Comments on: Muni-wifi delayed again

By: halans

halans — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 06:42:25 +0000

Not sure what you mean with “This is the sydney wireless network site.” There is no “the sydney wireless network” as far as I’m concerned. And this site started from a Facebook group with the same name http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=12590690161 , by a bunch of people who bought a bunch of Meraki’s , but for which you need a Facebook account, hence this site which is accessible to all people. This is just another website about free wireless networks in the Sydney area.
Yes, I know about the FON project, but in order to use the FON network free of charge, you need to have a FON device setup yourself. And it doesn’t support mesh networking, so each FON device needs an internet connection.
Yes we should need a common network name, like “SydneyFreeNet” (cfr http://www.sydneyfree.net which for now still points to the Facebook group - me bad).
I know you don’t need Merakis or FONs to share your internet connection, but when using a Meraki, you give access to people on a separate network segment, so they don’t have access to your internal network. And it’s easy to set up and manage. And you do need to give open access, else people still can’t connect (while your internal network is still closed and secured). Plus it allows you to throttle the connection too.
Currently there are no Merakis in the CBD, would be great if there were. Some pubs and restaurants give access (through regular access points), but it’s not that open (you need to ask a login, and it’s time limited). If you’re talking about the Sydney city council, then you’re talking about municipal Wifi and you’re back at what the above article described, the delays etc…

By: dbmoodb

dbmoodb — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 02:04:21 +0000

Oh and owner of this site- are those meraki set up in the cbd ?
Lets get some area from a business if you don’t have an office there. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind the PR. However, we would probably need to provide another internet connection at that business. So Maybe if we can get the sydney community going on this we can get the sydney city council to provide internet access and places to put the wireless aps ?

By: dbmoodb

dbmoodb — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 02:01:02 +0000

Can I just say your site seems to be taking off from http://www.sydneywireless.com/ This is the sydney wireless network site. However, it has not been used recently. I suggest the author of this site and this post looks into the FON project and suggests Advertising your wifi network as free or open if it is so. For example - OPEN-PUBLIC-OOOWIFI . You do not the special Meraki to do this kind of stuff. I know those things provide meshy stuff. But if people want to do this with what they already have they can. IF you do follow this path, i recommend you have secured your network and where possible ensure that you have properly set up your sharing and set administrator passwords. I.E. don’t share your entire hard drive to strangers if you did not set an admin password in windows xp (not sure what vista does).