[MLB-WIRELESS] xDSL to Regional and Interstate nodes. - Melbourne growth or lack thereof - Public thanks

[Winder]

Well said Ryan.

 Thanks you for putting up with people such as myself that are learning the
ins and outs of wireless networks and leaky antennas. Sorry for pestering
you about problems at your end, when most of the time it was my end with the
joys of water, silicon, tape and microwaves and cheap antennas

 I too wanted to provide services for people to use, but didn't factor in
the use of Linux. Sorry, I'm a windows user from way back. I've tried to
learn it but frankly Linux pisses me off greatly. I see it as never really
making it onto the average users desktop if they have to install it
themselves. Make? Make install, make config, edit, config, install, compile,
debug.... no thanks. install.exe thanks. I want to get involved but having
to learn a new OS to the level of a support expert just puts me off.

 I would much rather just buy an off the shelf AP / router that I can
configure to do the basic routing that we need, and then just plug systems
into it to offer services. But at the same time, I don't want to pay for an
expensive Cisco router when the whole idea was a free network (ok, with
limited hardware costs etc, but I'm not that rich).

 It's not as simple as it seems, not as cheap as first thought and I'm
wondering how many other people have the same thoughts, and if it has lead
to the lack of progress and the uptake in DSL.

 I think that if people did not drive it like you are doing, we would have
even less progress than what we have today. You got my vote... oh, and you
got my boxen too. Thanks :)

Regards,
g at z.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-melbwireless at wireless.org.au
[mailto:owner-melbwireless at wireless.org.au]On Behalf Of Ryan Abbenhuys
Sent: Thursday, 10 July 2003 9:25 AM
To: Tony Langdon
Cc: melbwireless at wireless.org.au
Subject: RE: [MLB-WIRELESS] xDSL to Regional and Interstate nodes.


Good deal yes

but I have a disagree, there's plenty more to do here first.  Frankly the
growth rate in melbourne is pathetic.  We need decent infrastructure in
place here and we need people to get off their asses.  Sure, in the past
few months things have actually started to move *slowly*, but they need to
start moving more.

People around the innernorth area are really starting to move along and all
the other areas should take their example of what can be achieved with some
action.

I believe there are a few more clusters trying to link up a bit more which
is good.  I also hear of a few people wasting time with GHO when they have
other people around them dying to try and link to them.  We need the
clusters to start serving some content to the other connected nodes and
letting the list know of achievements.  For example, if you have a nights
gaming session between a few nodes over the wireless links, post the
results to the list, let everyone know.

At the moment there's a lot of people who aren't exactly moving things
along with their setup because they know that there's nothing but the odd
ping test happening.  They're just not missing out on anything, because
there's nothing happening, motivation to connect isn't all that great.

If people want to see growth you need to actively seek it, it's not going
to just happen.  You need to contact nodes around you and you need offer
people any assistance you can.  Even if there's nothing currently around
you, setup a cheap AP, and leave it running 24/7, mark yourself as
Operational because interested parties will be more motivated to connect to
something that's already in place.

When I became involved in Melbwireless a few years ago there was nothing
around me. Not a thing.  Yet I saw the potential, and spent a lot of time
sourceing hardware and setting up an AP.  I mentioned it to a few friends
who live close who despite having not much interest in wireless, liked the
idea of being able to network our PC's.  So I sourced hardware for them,
made cantenna's for them, installed everything and configured it.

Nowadays I regularly have peoples Linux boxes dropped off at my home for
configuring to connect to the network.  I'm offering people hardware and
advice regularly, and in the past few months all this work is only just
beginning to pay off with the next few months expected to yield some vast
advancement.

We need less talk and more action people.


(written and authorised by R. Abbenhuys of the "Less talk More Action"
Party Melbourne)


>Umm, the line cost was over $100/_month_.  Sounds a reasonable deal to me.
>If there's enough members to absorb the cost of the line, it is provided
for
>free.  A good way to stimulate growth.
>

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