to follow up on this i have selected a few dates that i have available to me for hosting this event. please let me know which of the following dates will work for you. all times would be after 6PM CDT. the meeting location is the cisco office in bloomington (pretty close to the mall of america). i have the following dates available within the following week and assuming there is consensus and folks interested in attending i'll book the room and make the appropriate gestures for hospitality (read: food ;-)) monday - 6-May-2002 tuesday - 7-May-2002 thursday - 9-May-2002 if anybody has something that they would like to present on: interesting antenna designs, andy's WAP 11 tower mount, pringles cans w/o pringles and interesting h/w inserted, etc. please let me know. i figure that this should be soon enough to allow andy to show off his project and not delay its deployment too much. :-) if there is any interest i can see if i can get someone to give a presentation regarding some of the new cisco wireless gear and some deployment tips. i don't dabble with this stuff on a daily basis for work but i know people who do. if this is too soon and people would like to push it out another week or so i can arrange for that as well. just let me know. the available conference room has considerable white board space and AV equipment if someone would like to grace us with a presentation of some sort. when last we saw our hero (Monday, Apr 29, 2002), Andy Warner was madly tapping out: > steve ulrich wrote: > > [...] > > i joined this mailing list a couple of weeks ago and i just recently > > finished catching up on the mailing list archives. from some of the > > discussions that took place a couple of months ago there was some interest > > in creating a real community wireless network but nothing (or so it would > > seem from the archives) was really done about it. > > Ack. > > > [...] > > is there a populace amongst the list that would be interested in meeting > > and coordinating the deployment (albeit i'm sure quite limited at this > > time?) of such a network? i'm in the process of setting up a public > > access point in my neighborhood (NE minneapolis) once my omnis show up. > > Count me in. > > > i've been hacking on the NoCatAuth stuff (http://www.nocat.net) to talk to > > real routers (cisco) for the traffic shaping and such. since this seems > > to be the most promising mode of community authentication i would be quite > > willing to host an authetication server for local authentication and > > integration with other WCNs. > > I've been doing a bunch of work recently with the hostap driver > (http://people.ssh.com/jkm/Prism2/) which now supports PCI/Mini-PCI cards, > so a single linux AP/portal (a la Sputnik(http://www.sputnik.com)) is a very > practial and reliable option. Heck, just grabbing sputnik releases, hacking > the server details and putting up our own auth server might be another > potential option. > > I do believe the very first thing we need to come to terms with > as a group is exactly what kind of network/service do we want to > build. The stated goals of existing WCNs seem to span the gamut > from simply sharing technical knowledge, to coordinating/branding > hot-spots, to supplying a complete local network infrastucture. > > I'll go on record as remaining dubious about our ability to provide > any kind of meaningful alternative infrastucture in the metro area, > given the flat terrain and low population density. However, > providing/promoting public access points, with reliable/predicatable > configuration and services, while utilising wired backhauls (like > Sputnik) sounds both practical and fascinating to me. > > I think a face-to-face meeting of TCWUG would be a great idea, long > overdue. I'll offer to do some show and tell at a meeting, with a > re-cased, tower mount WAP-11 with POE, as long as the meeting happens > before I bolt it to my chimney :-) If anyone can supply a PCMCIA-capable > Mac (or an Intermec AP), we could do an alchemy BOF too, where Lucent > Silver cards were upgraded to Gold. > -- > andyw at pobox.com > > Andy Warner Voice: (612) 801-8549 Fax: (208) 575-5634 -- steve ulrich sulrich at botwerks.org PGP: 8D0B 0EE9 E700 A6CF ABA7 AE5F 4FD4 07C9 133B FAFC