[MLB-WIRELESS] Wireless internet in Melbourne?

[KevinL]

On Tue, 2002-05-07 at 10:59, Paul van den Bergen wrote:
> 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.

I'm personally of the suspicion that the regulatory issues _will_ be
ironed out, soonish - there's too many people making too much noise
about wireless and wireless broadband and suchlike.  Having said that,
it's in industry's best interests to keep the community groups locked
out, so they can sell the service.  So, who knows?

> 
> 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

*nod*  Atm, illegal to carry "third party traffic" across wireless
lines, or to run cables across property lines, without being a telco -
and it's more than just the fee to become a telco that's worrying there,
there's lots of legal obligations that tie in, like being able to assist
the nice men in blue with tapping where required, keeping logs for
untold time, etc. etc.

> 
> 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.

I would be more interested in seeing a billing infrastructure setup,
such that anyone on the wireless network can throw their bit of
bandwidth into the pot, and get recompense for anyone using it.  The
routing and billing/counting issues there are *ahem* non-trivial,
though.

Bear in mind, as soon as you gain the ability to sell traffic across the
mesh, chances are various ISP's will step up to the plate to sell into
the mesh - presuming the mesh exists, of course.

Worthy things to think about, also:  Traditional peering points,
distribution of non-traditional content (anyone got good reception for
channel 31 mind re-broadcasting over the wireless network?  Anyone feel
like bringing in the Big Brother live feeds (they've got a free one, I
think), and re-disting it for the rest?  Or some of the 'net radio
stations?)

> 
> 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...

Technically, there's a gadget written by some South Australian people
that acts as a squid "concentrator" - it knows what content's where
(digest distribution), you query it, and it tells you which cache to go
to.  This is a project I'd be _most_ interested in being involved in,
getting a decent squid peering mesh happening via wireless.

Legally, it's way unclear whether that would constitute third-party
traffic or not.

> 
>     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...

*nod*

> 
> 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.

Think vpn's and some general infrastructure for identifying their
existance and logging into them.  Chances are, this stuff would all
happen by private arrangement between people, but it'd be nice to
provide the documentation to support people setting such up.

KJL
(34% battery left, ~+200dB signal-to-noise currently ;)


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