I’m lazy so I’ll copy the email I sent to friends about the status of my Free WiFi project.
Hi guys,
I thought I’d start sending out updates via email for now until I get the motivation to blog them. Eventually I’d like to have a wiki of sorts for community wifi projects and the like.
Anyhoo:
- I’ve got Second Cup on 104th up and running.
- I switched the domain to http://free-wifi.ca and I redesigned the site to allow for better ads. Any ads you see are fake. Don, wanna give me $75/month!?
- I also turned on the captive portal which makes users authenticate their session before they can continue. I did this because it forces a redirect to free-wifi.ca while the previous redirect option wasn’t always working.
- The last updates from firmware version 952 to 953 bricked most of the network until I could reset them, however from 953 to 955 they were fine. This is good because 953 and 955 were supposed to address a lot of hangup issues the nodes have. I hope manual resets aren’t going to be the demise of the project.
- I spoke to Jonathan Plesset in Pittsburgh on the phone last week. He’s a neat guy, sounds like he’s young and one of “us”
He hates municipal wifi projects (sorry Don) and he runs a hotel down there and has 100+ nodes in the hotel and then 31 nodes on his street. It’s an area called Shady Side which is very similar to Whyte Avenue. Something like he has running is my short/long-term goal. Check out his site (http://www.shadysidewifi.com/) and then the Meraki (he hates them btw) map. http://public.meraki.com/network/shadysidewireless He runs like 50GB a WEEK through TWO gateways! Some of the nodes are 8 hopes away too. It’s crazy, I hope it’s something we can accomplish.
- Stephen has taken several nodes and placed them at ThinkTel and a few other locations. Mack, would you like some? I think you’d be the best person to go talk to the Three Bananas Cafe.
- I’ve been trying to bookmark whatever I find on free wifi or related material. You can see them here: http://del.icio.us/ewarnke/wireless
I would like to have a big pow wow for everyone interested or involved in this project. As most of you know I’ll be out of the country for 4 months come September and it’s too long to just drop this thing. I was hoping to do this in early August. Friday the 1st even. We could meet at my cafe depending on how large the group is, or heck Three Bananas would work (right Mack?). Anyone have suggestions or problems with August 1st?
If you know anyone who wants to be included in future updates please have them contact me.
If you have any questions or ideas please let me know.
Eric
And that’s that.