[Rack] Fwd: Mounting antennas on Noisebridge

Fri Jan 22 23:47:25 UTC 2016

Sent that a little too soon. I have a prior engagement on that Thursday
that requires me to leave the space by 19:30. If you can meet up between
18:00 and 19:00, that'll work. :)

On 22 January 2016 at 15:46, Rubin Abdi <rubin at starset.net> wrote:

> 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
>

-- 
Rubin
rubin at starset.net
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