Irish WAN

Raskolnikov

IrishWan? I have only heard snippets about this, i have been to the site and took a look around. The only problem is that i live 15km from Cork City. I know that there are tons of people interested in broadband in my town, i could probably find 10-20 personally.

What would it take to set up a town based WAN? Just curious

Moriarty

Its relativly easy to set up a community wan. Basically, the Wide Area Network (WAN) works as one network, similar to a LAN you may have at home or in the office. Operating systems will see the wireless network card as just another network card, so anything you can do over a lan or the internet, you can do over the wan - gaming, sharing files, etc. etc. etc. etc.

We use antennas on our rooves to connect to each other - they will, for the most part, look very similar to the chorus MMDS antennas you see all around the place. Each antenna is linked to a wireless 802.11b network card.. and thats all there is to it. You point your antenna at somone else, and it establishes a connection. From there on it works just like you strung a few hundred meters of networking cable between you

I have over-simplified the above a small bit - not by much though - so that everyone can understand the idea easily Our forums are active, have a look around them and if you have any questions just post them there and somone will be more than happy to go into as much detail as you like about anything wan related

Raskolnikov

Thanks for the response. It sounds like a bold concept and i know that there would be a lot of demand for something like that in my area. I have a few questions though, i have utterly no experience with networking though. Also how much would i have to shell out to get the equipment installed, are there monthly charges, is the thing stable, how many people would be needed to get such a system going etc

dahamsta

how much would i have to shell out to get the equipment installed

This hasn't been updated for a while, so it's not 100% accurate (note that the prices are in punts):

http://www.corkwan.org/materialandCosts.html

If anything though, the prices should be lower, since the cost of wireless networking kit is coming down all the time.

are there monthly charges

There will be for CorkWAN, and I assume there will be for all the others. The organisation will be not-for-profit though, so that will keep the fees down, and as the group grows, we should be able to keep driving down the price. The fees will be used for Internet connectivity and upkeep of the network. (EDIT: It's also important to point out that, because the organisation will be community-based and not-for-profit, we'll be relying heavily on donations of time and equipment, and even cash if people want to contribute. It's not just about antennae, there's also servers and other equipment to consider, as well as installations, and plain old brainpower.)

is the thing stable

It'll be as stable as we make it. Obviously there won't be any guarantees at the start, but as it grows it should get stabler. Since we'll be not-for-profit though, it's unlikely you'll get an SLA (Service Level Agreement).

how many people would be needed to get such a system going

I'm not really qualified to answer that properly, but it's really a question of building out. You can get a network started with just two people, but the intention is to start with a central omni-directional antennae linked to the Internet, and a few people with line of sight on that within a certain distance. Then you start to push the network out with people acting as repeaters.

adam

Moriarty

Originally posted by RASKOLNIKOV
how much would i have to shell out to get the equipment installed

At the moment we are sorting out suppliers for the equipment. Expect to pay less than €200 for everything you will need if you want to connect into the wan. It will obviously cost more to make a central 'node' that a number of other people will connect into though, as more parts will be required. Costs are still pretty manageable though.

Originally posted by RASKOLNIKOV
are there monthly charges

Theres been a lot of debate about this internally as it effects how things will be done. What Irishwan have decided is that there will be no charges for accessing the wan itself. For people that want to use the wan to get on the internet each will pay an equal share of the cost of the internet access. This is an important distinction as some people (even though they are in the minority) just want to access the WAN - they have no intrest in using the WAN for internet access. As an example, if there are 20 people in an area that all want internet access and they get a large leased line or something similar, the monthly rental of the leased line will be divided equally among everyone using it.

Originally posted by RASKOLNIKOV
is the thing stable

As dahamsta says it will be as stable as we make it. The technology itself is well proven and entirely stable.

sceptre

Split from the Beam thread. I think the IrishWAN (noble not-for profit idea/service that it is) is well worthy of a proper discussion on its own

Raskolnikov

Well i can't see the Cork based WAN going out as far as Carrigaline so that only leaves the option of a Carrigaline based WAN. I saw two replies from people who were interested in a Carrigaline WAN on the boards. I would think that there would be a huge interest for a WAN in my area, all we need is someone who is in the know to organise it.

So if anyone out there in Carrigaline in interested in this and has the ability to create it then please leave a reply

yellum

join the corkWan mailing list and post your details. Carrigaline would be a good area to set upin , some nice hills around there that would allow you to cover a big enough area.

By the way the corkWAN and IrishWAN are different groups with different agendas.