Bolshie bovines only barrier to SeaNet network

When SeaNet first erected the WiFi transmitter on a lone pole on a hill overlooking South Bay, Kaikoura, it didn't think about the cows.

At first the 2.4GHz wireless network, which reached over the hill to Kaikoura and 20km out to sea delivering 11Mbps bandwidth, worked perfectly. But suddenly it went dead.

Eventually, a technician climbed the hill and found the cows in the paddock had taken to chewing cable. Someone had forgotten to build a fence around the pole.

But besides dealing with bovine menaces, the SeaNet network is a great example of how wireless technology, especially as it works in free general licence frequencies, is just waiting to be used.

In bandwidth-impoverished Kaikoura, building the network itself was the only option for Whale Watch, which needed serious throughput not only to track boats in real time using global positioning satellites and to accurately map whale sightings, but for a host of future applications.

Those include asset management of the boats - monitoring engine performance and scheduling maintenance - and plans to send video and digital still pictures back to shore for processing on to DVDs ready for passengers as they come ashore.

The web figures large in future development too - the idea being that the live positional data from the boats could also be transmitted to the net in much the same way as Virtual Spectator does with the America's Cup.

That would allow travel agents in Britain, for example, to show potential customers live Whale Watch tours online. It would also mean visitors could go on to to the net after their trip and look for other sightings of the particular whales they saw - assuming it was one of the resident population of named male sperm whales that inhabit the Kaikoura canyon all year round.

Ultimately, the web marketing tool will also connect to an online booking system - not just to take internet bookings but also to transmit that data to the boats, so the crew know before visitors get on board who is on the trip and where they are from.

It's all very clever stuff and a testament to the software architects at Animation Research. IT manager Chris Hinch has designed the modular system around a core "dispatcher", which uses XML (extensible markup language) messages to communicate with other software modules.

That means when Whale Watch comes up with a new idea and asks if it can be done, Hinch says "sure no problem" because he knows it can bolted on as a new module.

So what's next? Hinch says there is already talk of using stereo hydrophones to listen to the whales underwater and to create a 3D animation as they surface.

The SeaNet wireless network is pretty smart too - using the company's "Aquatude" routers to provide secure authenticated and encrypted tunnels through the air.

The same technology is being used by the security-conscious America's Cup syndicates for data downloads and by super yachts to get high-speed internet access in the Hauraki Gulf. Yes, that's plain old 2.4GHz WiFi, the stuff that warchalkers like to find and get on to for free - so SeaNet's security has to be good.

But did SeaNet consider using its South Bay transmitter to provide high-speed internet to the residents of Kaikoura?

Yes, says managing director John Talbot, but the 10-person company is so busy developing its coastal wireless business with fishing boats, port authorities and commercial shipping companies, it simply doesn't have the resources.

So how feasible is it for a community the size of Kaikoura to take its broadband destiny into its own hands? It would need to add a few more transmitters as people started connecting wirelessly.

But that wouldn't be too hard with high hills all around and most of the population in the town below providing good line of sight.

Then it would need some backhaul circuits to connect the wireless network to the net and an internet provider to make connections to the people. Again not too hard for a few local geeks with a bit of entrepreneurial spirit. With a transmitter already on the hill and a wireless network working offshore, the residents of Kaikoura have a broadband future ready and waiting.

* Email Chris Barton

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