WiFi at AirVenture (was:Does your airport WiFi?)

George Patterson wrote:

In nearly all of the U.S., the internet providers are running on lines
that they've taken over from the local Bell company. The lines are still
provisioned by the local baby Bell. If the local Bell says that they
can't give you DSL at your location, nobody else can either. That
doesn't stop the internet service companies from claiming they can.

Exactly. That's why I mentioned in one of my earlier postings that DSL providers
are notorious liars.

"Dave Butler" wrote in message
news:1114695955.672961@sj-nntpcache-5...

Exactly. That's why I mentioned in one of my earlier postings that DSL
providers
are notorious liars.

So are the dial-up providers.
--
Matt
---------------------
Matthew W. Barrow
Site-Fill Homes, LLC.
Montrose, CO

But to where? What part of Wittman Field? WiFi will get you about a 300 ft
radius, maybe a bit more if you get fancy with the antennas. You then have
to deploy an infrastructure to which you can connect the access points. It
takes money, and all for 1 week's worth? Maybe 2 if you count exhibitors,
volunteers, etc.

"Dave Butler" wrote in message
news:1114631015.415430@sj-nntpcache-3...
Juan Jimenez wrote:
The fastest connection you can get at AirVenture, because of its distance
from the nearest facility, appears to be ISDN. There's no DSL, that I
know of, or anything faster.

NorthNet http://www.ntd.net/internet.htm claims to offer DSL.

Juan Jimenez wrote:
But to where? What part of Wittman Field? WiFi will get you about a 300 ft
radius, maybe a bit more if you get fancy with the antennas. You then have
to deploy an infrastructure to which you can connect the access points. It
takes money, and all for 1 week's worth? Maybe 2 if you count exhibitors,
volunteers, etc.

"takes money".

And just how much do you think Airventure grosses that week?

Let's see...how many visitor per day? Lowball it at 10K per day.
Assume half are EAA members at $20/day and the other half are
paying the $30. Times 6 days = 1.5M USD.

Now about those exhibitors...and sponsors, etc. Every single one of
them pays a substantial fee. Don't know what the fee/sq ft is but
I've been involved with very large technical trade shows over the
years and it aint cheap. I'd make a WAG and say that more than
$25M comes in from the exhibit fees.

OK, I'll agree that the show funds most of the rest of the year's
efforts, the museum, rent, utilities and the rest of the
EAA infrastructure.

But I'd speculate that the phone company could easily and happily
install a few T3's for 2 weeks at not more than $100K.

As an example, Universal Studios theme park near Orlando installs
an extra thousand (or more!) lines for the month of October to
support the Halloween attractions.

"Blanche Cohen" wrote in message
...

And just how much do you think Airventure grosses that week?

Just pointing out that Airventure charges to get in is not a justification
for spending money on a WiFi infrastructure to be used just 2 weeks out of
the year.

On 28 Apr 2005 04:59:58 GMT, (Blanche Cohen)
wrote:

And just how much do you think Airventure grosses that week?

Let's see...how many visitor per day? Lowball it at 10K per day.
Assume half are EAA members at $20/day and the other half are
paying the $30. Times 6 days = 1.5M USD.

A real lowball! How about the "camping" fees. If 70% are members,
10K relates to 450 people a day. Let's assume that everyone is a
member and stays 1 day. 200,000 X 20 = 4,000,000. My guess is that
it's around $15 million in admission, camping and the rest. A friend
exhibits, or did exhibit, and was paying $2400 for a 10 foot booth, or
whatever the smallest was, inside. Had to be there and manned the
entire time. How many booths are there and what are the sizes? then
there's the outdoor vendors, the split from the junk sale, the
exorbitant prices the food vendors must pay and everything else.
Makes a fine living for the little pober boy. And to top it all off,
all of those fine people working the event are volunteers. God bless
them, but I wouldn't do that for free for that organization if my life
depended on it. If they paid me $1.00 a day, it would be different.

Now about those exhibitors...and sponsors, etc. Every single one of
them pays a substantial fee. Don't know what the fee/sq ft is but
I've been involved with very large technical trade shows over the
years and it aint cheap. I'd make a WAG and say that more than
$25M comes in from the exhibit fees.

On Thu, 28 Apr 2005 00:38:15 -0400, "Juan Jimenez"
wrote:

But to where? What part of Wittman Field? WiFi will get you about a 300 ft
radius, maybe a bit more if you get fancy with the antennas. You then have
to deploy an infrastructure to which you can connect the access points. It
takes money, and all for 1 week's worth? Maybe 2 if you count exhibitors,
volunteers, etc.

You could probably put up some wide area WAPs with 3 or 4 to cover the
whole works. It's not simple, but could be done.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

"Dave Butler" wrote in message
news:1114631015.415430@sj-nntpcache-3...
Juan Jimenez wrote:
The fastest connection you can get at AirVenture, because of its distance
from the nearest facility, appears to be ISDN. There's no DSL, that I
know of, or anything faster.

NorthNet http://www.ntd.net/internet.htm claims to offer DSL.

In a previous article, "Juan Jimenez" said:
But to where? What part of Wittman Field? WiFi will get you about a 300 ft
radius, maybe a bit more if you get fancy with the antennas. You then have
to deploy an infrastructure to which you can connect the access points. It
takes money, and all for 1 week's worth? Maybe 2 if you count exhibitors,
volunteers, etc.

The Linksys WRT54G wireless access point/router supports (at least it does
if you get the Sveasoft firmware, and believe me, you don't want it
without it) a mode where each WAP can relay traffic for all the other WAPs
in its range, so you can chain a bunch of them together wirelessly with
only one connected to the cable/dsl/fat pipe. You can also turn up the
power on them and increase the range.


--
Paul Tomblin http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
"Man in the tower, this is the man in the bird, I'm ready to go, so give me
the word." "Man in the bird, this is the man in the tower, you sound funny,
delay's an hour." - Rod Machado

The Linksys WRT54G wireless access point/router supports (at least it does
if you get the Sveasoft firmware, and believe me, you don't want it
without it) a mode where each WAP can relay traffic for all the other WAPs
in its range, so you can chain a bunch of them together wirelessly with
only one connected to the cable/dsl/fat pipe. You can also turn up the
power on them and increase the range.

Ha. We tried the "repeater" method at the hotel, in an effort to adequately
cover two 3-story buildings.

It turned out to be incredibly unstable. All it would take was a 2 second
power outage, and the repeater "lost its mind" and would not recover -- a
completely untenable solution in a commercial application. Other times it
would lose its connection for no apparent reason at all, and have to be
"rebooted" from scratch -- a time consuming, aggravating affair.

Our solution was a separate DSL line and network in both buildings. A bit
more expensive, but rock-solid.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Juan Jimenez wrote:
But to where? What part of Wittman Field?

Pick a spot. It doesn't have to cover the whole field.

WiFi will get you about a 300 ft
radius, maybe a bit more if you get fancy with the antennas. You then have
to deploy an infrastructure to which you can connect the access points. It
takes money, and all for 1 week's worth? Maybe 2 if you count exhibitors,
volunteers, etc.

I don't think the infrastructure is *so* expensive just to provide a hot spot,
if you don't try to cover the whole airfield. The local coffehouse can afford it.