Setting up a community wifi network

[Kalambong]

To all,

I am from Malaysia, a country where the common people have to get
Internet access via the local telco monopoly. What we have here is
something known as "Streamyx", which gives us ADSL access to the Net.

It's slow, expensive and most of all, the service is terribly lousy !!

Me and a group of my friends have decided that enough is enough. We
gonna provide an alternative to the people.

Because of the local telco being the monopoly, and have laws to
protect it, we can't compete with the telco on equal term. So, we've
decide that we are going to offer the people a community WIFI network
type of Net access.

Yes, we are going to pull cables (optical) and set up our base
stations. It's going to cost a lot, but someone has to start doing
something, right ?

We've read up many publications available online regarding the WIFI
specification, including the latest "N" version, and because we know
that there's always something out there that we have missed, I'm here
to humbly request that if you know anything out there that you think
would help us, please share it with us.

Thank you !

Some of you may ask ... why not offering the new "Wimax" instead?

Well ... Wimax requires governmental approval, and government approval
is extremely hard to come by. They almost always only give such
amenities to the people who run the monopolies, ie, those politically-
connected, and corrupted-as-hell elites.

Since we gonna provide a community wide Net access to the people, and
we don't wanna bribe the government to do that, WIFI is the only way
to go.

Oh yes, it's gonna be a "paid" service, ie, subscription-based, but we
are not aiming to make a profit out of this venture ... the money
collected is mainly to offset the deployment and maintenance costs.

Again, if you know of anything regarding the deployment of a community
WIFI network, please share it with us.

Thank all of you again !!

Sincerely,
Kalambong

 

[Knight]

To all,

I am from Malaysia, a country where the common people have to get
Internet access via the local telco monopoly. What we have here is
something known as "Streamyx", which gives us ADSL access to the Net.

It's slow, expensive and most of all, the service is terribly lousy !!

Me and a group of my friends have decided that enough is enough. We
gonna provide an alternative to the people.

Because of the local telco being the monopoly, and have laws to
protect it, we can't compete with the telco on equal term. So, we've
decide that we are going to offer the people a community WIFI network
type of Net access.

Yes, we are going to pull cables (optical) and set up our base
stations. It's going to cost a lot, but someone has to start doing
something, right ?

We've read up many publications available online regarding the WIFI
specification, including the latest "N" version, and because we know
that there's always something out there that we have missed, I'm here
to humbly request that if you know anything out there that you think
would help us, please share it with us.

Thank you !

Some of you may ask ... why not offering the new "Wimax" instead?

Well ... Wimax requires governmental approval, and government approval
is extremely hard to come by. They almost always only give such
amenities to the people who run the monopolies, ie, those politically-
connected, and corrupted-as-hell elites.

Since we gonna provide a community wide Net access to the people, and
we don't wanna bribe the government to do that, WIFI is the only way
to go.

Oh yes, it's gonna be a "paid" service, ie, subscription-based, but we
are not aiming to make a profit out of this venture ... the money
collected is mainly to offset the deployment and maintenance costs.

Again, if you know of anything regarding the deployment of a community
WIFI network, please share it with us.

Thank all of you again !!

Sincerely,
Kalambong

Kalambong,

If you are going wireless and need some Antennas look me up!
biquadantenna.com
I'll give a discount for quanity purchase!

Good luck on your endeavor, sounds like fun.

Pete

 

[Kalambong]

Kalambong,

If you are going wireless and need some Antennas look me up!
biquadantenna.com
I'll give a discount for quanity purchase!

Good luck on your endeavor, sounds like fun.

Pete

Glad to get your reply. In fact, we need to purchase a lot of stuffs !

But before all that, can you please point me to the resources where I
can read up the technical details on community wifi deployment?

And if you can, please help me on the following questions .....

The technical details that I've read so far have all told me that the
Wifi "n" specification utilizes the 5GHz band, plus the 2.4GHz band
that "b/g"use, for a total of 1.1GHz. Am I correct in that?

I've also read that the Wifi "n" has a typical Data Rate of 74 Mbit/s
and MAX Data Rate of 300 Mbit/s (using 2 streams)

To totally saturate the 1.1GHz bandwidth given, this means we may have
to use more than one WIFI router (up to 15!!) per broadcast station.

My first question to you is ---
Is it possible to hook up that many WIFI routers to form one WIFI
broadcast station?

Since our deployment is to serve as much people as possible, which
means, we may not be able to give any ONE user the 300Mbit/s speed
(after all, we have a total of only 1.1 GHz bandwidth, translating to
a theoretically max of 1.1 Gbit/s throughput for ALL concurrent users
served by ONE base station.

We are thinking that maybe we would place a limit on the bandwidth per
user, maybe the maximum of 2Mbit/s per user.

My second question to you is ---
How would we achieve that?

If we are to put many WIFI routers (up to 15) in ONE single broadcast
station, do we need to hook up 15 pairs of antennas for those
routers ?

And my last question is ---
How to best boost the GAIN for the antennas?

Thank you !!

 

[Paul]

Glad to get your reply. In fact, we need to purchase a lot of stuffs !

But before all that, can you please point me to the resources where I
can read up the technical details on community wifi deployment?

And if you can, please help me on the following questions .....

The technical details that I've read so far have all told me that the
Wifi "n" specification utilizes the 5GHz band, plus the 2.4GHz band
that "b/g"use, for a total of 1.1GHz. Am I correct in that?

I've also read that the Wifi "n" has a typical Data Rate of 74 Mbit/s
and MAX Data Rate of 300 Mbit/s (using 2 streams)

To totally saturate the 1.1GHz bandwidth given, this means we may have
to use more than one WIFI router (up to 15!!) per broadcast station.

My first question to you is ---
Is it possible to hook up that many WIFI routers to form one WIFI
broadcast station?

Since our deployment is to serve as much people as possible, which
means, we may not be able to give any ONE user the 300Mbit/s speed
(after all, we have a total of only 1.1 GHz bandwidth, translating to
a theoretically max of 1.1 Gbit/s throughput for ALL concurrent users
served by ONE base station.

We are thinking that maybe we would place a limit on the bandwidth per
user, maybe the maximum of 2Mbit/s per user.

My second question to you is ---
How would we achieve that?

If we are to put many WIFI routers (up to 15) in ONE single broadcast
station, do we need to hook up 15 pairs of antennas for those
routers ?

And my last question is ---
How to best boost the GAIN for the antennas?

Thank you !!

First, you need to understand why so many of these projects failed.
Perhaps too much equipment was purchased, without first thinking
about how it would be used.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_wireless_network

"St. Cloud’s muni Wi-Fi cloud is only partly 'cloudy' "
http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=1046

"St. Cloud Sees Muni-WiFi Woes"
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060424/090245.shtml

"the download isn't great, around 2mbps, but upload is at least
4 times better than cable, at around 128kbps top speed"

"The download speeds are a consistent 4 Mb and uploading is
between 500-800 Kbps"

So to start with, those are the kinds of rates you'll be offering
people. There are limits to how many people can be supported. Some
of your customers might receive different performance than others.

*******

This site is purely for your amusement. This is *not* a practical
part of any subscription service. But I like this idea, of
private individuals doing their own distribution schemes.
The enemy of this system is fog. And the data rate is too low to
use for backhaul.

http://ronja.twibright.com/about.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RONJA

*******

You might also consider visiting an online bookstore, and
see what books have been written on planning large scale
wifi networks.

Another alternative, is to visit your local university. Go to
the electrical engineering department, and find a professor who
teaches about radio technologies. That person may have a better
understanding of the details.

Finally, don't underestimate the problems caused by governments,
laws, and monopolies. You might be almost allowed to finish the
installation of millions of dollars of equipment, only to have
a "stop work" order issued by a court. Make sure that there
are no legal obstacles to competing with a monopoly telecom
provider.

Paul

 

[david]

To all,

I am from Malaysia, a country where the common people have to get
Internet access via the local telco monopoly. What we have here is
something known as "Streamyx", which gives us ADSL access to the Net.

It's slow, expensive and most of all, the service is terribly lousy !!

Me and a group of my friends have decided that enough is enough. We
gonna provide an alternative to the people.

Because of the local telco being the monopoly, and have laws to protect
it, we can't compete with the telco on equal term. So, we've decide that
we are going to offer the people a community WIFI network type of Net
access.

Yes, we are going to pull cables (optical) and set up our base stations.
It's going to cost a lot, but someone has to start doing something,
right ?

We've read up many publications available online regarding the WIFI
specification, including the latest "N" version, and because we know
that there's always something out there that we have missed, I'm here to
humbly request that if you know anything out there that you think would
help us, please share it with us.

Thank you !

Some of you may ask ... why not offering the new "Wimax" instead?

Well ... Wimax requires governmental approval, and government approval
is extremely hard to come by. They almost always only give such
amenities to the people who run the monopolies, ie, those politically-
connected, and corrupted-as-hell elites.

Since we gonna provide a community wide Net access to the people, and we
don't wanna bribe the government to do that, WIFI is the only way to go.

Oh yes, it's gonna be a "paid" service, ie, subscription-based, but we
are not aiming to make a profit out of this venture ... the money
collected is mainly to offset the deployment and maintenance costs.

Again, if you know of anything regarding the deployment of a community
WIFI network, please share it with us.

Thank all of you again !!

Sincerely,
Kalambong

If your uses want internet access, then you'll still need to depend on
your local monopoly.

 

[Penang]

It's nice that all of your subscribers can communicate with one another
but will you be able to get a fast connection to the Internet for all to
share?


















- Show quoted text -

Yes, we can get 1Giga-bit-per-second hookup for each and every access
point. I believe that is fast enough for Wifi-N, which covers the
spectrum of 100MHz of 2.4 GHz and 1000MHz of the entire 5GHz.

 

[Penang]

First, you need to understand why so many of these projects failed.
Perhaps too much equipment was purchased, without first thinking
about how it would be used.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_wireless_network

"St. Cloud’s muni Wi-Fi cloud is only partly 'cloudy' "http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=1046

"St. Cloud Sees Muni-WiFi Woes"http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060424/090245.shtml

    "the download isn't great, around 2mbps, but upload is at least
     4 times better than cable, at around 128kbps top speed"

    "The download speeds are a consistent 4 Mb and uploading is
     between 500-800 Kbps"

So to start with, those are the kinds of rates you'll be offering
people. There are limits to how many people can be supported. Some
of your customers might receive different performance than others.

*******

This site is purely for your amusement. This is *not* a practical
part of any subscription service. But I like this idea, of
private individuals doing their own distribution schemes.
The enemy of this system is fog. And the data rate is too low to
use for backhaul.

http://ronja.twibright.com/about.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RONJA

*******

You might also consider visiting an online bookstore, and
see what books have been written on planning large scale
wifi networks.

Another alternative, is to visit your local university. Go to
the electrical engineering department, and find a professor who
teaches about radio technologies. That person may have a better
understanding of the details.

Finally, don't underestimate the problems caused by governments,
laws, and monopolies. You might be almost allowed to finish the
installation of millions of dollars of equipment, only to have
a "stop work" order issued by a court. Make sure that there
are no legal obstacles to competing with a monopoly telecom
provider.

    Paul- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Thanks for your reply !!