The Eurofurence Forum
Eurofurence Information => Feedback => Topic started by: DarkRat on 06.09.2012, 23:12:56
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Hello,
I want to suggest and offer help of using a Freifunk based setup for the next EF.
I'm member and developer of the Freifunk Rheinland e.V. (http://freifunk-rheinland.net) and we build a complete rewrite of the classic Freifunk project.
Pros:
- only one SSID. No need to manually connect to "lobby 1", "lobby 2" etc for different spots in the hotel. You connect one time, and stay connected while moving around.
- As it's a meshed network, it can be easily expanded. It is possible to connect the complete hotel, including rooms, as every router only needs power.
We would provide a special EF firmware with WPA2, custom splash page and bigger IP space. Also we'd help setting up the network (of course together with you guys ;))
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Can you provide the hardware?
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One major suggestion for the WiFi next year:
Either ask those with iOS devices that use Photostream to turn it off, or block uploads to it, or both.
I didn't use my iPhone 4S much for photos during EF (mainly because my old 3 was the only unlocked phone I had and kept that with me instead), but I did take a couple of quick pics and a short 15 second video clip. Then when I connected it to someone's tethered cellular data service, we were taken aback for a bit at how 33MB was uploaded in a short time - and then I realized it was Apple's Photostream service.
In other words, when anyone has an iOS device that connects to a WiFi network, and you have Photostream turned on, it will attempt to upload all new photos to iCloud.
Now multiply that with all the people who have iOS devices at EF - then think about the very small amount of hotel bandwidth available.
Never was a problem last year because iOS 5 (which introduced iCloud and Photostream) wasn't available until after EF17.
But, definitely worth bearing in mind for future years.
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Can you provide the hardware?
yes
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Maybe you could give us some more technical details - we've tried a meshed Wifi network in the first year, and we had rather big problems with thick walls, reflections and general overload of the frequency band in the lobby. I'm not an expert on this, so please fill us in how your concept may look like and why you think this is going to work :)
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we've tried a meshed Wifi network in the first year, and we had rather big problems with thick walls, reflections and general overload of the frequency band in the lobby.
...and in case this is a problem, is it possible to use cables between the APs (with this particular system) to save some ether bandwidth?
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...and in case this is a problem, is it possible to use cables between the APs (with this particular system) to save some ether bandwidth?
(http://i.pbase.com/g1/97/490897/2/92874333.1RSqoMrI.jpg)
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If shared bandwidth is a problem, contact me. My bachelors thesis covers how to fairly distribute bandwidth amongst dormitory users using Linux (tc and iptables) and I've written the code for the soon-to-be central internet access point for many dormitories in Vienna.
Fair means that every user gets the same proportional slice of bandwidth and that P2P doesn't get more than the twitter client next to it.
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Hello,
About the wifi problem, i don't mind sharing my AP Cisco Aironet 1130ag (http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6087/index.html) and give some help (network administrator) if needed for the next year ^^