PTP MONTHLY MEETING RAW NOTES

JANUARY 29, 2003

AdamShand

How accurate is nodedb and what is it, lot of new people here, inform all of meeting formats, welcome to join us afterwards to pick our brains

NigelBallard

add wifi to your cafe and business will increase

introductions > David olson, bureau director, office of cable communications and franchise management

DavidOlson

smallest bureau with longest name, seen many generations of tech go through, a legal policy wonk by trade, been a wireline guy in my career, riding the wave, showing what can happen when the public interest is served, missing the social, economic and cultural opportunities, sky dayton-he's one of many who are locking up spectrum to repackage it and resell to the public, better known as commercial missionaries, get your nodes out there, educate the public, make it clear that you don't have to lose your shirt to get hooked up, reminded of cable access days (at&t), the converged sector of cable tv-telecommunications, these large companies that were supposed to compete with eachother that hatched these smaller companies that were supposed to compete with eachother collapsed, we are a decentralizing force, doing grassroots work is essential, made funny crack about astroturf yeah okay you had to be there, cannot look to the fcc nor to the government, the work in evangelizing is a huge endeavor, check city of portland website, look for cable and you find the cable office, give david soloos props, we look to the very active long beach california community, a video recording of guest speaker is available from dat.

YOU CAN FIND AN AUDIO RECORDING OF THE MEETING HERE


AdamShand

  1. status of financials, using paypal but nothing in it now, we have a bank account now approximately $500, we were founded in november 2000, august/september 2002 became an oregon non-profit, obtained 5013c status, we'll find out in 4-6 weeks from irs, we have no full time employees so we need to raise funds, buy t-shirts and seek donations, that's the non-profit update, financials are available for viewing
  2. why is ptp around? what we accomplish? sometimes when we work on it we're not always aware of our contributions, good to know the city is aware of us
  3. adam traveled extensively the past few months, went to england, europe, new zealand and australia, they've heard of ptp, community wireless groups in greece and spain are going nuts, part of the difference between there and the states is that these countries telecom structure isn't so hot and so they are motivated to build something which is technically better (as opposed to in the states where we "just" want more equality and freedom with our telecommunications).
  4. there is a wireless group in netherlands called WirelessLeiden which is most advanced community wifi network in the world, they use a combination of AODV (See AdhocRouting) and OSPF. their advice is work with local community groups and the tech will follow from there. we will succeed when we get other community groups to join-build-expand, it is the people and the locations that you have access to that makes the difference

  5. check out the worldwide community here.

LonnieWormley

  1. t-shirts on sale $5 contact launi, if you have questions feel free to raise your hand
  2. talk about itec, last year we did a couple events, orcon-took ptp van to orcon, they wanted us to provide internet access and wifi cafe, kgon tower shoot to the van antenna, actually provided internet access, learned about equip protocols to use in this site specific context, kgon antenna still up there, winfield has an arrangement with kgon, generated $300 for ptp from van rental
  3. recently participated in itec, first convention that i put together, our theme and booth was grunge style, as it turned out we were swamped, all of us were tied up talking to someone, we had a lot of people inspired by us, glad to resolve the issue with tmobile, got a lot of contacts from itec, many requests to help setup a node

AaronJohnson

at itec the nytimes article was posted which included a ptp member posing in the park blocks, sam laminated article on that itec day at the booth, that was classic timing

LonnieWormley

core of your booth doesn't necessitate expected activity of booth, we spread the word, thanks for your support

AdamShand

  1. some thanks to DonPark and other SpecialOps team members, PioneerSquare node gets most attention and use, namely by journalists of note

  2. PioneerSquare hardware has been through some hard times, swapped hd twice, installed again, its an embedded linux system, soekris boxes have good prices

  3. statistics of the network question, someone wanted to know usage statistics

DonPark

we have data from a year ago, 17 authorizations per day average

AdamShand

  1. how much bandwidth shared, has two t1s feed their corporate net, we use a portion of their bandwidth, rate limit ourselves to 384k downstream
    1. come within range
    2. dhcp
    3. open web browser
    4. directs to captive portal on our box's web server
    5. update rules and allows traffic out
  2. no hard limit to individual users, access points typically 10-100 simultaneous connections, there is no hard limit noted on hardware specs its all marketing bs, our hard limit for ptp is 150
  3. question-do you have a sense of usage patterns like new regular users, answer-haven't done any data mining, privacy concerns with statistical analysis
  4. transmission power question to be answered after meeting
  5. what exactly is community wireless network-wifi? is it for free, why are ap connections free, does money have anything to do with it, we looked to open source software license frameworks
  6. adam and group of friends started a manifesto, what are the characteristics of our organization, wireless commons evangelizes need for a commerce platform over a network which stays open and available for anyone to use, check out picopeerhttp://www.picopeer.net/wiki and wirelesscommons http://www.wirelesscommons.org

  7. there was a wireless conference in berlin, beginnings of a pseudo legal document for traffic routing much like the gpl model for source code
  8. is TomHiggins here?, tom had a NewbieWorkshop at his house-discussed building antennas and general tech help

  9. organization issues to be discussed, our first annual BoardMeeting in december, at meeting we felt despair and frustrated with work we have or have not done, however we had a good healthy rant, good news now we have more projects to do, i see 2003 a transition year for running a NonProfit and the transition of hotspots to building a network (ManSig)

  10. like to see embedded wireless systems used more often, try to connect all the hotspots to actually build a network, its a big project we need you, who do you know and what can you do, that's an interesting and necessary part of our efforts
  11. transparency issues need to be addressed, decisions resulted in multiple mailing lists, private mailing lists becoming exclusive, board decided to make more transparent, now the admin list will be open, ops list will be open as well, ops list stays open to prevent shortcutting to individuals, ops archives opened although some parts are sensitive, announce list will be used more often
  12. ptp is a membership org currently the only members are the board, required by law to track members, so currently we track board only, we will develop membership policies
  13. ptp really needs office space, ptp individuals currently paying out of pocket, office space near downtown preferably

member comment

galleria could be available

member comment

pmug.org has an office in the galleria, willing to help in some way

LonnieWormley

what does it take to be a member?

AdamShand

what are we proposing to become a member?

  1. by running a node
  2. a fully branded ptp node
  3. ssid to www.personaltelco.net
  4. certain more detailed technical reqs to be a node
  5. can be a repeater node (a method to avoid providing internet access)
  6. honorary members can qualify that are not able to run a node for residential reasons and can be granted membership as a thank you
  7. paid membership discussed but no real agreement if good or bad but a good way to raise funds

AdamShand

  1. final thing to say, ptp has been a meritocracy up to this point, if someone does it well they usually own the project largely, if you want to become a board member we accepting nominations in august, septbember board meeting decided by advisory board, side note board of directors are liable and responsible for execution of policies, advisory board provides neutral guidance, one annual meeting required
  2. everytime we discuss a business opp a commercial provider beats us to it, two bars currently interested, a property developer interested in us with possible roof access, one lake oswego property interested, we have tread c to carefully with volunteer labor

NigelBallard

typically if this is a cafe its the first person through door becomes the defacto provider, we have to be circumspect about our involvements

member comment

glad to hear ops list open, but will it have a chilling effect on free ops speach?

AdamShand

discussion of new nodes on board list only, have to be careful with sensitive business information, setting up trouble ticket system in accordance with opened lists

AaronJohnson

don't leave it up ops team to help and instruct others, you do the work and then ask for assistance after

AdamShand

kicker is that giving away free internet access, regardless of the fact that a cafe is offering, john smith is going to think the cafe owner will know how to fix it, disadvantage is that we can't fully support installations properly, value added service for cafes, possible better wording community wifi access, never known to make a deal by stating that its community access, triage address for tech support

LonnieWormley

encourage people to use the main list, if question goes answered then the issue can escalate to one on one instruction

AdamShand

  1. who here has actually used a node? hands up, thanks to dan for the monthly meeting node, tech talk on s-boxes later
  2. we had dreams of creating a wide network, like connecting here and going out the wireless network to launi's node, more interesting things can happen not relying on the internet for content
  3. 802.11b can't talk to another ap, we're stuck with 802.11b

  4. we wanted an upgradeable configurable platform to allow more flexible routing solutions, sokris boxes offers an embedded platform and has no moving parts and runs linux so ultimately configurable small configurable quiet more expensive $300 however its still a good thing, standardized images and boxes good, manage this one device and cuts effort redundancy, many other wifi groups are using the sokris box, would like to see dev of installation cds detects os and autoinstalls

NigelBallard

802.16a recently approved by ieee http://www.ieee802.org

AdamShand

  1. we are several years away from 802.16a
  2. we have used NodeDb for MappingSoftware, the author announced that he will open source it, anticipating its release http://www.nodedb.com

past monthly MeetingNotes are available

stay tuned for next monthly meeting announcement

diy or send corrections to EugeneKeam


[CategoryMeetingNotes]

MeetingJanuary2003 (last edited 2007-11-23 18:02:24 by localhost)