Seattle CWN Concepts was SeattleWireless Node Fundraiser

[Casey Halverson]

There are probably several different wireless "freenet" camps out there.

You are correct what you said.  The goal of the SeattleWireless
"freenet" is to build a collection of pipes, and hotspots are
secondary.

1.  Yes, SeattleWireless can exist without the internet.  This is the goal.

2.  Routing is currently handled with a mesh routing protocol called
OLSR, but we have used RIP, BGP in the past.   Since we build the
pipes, we dont care if people use STUN or not.  No one has really used
it before, but there's no reason why you cant.

Lastly, Skype is a POS.  Who would use this in a real application? I
dont understand what the big buzz over a centralized VoIP proxy, with
custom codecs that are incompatible with other systems.  Its not going
to work in this network in a doomsday senerio, but frankly, there is
stuff out there 100 times better anyway.  If you use *real* VoIP, you
cannot tell the difference between it and the PSTN and thats the way
it should stay.

I just can imagine an EOC booting Skype on their laptops, with stupid
buddy lists and icons flying around, trying to talk into $2 PC mics
and wearing headphones...that would be a funny sight!!

3. Sure, OLSR has a great facility to use the best internet gateway at
a particular moment.  You can share out internet access if you like.

4.  Part 97 operation of WiFi sounds like a neat idea, and I thought
it was at one point.  I now think its a dumb idea -- simply because
the internet (especially a CWN) is full of third party traffic you
cannot control transmitted to and from people who are likely not
license holders.   It also restricts you to *ONE* channel, instead of
3.  And we all learned a long time ago that lots of power does not
really make any difference .. its all about good antennas and
line-of-sight.  The FCC gives us way more than enough power to play
with....infact....you will run out of earth before you run out of
power with part 15 p2p regulations.



On 12/1/05, auto43348 at hushmail.com <auto43348 at hushmail.com> wrote:
> I am not in Seattle but I still found this reply interesting.  I
> don't mean to detract from the fundraising for the node.  I think
> such things are fun.
>
> Am I correct in saying:
> The goal of a "freenet" is not a collection of hotspots but a
> collection of point to point pipes existing alongside and if need
> be in the absence of the wired internet.  The collection hotspots
> attached to this freenet is secondary.
>
> I am a bit weak in the netowrking area so please clarify some
> things for me.
> 1.  Can SeattleWireless exist without The Internet?  (say in a
> disaster)
> 2.  How is routing handled?  or for voip things like STUN?
> unfortunately things like skype don't work without contacting the
> Mothership and is not truly decentralized.
> 3.  Could one attach to the freenet and also attach to the internet
> (through a home DSL/cable connection)?  Would/could some external
> traffic then be routed through my node?
> 4.  In the city where I lived a local ham group put a node quite
> high up a tower but they ran it under part 97 instead of 15 which
> puts quite a number of limitations on it.  A few p2p links were
> established, but I never understood a big picture of what they
> wanted to do with it.  I was not in LOS with it, so I couldn't get
> on, but it didn't seem like you could do much with it.  It sounds
> like you have quite a bit larger critical mass and don't run under
> ham restrictions.