Again we’re not promoting Meraki explicitly, but they do make a great point. A local airport supporting 10000+ users in the first couple of months, with 5 Merakis, installed by a third party, for 1100 USD.
Read a comprehensive review of the Meraki hardware over at Practically Networked.
BarCamp Sydney v3 has passed again. We set up a wireless network for attendees to use. With the Internet connection handled by UNSW, so plenty of bandwidth, we set up two gateway nodes and one repeater (one Outdoor and two Mini’s). Of course, we could easily manage the splashpage with a BarCamp welcome, as well as have BarCamp and Free Australia Wireless text banners.
The Meraki’s handled traffic pretty good, with people playing WoW, watching youTube, surfing, demoing,… with the Meraki’s handling about 50 users and transferring 1.8 Gb over each day.
You can clearly see when lunch was on…
We talked to lots of people, mostly in the hallway, and in our presentation on Saturday we focused on the Meraki Dashboard and its settings. We also had a group discussion on developing meshing software for mobile devices or laptops. And then there was even a presentation on how, with the help of a couple of Merakis, a student circumvented his school’s net censorship… Some people signed up for a group buy (we’ll get back to you soon!).
Sunday afternoon, we had a Meraki Mini to give away to the attendees.
Another great day at Wireless World. More positive feedback, support and best wishes - which was really encouraging. Mark Pesce gave a presentation titled “Everywhere” at the main speaking slot at the Wireless and Mobility Summit.
Lots of people were interested in being involved in the project with some even committing to participate in the next hardware bulk buy. We also gained some valuable contacts with vendors, organisations and government bodies which we will be looking for opportunities to work with in the future.
Day 1 at the Wireless World expo was quite successful. Lots of positive feedback (nearly non negative), and great industry contacts. Read Nat’s write-up:
“Really good day, got lots of people interested in the project and got a chance to hone our project spiel and a better idea of which points to emphasise or explain in more detail or in different ways.“
Big thanks to Nat for driving up to Sydney from Canberra in the morning (4 hours!), and back again in the evening! And big thanks also to Alison to show up and help out (on her free day, and with beautiful weather outside). Sometimes the two of us just wasn’t enough to handle all people at the booth.