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Re: [Sheflug] Wiki links wanted (Dinnington.net + Plone event)
On Wednesday 14 March 2007 09:54, Jan White wrote:
> Richard,
>
> Where did Dinnington get the money to setup a free wireless network?
> Any chance Sheffield has any good ideas like this in the pipeline?
Please let me help here...
The money for this came from Objective 1 and The Big Lottery. It took several
years and an enormous amount of volunteer effort to put a proposal together
to make this work. It is now almost a Wi-Max network, with Wi-Fi connectivity
at street level backed by high speed wireless point-to-multipoint
connectivity from our community data-centre to key buildings in the
communtiy.
The project began from a community web site business I started called
living-in.co.uk. This gained great support from the community, but access to
the internet was then extremely low among the local population and I was
unable to develop the business further. Nevertheless, I decided to do
something about it and at the same time to base the whole project on a free
software platform. I was also determined that the community should own its
network infrastructure to give it the chance of succeeding on a volunteer
basis.
The wireless coverage has been hampered by delays in planning - most notably
gaining permission (recently granted) to site an antenna on a prominent local
Church. However, we are now managing to reach around 90% of our priority
targets and once the Church antenna is in place we should be able to reach
out to other nearby communities. We are presently waiting for someone who is
prepared to scale the outside of the tower using a bosun's chair -
interesting times!
The project includes a bank of servers based on Ubuntu, making Linux desktop
applications available to the anyone in the community using NX. This works
from anywhere, but performance in the wireless coverage area is excellent.
There are some caveats though - disabling screen savers on the server
sessions being an important one we have recently discovered!
We are presently working on extending this to include local streaming of
audio / video. The wireless network is well suited to this and several
Sheflug members are involved in making this work.
Although funding for the project officially finishes this June, the internet
backhaul is financed for a further year so the network will continue to
provide a free wireless internet access service to the community while a
self-financing model can be developed.
You will have realised that the web site is based on Plone. I have just posted
details of a Plone Skinning / Accessibility event on 21 March at SHU -
http://www.dinnington.net/dart/plone-skinning-and-web-site-accessibility
Please feel free to come along, but let me know.
As far as other bright ideas are concerned, there is a major new project
taking shape called Digital Region...
http://www.digitalregion.co.uk/
This will have a major impact on networks such as Dinnington.net, but it is a
little early to say exactly what!
HTH.
Bob Holland
--
R E B Holland CEng FIET
Bradwell IT Solutions Ltd
Sheffield S25 2QS
Phone: 01909 568630 Fax: 01909 567825
http://www.bradwell.net/
Travelling to South Yorkshire & need somewhere special to stay?
Throapham House B&B offers five star guest accommodation in a convenient rural
location.
For more details see http://www.throapham-house.co.uk/
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