Location: NodeUrbanGrind
Date and Time: Wednesday, November 28, 2007, 6:30-8:00 pm
Scribe: You
Roll Call: Them
Agenda
- Discuss Personal Telco membership attitudes towards City Fiber plan
Discuss outlines of a proposal for digital inclusion in collaboration with FreeGeek
NodeKlickitat (unless another speaker shows up)
People talk about Mississippi and ArborLodge quite a bit
RussellSenior is generally too modest to say much about his node
- Rectification of this lapse
- Node/other-activity Report
NodeBuffaloGap (and the need for our own node diagnostic equipment)
NodeBakery mast stabilization (thanks to PaulCLeddy and SaraHonsburger)
NodeLabarre still waiting for go ahead, needs re-pinging
Discovered that NodeFoxFire moved down near sw corner of Ladds Addition and:
- still has our nucab (which we can go collect);
- has graduated and wants to operate independently now.
- Russell gave talk at PLUG meeting in early November to about 20 people, got a decent response, but not much in the way of volunteerism or teeshirt purchases.
- Contacted by Portland Youth Builders for a speaker, Russell volunteered.
Received a FreeGeek grant of 6 1GHz PC's with 17-inch monitors, keyboards and mice for the purpose of distribution to attendees of a to-be-scheduled workshop on Mississippi.
- need to schedule the workshop
- need to advertise/promote the workshop
- need to construct a methodology for selecting recipients
- need to add wifi cards + antennas to each box
- have atheros pci radios
- have donated antennas
- need rpsma to n adapters to connect the two
- need to get them the heck out of my basement!
- Received a notification of new IRS rules requiring a form 990 (or equivalent) filing even if we don't have $25k in income (as we do not). Must file certain information by May 15th.
- Received a notification from the State of Oregon requiring a status update on our IRS status. We received our final determination last summer, just need to send a photocopy to the State.
- Continued receiving inquiries from people about new node-itude, 80% of them tend to be "i want coverage" rather than "i want to share my bounty of bandwidth with my less fortunate neighbors and random passers-by" we are looking for.
- Time for another node audit? Want to help? Drive around with a stumbler rig and a laptop confirming that we can connect to nodes we know about and any we find that we didn't know about, while chitchatting enjoyably with your fellow PTP volunteers along the way. This helps us maintain our map and identify nodes in need of help.
- Unwire Portland update.
- Other project ideas? Things you'd like to do? Things you'd like to learn about?
- None Yet
Notes
- City Fiber plans.
RussellSenior and MichaelWeinberg met with BrendanFinn and DavidOlson from the city and discussed strategies and ideas for citywide fiber. They indicated that there was council interest in having the city build a fiber network that would be offered to service providers on a wholesale basis. They also indicated that the business case for it was strong. Documents to this effect are available at Portland Online (http://www.portlandonline.com/cable/index.cfm?c=45468)
- Russell also attended a council discussion session where the council members seemed to be more cautious than Brendan and David were.
- In next 60 days council will vote on a "policy" that there should be fiber to the home. In 60-120 days there will be an RFI (request for information) about fiber to the home.
MichaelWeinberg is working on an advocacy effort under the banner Portland Fiber Initiative. Anyone interested in helping is encouraged to contact him.
- Consensus of meeting attendees is that a competitive fiber network is generally a good idea, and it makes sense for PTP to offer ideas.
FreeGeek collaboration.
PTP board members and FreeGeek staff are discussing possible collaboration on digital inclusion project (financed by city).
- Potential proposals are being developed in semi-private to prevent poaching. If you'd like to be involved or want to know what's going on, contact a PTP board member.
- City has proposed a few different funding plans, with costs from $150K - $325K. All involve distributing PCs, offering training and expanding Internet access.
- PTP Phone Number
- PaulCLeddy is an asterisk guru, and we could setup a POTS number to go to an asterisk box to take voicemail.
- It will cost less than $10 a month.
- Consensus is that it is a good idea. Paul will research the exact costs before we go forward with it.
RussellSenior talks about his node.
- 11a and 11b/g radio on roof.
- Neighbor down the street has a second node over 11a backhaul.
5 node RoofNet network which may be replaced with WDS.
- A year ago a number of PTP volunteers drove around to almost all the nodes that had existed. Some were still alive, others were gone which enabled us to make the map more accurate.
- Time to do it again.
- Basic plan is to drive around with a stumbler and a laptop. See if nodes are alive, and get basic information about the node.
- Russell will announce potential dates for this in the near future.
- Russell tells humorous (it wasn't so funny at the time) anecdote of accidentally triggering UPS shutdown of a point-of-sale system when repairing the node (Russell isn't sure it was really anything he did). Node hosts were very kind about it all.
- This incident illuminated the need for a PTP monitor to bring along for node repairs.
TomFitzgerald suggested we contact FreeGeek about a small LCD.
NodeMississippi hardware give away.
Need to have another workshop on Mississippi. We now have some FreeGeek granted boxes to give out.
- Need to schedule, perhaps in January.
- Need to come up with a system for giving them away.
UnwirePortland update.
MetroFi's demise was alluded to at the beginning of October. At the time, the story appeared to be that MetroFi would not be adding radios to the system, but they would be turning on the radios that were mounted but not in service.
- Russell has been screen-scraping the map to see if there are changes. There have only been 2.
MetroFi/DeniseGraab has been spotted doing a couple blog comments, so something is still happening.
- Other things
- There is some discussion of traffic shaping and QoS to prevent node users from pwning node hosts.
- Board Meeting - the annual board meeting will be Wednesday, December 19th at Site 9 (519 Southwest 3rd Avenue, Portland, OR 97204).