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| Since prices for 802.11 (primarily 802.11b) network cards have fallen we now believe that community networking is within the reach of most people with a technical bent. As such we are trying to organize these people into a cohesive unit. |
==== Mission Statement ==== Personal Telco is a grassroots effort to build an alternative communications network. By creating, packaging and disseminating Open Source tools, documentation and community support, we are building city wide networks which are open to, and maintained by, the public. |
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| There is lots more information (both general and technical) on our links page. A good technical overview of how 802.11b works and what it provides for is available (in pdf format). For the new comers and not so technical people here is a general overview of 802.11b and why we're excited about it. |
==== Recent News ==== '''3 July 2002 - Public Hotspot in NYC''' Bryant Park in New York City is now is a free wireless hotspot thanks to NycWireless. NYC Wireless, a volunteer community group of computer wizards, provided the expertise to make Bryant Park the first park in the world to offer free 802.11b wireless computing to its patrons. Go wireless and do work while enjoying the park. |
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* It is a standard. There is no single company or project you need to rely on. * There is good Linux and BSD support for 802.11b, especially for the Lucent Orinoco cards (and their predecesor WaveLan). * It has primitive support for encryption and authentication via WEP (wireless encryption protocol). Unfortunately standard WEP only supports a 40 bit shared key (many vendors have proprietary extensions to improve this but they aren't inter-operable). This is a better then nothing but not particularly useful in a community network setting. Because of the limitations of WEP we are looking into using IPSec and a CaptivePortal system for security and authentication. |
'''1 July 2002 - Time Warner Sending Out Cease and Desist Letters in NYC''' Time Warner sent out a nasty letter to an NycWireless [http://rickt.org/stuff/soho_wireless/twcnyc/ member]. He [http://slashdot.org/articles/02/06/28/2011241.shtml posted to] SlashDot later with his personal comments. I doubt this will be an isolated case. [Update: The [http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/01/technology/01WIFI.html?pagewanted=print New York Times] has a take on the letter.] |
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The PersonalTelco project is community based and driven, our role in this is to provide documentation and technical/moral support to help you set up your own wireless community. This means is that everyone that is interested should find other people near to them that are interested and create a community network, we have a list of PortlandWirelessCommunities and WirelessCommunities in general. Once you have this working the next step is to connect to someone else's network. As more and more people succeed in doing this our network will reach farther and farther and become more and more reliable (due to the network becoming meshed). ---- [CategoryPhilosophy] [CategoryPersonalTelco] |
'''25 June 2002 - Article on ''Warchalking'' ''' It may be slashdotted, but [http://www.blackbeltjones.com/warchalking/ Let's Warchalk!] suggests marking wireless access spots with chalk symbols. Your call as to whether this is useful or just more graffiti. |
Mission Statement
Personal Telco is a grassroots effort to build an alternative communications network. By creating, packaging and disseminating Open Source tools, documentation and community support, we are building city wide networks which are open to, and maintained by, the public.
==== Recent News ==== 3 July 2002 - Public Hotspot in NYC
Bryant Park in New York City is now is a free wireless hotspot thanks to NycWireless. NYC Wireless, a volunteer community group of computer wizards, provided the expertise to make Bryant Park the first park in the world to offer free 802.11b wireless computing to its patrons. Go wireless and do work while enjoying the park.
1 July 2002 - Time Warner Sending Out Cease and Desist Letters in NYC
Time Warner sent out a nasty letter to an NycWireless [http://rickt.org/stuff/soho_wireless/twcnyc/ member]. He [http://slashdot.org/articles/02/06/28/2011241.shtml posted to] SlashDot later with his personal comments. I doubt this will be an isolated case. [Update: The [http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/01/technology/01WIFI.html?pagewanted=print New York Times] has a take on the letter.]
25 June 2002 - Article on Warchalking
It may be slashdotted, but [http://www.blackbeltjones.com/warchalking/ Let's Warchalk!] suggests marking wireless access spots with chalk symbols. Your call as to whether this is useful or just more graffiti.