[MLB-WIRELESS] Re: Providing free *real* internet access to the community...

[Rowan Crowe]

> back at least $500. I was thinking of asking people who use the service
> regularly for donations to help cover capital equipment costs (upgrades,
> repairs etc), but with the actual internet access being completely free to
> satisfy ACA non commercial regulations.

Just a quick followup to this - the word "regularly" stuck in that
sentence looks a little ambiguous. I didn't mean I would ask for regular
donations, which would be effectively covering ongoing costs. These would
instead be one-off donations to help fund new equipment, eg for a second
AP as a repeater. I don't necessarily need to cover the full cost of the
equipment either, I used to run a Fidonet BBS which was 100% free to the
end user; I still have some of those warm fuzzy feelings lingering in me.
;)

On the topic of sharing - I half expect that my ISP will come back and say
it's not allowed. As a former ISP myself I know that it would commercial
madness to allow 10 separate households to share a single flat rate
account. However, I am pretty sure that I've seen mention on this list
that some ISPs have no problem with this. (Was it iinet?)

Limits: There will definitely be a system in place to ensure that the
users don't overtake my monthly download limit. I will have a dedicated
Squid box to further increase the efficiency of the setup (eg full speed
if it's cached, 256kbit/sec max if it's not)

Access: Would most likely be severely limited unless you've actually
applied and have an account. This goes in hand with monitoring - if
someone comes and complains that IP x.x.x.x hacked their box then I can
reference that to my account logs. If access is completely open, then I
have NFI. Malicious activity is the prime reason that I am considering
limiting the services to HTTP and SMTP (filtered/limited) only.

As far as melbwireless providing internet access... I don't think it's
practical to be transporting large amounts of data (such as "internet to
consumers") over the network. Keep it local. I expect most of the people
connecting to my AP won't be interested in wireless networking, just the
internet that they can access when they stick a card and antenna into
their PC.

Cheers.

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