Welcome to the Personal Telco's Monthly Meeting Wednesday October 29th @ Urban Grind Coffee

• 6:00PM - Introduction to Personal Telco for new comers
• 6:30PM - Meeting begins

• DarrinEden is the group director

Internet Simulcast Information

The IRC channel for the meeting is on server irc.freenode.net at channel #ptp.

The Photos of the meeting are [http://www.personaltelco.net/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=October-2003 on the PTP Photo Gallery]

This meetings audio is being broadcast by KeeganQuinn with [http://thebasement.org/ The Basement Productions]. Streaming server URL: http://personaltelco.net:8000/status.xsl BR The streaming server hosts a constant looping broadcast of the most recent meeting, and live audio when meetings are in progress. The streams are in a somewhat new format called [http://www.vorbis.com/ Ogg Vorbis] - some information about compatible players is available [http://thebasement.org/sound/vorbis_info here].

Recordings of past meetings are archived: http://ptp.thebasement.org/meetings/

LIVE MEETING NOTES

October 28th, 2003:

6:00 pm: About 50 people are gathering at Urban Grind for the moonthly meeting. Nigel Ballard, back from a hot spot adventure in parts South, and Darin are at table in the front of the room here we go:

Daren: Welcome remarks and a four point plan for Personal Telco was reviewed.

Nigel: Introduces self and asks new people to introduce themselves. About 10 people introduced themselves.

Nigel says his new WiFi sniffer from Singapore (not Kensington) works well. Nigel explains about a new node being constructed in the Pearl district although details are not going to be released until the system is finished - perhaps in a month or two. Should be a significant node.

Darrin: Gives thanks to the PTP members who are helping set up the new nodes.

Aaron Baer: has the official officers report: Briefly: PTP has a little money, we spent a little money and everything is cool.

Rick Lindahl: Heads PTP's education standing committee. He gave a report on the outreach/education committe. Rick wants to get into the high schools, and higher education, providing assistance to facilitate WiFi. Rick asks for contacts within the educational community to get the word out.

Tom Higgins: Local Content Committee. Several nodes are using "subversion" to link local content on the local nodes. Each node can have their own content if they so choose. So far the software seems to be working reliably.

Darrin: Explains the benefits of PTP membership. You must have a node and a current sponsor (who can verify the node's existance).

New Business: Darrin thanks Dat and the City of Portland for donating 90 PCs to PTP for local nodes. Thanks!

Local Node Usage Rating:

8 PGE Park 2.7

7 Hawthorne Youth Hostel 3.9

6 World Cup Coffee 4.5

5 Capio Cafe 8.4

4 S Park Blocks 15.8

3 Pioneer Squaare 17.7

2 Hollywood Library 19.6

1 Heaven Cafe (27.1 Ops per day)

FEATURED PRESENTATION:

Steve Shrodle, the president of Verilan, brought in two very exciting pieces of gear (1) An 802.16a-like gear from Wi-Lan with a 29+db dish and (2) a Vivato panel.

Verilan has installed a Vivato panel on top of the Weatherly Building, the tallest building on the East side of the river, and faces the core of downtown Porland (about .5 miles away). Verilan has 6 of the first 10 802.16a-like units (they use 10Mhz bandwidth on 5.8 GHz.

Rick Lindahl is now an official Vivato dealer for the Northwest. It's will likely have a significant impact on Portland's "cloud". The signal integrity of 802.16a is far superior to 802.11 standards due to the 256 COFDM carriers (compared to 64 carriers in 802.11a/g. Plus 802.16a includes QOS.

PTP Net:

• Jason and Keegan overview the Rockey Butte Node constructed with Don Park (who is not here tonight). Jason explains a small omni was first used at Rocky Butte but the signal apparently was shooting off over the heads of the clients. Now with a directional panel and a Yagi antenna, the range and signal strength is very good. Rocky Butte is about 5 miles East of downtown. Don Park gets good reception about 6 miles away. A test on top of the Vista Bridge, on the West side of town, about 6.5 miles away were successful. Photos and other information is available on the PTP gallery on this web site. Don has tons of photos.

Other New business:

Aaron Baer: says he has a friend with a 40 foot spruce in his backyard in North Portland. Aaron thinks it would be a good spot for a node.

Brian Smith: Has been working with a node on Couch Park using a D-Link device. Brian brought his node down in a weatherproof box. An ethernet bridge connnects to the WiFi hotspot with everything inside a slick looking blocks.

Carl: Says Portland Community College has $300 to install a node at the college.

Darrin: Ajourns the meeting at 7:21pm. Time for socializing.

- notes by Sam Churchill, Oct 28th, 2003