Why not more nodes

Thu Dec 28 12:48:28 PST 2006

I've restarted thus mail a couple of times, and I think I've finally
figured out what I'm trying to say. The project sounds awesome, but the
way information is being shared and explained just isn't approachable to
enough people. I'm not a developer or an electrical engineer, but I've
worked 10+ years in the computer industry and when I read the site it is
confusing, overly technical and I'd even say 7e33t. You've excluded a
lot of people by making it hard to understand. I know the core group
keeping this going is extremely intelligent and technical, but don't
limit yourselves to just other technical people. Your goals sound
broader than that and I would start to tune your message and your site
to a broader audience. 

As an example, by plain English I mean step by step "do this. Do that."
type instructions leave out all the explanations about what things mean,
have that separate. If it possible to setup a WRT54G someone should
write down how to do that. I mean someone spent a lot of time writing
down that hacking the WRT54G page, but that doesn't seem very useful to
the goals of getting more nodes on the net. As for the hardware
recommendations you should have a standard setup which you will think
will benefit the network the most, you should say "buy this list of
stuff from here, and email this person and they will help you set it
up."

Some other things I found confusing or missing:

* Linking to a Node - The instructions say find someone on the node map
and link to them. That is very vague. Ultimately I will have to do that,
but explain the steps to me so I know what I'm getting into before I
contact a complete stranger.

* Number of Nodes - It looks like there are 9 Active nodes and about 45
'potential' nodes. What does it mean to be a potential node? How long
can a node stay in that state before it is removed from the map? 

* Node Map - Besides the potential nodes thing, I love the node map.
This shows me that basically I can use this network downtown in a small
radius around 6th and Virginia, along a lot of Capitol hill, and in
Madrona. I'll go try that sometime.

* The site overall - I think the wiki should be moved to the background
and something more approachable and visual should be created (with
pictures) that explains the goals and the vision of the project. 

I mean this as constructive feedback, not as nitpicking. I'd be willing
to help edit site content, unfortunately I don't have the knowledge to
help with the other things much, but I can put on a cheerleader costume
if it would help. ;-)

-p

-----Original Message-----
From: talk-bounces at seattlewireless.net
[mailto:talk-bounces at seattlewireless.net] On Behalf Of Eric Butler
Sent: Thursday, December 28, 2006 11:33
To: SeattleWireless Talk List
Subject: Re: Why not more nodes

A dedicated router is almost always required, but this certainly could
be an off the shelf device such as a Linksys. The biggest issue with
using one of these devices is there is currently no 'plain english' way
to set everything up on one, you'll have to ssh the box and edit some
configuration files by hand. There has been talk about creating a
"SeattleWireless" firmware for these devices that would basically have a
"Make me a node" button, but as of yet, nobody has volunteered to
develop this. If anyone is interested , I encourage you to come to the
next HackNight. With a few people, I don't think it would be a very
difficult thing to develop.

Another other issue of course is that most off the shelf hardware (the
WRT54G is no exception) is not all that great, and if you started
pushing a lot of traffic, you'd probably want to swap it out with
something like a soekris board anyway.

Most people in this area pay over $40 per month for broadband. If you
set up an internet sharing agreement with someone else over the
SeattleWireless network, it would quickly pay you back the cost of a
decent soekris box.

    - Eric

Patrick Walters wrote:
> I'll chime in on this one. When I originally joined the list and
started
> poking around I figured all I would need to do is buy a $100 antenna,
> find a place outside for it, wire it to my existing access point with
> some quality COAX and I'd be up. I figured it would be easy and cheap.
> 
> It may be easy and cheap, but the instructions on the site call for
> spending a couple of hundred dollars to get everything up and running.
> 
> It is possible to do more with less? By that I mean if there were more
> nodes albeit with cheaper more commodity hardware could the same goals
> be achieved or is the higher end custom access point hardware
required?
> 
> If the higher end hardware isn't a must-have, I'd love to see step by
> step instructions in plain English on how to use commodity hardware
like
> a Linksys access point to get up and going.
> 
> Anyway, maybe all this is there but I'm not readily able get the
> information from the site.
> 
> Also, the Node Map seems to show a lot of nodes, but when I turn off
the
> 'potential nodes' most nodes disappear.  Are potential nodes
in-progress
> or just purely theoretical nodes? It would be good to have 'Needed
> Nodes' to show where adding a node could greatly enhance the network.
> 
> -patrick 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: talk-bounces at seattlewireless.net
> [mailto:talk-bounces at seattlewireless.net] On Behalf Of Jason Feeser
> Sent: Thursday, December 28, 2006 00:49
> To: dennis at galron.com; 'SeattleWireless Talk List'
> Subject: RE: Politics
> 
> So, why haven't more people put up seattlewireless nodes???
> 
> Large scale public mesh is what we want... right???
> 
> Are we waiting for 'N' to land???  Will 'N' solve current
limitations???
> 
> Can we have a self-configuring household mesh appliance that people
> would be
> happy to pay $100-$200 for in order to get "free" internet???
> 
> Or are most people here (industry professionals aside) just pointing
> antennas down the street in order to save $50.00/month???
> 
> I would love a free network from West Seattle to the UW to get at my
> free
> internet.  But for now, Comcast it is.
> 
> Jason
> 
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