[Rack] Fwd: Mounting antennas on Noisebridge

Fri Jan 22 23:46:16 UTC 2016

Hi Max. Maybe a meet up at Noisebridge would be in order to figure out what
is and isn't possible. Some of us have been meeting up at Noisebridge every
other Thursday night to review our todo list of crap to fix in the space,
that might be the best time. The next one we're meeting up on is the 28th
of this month. We can checkout the current setup on the roof and review
some of the things we want to eventually do/clean up, plus stuff from your
previous email.

On 22 January 2016 at 11:28, max b <maxb.personal at gmail.com> wrote:

> Re-sending because I wasn't subscribed to the list before I sent.
>
>
>
> Hey,
>
> Thanks for reaching out! I can totally understand the caveats you're
> mentioning. I think I can address some of these ideas and then go from
> there.
>
> Our side of the network infrastructure is currently very bare bones and
>> literally held together by duct tape. It needs a lot of attention.
>
> We are lacking in time to work on any networking projects (as long as it's
>> up for us it's good) as other more important projects keep on coming up
>> (such as getting our access control system fixed, or fund raising).
>
>
> The sudomesh/peoplesopen.net folks can do all the network
> install/admin/maintenance for the public network aspect. All we would need
> is an ethernet port where we'd get uplink bandwidth. Our firmware provides
> for strict separation of network subnets, so that all public traffic goes
> straight out to our internet exit server to the internet. We can also have
> remote access depending on what everyone agrees on, so we'd be able to
> monitor and do some remote debugging in case of issues.
>
> We're still waiting on Monkeybrains to complete some work on the roof
>> they've agreed to do.
>> Our line of sight to anything isn't that great, particularly the East Bay.
>> We want to be respectful of Monkeybrain's ability to run their business,
>> so it's hard to come up with a good plan to offer the local community free
>> wifi while still not hosing our relationship with them.
>
>
> So the roof thing is obviously tricky, and I think this would depend on
> what exactly the work is and what the current situation on the roof is. As
> for line of sight issues and not wanting to compete with Monkeybrains, one
> possible option would be to mount a few 2.4ghz antennas pointing towards
> the street which broadcast a public SSID and which simply provide free wifi
> to the street below noisebridge. It's unlikely that this would compete with
> Monkeybrains because it's just a different service than they provide. It
> also wouldn't interfere with any of the spectrum that Monkeybrains uses
> because they are on the 5ghz bands. It's also a fairly simple process. We
> have a firmware and config setup that's built for this sort of use-case. We
> did a similar install last weekend at some downtown Oakland offices:
> https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Mesh/Blog#Downtown_Oakland_Access_Point
>
> You can pick the amount of bandwidth to share, and we could do a nice and
> tidy install of a few antennas and a router.
>
> The nice thing about the firmware we've been developing is that it
> functions both as a public AP and a mesh router with babel and 802.11
> ad-hoc mode. So we could do the public wifi install and then see how things
> go. If at some point folks felt comfortable with the monkey brains
> situation and there was line of sight somewhere and they wanted to build a
> long(ish) link, the basic infrastructure is the same and it would be a
> fairly simple matter of swapping in an antenna and putting one on the
> remote location.
>
> Let me know if I can provide some more detail about the network. I know
> that the topology and design, etc. can be pretty confusing (it's taken us
> this long just to come up with it), so I'd be happy to find ways to make
> sure that everyone is on the same page.
>
>
> Thanks!
> Max
>
> On Fri, Jan 22, 2016 at 9:32 AM, Rubin Abdi <rubin at starset.net> wrote:
>
>> Hi all.
>>
>> We've been wanting to do a project like this for a while however we've
>> had a couple constraints...
>>
>> - We're still waiting on Monkeybrains to complete some work on the roof
>> they've agreed to do.
>> - Our side of the network infrastructure is currently very bare bones and
>> literally held together by duct tape. It needs a lot of attention.
>> - We are lacking in time to work on any networking projects (as long as
>> it's up for us it's good) as other more important projects keep on coming
>> up (such as getting our access control system fixed, or fund raising).
>> - Our line of sight to anything isn't that great, particularly the East
>> Bay.
>> - We want to be respectful of Monkeybrain's ability to run their
>> business, so it's hard to come up with a good plan to offer the local
>> community free wifi while still not hosing our relationship with them.
>>
>> But I'm totally open to hear what your ideas are. :)
>>
>>
>> On 21 January 2016 at 22:11, Brandon <brandonesbox at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Re-sending from the email I subscribed to the list with, since I think
>>> the other didn't make it through:
>>>
>>> Hey all,
>>>
>>> Max, this is the networking list of Noisebridge.
>>> Networking list of Noisebridge, this is Max of the People's Open Network
>>> (the Oakland Mesh project run out of Sudo Room).
>>> I'm Brandon, I'm running a hackathon called Hack the Left out of
>>> Noisebridge Feb 5-7.
>>>
>>> Max suggested as a possible hackathon project mounting antennas on top
>>> of Noisebridge that would share our uplink with the surrounding community.
>>> So I wanted to open discussion between y'all about this.
>>>
>>> Thoughts? Opinions? Known constraints? Max, do you wanna explain the
>>> project in somewhat greater detail?
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Brandon
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Rack mailing list
>>> Rack at lists.noisebridge.net
>>> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/rack
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Rubin
>> rubin at starset.net
>>
>
>
>
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>
>

-- 
Rubin
rubin at starset.net
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