posted Nov 16, 2009 6:42 PM by Ben West
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updated Nov 20, 2009 4:18 PM
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All WasabiNet routers will soon (within a month) be upgraded to new v1.5 firmware, which has been in development by the Open Mesh community for over a year!
New features: - Speedtest built into the portal/login pages - Upgraded OLSR algorithm for improved routing through the mesh - Ability for users to re-program their own routers if they get corrupted from power blips, cosmic radiation, or gremlins - Improved throughput and reliability |
posted Sep 15, 2009 6:03 PM by Ben West
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updated Sep 15, 2009 7:59 PM
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WasabiNet (http://gowasabi.net) reaches 12 active hotspots, 15 users, 3GBytes downloaded within the past 24hours.WasabiNet
ya tiene 12 fuentes activas y 15 usuarios. 3 Gbytes han sido
descargadas en las últimas 24 horas. Entérate como conseguir nuestro
servicio de internet gratuito.
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posted Sep 4, 2009 3:01 PM by Ben West
We just received the first batch of 20 Open Mesh routers! Expect to see more of WasabiNet in the next few months, in particular at the upcoming Mexican Independence Day Festival on Cherokee Street, Saturday 9/12. We'll also have a booth running from 12-4pm. Come on by!! |
posted Sep 2, 2009 3:22 PM by Ben West
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updated Sep 2, 2009 3:25 PM
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This blog post touches on many of the software and hardware solutions presently being deployed for WasabiNet. So, if you were curious how we're doing it, here are instructions written better than we could write them. How to Setup a Wireless HotSpot to Earn Money
http://geeks.pirillo.com/profiles/blogs/how-to-setup-a-wireless"This article will cover information you need to start your own business providing Internet service through Wi-Fi hotspots or mesh nodes. I will also cover what you need if you are a small business looking to add paid wireless service in-house for customers. "For example: you own a café, restaurant or cigar shop and want wireless available for customers to login and pay $2 for an hour Internet service." |
posted Jun 30, 2009 7:20 PM by Ben West
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updated Jun 30, 2009 7:25 PM
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posted May 28, 2009 3:21 PM by Ben West
A WiFi Co-Op Called WasabiNet Blooms On Cherokee Street
http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2009/05/wifi_coop_called_wasabinet_blooms_on_cherokee_street.php
In January 2007, Mayor Francis Slay announced via blog post that he had hashed out a deal with AT&T to outfit the entire city of St. Louis with low cost wireless Internet. But the agreement, worth an estimated $30 million, fell apart once word spread that the city had failed to seek bids from other companies -- and questions arose about how AT&T would power its WiFi antennas.
Now, two and a half years later, a handful of citizens and business owners in St. Louis' Cherokee Street neighborhood have set up their own public WiFi network using grant money, ingenuity, and a stretched-out DSL signal from none other than AT&T.
The service is called WasabiNet and it is billed as a publicly owned and maintained "wireless Internet co-operative."
It's powered by a series of inexpensive DSL routers that beam a WiFi signal around the neighborhood using nifty technology called a "mesh node network." It currently boasts download speeds of up to three megabytes per second.
It costs about $10 a month to join and it is set to jump2 in size from six subscribers to about 30 in the coming weeks. Coverage spans from Minnesota to California Avenues, but the network's creator, Ben West, hopes it will eventually extend from Compton to Jefferson Avenues and accommodate up to 300 people.
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posted May 22, 2009 1:23 PM by Ben West
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updated May 22, 2009 10:12 PM
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While it would indeed be quite awesome if we could beam wifi from the
state of Minnesota to the Pacific coast, what I mean to say is that
WasabiNet is now available at these locations:
- Gooolll
- Latino Americana
- el Vellasano (the "taco shack")
- el Torito Restaurant
- Cranky Yellow
- AVD+EVADE
- CAMP
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posted May 21, 2009 12:37 PM by Ben West
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updated May 21, 2009 1:37 PM
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About 1 1/2 years ago, AT&T had to pull the plug on a municipal wifi project they were planning for St. Louis City. More Info: http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/21202AT&T's big problem was how to get power to the wifi transceivers they wanted to hang on streetlight poles throughout the city, since those poles only receive power at night, when the lights are on. In comparison, WasabiNet avoids this sort of problem in the following ways... - Scale. AT&T was planning a single wireless network to span the entire city, and consequently they ran into unanticipated problems, like the streetlight power, because their scale was too big. Mesh wifi nets like WasabiNet are neighborhood-sized, not city-sized, so these kind problems will be much smaller, if not non-existent.
- Low Power. AT&T's transceivers were relatively high-power devices (10-20Watts per antenna, maybe 100W per antenna array) that would require substantial juice to achieve their intended coverage area. This is another factor that made the streetlight problem a show-stopper for AT&T. The mesh transceivers used by WasabiNet, by comparison, draw less than 5Watts each, and indeed they can even be run entirely off batteries and solar power!
- Open Source. AT&T's municipal wifi net would have used 100% closed-source software. The software running on all WasabiNet routers, ROBIN and OLSR in particular, are Open Source projects that were developed collaboratively by hundreds of software engineers from all over the world. This software is intentionally provided free of charge, as that permits local projects like WasabiNet to spring up and ultimately bring everyone a larger return on their investment than otherwise possible with close-source software development.
- Cost of Operation. WasabiNet is intended to be a simple and low-cost approach to wireless internet access. The routers themselves are cheap (approx $50/ea) and self-configuring. The WasabiNet co-op business model does not require maximizing profits or hiring full-time staff. Finally, the captive portal with ads from local businesses generates neighborhood-scale commerce, that even further offsets the already-low operating costs for WasabiNet.
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posted May 15, 2009 11:49 AM by Ben West
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updated May 15, 2009 12:14 PM
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We recently sent off an application for a $5k micro-grant from the DailyKos Take Flight program last month. The latest word we've heard on that is they are still seeking adequate funding for the grant. Besides that, we are scoping out other options for start-up funding, so yes, do very much please drop us a line if you have any pointers, links, referrals, suggestions, et cetera. We still have $1500 in start-up funding courtesy of the Incarnate Word Foundation, and we looking to pool that with a micro-grant to get sizable initial mesh set up. At least 2 people in the Cherokee St. area are signing up for WasabiNet after Ben West gave a spiel about it at the Cherokee Chautauqua Art Lab. Hurray! Along these lines, we also added the helpfully-titled page How Do I Sign Up?Besides that, this year's first lighting storm verified that the auto-reset circuit mod described here actually does work! Huzzah! No more locked up routers requiring manual reboots! Look forward to seeing shiny, flashy WasabiNet posterboard presentations hanging in establishments around the Cherokee St area. |
posted Apr 16, 2009 8:31 AM by Ben West
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updated May 15, 2009 12:11 PM
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I recently corresponded with a user on the Open-Mesh/ROBIN support forum discussing architecture problems with the current generation of Open-mesh.com firmware, especially its limitations. The user mentioned his project, which was described as partly a fork from Open-Mesh and partly his own authorship. Unfortunately, it looks as though this user may not have been participating in the Open-Mesh project in good faith. He has been accused of packaging elements of Open Source wifi firmware code into his own for-profit enterprise, with violates the Open Source GPL license. http://nightwing.lugro-mesh.org.ar/doc/corriendo_dingos/en/http://robin.forumup.it/post-8677-robin.htmlIt also appears this person has retroactively removed content from his posts to had posts removed by the moderators of the Open-mesh/ROBIN forums AND the Ubiquiti Networks forums. Although I will consider closed-source software for WasabiNet based on merits of functionality and value, I would not exploit the contributions of any Open Source developers for personal gain. If WasabiNet uses Open Source (which it does right now), then it stays Open Source. |
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