[MLB-WIRELESS] What's it all for ... [long]

[Paul Hafner]

Very good question, I myself have pondered this after the initial 'neato'
factor passed.  There certainly are a few benefits, the first one relates to
the illegal content you mentioned.  Although Melbourne Wireless obviously
*cannot* condone leeching, the fact is that it will happen, broadband caps
or no broadband caps people will setup ftp's etc on the wireless network and
people *will* be use them!  The benefit of this however, is that one person
grabbing the latest ep/movie/game etc off the wireless network is one
download less off the internet, this is quite an internet bandwidth saver
(saviour?!).  I'm not sure if melb-wireless are/will be required to monitor
the network for illegal activity and if so to what extent, however all kinds
of measures could be taken to ward off leeching, but of course for each
measure there surely is a counter measure.  I won't get into too much detail
on this issue, I'm sure we all get the idea.

Also, one more AP is one more AP closer to connecting all of Melbourne, the
more inter-connected we are the more 'somethings' (read below) we could
devise.  I myself would love to be, say sitting in a Café in the CBD and
connect my lappy/pocketpc via a home-brew vpn to my servers at home, use
files, get mail and even get onto the net using my connection.  This of
course is largely a 'neato' (or wankerism?) thing to do, however it will
have practical applications as well.  How many devices etc are on the net
where devised simply due to someone saying "hey would'nt it be cool if...?".
SMS messaging on mobiles is a classic example.  SMS was devised simply
because it could be done, it had 'cute but, useless gadget' written all over
it, now SMS messaging is being used for everything from Big Brother
notifications to Stock Market reports... 

Then there's gaming, not all gamers have the opportunity to play over fast
connections due to being restricted to dialup (some not even that!). No more
having to drag you're PC to the next lan night just to have the chance to
play with tonnes of people over decent links.

Finally, I personally like the simple community aspect of the network. It
would be possible to setup BBS-like stuff that could bring us closer
together as a community (1-2-3 aaawwwwww) ... You know what I mean :)

I reckon the good thing is that whether we have internet connectivity though
the wireless network or not, it is still a worthwhile project indeed ....







-----Original Message-----
From: Cato [mailto:cato at codebear.com] 
Sent: Saturday, 29 June 2002 7:20 PM
To: melbwireless at wireless.org.au
Subject: [MLB-WIRELESS] What's it all for ...


At 07:01 PM 29/06/2002, An Inner-North member wrote:
>Umm do we have any PLAN for wireless other than seeing each others 
>servers
>AP's etc ?

I'm glad you brought this up. After my initial enthusiasm about wireless 
last Sunday, I started thinking more on the whole purpose of it all.

Short term: Several very close people connected to each other share a lan 
environment.
Possible purpose: Co-ordinated agreement on the download of some or 
parts-of very large files for the collective good.
Issues: File sharing of most of the large stuff people donwload is illegal. 
You might be comfortable doing it in the privacy of your own home, but are 
you willing to do it with a total stranger who has a pretty good idea of 
where you live?

Medium term: Enough people create a critical mass to do something. Again, 
I'm not sure exactly what that "something" might be until Internet 
connectivity comes into play.

Longer term: Clever people create a way for the Wireless community to 
easily share the collective internet bandwidth of many people in an 
equitable way, while still allowing specific bandwidth owners (ie those 
with the Internet connections) control over their internet connections. 
i.e. Peer-to-peer bandwidth sharing.

It seems to me that at this point it's like spending a few hundred dollars, 
connecting to your nearest neighbour, and saying "This is neat." The 
benefits are a greater understanding of the issues of wireless and, by 
default, general networking.

What are YOU looking to get of being involved in Wireless?

Cheers,
Cato



To unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo at wireless.org.au
with "unsubscribe melbwireless" in the body of the message

To unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo at wireless.org.au
with "unsubscribe melbwireless" in the body of the message