LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Andrew Reid <andrew.reid@plug.cx>
  To  : Simon Hackett <simon@internode.com.au>
  Date: 24 Jan 2001 15:52:21 +1030

Re: [was Re: AOL? or best ISP]

Simon,

Thanks for your reply. I understand what your concerns are. I 

> At least one of you is likely to be breaking federal 
> telecommunications law in the process. Exciting, isn't it?

We examined the rules and how they affect our situation. Since our ISP
is a carrier, they've done all the `endorsement' and taken care of the
Paper Work issues that makes the link legal.

While I know whining about it on this list wont change anything, I
cannot see why the government is so strict on the use of this gear. I
mean, If I want to put in an RF loop in my home suburb amongst some
friends to share network resources, according to a guy at the ACA, I
can, as long as I no money is changing hands for the use of the service.

So I can use it as a WAN amongst a bunch of houses, but if one of us was
to install ADSL or ISDN at our homes, and equally distribute the cost of
the ISDN/ADSL rental amongst ourselves, I beleive it then becomes
illegal, as it is being used as a revenue generating facility. It seems
that the ACA view this as you trying to `be a carrier' and provide a
service.

The ACA's answer to this was something along the lines of you (the
ISDN/ADSL owner) being obliged to provide a service because of the money
changing hands etc.

What I am quite bamboozled about is that I cannot do this amongst
friends to share an Internet Connection. It's hardly a commercial
venture, as the money changing hands would most certainly be a trivial
amount.

> >This gear is really cheap (The genuine Lucent cards retail for about
> >$300, I believe) and an antenna, pigtail and all the bits add up to
> >about $600. The gear is capable of 10Mbit/Sec (It adjusts iself
> >according to noise / environment) which is nothing to sneeze at.
> 
> Performance claims on 802.11b spread spectrum equipment are even more 
> bogus than performance claims for '56k' modems.

Hmmm. My Link is ~3Km from the City, and I have direct line-of-sight to
the roof of the building where the other antenna lives. The best I've
got out of the link is 490KBytes/Sec. Thats the link's capability, as it
was measured by an FTP Test between to UNIX boxes directly connected to
each end (Both with SCSI Hard Disks -- I've tried it with IDE and it
didn't seem to be able to keep up :-).

 
> What you've forgotten to factor in, for a commercial service, are 
> items including:
> 
> - site survey and install labour
> - equipment maintenance
> - extra hardware at the customer end to virtualise a customer circuit 
> across the shared broadcast domain implemented by the radios, unless 
> you really did want your next door neighbour (and his mate across 
> town) to mount your filesystem while you surf
> - impossibility of making any statement, at all, about QoS of the 
> resulting service, or recovering from people running illegally 
> over-powered links or just plain saturating the link with traffic 
> beyond your control
> - starting a company, gaining and paying for a carrier license so the 
> activity is actually legal, and surviving the compliance costs of 
> retaining that license


As far as encryption/privacy goes, I would have thought that connecting
this link into a properly setup Linux box would prevent such issues. I
cannot say that I know from experience, as I am all alone on the link an
use Lucent's in-built encryption stuff (Though I think this is used for
scrambling the signal to stop interception).

> >As the gear is capable of an Access Point mode, you can connect several
> >clients to one "Central" antenna, acting somewhat like a 10Mb hub --
> >sharing the central antenna.
> >
> 
> Yep. See above.
> >
> >  > I'm mulling over a middle ground which I might call 'wireless ADSL'
> >  > with a lower installation fee and a different QoS to the Agile
> >  > wireless derived service. Its complicated by various issues and they
> >  > aren't trivial - but it's 'on the list', yes.
> >
> >
> >Possibly the Lucent gear is a solution? It's cheap for people to get,
> >install is trivial and costs pretty much nothing for data transport. I
> >know there are issues with the ACA etc. But I've been quite impressed
> >with the gear during the time that I've used it, and maybe a specialist
> >product could be worth a look. Maybe this could be 'Wireless ADSL' as it
> >is relatively easy to configure these things to run at rates similar to
> >ADSL (or faster :-)
> >
> >I'd be interested in your, and other people's opinions, comments etc on
> >the viability of such a delivery medium.
> 
> Its an absolutely sensible suggestion. And in various places around 
> the world (mostly in countries where it's actually legal, but here in 
> Australia, anyway, as well), various small communities are setting up 
> their own wireless ethernet broadcast domains using this sort of gear.
> 
> They're getting popular because the entry cost, if you're keen and 
> able to contribute your own labour without including that in the cost 
> accounting, it can seem like an effective 'neighbourhood internet'.
> 
> There are some scaling issues, some QoS issues, some legal issues, 
> some serious security issues (everyone's on the same broadcast 
> domain, as already noted), but the biggest long term issue is the 
> likely 'diminishing returns' effect as the cells run out of 
> bandwidth, and everyone wishes a few less people had joined in - but 
> they're not volunteering to leave.


Surely a well designed Wireless network would be able to grow to cope
with such scalling issues. For example, if the antenna in area `A' is
too full, install another one near by and move those (and new) clients
over to that one.

> This has an end game which has similarities with the 'tragedy of the 
> commons' - if everyone's sharing a common resource and using it as 
> much as they like, that works really really well until there is no 
> longer enough common resource to go around.
> 
> [which, interestingly, is also the risk factor for all-you-can-eat 
> ISP's - the pricing model looks viable until the ISP concerned runs 
> out of their initial available bandwidth and hasn't got enough income 
> to afford the next link upgrade]

I'll just make it clear here that I am not trying to undermine what you
have said at all. As a person with squillions more in the experience
department than myself, I respect what you've got to say. But by the
same token, I've got my opinions about what I believe this stuff can do
and be used for. In the end, all I want is access to a network that is
capable of giving me fast access to the Internet.

Regards,

-- 
Andrew Reid                   email: andrew.reid@plug.cx
                              www:   http://www.plug.cx
"Where the hell is            phone: +61 401 946 813
 Christmas Island Anyway?"
         - nixcx.com

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