[wplug] Be nice if we had such a freenet in Pittsburgh

Michael Skowvron michaels at penguincentral.org
Thu Feb 22 10:37:08 EST 2007


G.Pitman wrote:
> but anyway, on a local hobbyist scale it can be fun...

I'm also reselling service and I agree with everything you've said. My 
primary motiviations for selling service were to learn from a real 
wireless deployment and to defray the costs so I could have symmetric 
bandwidth. I work from home and ADSL just wasn't cutting it.

I started the project in 2001 when 802.11b was just becoming popular. At 
that time, the fastest DSL was around 1.5Mb/128kb and I wanted a 1.5Mb 
SDSL circuit. To help pay for the $325/month cost, I offered a shared 
service to all of my neighbors in the courtyard where I live. Many have 
participated.

I currently have 7 neighbors participating and 1 co-located server. I'm 
looking for others who might be interested in very inexpensive 
co-location for their system (sorry for the shameless plug). It's been a 
great learning experience. I've learned a lot about the behavior and 
propagaion of 802.11b/g; the quality and reliability of various brands 
of gear; the performance difference between consumer and business gear; 
and a lot about maintaining a production network.

Most of the neighbors are _very good_ about paying, expect for the one 
who's never returned an invoice. Oh well, that happens. I'm not blocking 
his access, so maybe he'll feel guilty enough some day to start paying. 
I'm also not very good about sending ivoices out, so I'm ususally 
covering many months worth of service. I've never made a profit on the 
service and I never expected to.

Michael


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