[MLB-WIRELESS] Possible resources at swinburne.

[paul van den bergen]

Hi all,

first off a question for FreeBSD users.  wrt networking (IPv4 _and_ IPv6) what 
tools do you use?

firewall, routing, DNS, NAT, IPsec, cache servers, web servers, network tools, 
wireless discovery tools, AP software, etc.  And anything else I missed...

I am interested in getting peoples opinion on what is available, what works 
and what is easy to use so I can build up a couple of basic install scripts 
to automate/ease wireless node installations.

secondly, there is a desire here at CAIA BSEE swinburne, hawthorn to assist 
the wireless community, partly to promote wireless so that it becomes 
important to telcos and they will give us money to do fun research, but also 
because you guys are a resource that we can leverage. And also, ofcourse, it 
is kinda cool.

We are in the stages of setting up a test network, and are beginning to design 
the network now.  It will be somewhat seperate from the general swinburne 
network (which is IPSec'd), but there is the possibility that some of the 
resources here could be used to set up a public access point or some sort of 
available service.  The sort of things we had in mind were a DNS or IP 
allocation server (DHCP???), or webpage or hardware database.  Either wired 
or wireless or both (personally I think it would be cool to offer a web 
interface or service that is only available on the wireless side.  It is 
possible that we can place an antenna on the city side of the building and 
provide a relay service between swinburne and the city too).


what I would like is a raft of ideas about what services are desirable so we 
can best promote melbourne wireless, etc. and best utilise this potential 
resource... (only potential at the moment - I am not sure where this is going 
exactly and there may be administrative issues I have not forseen, but the 
desire is there at least)

Obviously this would all be carefully firewalled from swinnet.  ITS do not 
want open access to swinburnes network :-)  Can't say I am surprised...

(aside: it is possible that the publically accessable part of the CAIA WLAN 
would be accessable from any part of swinnet!  This would be really cool!!!  
obviously lots of stuff to work out with ITS, etc. so don't go blue)

WARNING:
this is not official policy nor does it represent the opinion of swinburne per 
se.  So it is not for general public consumption.  Inappropriate press or 
feedback to the right people at swinburne in a mis-informed manner could 
easily scuttle this.  We have so many things to work out here it is not 
funny. Both technical and political.  As you can imagine, it is one thing for 
me as an individual to put up a PAP out side my home, quite another for a 
large organisation like a University.  Given how carefully and elegantly the 
swinburne wireless hotspot has been set up (and the enormous effort at 
getting it right by ITS) the last thing we want to do is piss anybody off.  
and yes they are aware of us and don't always have a high opinion of us... we 
are after all a hobby group (flame bait? me?).


-- 
Dr Paul van den Bergen
Centre for Advanced Internet Architectures
caia.swin.edu.au
pvandenbergen at swin.edu.au
would somebody get this big walking carpet out of my way?

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