This is a general overview intended to cover the basics of our Society, its work and the technology we use.

If you have questions, or additional information that you think is relevant to this overview please post it to the bottom of this page. Thank you!

There are other Overviews available from CategoryOverview

Contents

  1. What is B.C. Wireless?
    1. Are you a non-profit or commercial business?
    2. Who are the people involved?
    3. What type of "memberships" are available?
    4. What's a community network?
    5. What's a community?
    6. How much does it cost?
    7. What is BC Wireless Society's current public policy discussion points?
    8. How does it work? / What Technology do you use?
      1. What kind of equipment do I need?
    9. What about Internet access?
  2. What is Wireless?
    1. What do people do with Wireless?
      1. I've heard that people can steal Internet over Wireless, is this true?
    2. What about privacy?
    3. Is Wireless hard?
    4. What type of hardware do I need to get started?
  3. Do I need an antenna?
    1. What's the difference between an Omni Directional, Yagi, Parabolic, etc antennas
    2. How does an antenna increase my range? Is it an amplifier?
    3. What are all these scary terms, MHz, dBm, dBi etc.

What is B.C. Wireless?

The British Columbia Wireless Network Society is a non-profit grass-roots organization made up of unpayed volunteers and like minded folks who setup community networks using Wireless.

Are you a non-profit or commercial business?

The B.C. Wireless Network Society is a non-profit organization registered under the Society Act of British Columbia, Canada.

Our motives include empowering people to use technology to improve their own lives through direct participation in networking and all the things that go with it. The B.C. Wireless Network Society is one resource we use to help accomplish our common goals.

That being said, we do Co-Operate with for-profit venues to help them empower themselves to use our technology. Businesses are part of the communities.

Who are the people involved?

Our users, volunteers, members and directors come from many backgrounds including Internet trades, political backgrounds, the medical industry and various other professions. While many of us have technical training as a result of our professions, our common goals tend to be aimed towards socio-economic stimulus and community vitalization.

What type of "memberships" are available?

We have three classes of "membership".

What's a community network?

A community network network made up of three components: the people in the community, an infrastructure that provides connectivity, and an information network that provides the services people use (such as web sites, peer to peer networking, telephony, etc).

Connectivity is an area often focused on by many community groups. The need for broadband Internet is readily championed by groups throughout the Province, and broadband service offerings are available from numerous service providers in denser metropolitan areas. To create a network that is free for community use we use license exempt wireless technology such as WiMax (or 802.11) for mesh, hotspots and dedicated infrastructure (backbone).

The purpose of these networks is to provide a politically and economically unencumbered infrastructure for people (particularly those affected by economic hardship) to “get connected”.

While connectivity is all fine and good the question of “What can we do with it” remains. Most people equate connectivity to mean Internet access but this misses the point of what a Community Network is really capable of.

In considering “What we can do with it”, members of the Society have discussed a possible model for Community Informatics. In doing so we have kept the following principles and objectives in mind:

The third component, people, is ultimately who a community a network is suppose to service. Involving people in the community can take a variety of forms:

To support these three social goals, thus our peoples and first voices, BC Wireless aims to provide easy to use tools for people to publish information without having to know a lot about the underlying technology. We are developing a set of common applications of our common sources that can be used by our united citizens.

In addition: these tools and technologies are developed using freely available standards and source code to provide a technology basis for people who wish to learn about information technology and develop community applications. We hope that other institutions, particularly schools, libraries and other community centers will see usefulness in this schema and work to integrate BC^3 recommendations into their systems.

Individual opinions about what a Community Wireless Network are posted on the Opinions/What is a Community Wireless Network page.

What's a community?

A community is a group of people, businesses and organizations that live within a geographical area. Communities may also be “virtual communities” (such as special interest groups).

Communities are dynamic groups. We do not define a community by geographical boundaries (but in practice people may do so themselves). For example, First Nations Communities are often defined as five households within proximity of each other, while the Provincial Government may define a community as any area with a School, Health Center or other citizen centered service.

Every community is autonomous and should have the ability to choose what is right for itself. This includes how community information should be accessed and published. Communities also interact, thus we architect our technologies to facilitate collaboration between communities.

BC Wireless is an autonomous community in its own right and runs independently of individual community networks. By design the B.C. Wireless community is open to membership with citizens of other communities and provides centralization to connect communities together through both connectivity, information sharing and common application services.

How much does it cost?

The cost is participation. Setup your own network, link it with another network, find other people to help you network it.

Our project is volunteer oriented. That means, you pay your own way. It also means we track in-kind contribution to ensure trade remains equitable for both parties.

One example of our economic view point is:

What is BC Wireless Society's current public policy discussion points?

How does it work? / What Technology do you use?

We use Wireless technology called "Wifi". The real name is "802.11", the name of the technology standard we use (Wifi is an industry brand name you'll often see at Future Shop or London Drugs).

We also use Internet technology, specifically TCP/IP. (Note, this doesn't mean this is Internet access, just that we use the same technology the Internet does). We use TCP/IP because most computers support it, and it is an open standard that no one owns. We prefer open systems because there are less hassles with Copyright issues, support more people and are well known and understood.

The Wireless technology is what we use to connect "nodes". Nodes are wireless repeaters, that transmit and receive information to other nodes. A node is basically a computer with one or more radios in it, hooked up to one or more antennas. Each node has an IP address, and nodes route information to other nodes.

Of course we don't only use Wireless. Ethernet is a big part of it, and some day we'll probably get our hands on CheapFibre too.

The more nodes we have, the more routes we can build, which means information can travel farther and to more people.

Note that when we say "a computer" we don't mean the whole computer you're working on. The computer's main component is the motherboard which controls all of the devices (monitor, keyboard, disk drives, monitors, etc.). All wireless access points and nodes that people build have one, and they come in many shapes and sizes.

Some motherboards we use are WirelessRouterApplicationPlatform boards. These are small boards that are designed specifically for Wireless. They have one or two slots that radios can be put into, 2-3 Ethernet connectors and room for a disk-drive like device that holds the software.

Older PC motherboards can also be used, although they are bigger and need an appropriate case to fit them. Some people have used old 486 and Pentium motherboards which do the job just fine.

What kind of equipment do I need?

There are several options and it depends on what you want to do.

=== How much does the high end stuff cost? ==-

By high-end we mean a low-profile computer+radio solution stuffed in a 10x10x2" box that runs Linux. The advantage to this type of system is that it's much smaller than using a regular PC, and more powerful than using a store bought access point. You can run Linux or a number of Wireless specific operating systems, and you can experiment with technologies such as Mesh.

Costs vary depending what you want to do. If you buy brand new equipment, you could easily spend many hundreds of dollars even for commodity Wifi/802.11 equipment:

There are even more expensive, but better, wireless solutions available. Products such as TrangoBroadband and Orthogon easily run in the $500 per subscriber range and at $1-$2k for their access points. While these products offer better performance over all the Wifi products we tend to use are standards based, easily available, and recyclable equipment can generally be found lowering the barrier to entry for budget constrained groups.

We strongly suggest people find creative ways to keep their costs down. Using used computers is a good start, buying surplus radios and antennas is another (some people even build their own antennas). In fact part of the "project" part of BC Wireless is the tinkering that goes on to build parts of the network using creative ways.

Sometimes we get equipment donated to us, and we'll put it to good use on sites we know we can use for a long period of time (at least 5+ years).

If these costs scare you, don't be afraid. We stress the high part of the cost so that you avoid jumping in and wasting your money. We would much rather recyle technology instead of filling up landfils, and teaching people how to make their own technology is a value-added goal of ours anyway.

Deploying networks on the cheap has been done by many small companies and there's lots of neat and fun ways to get around having to buy brand new equipment.

Some companies also sell pre-assembled "kits" that work well for our purposes. ValemountNetworks in Valemount, BC, sells some equipment as does Metrix in Seattle. We do think buying from a company in BC, or Canada is better since it helps fuel our economy and innovation, especially in small parts of the Province who are losing out in the NaturalResourceIndustry.

What about Internet access?

Our focus is to build networks and community. We do not sell access to the Internet, however we do facilitate access through the networks we partner with.

We are primarily focussed on the application of community and networks but many systems do offer Internet access. BC Wireless offers several community services to support Internet connectivity:

Some nodes may also publish OlsrRoutes to the Internet as well.

What is Wireless?

"Wireless" usually refers to anything without wires. This can include optics (like your InfraRed TV remote control) and Radio technology. When people talk about Wireless they quite often are referring to WiFi which is a free (as in, you don't have to pay a licensing fee to use it) technology.

Sometimes you'll see commercials for "Wireless" service which almost always has to do with a Cell phone company like Telus Mobility or Rogers/AT&T -- this isn't what we mean, at least not yet, until we setup our own CommunityCellularNetwork.

What do people do with Wireless?

Lots of things! :)

A lot people first start out soley because Wireless alleviates the need for running cumbersome cables and drilling holes. The mobility aspect of Wireless is also very attractive. Wouldn't you rather be sitting outside in your back yard, basking in the sun, chatting with people on the 'net or telecommuting to the office?

A lot of people also like to experiment with technologies that aren't common place on the Internet:

Some of the advanced uses of Wireless are:

where it is to costly to deploy classic, TelephoneCompanyTechnology.

The most obvious benefit to starting or joining a NeighborhoodNetwork is that the range of your home network increases far beyond your house letting you surf your home Internet connection or even using your home phone line using Voice over IP.

Ideally NeighborhoodNetworks can also connect with each other and further the range even more.

I've heard that people can steal Internet over Wireless, is this true?

This is an often heard question that has been subject to debate in the media and various community wireless groups. The idea that people can "steal" internet is gray in itself as the Internet is a FreeNetwork.

The problem of theft comes in when your Internet Provider (specifically Telus and Shaw/Rogers) says that you can not re-sell your Internet connection. Do they mean: you can't profit from it (and does splitting the cost of your xDSL line with 5 neighbors qualify as profit), or do they not want other people using your connection; at all.

It's entirely up to you if you want others to use your Internet connection. If you don't, you can configure a NoCat gateway or Firewall or protect your Internet connection from other users.

The IspWirelessPolicies page lists Internet Provider's and their policies on Internet Sharing. But please keep in mind, we don't want to get into the InternetAccess gig (there are plenty of people who can fill this role, anyway). If we did, we'd be a WirelessInternetServiceProvider instead.

What about privacy?

Privacy is very important, many older Wireless technologies (such as VHF Radio, older Cellular Phones, etc) could be picked up by anyone with a scanner. It's possible for people to eves-drop on your communication. We strongly suggest you use encryption. SSL, VirtualPrivateNetworks and IPSEC are all technologies used on the Internet, and can be used on our network.

We intend to provide native IP Security in the long term. But otherwise, you should always use a virtual private network if you are accessing your home computers, and SSL for websites (such as your Webmail, or whenever you submit a password or other confidential information).

Technology itself is inherently open for both good; socially positive uses as well as abuse. Many businesses use Wireless but fail to "secure" their networks leaving private data open to anyone who drives by, but this is most often due to lack of awareness more than an inherent flaw in the technology itself.

The same rule applies if you have an Internet connection (yes, even on dialup). If you don't take the time to regularly update your operating system; turn off, or password protect your shared files then no matter what technology is in use, you will be vulnerable to invasion. If security is a concern for you, take a look at SecurityTips for some help on protecting yourself.

Is Wireless hard?

No, it's just different. Actually, it's a heck of a lot of fun. Take a look at CategoryFieldPlay to see just how fun it can be :)

What type of hardware do I need to get started?

You'll need a WirelessNetworkCard for your node (for each antenna you want to use).

If you want to have wireless access on your own computer, you'll need one for each computer you intend to use.

For PC users, we suggest LucentOrinoco or PrismBasedCards.

For Macintosh users, AppleAirport cards are good.

Do I need an antenna?

Not explicitly, but you can. Most Wireless hardware has a built in antenna, and some hardware supports the use of an external antenna to increase the network's range. The hardware that we recommend will almost always have this option.

What's the difference between an Omni Directional, Yagi, Parabolic, etc antennas

Really there are two types of antennas (so far as effect goes):

Omni means "everywhere". An Omni Directional antenna throws the Wireless signal in all directions, where a Directional antenna focusses the wireless signal in one specific direction.

How does an antenna increase my range? Is it an amplifier?

An antenna is not an amplifer. Antennas work by "focussing" the Wireless signal in a particular way (similiar to adjusting the head of a flashlight).

A Directional Antenna tightens the wireless signals beam resulting in higher signal strength.

An Omni Directional antenna flattens the wireless signal into a pan-cake like shape but pushes the signal all around and not in a specific direction.

Amplifers increase the signal going into your antenna.

DO NOT USE AMPLIFERS/SIGNAL BOOSTERS UNLESS YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO. See WhyNotToUseAmplifiers.

What are all these scary terms, MHz, dBm, dBi etc.

When talking about Wireless you'll often hear expressions like "24 dBi" or "2450 MHz". These are all units (like Miles, Kilometers, etc.) that we can use mathematically to figure out how a wireless signal will perform.

Don't worry about the math part of it, but you should make note of these terms:

dB is cool. Instead of saying "watts" (like, my stereo is 100 Watts of pure Britney Spheres), we say "dBm" or "dBw" (decibles over a milliwatt, or decibles over a watt). The reason why, is we can quickly tell how much signal your node transmits and how far it can go.

Watch! :)

To figure out how much power your setup will transmit, just add the two numbers together. 15+8 = 23 dB.

So what you say? Well, as a wireless signal travels through the air from your antenna, it loses strength. We call this PathLoss or FreeSpaceLoss.

For example, after 5 miles a wireless signal at 2450 MHz will lose 118 dB of signal.

We can tell if this is a good or a bad thing by subtracting the FreeSpaceLoss of the signal from the amount of power you are transmitting:

We can tell if there's enough signal after 5 miles because now we know we can expect (best case scenario) -95 dB of power.

All radios need a certain level of power to "hear" the signal. If the other person's radio needs -84 dB of signal to "hear" properly, then we know that -95 is not enough and we need at least 11 dB more. How to get more is beyond the scope of this question, but you'll soon find out when you read the other overviews. :)

There's a handy excel spread sheet (works in OpenOffice too) available from here that let's you plug in various settings (radio power, antenna gain, distance of the link, etc.) and will give you a visual idea of how well the link will work.

CategoryOverview

GeneralOverview (last edited 2009-01-24 20:10:01 by MatthewAsham)

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