Shared wireless networking
I'm looking to the community for some help as it has always been very helpful.
I have a friend in a very rural area who has been fighting to get Verizon to upgrade the phone lines in her area. Connections of 19.4k are normal, hell might freeze over if they connect at anything higher then 21k. And it's not just her dealing with slow connections, if they connect at all - it's about 15 households total.
Well today Verizon laid fiber down in my area as a part of their FIOS service and when my friend came over she was disgusted - they can lay fiber in my area but can't work on the phone lines in hers, only about 25 kilometers from my home. When we got inside she was asking me what options she had for getting a faster internet connection. We talked it over and she said that just about everyone in her area was sick of dial up and was also wanting info.
That's where I got the idea for a public wireless network.
My friend lives in an area where people actually care about each other (I know it's shocking but there are people like that still left in America) and do things for each other and to better their area so I have no problem helping get everything set up (and the support that will follow).
My question is what problems might I run in to? What hardware should I use? I was looking at the Linksys WAP54G with hacked firmware. I already have an outdoors phone box that I could use for housing the router and I'm sure there are plenty of antenna options out there.
Any help or info would be great, you would be helping a commmunity get out of the dark ages =]
(crossposted - I need all the help I can get)
I have a friend in a very rural area who has been fighting to get Verizon to upgrade the phone lines in her area. Connections of 19.4k are normal, hell might freeze over if they connect at anything higher then 21k. And it's not just her dealing with slow connections, if they connect at all - it's about 15 households total.
Well today Verizon laid fiber down in my area as a part of their FIOS service and when my friend came over she was disgusted - they can lay fiber in my area but can't work on the phone lines in hers, only about 25 kilometers from my home. When we got inside she was asking me what options she had for getting a faster internet connection. We talked it over and she said that just about everyone in her area was sick of dial up and was also wanting info.
That's where I got the idea for a public wireless network.
My friend lives in an area where people actually care about each other (I know it's shocking but there are people like that still left in America) and do things for each other and to better their area so I have no problem helping get everything set up (and the support that will follow).
My question is what problems might I run in to? What hardware should I use? I was looking at the Linksys WAP54G with hacked firmware. I already have an outdoors phone box that I could use for housing the router and I'm sure there are plenty of antenna options out there.
Any help or info would be great, you would be helping a commmunity get out of the dark ages =]
(crossposted - I need all the help I can get)
