No Sigs!
  3. $5 million dollar wireless network? by Atario · · Score: 3, Funny

    Is that anything like a number #2 pencil? Or a 10% percent raise?

    --
    "A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
  4. Oregan? by bladx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "it looks like rural Oregan is leading the way" let's spell it Oregon

  5. security of WiFi/WiMax (DoS potentials) by IDkrysez · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From what I've seen, normal Wifi (802.11b and 802.11g) can suffer denial of service fairly easily, even with simply misconfigured clients. I'm not sure if WiMax addresses this, I hope so, but TFA says that the wireless network will cover surveillance presumedly for the chemical depot(s) as well as the shipping yard, and also that various emergency signs can be controlled by WiFi. Assuming they've got these devices and monitoring/control [sub]nets setup securely, it seems that they're still quite vulnerable to a simple denial of service attack. Taking out traffic lights and/or jamming radios is not a new idea to Bad Guys (and Bad Girls), it seems this makes it fairly easy to accomplish criminally-intented DoS with OTS components. I hope there's more to it, possibly a followup article from Wired, which has gotten so damned fufu in recent years.

    Yay Oregon!

          -IDkrysez

    --
    Was it a bat I saw? Racecar. Stack cats. A man, a plan, a cat, a ham, a yak, a yam, a hat, a canal--Panama!
  6. Re:Political bribes are accepted practice nowadays by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I agree, but it still is good to see people making it work, even at such a small scale. I've used wireless since it became cheap enough, using a/b/and now g and better. It has never really been that speedy but, once setup works quite well. The more people who get involved the better it can become.

  7. Re:Political bribes are accepted practice nowadays by threaded · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A bribe in my dictionary is something, such as money or a favor, offered or given to a person in a position of trust to influence that person's views or conduct.

    The case in point: a law maker makes a law in return for campaign contributions. The law maker would not have made the law without the contributions. The contributor would not have contributed without getting the law.

    That is bribery.

    HTH

  8. GOOD! by Foktip · · Score: 5, Funny

    My town is in the same situation. I have developed the equation for political drag on wifi:

    Dp[wifi] = n/(1/2pU^2A*Re)t^S

    where S stands for stupidity factor, and n is the number of telecoms, p ~ politicians, U ~ potential userbase factor, A ~ land area/size, Re ~ Retardation number, and t ~ reasonable time expectation

  9. Um, no they dont. by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There are several community wireless networks that do very well and the one in seattle is larger than this if you count all the hotspot's and their square footage of coverage.

    Maybe for a privately owned pay for use, but not for existing wireless coverage.

    and the funny part is the community wireless projects are done without wimax. 802.11 point to point works very well.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    1. Re:Um, no they dont. by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Square miles is easy, and I suggest you contact the guys at seattle wireless and get more info. I helped my local community wireless based on their designs and we have almost 90 square miles coverage with just a small handful of us. (Note a 802.11 access point with antennas outside and up in the air has pretty good coverage, a ~1000 foot circle of coverage add's up fast as you add access points. Most of our access points have OTS 6dbi outdoot antennas with a 8 degree downtilt at about the 100 foot mark up towers or buildings around town. having less than 6 inches of coax reduces loss quite a bit and having the point to point link right there next to the open access point makes a big difference. Each new access point costs less than $1000.00 to install including equipment and a second point to point dish or helical antenna back at a hub point.

      It is really easy to gain square miles of coverage. remember 2 square miles is a very small amount of land area and can be covered quite easily. espically if you pick and choose covering spots that matter. (the oil/gas trasnfer station and train yard do not need wireless coverage, the park and residential areas do.)

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  10. the Tragedy of the Commons issue... by Douglas+Simmons · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Every time a new large scale public wifi deployment story hits the wires, the topic of preventing abuse while maximizing usability emerges. Maybe it's just my 4:23am weirdness, but I think I'm on to something: Given that all unsuccessfully throttled bandwidth will always get sucked up by people who will inevitably figure out how to procure gigs of entertainment/warez, thereby screwing over people downloading important shit, both, rather all types of data transfering people will be left frustrated. However, as bandwidth improvements continues to enable us one not-to-distant day to transfer real quick-like the highest quality five channel 30 frames per second 1600x1200 pr0n, to use video as an example, bandwidth will eventually surpass what we could possibly need to keep ourselves "busy" and there eventually will be enough public juice to go around without throttling (pingflooding usage being an exception of course).

    Yeah this brings us back to Bill Gates quotes paralleling my pr0n res hypothetical to be good enough to suit us (like the 640KB did), but, I mean, c'mon, won't that video quality suffice?

    The answer is yes, until the market fully adopts 3D holograph pr0n that will require some more zeros and ones.

    I mean, c'mon.

    1. Re:the Tragedy of the Commons issue... by MacGod · · Score: 4, Funny

      4:23AM weirdness? Your time stamp says 4:44AM. Did it really take you 21 minutes to write that post? Be honest now, you were "researching" high-res pr0n at the same time, weren't you?

      --
      "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
    2. Re:the Tragedy of the Commons issue... by Doctor+Memory · · Score: 3, Funny

      Since his home page is at "assambassador.com", I'd say you hit it.

      --
      Just junk food for thought...
  11. This is really really really good news. by freakybob · · Score: 3, Interesting

    On tv shows such as 24 and Spooks, you know how when a bad guy uses his credit card at a gas station and they can immediately pull up the CCTV footage of him doing it? Even though CCTV kind of means that it's tv on a CLOSED CIRCUIT? I think that's what the article means when it says the cloud can be used for "surveillance" - it makes this commonly used artistic license a reality. In the future, I have always hoped there will be wireless internet pretty much everywhere, for free. I'm not sure of a way for the providers to make back their money other than taxes, but I'm sure there will be a solution.

  12. Re:Political bribes are accepted practice nowadays by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Ronald Reagan had this to say: "Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." which along with another statement he made, "The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other." gives an apt description of the process of government.

  13. Re:Political bribes are accepted practice nowadays by douthat · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I happen to have a copy of Black's Law Dictionary here, so I decided to look it up:

    Bribe:
    Any money, goods, right in action, property, thing of value, or any promise or undertaking to give any, asked, given, or accepted, with a corrupt intent to induce or influence action, vote, or opinion of person in any public or official capacity.

    abbreviated, that would be:
    Any money given with intent to influence action of a person in any public or official capacity.

    Given the legal definition of a bribe, I'd say that any incident where a politician accepts campaign contributions from a lobbyist and changes stance on any particular issue or votes favorably towards the cause of the lobbyist should be suspect.

    --
    She loves me: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 She loves me not: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688BF ...
  14. Bribes have always been accepted practice by TubeSteak · · Score: 3, Interesting
    That is bribery.
    So is the entire plea bargaining process in our judicial system

    The general figure that is thrown around is that 90% of cases are settled through plea bargains.

    There have been court cases which have called 'leniancy' and 'plea bargains' as the bribery that they are, but if those decisions were allowed to stand, the criminal justice system would grind to a halt under the caseload.

    here's some guy's book/rant, where he brings up the topic of total immunity. Pretty much the ultimate bribe: We'll forgive your past crimes if you tattle on someone else.

    Immunity, by the way, is a holy grail of sorts in the law making biz. Various industries are always trying to get language slipped into a bill that will grant them immunity from lawsuits.

    Bribes make the world go round

    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
  15. Interesting by Trip+Ericson · · Score: 3, Interesting

    According to the article, this county has roughly the same population that my county has (my county has a little over 12,000 and no traffic lights, compared to the one in the story with 11,000 and no traffic lights). The only difference is that my county would likely put up a fight over having towers scattered all over the place, regardless of what service they were providing.

    This county also blocked a coal-burning power plant, so the people who wanted it moved it 2 miles, just across the county line, and got it built.

    And blocked a landfill in a remote section of the county.

    I'm not sure that a project like this would face such opposition, especially if the towers could also provide cell phone service (which is also very poor in the county). I know that everyone I talk to that can't currently get high-speed internet is always saying "oh there has got to be a way!" especially considering that the phone lines in much of the county are so old that connections above 28.8kbps (that's a 3K transfer rate) are rare.

    I have heard that the school system wants to do something like this, but I know the admin who thought it up, and I don't really want to use something he runs. I heard something about "free but filtered" and I almost said "don't bother" right then and there.

  16. Politics and big business by CharliePete · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A couple of yearss back I started looking into using an alternative ISP for my DSL service. After checking into several that had packages that more closely suited my needs I quickly discovered that the rates that the few providers that offered service in my area were 2 - 3 times higher that what I was already paying for with my telco based ISP. It seems that the FCC regulations that required telcos to open their networks to regional ISPs at discounted rates applied to everyone except Verizon. Economic legislation should only be used to encourage competition not stifle it as we see with any legislation promoted by the Bigs (like the DMCA an the idea of software patents). My hat's off to Mr. Ziari and the people of Hermiston, Oregon for getting this set up on their own.

    --
    "Never limit what you know to what you do", Me
  17. Re:Political bribes are accepted practice nowadays by vandan · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The only way to address this is to stip all parties of all funding, and then allocate money for campaigning from tax revenue. Then you make the accounts books of all parties open to public inspection, as well as bank account and tax details of all politicians AND their families. If people want to 'serve' the public, then they can start out by being honest. And you know what the politicians always say about such invasions of our privacy ...
    Well, if you're not doing anything wrong, then you don't have anything to worry about

    Time they applied this to themselves.

    Equal funding of ALL political parties. Equal media access to ALL political parties. People implicated in bribery get charged with treason.
  18. Re:Political bribes are accepted practice nowadays by kkohlbacher · · Score: 5, Insightful
    >

    I think it's more like: "Stop talking politics! What happened on Big Brother last weekend. OMG look what the girl is wearing!? Fat people SHOULD NOT be wearing Abercrombie and Fitch!?!" Wow. (Sorry, OT rant...) (Most) Americans are elusive and close-minded when it comes to politics. We have the big guys patting us on the head saying, "Everything will be ok. Don't think. Don't question. Go about your regular daily routine and everything will be fine." I met a 26 year old last night that said, "The President will pass the law for Christians. He can do anything!" My response: "No, he is not a dictator. Bills must be passed through the H.O.R and the Senate first." Her response: "Who are they!?!?" She could probably tell me Tom Cruise's foot size and what Jennifer Aniston had for breakfast on the second Monday in August though... Anyways, it looks like its starting to hit the fan finally with Rove, DeLay, Brown and all these other morons. About time. I thought the checks and balances system was done for. These people need to be strung up, cause the little guys are always footing the bill. (Now if I could just figure out a way to get high-speed from a non-conglomerate...) BTW, I'm from Dayton, OH--I think it was more like 45 degrees this weekend Alex...!