IP: Gatespeed Wireless, Hot Spots, and Cringely

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
>
> [Note:  This item comes from reader Jim Forster.  To clarify Jim's 
> comment, he lives in the SF Bay Area.   DLH]
>
> At 22:59 -0800 2/8/02, Jim Forster wrote:
> > From: "Jim Forster" <forster () cisco com>
> > To: "Dewayne Hendricks" <dewayne () dandin com>
> > Subject: Gatespeed Wireless, Hot Spots, and Cringely
> > Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002 22:59:07 -0800
> > MIME-Version: 1.0
> >
> > I've got service from Gatespeed in Los Altos, beamed down to my neighbor & I
> > from nearby Black Mountain.  Works great!
> >
> >   -- Jim
> From <http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20020207.html>
> > FEBRUARY 7, 2002
> >
> >  Bank Shot
> > Not Even a Mountain Can Get in the Way of Bob's Search for Faster Internet
> > Service
> >
> > By Robert X. Cringely
> >
> > Some of my most popular columns have been about my continuing struggle for
> > good Internet service from my home in rural Sonoma County, California. From
> > bad dial-up to bad DSL (IDSL -- don't get it) to Starband satellite Internet
> > to my current set-up, where I use a 10.5 kilometer wireless link to borrow
> > DSL service from a guy down the valley who I found by looking through a
> > telescope, readers have followed, sympathized, and sometimes even copied my
> > efforts. For the moment, I am satisfied with my Internet connection. With
> > Starband as an alternate, my wireless DSL connection is solid and reliable.
> > It does violate the service agreement with SBC Pacific Bell Internet, but as
> > long as I am not stupid enough to print the name of my down-valley partner,
> > I don't think the phone company will do anything to stop me, nor do they
> > probably care. So I should be happy, right? Wrong. Frustrated engineer that
> > I am, I want still greater speeds. And as of this morning, I have them --
> > two megabits-per-second straight to chez Cringely. But remember, your
> > mileage may vary.
> >
> > What prompted this latest adventure was an e-mail from Dan Arra at Gatespeed
> > Broadband in San Jose, California. Gatespeed is a wireless Internet provider
> > serving much of Silicon Valley. Dan was writing to crow about a new
> > innovation he had come up with -- a different way to offer wireless service
> > to users in restaurants and coffee bars.
> >
> > "We have just entered the so-called "broadband public access market" that
> > has recently gotten a lot of hype from promoters such as Boingo and
> > HereUare," said Dan. "As you probably know, this is the space where
> > Mobilestar (Starbucks fame) and Airwave died ugly deaths. Wayport and STSN
> > are still pretty active here, but mainly at hotels and airports. The VC
> > community seems to like this space with ComVentures backing HereUare and
> > WiFi Metro (picked up the pieces of Airwave). The current business model is
> > pretty flawed, the last one was ridiculous, but the hype is there, so I have
> > figured out a way to garner some of the hype with little to no expense, and
> > hopefully generate some revenue."
> >
> > "The current business model [used by those other guys is to] beg Starbucks,
> > coffee houses, sports bars, etc., for permission to put wireless access
> > points (APs) on the premises -- offer to pay for the bandwidth and THEN even
> > offer to share the revenue. Can you imagine Sprint PCS offering to pay
> > Starbucks for every minute someone used a phone while sitting in the store?
> > The brilliant VCs believe they've fixed the model that killed Mobilestar."
> >
> > "My model is different. We use our existing Wireless Points of Presence
> > (WiPoPs) to blast a group of stores, coffee houses, restaurants, from atop a
> > building. We don't do this everywhere, only where we already have bandwidth
> > and roof rights. (There is) no extra cost except the AP, and we've got some
> > old two Mbps 802.11 ones laying around. I set one up this morning. I put a
> > two year-old two Mbps AP with an 18dBi directional antenna on top of our
> > downtown San Jose WiPoP, and pointed it at the Starbucks, Rock 'N Tacos,
> > Spiedo restaurant, and the Campbell Cigar shop below. It works great. I got
> > 1.2 Mbps inside these places with my WiFi card. I didn't have to ask
> > Starbucks, nor offer to pay them anything!"
> >
> > Good for Dan. He has found a way to bring new services to new customers for
> > almost no extra expense. But of course, I found myself wondering if there
> > was some way I could use Dan's experience to improve my own Internet service
> > out here in the boonies. Dan's idea was to use a high gain rooftop antenna
> > to offer wireless Internet service. What if I found a place that already had
> > wireless Internet service, and used a high gain antenna to take advantage of
> > that service from a great distance? It would be just like sitting in
> > Starbucks with a notebook computer and a latte, except that I'd be at home
> > where the coffee is considerably cheaper.
> >
> > The nearest town to where I live is Santa Rosa, a delightful community with
> > a very good Internet Service Provider, Sonic.net. Sonic is my backup, backup
> > ISP -- the outfit I dial up if bad weather makes both my bootleg wireless
> > DSL link and the Starband satellite unusable. It is a backup link I have
> > never had to use -- until now. Sonic also has 802.11b wireless coverage
> > throughout most of the Santa Rosa downtown, so that's the logical place to
> > aim my high gain antenna if I want to get faster service.
> >
> > Now for a word about paying for Internet service. Some people read these
> > articles and think I am advocating stealing service. I am not. On all the
> > schemes I have presented (even including the "dry pair" homebuilt DSL scheme
> > not involved in this particular column), there has to be some sort of meter
> > between you and the Internet. Yes, at this point in the story I am preparing
> > to grab bandwidth from Sonic.net, but I am a longtime paying customer of
> > Sonic's, and am not proposing anything that I believe violates my service
> > agreement.
> >
> > So all I have to do is aim my high band antenna into Sonic's 802.11b service
> > cloud. I have the high gain antenna, as well as my Sonic user name and
> > password. There is only one thing in the way -- Taylor Mountain. I can't see
> > downtown Santa Rosa from my home because there is a 427 meter (1,400 foot)
> > hill in the way.
> >
> > Undaunted, I decided to try a bank shot. I'd simply bounce my signal off
> > another, even higher, mountain -- 1,887 foot Bennett Mountain -- and
> > straight into downtown. It is far, far easier to write these words than to
> > actually accomplish this feat. Radio waves don't actually bounce off
> > mountains. You need some sort of repeater. And since I don't own the top of
> > Bennett Mountain and didn't really know who does own it, whatever repeater I
> > used would have to be inexpensive in case I had to abandon it.
> >
> > There are many designs available on the Internet for homebuilt yagi
> > antennas, some made from old Pringles potato chip cans. Now I know the
> > potato chip lobby refuses to see Pringles as chips, preferring they be
> > referred to as "snacks," but it's my column, my yagi antenna, so I'll be
> > calling Pringles "chips," not "snacks." You can find in the "I Like It"
> > links the general design I followed. Interestingly, most of the passive
> > repeater designs on the Internet have not been tested -- a fact I notch up
> > primarily to the "Jolt Cola and Three Musketeers" phenomenon mentioned
> > below.
> >
> > A couple trips to Home Depot and about $100 later, I had in hand a pair of
> > double-headed yagi passive repeating antennas tuned for 2.4 GHz. I built two
> > repeaters thinking that, if I could even find a place to put them on top of
> > Bennett Mountain, two repeaters might be better than one.
> >
> > Now comes the absolute hardest part of this project, climbing Bennett
> > Mountain with two double yagis, a notebook computer, and various implements
> > for attaching the yagis to a tree and to each other. This is the sort of
> > effort most geeks from the Jolt Cola and Three Musketeers school of
> > computing should probably not try. The top of Bennett Mountain is 1.5 miles
> > away, and 768 feet above my house and there is no way to drive any of it.
> >
> > Ninety minutes later, I found the bronze marker left by the U.S. Coast and
> > Geodetic Survey crew in 1956 signifying the top of Bennett Mountain, but
> > from that spot, I couldn't see my house or downtown. That required climbing
> > a large oak tree. Once up in the tree, a blue oak, the view was amazing! I
> > could see the Pacific Ocean about 30 miles away, and to the south I could
> > even see San Francisco Bay. Downtown and my house were both visible, too, so
> > I mounted the first yagi and pointed each end in the appropriate direction.
> From the treetop, I could log-in to my home network and also into Sonic.net.
> > Using both double yagis at the same time did increase total signal strength
> > and made the installation stronger, too, since I could attach both yagis to
> > the tree and to each other with large cable ties. The complete system, for
> > those taking notes, involved a Linksys WAP11 access point at my house that
> > had been reprogrammed to operate at a full 100 milliwatts. Connected to the
> > Linksys was a Cushcraft 21 dB parabolic mesh dish antenna. The dish was
> > aimed at the ganged jagis attached to the oak tree on Bennett Mountain,
> > which were aimed in turn into the Sonic.net 802.11b coverage area in
> > downtown Santa Rosa, approximately five miles away.
> >
> > And it works! Right now, I am getting a solid two megabits-per-second and
> > might try for five or even 11 megabits if the Sonic downtown network can
> > handle those speeds. I literally got things running less than an hour ago,
> > and have had little time to tinker with it.
> >
> > But I have my doubts about this as a long-term solution. The yagis, while
> > supposedly weatherproof, might not handle a bad storm. The installation is
> > on shaky legal grounds, too, though I doubt there is a lawyer in California
> > who could find those yagis. Sonic.net, which thinks I'm sitting in some
> > bookstore computing like crazy, probably doesn't appreciate this use of
> > their system. And that old blue oak could turn on me come springtime when
> > its RF-absorbing leaves return. So, having proved the concept, I am going to
> > go back to my slightly less offensive bootleg DSL connection until I can
> > find out who owns that oak tree and make my new installation legit.

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