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Wireless Networking Hardware

Austin Becoming Wi-Fi Hot Spot 185

Posted by michael from the but-when-you-walk-outside-you're-in-texas dept.
Omega1045 writes "The Austin Chronicle is running an interesting article on how Austin is fast becoming the Wi-Fi Capital of the Free (as in beer) Wireless World. With the industry standardization board Wi-Fi Alliance moving to Austin earlier this year, and groups like Austin Free-Net helping local businesses, the article quotes Austin has having more hotspots 'than anywhere else on the planet'. While this article does quite a bit of bragging about Austin, it also does a great job of highlighting how businesses and local non-profits can work together to promote and profit from free Wi-Fi Internet access. This provides an excellent model for other cities to follow using tools like Less Network."
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Austin Becoming Wi-Fi Hot Spot More

Austin Becoming Wi-Fi Hot Spot

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  • Dear Slashdot (Score:2, Funny)

    by Letter ( 634816 )
    Dear Slashdot,

    So you can get free wi-fi...
    .
    .
    .
    but you have to live in Texas.

    -Letter

  • Saturation (Score:2, Informative)

    by RucasRiot ( 773111 )
    The abundant Wi-Fi saturation in the area is actually causing interference between access points. The over-propagation in the area is incredible.

    • Re:Saturation (Score:5, Informative)

      by LostCluster ( 625375 ) * on Sunday June 13, 2004 @05:48PM (#9415463)
      The abundant Wi-Fi saturation in the area is actually causing interference between access points. The over-propagation in the area is incredible.

      WiFi's collision domain is with anything else that's transmitting on the same frequencies within the 2.4gHz/5.8gHz bands. It's not just your subnet anymore, it's everybody transmitting there.

      Just like how these new "Turbo WiFi" devices are suggesting using the entire 2.4gHz range instead of just 1/3 of it like the proper channel-based protcol suggests, it's a tragedy of the commons waiting to happen. When too many people are using WiFi, it'll become unusable for everybody.

      Oversaturation is a big issue. WiFi shouldn't be painting a whole city in places where it wasn't asked for.
      • I think the key to oversaturation isn't to stop people to making these cities 100% covered. If I am reading you correctly, I infer that you are saying that you don't want to be sitting if you house and having the free connection overlapping your DSL or Cable Modem.

        Well if you set your WAP up with WEP encryption, you won't have this problem. Well if you use Windows anyway. I just choose the connection I want to connect to and tell it to ignore the others. It works great especially with my key.

        As far as t

        • Re:Saturation (Score:4, Informative)

          by randyest ( 589159 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @06:29PM (#9415632) Homepage
          You do realize that WEP can't magically remove interfering signals, right? It will prevent you from connecting to them, but it can't remove the impact of the interference (collisions, reduced bandwidth, and in extreme circumstances, no bandwidth.)

          Oh, and I think other OSes support WEP as well. Not just windows :)
      • I city can reasonably be covered if people can work out an alternating "honeycomb". With three channels, it is possible. Given that it seems to be a cooperative project, I'd say that it shouldn't be too hard.

        I do wish the world goverments would grant more standard bands for stuff like this, I mean, .1 GHz at 2.4GHz isn't enough, and the 5GHz often doesn't have half the range.

        Also, many of the "turbo G" and such devices aren't using a second band but rather using some odd frame bursting rather than wasti
      • > When too many people are using WiFi, it'll become unusable for everybody.

        No, everyone will just have to start using some form of spatial coding.

  • Obvious (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 13, 2004 @05:42PM (#9415435)
    I'm moving to Austin. Err, once I move out of my parent's basement.

  • It's like my momma always said... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The world is ready for a new way of doing business and living life. It's not about more money and more stuff. It's about knowing the difference between a life well-lived and a life that's purchased. It's about how much you can do with what you have.

    (i.e., free Wi-Fi == good)

  • They'll need to do some catchup :-) (Score:5, Informative)

    by dirkx ( 540136 ) <dirkx@vangulik.org> on Sunday June 13, 2004 @05:44PM (#9415442) Homepage
    http://www.wirelessleiden.nl/english/ is well in the lead with over 50 nodes (not just hotspots) on churches, schools, offices and other tall buildings :-) And all open source to boot (fetch yours at http://wleiden.webweaving.org:8080/svn/node-config ) or persue the configuration http://www.wleiden.net/cgi-bin/g_list.pl and actual status: http://uuu.wirelessleiden.nl/nodemap.jpg.

    Dw.

  • Give me a better reason to move to Austin! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This won't mean much soon. I live in Portland, and wireless is everywhere. It seems the west coast in general is pretty wired at this point.

    In about a year or so, this will be a moot point anyway. Everyplace will have wireless broadband soon enough....

    • Re:Give me a better reason to move to Austin! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Sponge Bath ( 413667 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @06:48PM (#9415699)

      1. Crushing traffic gridlock
      2. Rebulican redistricting that disenfranchises Austin voters.
      3. Expensive housing (maybe not as bad as Portland)
      4. Large pool of technical talent chasing fewer jobs

      I live here, and I actually like it. But in the last 10 years or so this city has a developed desperate, almost pathological need to pimp itself with dubious claims of superiority. "Live Music Capital of the World"! "Wi-Fi Hotspot!" It gets a little old, and should be taken with a grain of salt.

      • You do live here! Seriously, I know I might get modded off-topic, but you should vote rail in November as we really need it. At the CapMetro Rail meeting the other night I suggested that they provide wi-fi on their trains, if the voters will approve it this time. Check out their site All Systems Go! [capmetro.org] and let them know [capmetro.org] they should put wi-fi on the trains. I also suggested bike storage, and coffee shops at the stations.
        • Just out of curiosity, but has Cap Metro figured out how to pay for the light-rail service yet? Part of the reason it failed four years ago is because there was no way to pay for it without levying excessive taxes which most Austinites weren't willing to pay. Also, have they come up with a route plan yet that covers more than just South Austin to downtown, which was also a problem the last time around? Basically, have they found a way to get past the costs too much, does too little argument?
          • has Cap Metro figured out how to pay for the light-rail service yet? ... have they come up with a route plan yet that covers more than just South Austin to downtown

            The new service is called commuter rail which runs on traditional rail; the first portion of this will run on rail line that CapMetro already owns from Leander to downtown (more sections to come). This current line is used by limited freight and the Austin Steam Train [austinsteamtrain.org]. So, this line will service a large portion of the city's growth up 183.

            Cap

            • Right, which is exactly why I voted against light rail last time. Did you see what they were gonna do to Guadalupe?! The commuter rail plan is much more sane and makes much more sense... not that I'll be able to take advantage of it (Northwest Hills in the hizzie). Still, I did email them asking for wifi on the buses. That'd be the only way I could justify moving from a 30min commute to St. Edward's to roughly 75. Personally, I wish they'd taken the 1.5 bil they had in the bank for light rail and schedule
              • I hear the new roads (45 & 130) are way ahead of schedule, which is good news. They also mentioned they are going to add more routes. One thing that CapMetro needs to do is raise their rates. This may sound stupid at first, but check out this Statesman article [statesman.com]. They are way below national rates in a community which can probably afford a little more than the dead minimum. Then maybe they could afford more routes.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
          Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • I live off Parmer Ln and it wont do me jack

            I don't have children, perhaps I should quit paying my school district property taxes? Is this fairly equivelant to what you are saying? Or perhaps when I worked at home I shouldn't have had to pay hardly any road taxes since I only occasionaly went anywhere I couldn't walk?

            Adding rail line is going to become increasing important to Austin. With the 183 extension and the new 183A (toll road through Cedar Park and Leander opening in a couple of years), more and

          • yes rail. I live off parmer also. Did you not read about the 5-6 stations between leander and downtown? Did it not occur to you that one of these stations will probably be closer to your house than downtown?

            So what's wrong with driving to the rail system? So I'm guessing you think park and rides are stupid too right? Drive to the station, park in the lot, get on a train.

            And when you get to the destination, yes, you take a taxi, or a bus, or walk. So take a cab, what's wrong with that? Maybe you take
      • Well, I live in Dallas, crime capitol of the country.
        We're number one! We're number one!
    • Chicken fried steak w/ bisquits and gravey.
    • Our BBQ is better than yours. Period. Here are just a few:

      Black's [blacksbbq.com]
      Salt Lick [saltlickbbq.com]
      County Line [countyline.com]
      Stubb's [stubbsbbq.com]

  • Not quite the world's WiFi leader (Score:5, Informative)

    by node 3 ( 115640 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @05:54PM (#9415493)
    Portland's Personal Telco Project has well over 100 free hotspots throughout the city. Austin Free Net has 36 (based on their listing of hotspots which have libraries listed from 1-22 and other places as A-O). The city of Portland is also working, in cooperation with the local university, the city government, and various megacorps (such as Intel) to blanket the entire city with free WiFi (see Free For All [wweek.com]).

    But, it doesn't matter much who wins. What's great is that independent groups are popping up all across the country (and presumably, the planet). I know that Portland, Boston, and Austin all have growing free WiFi organizations, and I'm sure there are others.

    Do you know how nice it is to take your iBook, Vaio, whatever, down to the local park and have free high-speed WiFi access? Thanks to these people (and others!), some day you will.

    Let me tell you, it's nice. It's the sort of thing you'd expect from the 21st century.

  • WiFi irony... (Score:2, Funny)

    by RLiegh ( 247921 )
    I live in a small town -with wal*mart being our nearest retail store- and I chuckle every time I see their WiFi cards, routers, etc sitting and gathering dust.

    The nearest hotspot is most likely 12 miles away!
    • Yeah I mean, who would want to ever have a wireless network in their HOUSE! Ha!

      Seriously, I live in a small town, in texas no less, and it's almost common for people with broadband to have wireless, just because it's easier

  • its true. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rebelcool ( 247749 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @06:16PM (#9415587)
    a friend and i were driving among the streets of austin (not just downtown or near UT, but in and around other places) and it is possible to simply jump from hotspot to hotspot while waiting for the light at an intersection or while driving around.

    They're everywhere. Virtually every decent pub, restaurant and coffee shop here has free wireless.

  • Here comes the child porn surfers driving around with no pants on.

  • I would use the internet if I could stop twiching (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Austin has great wireless indeed. Alot of it is due to the great coffeehouse scene. Sure many parks, neighborhoods,bars,theaters, and restaurants are getting them at a breakneck pace. But the boom in wireless here is mainly at the coffeehouses in Austin which rivals the coffeehouses that I have been to in New York, Seatle and San Fran.

  • "wireless"? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Twid ( 67847 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @06:24PM (#9415609) Homepage
    I chuckle every time I hear about "wireless" networks because every time I wander into starbuck's or any other spot with wireless everyone with a computer is jockeying for the power outlets. There usually aren't nearly enough outlets for the number of people who need power. Heck, when people bring laptops into one-hour meetings in my workplace they are usually jockeying for outlets too.

    So, maybe we're seeing a large deployment of "one less wire" networks, but until battery life gets much better, I don't think it's fair to say wireless. Most laptops and pda-type gadgets are lucky to get two hours of "real" usage in the field. By "real" I mean actually using the laptop or gadget on the wireless to surf the internet while, for example, playing music. (Everyone in these coffee shops seems to have headphones plugged into their laptop when I see them.)

    Just an observation, not a critique on the article.

    • Re:"wireless"? (Score:4, Funny)

      by Twid ( 67847 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @06:41PM (#9415676) Homepage
      Sorry to reply to my own comment, but I looked closer at the picture in the article of Richard MacKinnon, captioned as part of the Austin Wireless City Project. He has a rather conspicuous power cable plugged into his laptop.

      Wireless? I think not. :)

    • Well, on my Dell Inspiron 1100 I tend to get about four hours of real usage in the field using wireless networking. Perhaps a bit less while playing music. But I can live with between three and four hours of battery time.

      But the difference between finding wired networks and finding power outlets is that the latter is much more available and seldom firewalled.

      The next step for coffee-shops and the like would probably be power outlets. When you get free power AND free Internet connection, imagine the amount
      • I go to UT-Austin and frequently use wireless at the coffeeshops near campus. Most of the coffeeshops have power outlets available. I suspect customers demanded these even before Wi-Fi, so they could spend hours working on papers or other offline activites. One coffeeshop I frequent, Little City, nearly has a computer lab, with a long counter and enough power outlets for each seat.

    • Re:"wireless"? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Laz7 ( 754088 )
      I get about 4 and a half hours of real use time out of the battery in my Dell Latitude D500. When I get the second battery installed, that should jump to 8 hours. Being able to do a full business day of computing without plugging my laptop into anything, is a nice thing. I hear you on some older laptops though. My last Inspiron got a mere 30 minutes of battery life - one of the reasons for the move.
      • I used to have a Latitude and I wish more vendors would take up Dell's multi-battery design. It was great on a long flight to be able to decide to ditch the DVD and go for the double-battery long life. In fact, I can remember many times with co-workers at Novell (we all carried Latitudes) swapping batteries with someone who was on AC power when I couldn't get to an outlet.

        Dell gets a lot of knocks for being unoriginal, but the multi-battery design is one place where companies like Apple could learn from

    • Re:"wireless"? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by eggboard ( 315140 ) * on Sunday June 13, 2004 @07:28PM (#9415945) Homepage
      This is a neat part of the design of newer restaurants and coffeeshops: they have to plan for more juice!

      A coffeeshop that opened last July in Seattle near my office had put in several outlets before they opened, and they have free Wi-Fi. About two weeks later, overwhelmed with laptops -- and doing great business -- they installed a whole strip of outlets and changed their table layout for more two-person tables. The place sometimes has 8 to 10 people working in it, all of them buying coffee and contributing to a nice air of comradeliness.

      • That seems smart to me, especially if the coffee shop is charging for wireless access. It pays for them to keep people connected as long as possible!

        It still seems kind of funny. I mean, we didn't need the wireless revolution for a bunch of people to cluster around a table and plug in, we could have done that years ago with wired ethernet! :)

        Although, to be fair, wi-fi brought a level of plug-and-play to the equation that wasn't there before. I think Win2K was the first microsoft OS that cleanly could
    • I'm half chuckling with you, especially as I tend to be in airports a lot and have a hard time finding AC power adapters. Massport just installed Wi-Fi in Logan, for instance, but didn't help out with new outlets in the terminals. Likewise in Heathrow, they have a hotspot in one of the terminals, but no AC plugs to be seen. Had to sit on the hard windowsill in San Jose airport just to get close to the power. Seems like they want you to run your battery down before you get on the plane! (Can't count on
    • I just got a new laptop, a Fujitsu P5020, the little teeny tiny one (I LOVE it). I can run it for at least 4 hours easily with the battery it came with, not the high capacity one, while using wireless internet. That is plenty for me. So, they have battery life out there much better than you are talking about.
      • all the girls seem to love the littly teeny tiny laptops... but most of us slashdot geeks aren't happy unless our laptop has at least a 15" display, the ability to burn dvds, and of course the ability to run the latest 3-d adrenaline pumping games...
        those laptops, simply don't last more than an hour on current li-ion technology... unless you strap 25lbs of battery to it they'll never get much 'wireless' time... that model of laptop you have is tiny and has a slow cpu, and us using an integrated intel agp g
        • Haha, well I *am* a small-fingered person... actually tiny fingered. I wear like a size 4 ring. I like that keyboard better than a regular one actually. The reason I wanted a tiny laptop was because of weight... I'm a small girl (this is why girls like them, some of us have a had time carrying heavy things), and there is no way that I would be able to carry a 10lb laptop around campus, especially with notebooks and books added to that. And, I didn't get the laptop to be able to do some crazy mega graphi
    • Ah, the hyperbole. Just tell people not to buy shit.

      I have a Pentium IIIm laptop that gets three to three and a half hours on a charge, and the battery is two years old, so I might get four hours if I bought a new battery.

      People need to buy shitty desknotes and pretending they are true laptops. By weight (often 10lb), they are practiaclly luggables when a good laptop can weigh only half that.

      You don't put a 3.4GHz Pentium 4 (desktop model) chip into a laptop and expect it to last more than an hour. Th
      • You don't put a 3.4GHz Pentium 4 (desktop model) chip into a laptop and expect it to last more than an hour. That's stupid, they weren't made for that. Get a Pentium M or at the very least, Pentium 4 M. Forget the M and you can forget your battery life. Same goes for Athlon too.

        You make a great point. Most people seem to ignore the battery life of their notebook or their usage patterns and just buy whatever looks shiny (or believe the manufacturer's battery ratings.)

        I think most people, if they were tru
    • Buy more batteries.
    • Not providing power may be a business stratagy. It discourages campers that just come to surf KaZa all day. This makes room for the morning, evening, and lunch business folks to get a seat, grab their caffene fix and mail on battery power. You don't make much money on the campers. Higher turnover is better. Imagine if you ate lunch regularly at McDee's. Now immagine if most people instead of staying 30 minutes for lunch now just got a drink and stayed 4 hours. In busy places, creating an environment
  • Austin's becoming a hot hot spot because it's still a comparatively small city with the likes of New York and such.

    Imagine stretching WiFi from the Bronx to JFK Airport, and I don't find it surprising that Austin is so hot. Some small city was bound to become a hot hot spot, and Austin happened to have good luck.
    • Austin's becoming a hot hot spot because it's still a comparatively small city with the likes of New York and such.

      Austin may be small by comparison with NYC but it's a major metro area compared with most places.

      Still, your comment made me wonder if wi-fi could be the basis for an economic development model for smaller cities & towns. I wonder if any of the profs at UT are looking at that aspect of the Austin "model"...

      • Austin also got started on community wireless before it got to be such a huge fad recently. A few indy coffeeshops have been providing free wifi for years now, and AustinWireless has been mapping out locations (intentional and otherwise) since the late 90s.
    • Yes and no. New York has 301 square miles [fedfleet.org] vs Austin's 232 in city limits, and 2705 in metro area [austintexas.org].

      I know you can only put so many people on an WAP, and big NY building probably mess with the signal. But I bet Austin has a lot more land to cover than NYC does.

  • Austin?? Well I have a few concerns (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I believe it's a somewhat polluted city, so I'd be concerned about WiFi performance. Would WiFi Speed Spray do the trick??

    WiFI Speed Spray [j-walk.com]
  • San Francisco has a free wi-fi network called SFLan.

    SFLan [archive.org]

    SFLan node map [archive.org]

  • Why? Lightning! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Temkin ( 112574 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @07:29PM (#9415954)
    Having just moved to the Austin area from Silicon Valley....

    Wireless is very popular here because they get more lightning strikes per week than Kali gets in a year! Having everything connected with wires is like playing russian roulette. I'm going to need at least 3 more APC UPS's.

    On the upside... The BBQ is excelent, and gas/diesel/rent/food/etc... is cheap. :)

  • UT-Austin's WNGG (Score:2, Informative)

    by yttrium ( 88756 )
    The ECE dept here at Univ Texas-Austin just opened a newly $1.5 million remodeled lab for the Wireless Networking & Communications Group. Austin is moving up the ladder in WiFi. Here's the WNCG webpage: WNCG [utexas.edu].
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Thank god for slashdot, wouldn't have know to tell doug he was in the chronicle. Except that was last weeks issue. And I read it. Anyway, that's Doug on the left in background, on right is Mike. He hasnt' worked there for several months...

  • Wardriving Austin? (Score:3, Informative)

    by drewzhrodague ( 606182 ) <drew@nOsPaM.zhrodague.net> on Sunday June 13, 2004 @10:35PM (#9416829) Homepage Journal
    For those of you interested in wardriving or what's out there, here's a look at Austin Texas from a wardriver's point of view [wifimaps.com].

  • hotspot security (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This article comes just in time! I bought Linksys WRT54G for my home network and I'm intterested to open it for my fellow net users, BUT. As I have experience in hosting / server administration, I'm concerned of security. Mostly MY security, to prevent my AP becoming a source of spam. I think I should set up firewall to limit smtp-traffic, but what's sufficient? I think the problem is common with other free internet access points / cafes, schools etc. How is it done?

    I do know how to set up firewall / routi
  • Is Wi-Fi big in the states? Just how big?
    I'm finding all this coverage a little puzzling.

    I haven't heard of a single Wi-Fi hotspot in this country(Ireland).

  • Austin wi-fi how-to (Score:2, Insightful)

    by cabazorro ( 601004 )
    Move to Austin and crash w/ a friend.
    Apply for UT or ACC get admitted.
    Grow a pony tail.
    Get a job at HEB or Fiesta or Central
    Market.
    Wear a belly pack.
    Get a Student Loan (2k).
    By a cheapo laptop and used bike.
    Default your loan.
    Get your own place in the crappy
    side of town (East I-35).
    Finally get your back pack, your belly
    pack wait 3 hrs for the dillo bus
    down town. Go to cafe on South Congress.
    Go to the bathroom and change your sweat
    drenched shirt and remove the fire ant
    that's been chewing your skin inside your
    s
    • Or you could skip the pony tail, get a decent job, actually graduate, get a car/apt live in S. Austin, pay off your loan, and go into virutally any AC'd food/coffe/alcohol establishment in austin and get free wifi. That's what I did. Don't know why you would want to do it the hard way.
  • Interesting story Chronicle, but the old editor Lewis Black has them a few years behind the times, plus he is one of the bigger jerks in town. Austin has been a wifi hotspot for years. The Chronicle needs to stick at making stuff up about George Bush, that is what they are good at.

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