My City Going Wireless with Free ISP and I Want To Get In On It

[Harry]

My city has a lot of free wireless hot spots set up with a free ISP company, an article about it which I am including below my post. So what do I need to access a hot spot that may be 1/4 mile to several miles away. Do I need just a wireless card and a 50 foot wire connected to an omnidirectional antenna on or near the roof. That would be pretty clumsy. Would the wireless card access the roof antenna signals wirelessly. Not really sure how to set this up.
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Free Wi-Fi Blankets San Francisco

Innovative philanthropy project aims to spread wireless Net over city limits.

By Melanie Kim, Tech Live
techtv.com

Video Highlight
See how one man aims to deliver Wi-Fi Net connections to San Francisco





A project to help bring free Wi-Fi to the masses is picking up steam in the San Francisco Bay area. If it succeeds, it could become a model for other similar networks all over the world. On "Tech Live," see how the project to broadcast an Internet signal to a city could change Wi-Fi and the way we log on forever.


Share and share alike


Some think wireless Internet should be for sharing, and Tim Pozar is a socially minded techie who's using his Wi-Fi know-how to do just that. But he's not sharing just with his neighborhood, but with dozens of neighborhoods. The whole project is perfectly legal and within FCC limits, and in most cases only costs a few hundred bucks to build.


"What we're doing is lighting up a number of blocks," he says of the Wi-Fi signal while rifling through some boxes of tech junk. "What I'm doing is what we call a neighborhood area network, or NAN."


The former DJ, radio engineer, and founding member of the Bay Area Wireless Users Group, has dedicated himself to the project. It's part of the Bay Area Research Wireless Network, which is dedicated to extending technology for social, educational, and public safety concerns.




He says, "Usually the geeks that do all the networking are not RF (radio frequency)-clued, and the people that do RF are not geek clued."


Anatomy of the network


Wi-Fi is a generic term that covers any device that is interoperable with the 802.11 networking standard. Wi-Fi has been done in houses, neighborhoods, and Starbucks everywhere, but this is a whole Wi-Fi network that stretches for miles, not just several feet. Antennas and a friendly Internet service provider -- in this case United Layer -- are the keys.


It all starts with United Layer, which provides the bandwidth from a location in downtown San Francisco.


"So we have a radio link up to San Bruno (Mountain)," he says, referring to the 1,314-foot-tall hill that rises just south of the San Francisco city limits. The signal is transmitted to a dish that's on a building filled with other towers and dishes, most belonging to radio stations. That building is atop the mountain, where there's a 360-degree, unobstructed view of the city -- exposure that's critical for Pozar's wireless network.


"There's a little computer that's connected to that dish. It transmits to that omni-directional antenna," he says, pointing to another antenna. It looks like a foot-long piece of white PVC pipe, with a cap on top.


The dish, computer -- encased inside a metal box along with several Wi-Fi cards -- and the antenna, are all connected by metal piping to form one unit, which Pozar built himself. He gets to keep that unit on top of the mountain by providing a local radio station with Net access.


That antenna is key to the network. It sends a Wi-Fi or 802.11 signal to 29 other "access points," as Tim calls them, including one on his own rooftop far below and several miles away in San Francisco's Sunset District. There, Pozar showed what's inside the access-point boxes.


"There are the radios that will rebroadcast the bandwidth out to the neighborhood as well as connect back to the mountain top," he says, pointing to the Wi-Fi cards inside another metal box."


Now, thanks to Pozar's work, almost anyone in the neighborhood with a laptop and Wi-Fi card can get free, high-speed Internet access.


Wi-Fi for the globe


Tim says he set up the network because he wants to give Internet access to people who can't afford or access it, especially people living in Third World countries or depressed areas of other countries.


"Those are the places that need it," he says. "Unfortunately that digital divide is becoming larger and larger."


Pozar explains that you can't build a network like this anywhere. It would be tough, for instance, in flat areas. San Francisco was ideal, he says, because of the nearby mountains and a technically savvy population. For now, Pozar is consulting with neighboring Marin County to help it set up a similar network.


Get on the NAN


If you want to connect to Pozar's network, you'll need some gear, and you'll need to live within a quarter-mile of one of the 30 access points that make up the network. If you do, a Wi-Fi card in a computer or laptop will allow you to connect to an access point.


If you live within eight miles of San Bruno Mountain and have a place -- a rooftop often does well -- that provides a direct line of sight to the mountaintop, you can buy and build your own access point. Most of the equipment you'll need is available at computer and electronics stores, or through online retailers.


An organization in San Francisco called SFLan will build a node for you for $1,000, allowing you to connect to the network and also broadcast a signal that your neighbors can latch onto. The group's website also has a ton of helpful information on how to connect to NANs in San Francisco.

Originally aired December 9, 2003
Modified December 10, 2003