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

[rick]

one off does not mean free does it?> its ither free or its not, we have a
few nodes on the rgsouthern mesh that offer FREE net traffic, i dont
remember any of them asking for any sort of donation, and 500$ for a node?
well your getting off cheap, most of the guys who have had nodes for the
last 3 years im sure have put alot more cash than that, two people to name
are ryan (sneeze) and peter (melb_ap) Both of these people have out time
money and effort into there setup, does your isp allow you to resell your
internet access, if you make a compulsury donation even if its once off its
not free and in breach of your contract. when you ran fido bbs did you make
people pay a donation to use your 100% free bbs or did people donate of
there own freewill

what other people say about isp's isnt what matters, your aup might be
diffrent to someone elses for example due to when you signed up or what plan
your on even to what suburb your in

i dont think ANYONE ever considered melb-wireless as a isp, we are a mesh a
network a group of like minded people under the name melbourne wireless, is
your node a mw node or is it a personal isp? i could ask everyone at
bentleigh and patterson trainstation for money everytime they associate to
my node acidently but lets face it, im not a nice guy but im not a asshole
who would charge for my scraps of bandwidth

is your net account only for people who connect to your node or will you be
using it to? i take it it will be your net access and your giving people
your scraps. be a nice guy and get off the idea of making people pay to
connect to you, or you might get a rude shock when people make you pay for
any data you get off these network..

on a side note i liked the last meeting even thou it was very cold, in the
past i have been short with some people i am trying to be more accepting,
but the day any of the data that goes thru my wireless traffic is being
forced to be paid for when it should be free then i will become Rick/Toby
wireless population 1 where its free for the world to use all of my traffic,
i will even leave cat 5 cables out the front of my property

rik

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-melbwireless at wireless.org.au
[mailto:owner-melbwireless at wireless.org.au]On Behalf Of Rowan Crowe
Sent: Tuesday, 20 July 2004 3:14 PM
To: melbwireless at wireless.org.au
Subject: [MLB-WIRELESS] Re: Providing free *real* internet access to the
community...


> 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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