Neighborhood wireless summit

[Steve Schear]

>The Seattle Wireless Network had a huge meeting yesterday with
>presentations by founders and leaders of most of the large wireless
>networks in the world.  Amazing group of guys, one after another from
>BAWUG (www.bawug.org), the London Consume net, NY wireless, BC,
>Portland, etc. including developers of the 802.11x specification,
>Nocat (http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2001/11/09/nocatauth.html)
>
>These guys are building fabrics that will route at 10Mbps all over their
>regions for free.  The meeting was streamed over the internet live.
>There are photos which you can find in the list archives of Seattle Wireless,
>http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/FrontPage   There were approx.
>100 people.
>
>My understanding was these folks had all come to Seattle for meetings,
>to working on global coordination of IP spaces, routing, stuff like that.
>
>There are some fascinating technical differences between the
>wireless networks in different cities.
>
>Driven by circumstances
>------------------------
>In the UK for example, Wireless ISPs (WISPs) cannot happen because
>802.11 is strictly nonbusiness.  And, 802.11 is limited to 10 milliwatts
>(1/10th of the US).  Internet access is killingly expensive; many APs
>are underground activities.
>
>NY for example has a horrible deficiency in line-of-sight connectivity
>between buildings, and a relative surplus of megabit internet access by
>corporations so it has mostly access points (APs) hanging off DSL and T1
>lines.
>
>Driven by culture/technical differences
>------------------------------------------
>Seattle generally regards DSL sharing as out of scope and generally
>distasteful. Seattle seems to be building a routed network with lots of
>APs supported by lots of crosstown links with highly directional
>antennas.  Seattle says they're just going to build a whole parallel, free,
>internet.  PersonalTelco in Portland seems to believe in an ideological
>purity of omnidirectional antennas, with a long term vision of mesh
>networking.   I seem to understand Seattle would have Nocat portals as
>the prevailing practice?  Where Portland would be more like a self-
>organized Nokia Rooftop network
>http://www.wirelessnewsfactor.com/perl/story/12619.html (Rooftop
>constructs mesh networks on the fly. None of the free wireless networks
>are anywhere near the "Rooftop" capability.)
>
>My understanding is that the mathematics of mesh networks and swarmcast
>demonstrate an interesting phenomenon that the more nodes who stick
>their antenna into the cloud, the more routes appear and there is a
>virtuous circle of improving performance.
>
>Instead of heat death, from congestion you get a virtuous cycle of
>greater capacity.  Fsckin unbelievable.  Unregulated, and all but
>unregulatable.  Just like oral speech and visual eyesight-- except
>having unlimited range.
>
>I sat next to Tim Pozar, got a free 20-mnute tutorial on long distance
>links.  His team has transbay links of 15-20 miles in the
>http://www.bawug.org community. We need some 5 mile links across
>a lake to reach SWN.  Tim's a founder of BAWUG and his papers are
>at http://www.lns.com/papers/
>
>Imagine the possibilities!   No.  Plan on them.
>
>Todd
>
>
>
>
>------ Meeting Announcement --------
>
>From: mattw at seattlewireless.net
>Subject: SeattleWireless: Special Meeting 01/06/2002
>
>Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!
>Wireless Meeting in Georgetown!
>
>         http://www.seattlewireless.net/?SummitJanuary2002
>
>The WirelessSummit is your chance to meet organizers, contributors
>vendors and enthusiasts from other wireless groups across the western
>world.  If you can only make it to one meeting this month, this is the
>one
>to be at!
>
>You will hear from group leaders and contributors, See cool hacks,
>Check out the latest hardware and software and you may even get FREE
>STUFF!
>
>Which Wireless groups will be represented?
>
>  - BAWUG (San Francisco)
>  - BCWireless (Vancouver, BC)
>  - Consume
>  - NoCat (Sebastapol, CA)
>  - NYC Wireless (New York City)
>  - PersonalTelco (Portland)
>  - Austin Wireless (TX)
>  - and of course, SeattleWireless :)
>
>...