Chris Barton: Hooked up on a whole lot of fresh air

By CHRIS BARTON

Picture a small aerial mast with a grid dish antenna on the roof of your house. Two streets away there's another on your friend's house and several streets away yet another antenna on a friend of the friend's roof.

One of the houses has a fast internet connection on its phone line which, thanks to the aerials, is being shared by all three homes to access the net at broadband speed.

No, it's not a fat pipe dream. Communities all over the world are doing it for themselves - experimenting with the high-tech equivalent of No 8 wire to create their own broadband pathways through the fresh air.

The underlying technology has the improbable and unmemorable name of 802.11 - eight oh two dot eleven.

It's most common use is in office networks - using base stations and transceiver cards - to link PCs and notebooks without wires. Normally it works over a short 10m to 20m range indoors but outside with line of sight it can go several kilometres - even further if you boost the power - at a speed of 11 megabits per second (Mbps).

To the uninitiated that's very fast - the top speed residential broadband internet in New Zealand is about 2Mbps. Eight oh two dot eleven finds its pathway through the air in the 2.4 gigahertz (GHz) frequency range - plus a few other frequencies which are in the general licence band in New Zealand.

That is, they are free for anyone to use.

These are the same frequencies used by wireless network providers such as Walker Wireless, Safetynet and Radionet, which all provide high-speed, wire-free data and internet connectivity for businesses. It is also the same technology that created a wireless campus for St Kentigern College pupils to connect with their notebooks to the school network and the internet without wires from anywhere in the school grounds.

So we know it works - proven technology in geek jargon.

But what communities are discovering is that it is also quite cheap ($1000 to $1500) to set up and fits well with cooperative ideals. London-based Consume's manifesto sets out the motivation: "Fed up with being held to ransom in the local loop, phased [sic] by fees to ISPs, conscious of community? Okay, so let's build a fresh network, one that is local, global, fast, expanding, public and user-constructed."

Then there's Sweden's Elektrosmog - a project which grew out of scepticism that third-generation (3G) mobile telephone systems would ever provide fast wireless internet.

Electrosmog is a pun on a word used in Germany and Sweden to describe the potentially dangerous fields of electromagnetic radiation at varying frequencies that surround all electric and electronic equipment. The group says it is keeping an eye on the health risks but wants to show that the radiation cloud can bring good effects, too.

"We envision a cloud of free internet connectivity that will cover most inhabited areas. The coverage might be spotty, vary over time, and be hard to control or predict, just like a fog or smog."

Others like Guerrilla Net founded by "white hackers" Brian Oblivion and Capt Kaboom (I swear I'm not making this up) believe the future of democracy itself is at stake.

"As pressure is asserted upon the internet from insecure individuals in the US Government, an alternative network is needed to ensure that the free flow of information is not obstructed, captured, analysed, modified or logged."

The site also includes a huge information bank on commercial and build-your-own antenna and transceivers for 802.11 networks.

Seattle Wireless describes itself as "a not-for-profit project to develop a community wireless network in Seattle and end recurrent telco fees". The project, which began last September, provides do-it-yourself wireless coverage for a large area of Seattle.

Closer to home, there is Queensland-based, Xtreme Wireless - a free public-access network, "providing ultra-high-speed broadband wireless network access for all of those within the coverage zone on the Gold Coast".

Or Melbourne Digital and Wireless - "a non-profit club set up to help the community in setting up publicly owned and operated networks using cheap, off the shelf items that are commonly used in home wireless networking".

If all this sounds idealistic, - even utopian - it probably is. But then, the idea of a communications network built by the community for the community does have appeal.

After all, isn't that how the New Zealand Post and Telegraph Department got started back in 1881?

* chris_barton@nzherald.co.nz

Links

802.11b Community Network List

Consume

Elektrosmog

Guerilla Net

Seattle Wireless

Xtreme Wireless

Melbourne Digital and Wireless