[MLB-WIRELESS] Wireless internet in Melbourne?

[Paul van den Bergen]

On 05/07/02 10:06 AM, Tony Langdon wrote:

>>>would then you be legaly allowed to use that net access?
>>>
>>If you are fraudulently calling us employees?  Of course not.
>>
>
>But if we're getting paid to field test the "company's wireless network"?
>:-)
>
regardless, legality test would require someone to sue us...  either 
gov't or private.

so the real issue is not getting sued.  because lets face it, all it 
takes to shut it down is a threat to sue and be sure if you make serious 
inroads on _anybodies_ customer base, you are going to have problems.


time for a rant... (RFC)
(disclaimer - On the whole, this is my opinion.  I may be wrong. I have 
been talking to some people in the industry who may or may not be well 
informed and this has structured my opinion.  I am open to correction 
and clarification)

TANSTAAFL!
internet access and community wireless: incompatable bed fellows?
I can see numerous technical solutions to the whole broadband wireless 
internet access issue.  some work better than others.  but what will be 
the sticking point IMHO is the regulatory issues.

Technical solutions -
shared broadband connections - DSL or cable connection to access node, 
shared amoungst friends/members geographically local and connected - 
fibre or wireless.

regulatory problems - crossing property lines, definition of service 
provision

I reckon this is a fair way to do business in the sense that as long as 
you pay for the common download pipe, people who sell you the pipe 
should have no cause for complaint.  You become a business service 
provider that pays per MB.  Lets face it, the majority of us are not 
about to give up our dialup or broadband accounts because we have 
melbwireless.  It's an extension rather than an alternative...

so this is really the prefered choice in some senses.  an augmented 
internet access shared amongst multiple people. if we can get the 
regulatory issues ironed out, and the payment issues addressed (i.e. 
howmany access points, how to count the costs, who downloads what, how 
internet access provision nodes get paid for) then I think we could 
approach any of the broadband ISP's as a high volume customer.

someone on the Brisbane MESH mentioned APANA as a possible internet 
access provider - being of similar inclination to melb wireless... 
 anyone know much about this...

shared cache - the majority of caching benefit is in the first 100 MB or 
so.  It is certainly technically feasable to have your internet cache on 
the wireless side of you homeLAN firewall (we all have one of those, 
right? Right!?). this would potentially lead to a shared cache of 
several GB available to members within a reasonable number of hops on 
the wireless side and might greatly reduce the amount of download you 
would have to do on the internet side of things...  ofcourse, there 
might be security and privacy issues with this...  and technically it is 
feasable but not completely easy...

    regulatory problems - not sure.  still smacks of service provision, 
but then so should file sharing in that case.  doubt that'll get you 
into much hot water unless someone wants to stop you.  note: this could 
be done in addition to broadband access.... - that would be a real 
bandwidth saver...

file share model.
    like gnutella writ geographically on a true mesh net...  firewalls 
everywhere protecting private data and people selective about what they 
place on the wireless side.  Ah, harks back to the days of Fidonet, etc. 
(I'm lying folks.  I'm old enough, but I came to computers well after 
fidonet had been subsumed by the internet.)
    regulatory, I cannot see anything wrong with this unless people 
start distributing porn to minors or similarly otherwise illegal activities.


-- 
Dr Paul van den Bergen
SERC
goofey:bulwynkl
paul at serc.rmit.edu.au
+613 9925 1624 (Phone)
+613 9925 5699 (Fax)


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