Announcing a Community Wi-Fi Mesh

Am I missing something?

Where's this link to the Wikipedia definition of Wifi Communities?

And which "internet backbone" might you be connected to?
 
speed

I am sure he means 100Mbit if you take a calculator and add the speed of each point together, its a plausible number, since eventually you are going to hit it (in theory) and well 10/100 network cards are still common. Anyways, lets see if we can reach that number.

We start with node speed.

"The maximum bandwidth of the mesh as seen at each member end is 54Mbps".
"with the 2Mbps being the worst speed achievable"
WOOPS! obvious typo above, 1 being next to 2, let's correct quickly.

"with 1Mbps being the worst speed achievable"

oh but wait, its wireless so lets cut all those numbers in half. (this is generous, since normally i would say to 40-45%)

oh, but wait, your packet might hop into and out of the same interface, since its all ad-hoc, so let use half that number.

ok, now that we have fixed all the typos (so hard to find a decent keyboard) lets read the whole thing back.

"The maximum bandwidth of the mesh as seen at each member end is 13.5Mbps".
"with 0.250Mbps being the worst speed achievable"

oh, and I didn't factor in any noise... but thats not important for now

so with 13.5Mbps being max speed only 8 users would give that 100Mbit number.
 
Oh.. and if you can show me a Wifi (be it 802.11a or 802.11g) link that runs at 54mbps (megabit per second) IP data throughput, I'll send you a Juniper J4300.
 
Lachdanan said:
Interesting post...

Im just wondering about the following:



What/where is this backbone? Are we normal dsl/3g users also "plugged" into this "Internet Backbone", or is it something exclusive to users of your "community service"-thingie?

Another thing thats troubling me, and i quote from your website: "...as well as a section full of catalogued, latest blockbuster video titles, similar to the ones one can find in a typical Video Store, available to the community members to watch on-line, on a club membership principle..."

Are you then registered with the relevant authorities to supply multimedia content to others (for a profit), in an environment where it is quite easy to copy/duplicate said content? We wouldnt want to break the law here...
Click to expand...

Xarion said:
ok hmm where to start... my "Attack" is not on your venture, your business venture sounds great and good luck with that. My issue is the preservation of the ISM band, and for it to be used for what it was meant to - experimentation and non-commercial purposes. Any access point you buy exceeds EIRP limits if you really want to be pedantic so there is little way for anyone to enforce that. Perhaps you wisps should actually all get together and buy a portion of the frequency bands and move off ISM bands and all fall under one umbrella. How does Iburst manage to do so well no killing the ISM band?
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Lachdanan,

There is only one backbone, in the US of A. And yes, AFAIK, no one else provides direct Internet connectivity in SA - we are going to be the first. Don’t you just want to join our "thingie" so you can benefit from it?

I replied to your answer in my previous reply - but to state that again, yes, we are not going to provide any service unless we have secured all the required licences, permissions and like. "Registering" with "authority" to do so is going to be tricky, though - there is no such one in SA, I am afraid :-)

Xarion,

Don't get alarmed - the 100% utilisation was under test conditions, we did it so to see if we can do it if again if we wanted to :-)

Also, where is this sentimental attachment to the "ISM" comes from? We never had such spectrum designation in South Africa - you must have been reading to many US regulatory papers. LOL.

Here the regulator calls this spectrum "License Exempt", made to be used by SRD (short range devices). What makes the SRDs SRD is the limitation of EIRP. The further assumption is that if everyone adheres to the EIRP regulations, the spectrum will remain clean so everyone can use it for his own purposes. And it has never been reserved for non-commercial use - on contrary, since the original Paulo Jordan published regulation, it has always featured the requirement, loosely quoting here ".. if one provides commercial service in this spectrum, he would need a service licence to do so..."

Just so you can relax even further - we will only use 1 or 2 of the 12 available channels in the 2.4 GHz spectrum. Also, we don't have a mechanism to monopolise these channels, so we made a provision for a mechanism that will assign the least used channel for our needs, instead of stepping onto someone else.

Do you WUG guys do this, as a principle?
 
geez, thanks to the traffic I seem to have missed all the fun!
 
Iliyan said:
Just so you can relax even further - we will only use 1 or 2 of the 12 available channels in the 2.4 GHz spectrum. Also, we don't have a mechanism to monopolise these channels, so we made a provision for a mechanism that will assign the least used channel for our needs, instead of stepping onto someone else.
Click to expand...
Wow, there are are only 3 real WIFI channels on 2.4, so i guess 2 / 3 aint that bad...
 
These tests that you did, did you do them indoors or in actually over a distance? We do no run any form of turbo modes we stick to one channel andmake the most out of it, we tweak every possible timing, rate distance etc so that we can get as far as possible from amped wisps destroying the ISM band? do you use standard 802.11 stuff or are you using a **** system like canopy or similar?
 
Mandatory once a month WISP venture by someone who knows nothing about the technology fulfilled.

/thread
 
Iliyan said:
RichardP,

Please read carefully every statement that we made - here on this forum, as well as on our site.

I understand your socialistic stand, but unfortunately, we do not subscribe to those values. We never have. We also use the common definition of wireless community - for people who get confused, we provided a reference to Wikipedia's article on the wireless communities.

When we say a community, we say it within the context of people free to associating themselves into a community of some choice. Hence the clarification – we call these “Wi-Fi Communities”. We, the company that provides certain Internet connectivity service, do not charge for, nor get commercially involved in the intra-communal connectivity.

Although, facilitating and help building the Wi-Fi mesh does cost us a lot, we have decided that we are going to keep the communal level of connectivity free. If you understood what we are doing, you will notice that no one is charging (nor going to charge) for the traffic travelling across and within the communal mesh. That includes all P2P traffic as well as all future on-net VoIP connectivity.

But this is the closest we will get to your socialistic view of a community?

When it comes to providing services - be them the Internet connectivity, or the access to the Video Library (who do you think should pay for the royalty fees for content), or the access to the number of additional (all commercial) services that we intent of introducing in good time, we provide them in strictly commercial grounds - and we never hide our intentions.

Hey guys, how difficult is to accept that someone is going to make your dreams come true by providing superb wireless connectivity, gaming amd VoIP will finally work and you will be able to connect to the Internet trough a link that does not count bytes anymore - that for the lowest possible price?
Click to expand...

So your answer is "No, I have never run a network besides by home one on a R300 Dlink AP"

Socialistic? looks like you havent done your homework.. You are the controller of the network, its not a section 21 company (Non Profit) You want the Community network AND want to control it.

You have not researched wifi at all.. must I send you some links on how Ad-Hoc, infrastructure modes work. 802.11g mode works.

Do you realise that an Access point on a roof with an 8dbi OMNI antenna will be receiveable 6KM away? in G mode it uses 20Mhz flat out... that means anyone within the radius will have their in-house Wifi performance messed up by someones Mesh. There are only 3 usable[/B ] WIFI channels, 54Megabit is RAW wireless bit rate - 24Megabit is a theoretical TCP/IP performance.
If I have 10 Mesh nodes and one is flooding the network, then ALL the nodes suffer the consequence. All you need is 1(ONE) Elsat 2.4Ghz analog video sender and the mesh is a mess due to noise levels.

but you know this all, as you have researched it all and are confident, and your Video/Audio broadcast license is in order.

Value for money :-) Who's giving value for money if you cant guarantee anything? Sounds like YOU win all the way.

(btw, I am not on any WUG, so you can rest easy on that point)
 
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Iliyan said:
Let me help you there - we never said that a single Wi-Fi link can provide 100Mbps throughput. Do not get mislead by the opinions of the others - sometimes, they can be erroneous. Go and read our statement yourself.

To help you further - one test that we conducted was streaming 65 concurrent DivX stream, each at SD 640x480, one server serving 20 player stations. The dropped frame rate was 0. The spectrum utilisation was close to 100%.

con-ca-te-na-ti-on
Click to expand...

fair enough if you want to add everything up, but thats hardly a way to measure things though. i'm sure you realise but a typical divx is 165kb/s, 65 concurrent streams would be around 10000k/s, even with 20 clients its 3300k/s which is a tad optimistic for 802.11g over a distance with an EIRP of 20dBi.
 
daffy said:
Oh.. and if you can show me a Wifi (be it 802.11a or 802.11g) link that runs at 54mbps (megabit per second) IP data throughput, I'll send you a Juniper J4300.
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daffy I hope you have the Juniper packed and ready to ship :P
 
lol @ setsquare

Iliyan - Good luck..... don't screw up the ISM band for the rest of us.

Let us know when you in Durban and I will hook up to your "community" network on the ISM band because it will be free to hook up use the community resources right?

heh When I saw the words community and commercial in the same post I knew it was going to be a fun thread.
providing continuous indoor coverage across urban and semi-urban areas.
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now that should be interesting to see sticking to the legal EIRP

I wait for the imminent launch of your company
 
Sangoma said:
fair enough if you want to add everything up, but thats hardly a way to measure things though. i'm sure you realise but a typical divx is 165kb/s, 65 concurrent streams would be around 10000k/s, even with 20 clients its 3300k/s which is a tad optimistic for 802.11g over a distance with an EIRP of 20dBi.
Click to expand...

Not our DivX - we streamed SD content at 790 kbps average (VBR). The distance was simulated though - we have provision in our link budgets for 95 db in-path loss - during the test we made sure that the signals were attenuated at both ends so as to correctly simulate the free air loss as if it was encountered in a real environment.
 
Iliyan said:
The distance was simulated though - we have provision in our link budgets for 95 db in-path loss - during the test we made sure that the signals were attenuated at both ends so as to correctly simulate the free air loss as if it was encountered in a real environment.
Click to expand...

Simulated environment? Okay so normally I keep out of these kinds of discussions but this is crazy. Have you even tried to do a real link? Currently in Cape Town the ISM 2.4 band usage is probably close to 150% overutilised. There is NO simulated environment that can give you real world expectations out here...
 
Wow!

Let me recap -

1. I announced something that many have been talking about intending doing for years but none has managed to deliver so far.

2. I announced the imminent commencement of a business that would see delivering Internet connectivity with parameters that everyone has been only dreaming about - and for years comparing the pricing of our broadband to the worldwide levels of pricing

3. I apparently stepped onto the sore toes of the universal brotherhood of the WUG (in all its local semi-united forms) and roughed their collective feathers by pointing that by deploying their Wi-Fi links in the way they have been deploying them, they have been breaking the law. Again, irrespective if we all agree or disagree with the law - it is there to comply with.

4. I, being the friendly person I am :-) handed my hand out by inviting everyone to join me on the premise to see anyone who wants’ to be involved with this (Wi-Fi Mesh) to gain more than he has been gaining on his own - I even offered a nice incentive...

5. Had to endure reading communistic/socialistic gibberish coming from someone who's obviously enjoying a nice spoilt life at a first world country university, clearly not having a clue that there is such a plague spreading around us called digital divide and that there are potentially millions of young people that have been left out without any chance to afford computers, enjoy computer communications as well as get access to the world of knowledge on the Internet. And I for a change Intend to help bridging that divide - with the help of the spoilt boys or without.

6. Have read many opinions that (if we don't do it the way everyone has been doing it, then) we don't know what we are doing

And I am still waiting to receive one constructive criticism. One that is made by an adult (or hopefully, a professional) - focused, substantiated and well argumented.

But then, when I posted this post on this forum, I did not know who is going to reply and what they are going to say - but what really surprised me was the pitch level of these replies.

Please, may I ask you for a tad better quality in your replies, please?
 
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