all-
a few notes from the meeting last night. i know that i enjoyed the
meeting and it was nice to be able to put a face to the posters and catch
up on some of the local network gossip. i hope others enjoyed it as well.
without further ado - i've coalesced my notes and dropped them into this
email. my apologies for errors and omissions - hopefully conversation
elements have been attributed appropriately.
AGENDA
------
* introductions
just like it sounds - people introducing themselves and explaining what
their interests are and backgrounds. .as a point of reference we had 43
people in attendance.
* discussion of practical group goals
this sparked a lively discussion with comments on the part of several
parties.
to spearhead the discussion andy warner kicked it off with the
suggestion of getting a feel for the "center of (mass|gravity)" of the
group.
an explaination by bob tanner regarding what several of his
initial objectives were with the start-up of the group as well as some
history regarding real-time's involvement in the local wireless arena
(dabbling in breezecom gear - migration to cisco gear, lessons learned,
at times painfully, etc.)
this culminated in the polling of the room for 2 primary goals and 1
ancillary goal <- which fits in nicely with the above goals
primary goals described
- creation of an independent network infrastructure which is
independent of current copper infrastructure or privately
augmented. very much in line with the goals of Seattle Wireless[1]
or PTP (personal teleco project)[2].
- addressing the needs of local hot-spots and providing consistent
configuration and setup for people to use in a roaming fashion.
this is more in line with the goals of the NYC wireless folks[3].
ancillary goal described
- simply be a group that gets together on a monthly basis for the
dissemination of wireless techie type information. cookies, soda,
gossip, demos, etc..
after some circular discussion on the matter it was suggested that
we take this to the list and andy was elected to drive this forward
within the mailing list and we'd take it from there.
* discussion of current hot-spots and interesting nodes
while this agenda item never received formal attention within the scope
of the meeting it was broached in a rather interesting fashion. matt
hallacy had some kismet maps that he'd created in the process of his
netstumblings. these pointed out that there are a fair number of
poorly configured nodes out there with a wide range of coverage. if
you're interested in these maps you might want to email matt regarding
this directly[4].
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
| note: |
| since he's placed this notification on the web page |
| where these were i'm going to assume that he won't mind me posting |
| this on the list - but you know what they say about assuming ... |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
* show and tell
andy was nice enough to show us his wap11 put in a die-cast box as well
as provide a discussion of some of his design considerations. for those
of you that weren't able to make the meeting and see the h/w while it
made it's progression around the room i believe that andy will be
posting pictures.
chris elmquist also brought in an an omni that he'd modified to survive
exposure to sun, rain, etc.
* wrap up and planning for the next meeting
the last item on our agenda was pretty quickly dispatched. i've
extended the offer to host the meetings at the cisco facility as
long as the facilities addressed the needs of the group. if there is a
need for additional room, we'll investigate alternative locations.
since i travel a fair amount i've secured backup for the meetings in
the form of william reich another cisco employee who can handle the
logistics associated with hosting the meetings.
the group agreed that the first tuesday of each month was the most
convenient for meeting times. <action>everyone marks their
calendars/pda's and proceeds to tell their friends.</action>
* meeting adjourned. socializing ensues...
misc notes
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there are a variety of different group related perks which bear
investigation as well as items for discussion at the next meeting. i
scribbled some notes. regarding these items and they might be topics for
further conversation. (in person or on the mailing list)
presentation discussions
- wireless security discussion
- antenna design
- apartment dweller antenna designs
- poe
group discounts
- books - ORA and others have group discounts available for user groups
like tcwug. perhaps someone would like to volunteer to track
this for the next meeting and we can place an order or
something along those lines.
- hardware - antennas, cable, connectors, etc. is there anything that
folks are particularly keen on buying in a bulk fashion?
catalog of member nodes.
- mapdev - setup a group node map for tracking t.c. hot spots and their
configurations. much like what the ptp folks are doing?
- research wiki type collaborative tools - a topic of brief conversation
during the meeting was the notion of sharing information in a
collaborative fashion that didn't place any given party at the focal
point for content insertion. (i was assigned the job of researching our
options here - suggestions welcome.)
misc references
---------------
[1] - http://www.seattlewireless.net
[2] - http://www.personaltelco.net
[3] - http://www.nycwireless.net
[4] - map url - http://www.techmonkeys.org/~poptix/802.11/ - contact matt
for more information. matt's email: poptix at poptix.net
--
steve ulrich sulrich at botwerks.org
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