WiFi Mesh's Organise

[Spamtheman]

With everyone thinking of setting up meshes it has got me thinking, why is everyone bothering? Sure it's handy for copying files and playing games, but it's not the internet. So here is my idea.

Get as many of you friends hooked up as possible, it will rely on someone laying out the cash for access points, or maybe team up and buy them. Once you have a reasonable number of people connected, appoint someone as the administrator of the mesh. Pick someone with a decent amount of skill but more importantly pick someone honest, that's more important than skills which can be learnt later.

Then it's time to start having fun, approach ISP's about selling you bandwidth, possibly a couple of meshes could get together to bargain. why put up with shoddy service, traffic shaping and a general bad attitude from companies who seem not to care what their own customers think.

I'm not sure what the financial calculations would look like, but if it's possible for ISP's to do it and make money, surely we could do it without.

[georgelza]

IS, has always been very proactive/progressive and into new ideas, know some guys there (use to be with IS), i am pretty sure they would do something like this,

G

You Have The Obligation to Inform One Honestly of the risk, And As a Person
You Are Committed to Educate Yourself to the Total Risk In Any Activity!
Once Informed & Totally Aware of the Risk,
Every Fool Has the Right to Kill or Injure Themselves as They See Fit!

[stoke]

Now if my other neighbour, and the adjacent neighbour, and the other one stopped looking at me as though I were a criminal, maybee we could get somewhere.
What is it with South Africans and instant distrust ?

[Spamtheman]

Stoke, have you been playing pr0n with the volume too loud? That may explain it :). I imagine IS would be very keen on anything that would shaft Telkom. Just did some rough math and if you had 50 users willing to pay R320 pm you could offer 64kbit with a contention ratio of 9:1 (assuming you could link directly to the ISP and assuming a cost of R2000 per 64k). I don't think there is an ISP in the country who could match that.

I suspect it's an idea worth fleshing out a bit, who knows it may be a viable alternative until something better comes along. Let's hear some more idea's.

[georgelza]

Spam, let me know, i got a good name at IS i can refer you to...

G

You Have The Obligation to Inform One Honestly of the risk, And As a Person
You Are Committed to Educate Yourself to the Total Risk In Any Activity!
Once Informed & Totally Aware of the Risk,
Every Fool Has the Right to Kill or Injure Themselves as They See Fit!

[Spamtheman]

I think it would be a bit pre-emptive to negotiate pricing at this early stage, if one has a large requirement for bandwidth from the beggining then you have a far better base to negotiate from. Besides it's not like I'm particularly keen on getting that involved unless something was running in my area. I certainly think it's a good idea (but then I came up with it so I'd have to). Besides I'm keen on a more democratic approach, vote for someone else to run the thing so I can bitch loudly from the sidelines :)

[georgelza]

hehehe, well bitch away, just an idea, we cna see where it goes in the future.

G

You Have The Obligation to Inform One Honestly of the risk, And As a Person
You Are Committed to Educate Yourself to the Total Risk In Any Activity!
Once Informed & Totally Aware of the Risk,
Every Fool Has the Right to Kill or Injure Themselves as They See Fit!

[armitage]

brilliant idea spam. interesting thing though in CPT the rooftops of apartment buildings are getting quite crowded with the omni's that are sprouting there. have to think hard of a apartment building that doesnt have one down in bellville.

Look as prices come down the bandwidth can increase which is quite a terrific thing if you consider that most ppl just get what they pay for an never more but a service which actually gives you more over time is to me the true meaning of a community business.

im actually thinking of raping the office photocopier and making pamphlets for my neighbourhood to see if anyone would be interested in joining up. get a kid to just throw a pamphlet in the mailbox and voila instant communication and faster than a sentech line to boot.

Proud South african rip offs.

[lewstherin]

armitage - I'm thinking the same kind of neighbourhood campaign [:)]

spam - the idea of essentially reselling a local loop network is not a new one, but it is a good one. I think its a little to early to be considering that though...as it is there are only 8 ppl keen in the whole of Dbn [;)].

Methinks we need to build the mesh before anything else...

<font color="blue">Telkom needs a leash, ICASA needs some guts, and the </font id="blue"><font color="red">SA consumer</font id="red"><font color="blue"> needs to make it happen</font id="blue">

[Nickste]

Lo all.

This is an awesome idea, however, i think someone with the know-how needs to make a right up, of how to set it all up, including equipment and where to get the parts. I know it is a big ask, but it would certainly get me going - right now I don't know enough to ask my neighbours to hook up.

Chow, Nick

Nick Smit
broadband@nicksmit dot za dot net

[Spamtheman]

I'm pretty sure that's what I said. First get the mesh up and then consider impementing some sort of internet connection. It's just that once that sort of network is in place it could leave on in an ideal position to negotiate for bandwidth. The lack of a corporate interest means that a large enough group could conceivalby get a really cheap rate for bandwidth. Plus it's allways good to have a final goal in any project.

As far as running the thing goes I'm probably the worst person to do it, I'd be happy to do the research because I'm doing it anyway. My idea is to use this forum to develope a rough guide for anyone to set up this sort of network, think of it as an open source ISP. Once one has a reasonable number of users you can then vote or appoint someone to be in charge of your mesh and negotiate an internet connection.

Lewsitherin, yes there are only 8 people in Durban, but how many have heard of the site, add to that the site itself (while being a good idea) is not very user friendly. Once you have the foundations of a mesh in place consider mentioning it in local papers, get some awareness going because sadly the majority of the population does not frequent myadsl forums.

[AcidRaZor]

open Source ISP, cool idea. I'll recommend LooseCannon's linux distro for bandwidth management. Plus if everyone setup their own hotspots, you could "resell" bandwidth to folks around you.

Person A set's up backbone (should be in good location) and negotiates internet connection
Person B,C,D,E,F.... sets up hotspots that connects to Person A. Person's B-.... buys an allocated slot of bandwidth from Person A and resells that bandwidth to anyone wanting to connect to their network.

More ideas?

Hell, my gran on a scooter with a memory stick is faster than Sentech's MyWireless!

[MaD]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Spamtheman</i>
why put up with shoddy service, traffic shaping and a general bad attitude from companies who seem not to care what their own customers think.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
You by any chance talking bout Telkom? [:D]

<font color="navy"><font size="1"><b>Where others have progress, we have Telkom.</b>
Hellkom website - www.hellkom.co.za</font id="size1"></font id="navy">

[Spamtheman]

Well noone, that puts a little bit of pressure on person A to negotiate the best deal possible. A far better plan would be to be able to collectively negotiate for bandwidth. As far as managing the bandwidth I have a personal preference for FreeBSD, mainly cause I work on it every day.

MaD, sadly not just Telkom, most South African businesses tend to have a philosophy that the customer exists to get shafted.

On an interesting side note, I assume everyone has heard about UUNET losing the MWeb contract to IS, now there are a bunch of lads who need to sell some bandwidth urgently :P

[AcidRaZor]

I gasped when I heard that.

I even thought mweb bought uunet a couple of years back, prolly just misread.

The whole idea is that Person A (who has the skills) negotiate and pay for said bandwidth, then resells that portion of bandwidth to whoever wishes to be a "reseller"

So effectively, the head honcho would buy x amount, then all the town house complex dudes (lets say 5 guys from 5 different complexes) buy's the bandwidth from you (divided up of course)

Then THEY are responsible for setting up their own respective servers/bandwidth management and get their OWN customers

Is that far fetched?

And what is the legal implications of starting your own WISP over a readily available format like normal wireless?

Hell, my gran on a scooter with a memory stick is faster than Sentech's MyWireless!

[Spamtheman]

Well if there where a loose non-profit organization doing the negotiating for bandwidth and handling central payments then it would be very hard for Telkom to try and get it shut down, think of the PR nightmare. Community project for cheap internet to schools and clinics shut down by big bad telkom :).

The biggest problem that I've allways spotted with WISPs and telco's in general is this, they own the network. This is the root of the problem that we've experienced locally, we can't say to Telkom "look stuff you guys, I'm gonna take my phoneline and plug it in elsewhere". With this sort of model each community can make decisions that affect that community. A prime example would be traffic shaping, imagine being able to vote for your areas traffic shaping, or whether to have it at all. In business areas it could be http ftp email ect. In residential areas p2p, gaming, http. If an ISP offers poor service simply choose another. You could even have different providers offering different packages across the networks.

By removing the customers from being locked into using a telkom line it allows all sorts of other business oppourtunities to come about, if you've got a 54mbit link acrosss areas imagine streaming media and voip.

[sauermfj]

Hi
This type of thing is exactly what we want to do!!
My company started last year in June 2004, and eversince I have tried various models etc. to get this off the ground. This one seems the best. I intend to run the auth service.
Do you guys want to share some of your ideas with me?
franss at softstart dot co dot za