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<DIV><FONT size=4>Here is a link to an article that EVERY MEMBER of the
COMMUNITY MEDIA</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4>ASSOCIATION should understand about the future REAL
possibilities of delivering "Community Media" via a "Community owned and managed
network"</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4>Henry O'Tani</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4><A
href="http://www.wlan.org.uk">www.wlan.org.uk</A></FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4>The Corner Internet Network vs. the Cellular
Giants<BR> By JOHN MARKOFF<BR> The New York Times
On-the-Web</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4> SAN FRANCISCO, March 4, 2002</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4> The informal Wi-Fi networks that inexpensively provide
wireless Internet<BR> access are fine, as far as they go - which is
generally a few hundred<BR> feet. But what happens when there are enough of
them to weave together<BR> in a blanket of Internet coverage?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4> What begins to appear is a high-speed wireless data
network built from<BR> the bottom up, rather than the top-down wireless
cellular data networks<BR> now being established by giant
telecommunications companies.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4> Many Silicon Valley engineers now believe that it will
be possible to<BR> take the tens of thousands of inexpensive wireless
network connections<BR> that are popping up in homes and coffee shops all
over the country and<BR> lash them together into a single anarchic wireless
network. Connections<BR> could theoretically be passed from one Wi- Fi node
to another, similar<BR> to the way wireless phone signals pass from cell to
cell, thereby<BR> significantly extending the wired Internet.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4> Modeled closely on the original nature of the Internet,
which grew by<BR> chaining together separate computer networks, the
technology - known as<BR> wireless mesh routing - is being rapidly embraced
in the United States<BR> as well as in the developing world, where it is
viewed as a low-cost<BR> method for quickly building network
infrastructure.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4> If the engineers are right, the popular and inexpensive
Wi-Fi wireless<BR> standard, also known as 802.11, could serve as the wedge
for the<BR> next-generation Internet, enabling a new wave of wireless
portable<BR> gadgets that ultimately blanket homes, schools and shopping
malls with<BR> Internet access.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4> Currently most 802.11 networks serve as individual
beacons that provide<BR> wireless Internet connections to portable
computers situated within 200<BR> feet or so of an 802.11 transmitter. What
wireless mesh routing offers<BR> is the promise of a vastly more powerful
collaboration driven by the<BR> same forces that originally built the
Internet.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4> "The good news is that broadband wireless access will
finally explode,"<BR> said Nicholas Negroponte, the director of the M.I.T
Media Laboratory.<BR> "The social contract is simple: you can use mine when
you are in the<BR> vicinity of Mount Vernon Street, Boston. But I want to
be able to use<BR> yours when I am near you."</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4> The technology is being driven both by a gaggle of
ambitious start-up<BR> companies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere and by a
hobbyist movement<BR> that mimics the original Homebrew Club that led to
the personal computer<BR> industry.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4> Today, Tim Pozar and several of his friends are seizing
the high ground,<BR> literally and figuratively, in a movement that could
undercut the<BR> nation's cellular companies, which are investing tens of
millions of<BR> dollars in top-down, heavily engineered, digital cellular
networks.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4> Mr. Pozar, a radio engineer, is a member of the Bay Area
Wireless Users<BR> Group, an active band of hobbyists who have been
building free networks<BR> in communities through the region. Mr. Pozar and
some of his friends<BR> have quietly begun obtaining the rights to place
$2,000 wireless network<BR> access stations on the mountains and hilltops
that encircle San<BR> Francisco Bay. If he succeeds, the network will be a
starting point for<BR> a wireless data network that could eventually spread
all over the Bay<BR> Area.<BR> Significantly, what will set Mr.
Pozar's planned Sunset Network and<BR> those like it apart from the
commercial cellular networks now being<BR> constructed at great expense is
that they will "self assemble" -<BR> expanding from one neighborhood to the
next as individuals and<BR> businesses join by buying their own cheap
antennas that either attach to<BR> the wired Internet or pass a signal on
to another wireless node.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4> Mr. Pozar has even come up with a new acronym to
describe his plan. In<BR> addition to the existing terminology of LAN's and
WAN's - local and wide<BR> area networks - he is proposing the idea of
NAN's, or neighborhood area<BR> networks. The so-called Nanny Networks are
rapidly becoming the hottest<BR> thing in Silicon Valley and
internationally. There are now at least 19<BR> companies developing
proprietary wireless mesh routing technologies, all<BR> trying to replicate
the original Internet in a wireless form.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4> It is not an easy task because the companies are
engineering for a new<BR> kind of design, with which they must route data
packets over paths where<BR> network nodes constantly pop up and disappear.
Moreover, wireless<BR> networks must overcome an array of environmental
obstacles that do not<BR> plague wired networks, including hills, rain and
trees.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4> Such networks, however, do have the critical advantage
of economy of<BR> scale. In contrast to the cellular data networks, in
which every<BR> customer is an added cost, in some respects in wireless
mesh networks<BR> the more users who join the better the network performs.
In the jargon<BR> of Silicon Valley, wireless mesh routing is potentially a
"disruptive<BR> technology," a new technology that is likely to upset the
existing order<BR> by using the same powerful economics of cost and scale
that initially<BR> drove the growth of the commercial
Internet.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4> Already, companies like Mesh Networks, based in
Maitland, Fla., are<BR> selling systems of wireless routers, making it
possible to create<BR> self-assembling and self-healing networks that would
cover an urban<BR> area. There are also companies like Boingo Wireless and
Sputnik, which<BR> focus on software and services that make it possible for
wireless users<BR> to roam among networks. Similar technologies were
crucial in the<BR> development of the original nationwide analog cellular
voice networks.<BR> In Silicon Valley, companies like Skypilot Network, FHP
Wireless,<BR> Ultradevices, CoWave Networks, SRI's Packet Hop and others
are all<BR> developing networks that have the potential to weave together
networks<BR> made up of wireless antennas.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=4> "We're going to start seeing more mom-and- pop Internet
service<BR> providers buying access points that will support 802.11," Mr.
Pozar<BR> said. "At first I thought it was going to just be geeks doing
wireless,<BR> but now everyone has one of these things
deployed."</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
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