Byte by Bite

Money available for widespread wireless

by Marv Dealy

Boston is considering the formation of a new non-profit organization tasked specifically with achieving that goal by raising the necessary money themselves to build and operate the system.

Most other area-wide wireless networks involved a single company willing to make the considerable upfront investment and take the risk in return for a possible market gain.

Would such an non-profit approach work here? Possibly. We’ve certainly got enough talented people around here, the technical know-how is available, and organizations like the AT&T Foundation are giving away buckets of money to groups who apply for assistance in setting up wireless networks.

The AT&T Foundation—one of the top five corporate foundations in the U.S. according to their website—has distributed more than $439 million since 1996.

The Foundation lists on their website their latest awards which include $1 million to provide technology resources for people with disabilities, a $1.6 million grant to help prepare African Americans for technology careers, a $150,000 grant to help teachers and students in Massachusetts, a $99,500 grant to Central Michigan University, and $100,000 to Cajone Valley to fund some program or another.

You can see the money varies all over the place, in both dollar amounts, geographic location and goal, but a common thread includes upgrading access to broadband Internet then guiding adoption of technologies to make an improvement in whatever group the grant ultimately benefits.

The Great Valley Center—which Tuolumne’s officials chose not to join for some reason—recently announced a $600,000 grant from the AT&T Foundation to benefit Pixley, partway between Fresno and Bakersfield on Highway 99. And there are many more sources of money to be applied for that could be used to create a wide-area network. The Federal government apparently is awash in our money.

Or, there’s the Matt Ashe approach. All 3,876,495 faithful readers will remember Matt has helped us out so many times in the past, what with rigging wireless connections hot enough to singe the air. Matt passes along news of the CUWiN project (Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network) (http://cuwireless.net/info) and suggests it might be just what we need to consider in our situation.

This group, to the south of Chicago, was formed a couple of years ago with the goal of providing public Internet access via a mesh system. In February, 2005 they launched with an “open-source effort to provide mesh networking with no center. The system is self configuring among nodes which need no non-volatile or permanent storage.”

“To set up a CUWiN network, you burn a CD with the 0.5.5 software and use it to boot a computer with a supported wireless card. The system finds nearby nodes, creates tables, and establishes itself as part of the network. The software is free and open source.”

“Imagine a free wireless networking system that any municipality, company, or group of neighbors could easily set up themselves.”

Now think about that, boys and girls. CUWiN’s project results in a free—as in hassle-free and money-free—way for folks who can’t get broadband without resorting to satellite—when that’s even an option—to cross the digital divide and join the haves.

To break this down, what you’d need to do is reach in your closet and drag out an old 486 computer that probably still works just fine. You’ll add a wireless card, load some software, and the computer will all by itself look around and establish a link with any other similarly equipped computer, say at your neighbor’s house across the way or at a business or other home up to a mile away.

The CUWiN-win project also provides a community-wide local area network at the same time, over which streaming audio and video, voice services and other things can be sent. The project pioneers the first open source implementation of “Hazy Sighted Link State” routing protocol, creating a “highly robust, scalable ad-hoc wireless network.”

In keeping with their goal of making house-to-house or building-to-building mesh networks freely available around the world, CUWiN’s website lists current projects on their website including Ghana, Illinois, D.C., Kansas, South Africa, New Orleans, and Tribal Digital Village, California (where else).

Naturally, the mesh needs some connection to the Internet somewhere; possibly several groups or companies who have excess bandwidth could each pump signal into the mesh.

If Matt’s idea sparks your juices, drop me an email at the address below or get on over to my blog, called Talk Here, at www.talk-here-now.blogspot.com and let’s talk more. Look for the Comments link below my fetching picture to join the conversation.

Error Messages

On a lighter note, cousin Bob Dealy sends along some graphic representations of error messages he’d like to see rather than the cryptic ones Windows sees fit to deliver. Some examples: a long string of letters and symbols followed by the phrase “you aren’t expected to understand this.”

I also liked “your system administrator has determined that your current activity is providing a level of enjoyment beyond that which is allowed on company time. Your enjoyment will now be disabled. You may continue with this activity, but you may not enjoy it. Please click either OK, I’m sorry, or Dock my Pay.” How about “your mouse has moved, please restart Windows for the change to take effect.” My favorite “user error – replace user.”

Friday Freebie

This one’s a biggie, as AOL makes some of its services free for the very first time. AOL got many people on the Internet in the early days, and collected money each month from them for the privilege of dialing up through their walled village. In an effort to gain potential market share in the burgeoning online advertising arena Time Warner has announced that AOL will begin giving away e-mail accounts and software now only available to paying members.

While AOL will still offer dialup accounts (I’ve had one since AOL started—emergency use only now, and should have been dropped some time ago) your mailbox won’t be stuffed with AOL CDs anymore as it won’t be marketing the service nearly as aggressively. And be sure to throw all your AOL CDs away so my collection will be worth something on eBay someday.

Paid subscriptions still account for 80% of AOL’s revenues, so considering that millions of people suddenly have no reason to pay AOL each month, the strategy is a risky one for Time Warner. Rivals Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all offer free email accounts already, and subscribers have been peeling off to go to those competitors. Time Warner stock, gutted by the drop in the value of AOL, closed down on the news.