How make my whole town wireless?

I live in a small 25k Midwestern town

Is it possible to make the entire town wireless without having to get FCC permission?

Sort of a grass roots get a bunch of citizens together and just do it?

Reply to
me
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Exactly, there are a number of such efforts underway. IMHO, the setup, maintenance, and support issues would swamp anyone, but they are trying it. IIRC, at least one of them is building a mesh, which would add some redundancy, while probably sucking up most of the bandwidth keeping the mesh alive. 8*)

TANSTAAFL...

Reply to
William P.N. Smith

snipped-for-privacy@privacy.net hath wroth:

Yep. 2.4GHz and 5.7GHz wireless does NOT require an FCC licence. The new 3.65Ghz band requires only registration.

Here's an exercise for you. Let's say you build a mesh network and you buy a mess of Tropos mesh poletops. Figure on about $1,000/ea.

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you've got a downtown area, you'll need at least 5 of these per square mile. How many square miles do you plan to cover?

Aggregate bandwidth tends to diminish rapidly after going through several hops in a mesh. Therefore, you need at least one wired T1 for perhaps every 5 poletops. At T1 is about $600/month plus hardware. How many T1's are you going to need?

The backhaul into the internet will also require that purchase bandwidth from an ISP. Figure about $200/month per T1.

The midwest is mostly flat. However, if you have hills or obstructions, you'll need to add extra poletops to cover those hidden areas. The more hills, the worse it gets.

Of course, you don't just install such a system and have it run itself. You need monitoring, abuse management, user support, maintenance, insurance, and everything a regular ISP has. Are you ready to go into the ISP business? Who gets the phone calls at midnight? In general, you'll need to contract out the operation to an existing ISP.

Don't forget you need the cooporation of the city. If they want to be mean and nasty, you'll find building permits to be difficult to get. I'm sure you'll enjoy rubbing elbows with the politicians.

There's always your friends in the cellular, two-way land mobile, DSL/cable modem, and telecom business. They consider municipal wireless to be a threat and specialize in making life miserable for anyone that tries. Be prepared to have regulations and laws passed to make your life difficult.

Then, there is the tin foil hat crowd. "You're irradiating me" is the traditional war cry. Be prepared to deal with the lunatic fringe and defend yourself against specious health claims.

If you're still interested, supply some detail and I'll throw in some specific reading material in municipal networks. Meanwhile, start here:

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various reports in the lower right corner are worth a skim.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

You're not kidding, one of the concerns about putting cellphone antennas on a nearby water tower was that it'd make the water radioactive.

Reply to
William P.N. Smith

You just have to promote the added benifits such as reducing bacteria levels in the water system, proactive reduction of the weak cancer cells in the body before they can get to be a problem, and reduced heating cost in the winter.

Reply to
Si Ballenger

What got me to thinking abt it was an article in recent PC Mag abt a mesh network

I just it was very cool and wondered if it was low cost and easy to do. And if it was would look into doing it in my small home town.

Reply to
me

Milwaukee is putting in a city wide wireless network. I don't think FCC approval was needed.

Reply to
Dan

Understood Jeff....all the potential problems that is.

How abt just doing say my block or two from my own house?

Reply to
me

That's quite a reduction in scale.

It's fairly easy. Put an access point and antenna on your roof. Connect the AP through a router to your DSL or cable modem. Figure out some way to keep the hackers out (hint: WPA with RADIUS athentication). Figure out some method of billing the pisses off the fewest number of potential customers. Put a sign in the lawn saying "Open for Business".

I don't know how big your "block" happens to be. (Hint: numbers are nice). With just the stock antennas found on most laptops, your range will be about 300ft maximum. Add a few tress, buildings, hills, and whatever in the way, and it will be much less. If you have interference from any other nearby wireless networks, even less.

Search Google for hot spot hardware, software, and services. I have some favorites, but since I have no clue what you have to work with, how many users you plan to service, what manner of bandwidth you plan to offer, and if there are any other limitations, I can't offer a specific recommendation.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

I recommend web browser type access control (instead of WAP with RADIUS), as built into several hotspot products, because it's robust and easy to administer. You give individual accounts to paying customers, and shut off the accounts of those that don't pay.

Some choices to get the OP started:

  • D-Link Airspot DSA-3100 Public/Private Hot Spot Gateway

  • Instant HotSpot

  • ZyAIR B-4000 Turn-key Hotspot Gateway
Reply to
John Navas

Very interesting!

Thanks so much everyone!

Reply to
me

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