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

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.

On Thu, 28 Apr 2005 04:08:47 GMT, George Patterson
wrote:

wrote:

Cable is not a available option for me, but if the cable companies
offer any customer service at all, it's no surprise that they are
kicking the phone company's collective asses.

Here, they don't. I'm paying $40 a month *less* for my DSL line than the local

Good Gawd!
It cost me about $97 a month for 128K DSL. Another $90 some for a
dedicated IP at my provider, web hosting, and about a gig of storage.

The cable company is around $29 a month for 3 Mbs down and 256Kbs up.
Plus the first three months were free when I provided my own modem.
Other than the cable company's auto hook up software didn't work, it
was simple to do manually, call the proper number, give them the MAC
address of the main computer.

Once connected, I went to the router manufacturer's site, logged in
and cloned the MAC addresses for the rest of the computers on the
network.

cable company wants for computer access cable. The Comcast customer service
lines were a real PITA when we had cable. Verizon's service lines were great,

So far, Charter has been very helpful. Only once did I get a "clueless
newbie" at the help desk. Or it may have been a tech with no
communications skills :-))

except for the long holding time. The hold actually wouldn't be so bad, except
that they would play the "self-help" tips over and over again while you were
waiting. With Comcast, if there was a problem in the area, they just wouldn't
answer the phone.

Here it's the phone company that's the PITA. Guess it all depends on
what company, what division, and who's on duty when you call.


One of the advantages of DSL is that I have a direct line to the switch -- I
have to share the bandwidth on cable. Granted, if there's a lot of traffic on
the server, I'll still see a slow connection, but I don't see the service
degradation caused by congestion on the cable. IIRC, cable was frequently a
little faster than my DSL line usually is, but there were also times when it
crawled, and I don't see that on DSL.

Being a power user, I hope no one on our cable feed decides to try
VoIP as it's gonna be pretty intermittent.
I also hope no one in the neighborhood decides to automate with home
plug next to my legal limit radio station.

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

George Patterson
There's plenty of room for all of God's creatures. Right next to the
mashed potatoes.

On Thu, 28 Apr 2005 00:39:50 -0400, "Juan Jimenez"
wrote:


wrote in message
.. .
On Wed, 27 Apr 2005 21:39:57 GMT, George Patterson
wrote:

Turns out I was 8,200' of wire away. He did a "line test", and put me
in contact with a person within the company (not related to the sales
team) that had me hooked up within 2 weeks.

I believe the limit on DSL is 15,000 ft from the telco facility and at that
range, quality of the signal is so degraded to be almost worthless. But
under exceptional conditions, you may get service at that distance.

I was a tad over 5 miles (25000 plus change) and it was very reliable.
Of course it was only 128Kbs and cost me nearly a hundred a month. For
slightly less than twice as much I could have had 256Kbs.

Now the local ISP is working on wireless.
I've offered to help Beta test.

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

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.

Dave Butler wrote:

On a related note: there was a thread here earlier about wireless access
at Oshkosh. IIRC the sad conclusion was that there was no access very
nearby.

The nearest WIFI's last year was a few of the neighboring hotels and
the Starbucks up the road. We spent the last night in the American
Suites or whatever it is (the one that has the LaSeurs catering hall
attached and it has WIFI).

Having an internet cafe on the field would sure be nice.

On Thu, 28 Apr 2005 04:40:59 +0000 (UTC), David Lesher
wrote:



One choice is EVDO. If the area has coverage, you can feed an 802.11b
access point from the cellular service. At least one commercial
product https://evdo.sslpowered.com/wifi-router-evdo-sharing.htm
and one project (StompBox) do the trick.

Any of the high-speed cellular connections would work as the backhaul.

Another option that might allow better bandwidth...

Since backhauling the 802.11b/g data isn't a mobile application,
better datarates would be achieved through point to point last mile
type connectivity. In Chicago, we have several such carriers, but I
haven't looked at Oshkosh.

On Thu, 28 Apr 2005 00:36:22 -0400, "Juan Jimenez"
wrote:

"Dave Butler" wrote in message
news:1114630866.771623@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.

I'm not sure there's no DSL, you could be right. DSL advertisers are
notorious liars. Also, there's satellite. If the bandwidth can't support
the demand, the number could be restricted to some arbitrary number of
simultaneous users, first-come first-served. Better than nothing.

If you think about it, the area where the show takes place is well separated
from the rest of civilization. For DSL to work you have to be a certain
distance from the closest telco facility, due to limitations of POTS wire.

That distance is typically a maximum of 18,000 feet of copper from the
central office or remote terminal hosting the DSLAM.

That is not very far considering OSH airport itself is probably a 2
mile by 3 mile chunk of land.

-Nathan

On Wed, 27 Apr 2005 21:39:57 GMT, George Patterson
wrote:

Dave Butler wrote:

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

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. I think the baby Bell in that area is Ameritec?

Here, Earthlink was claiming that they could provide me DSL for two years before
my line could actually support it. Verizon had to condition the line for DSL
before anyone could provide service on it.

My previous home was in a new subdivision in a growing area of my
community. We were one of the first homes in the subdivision. We
were approx 16k feet from the CO, with a clean line (no DLCs,
repeaters, etc.). At the time (~4-5 years ago) Ameritech was the
phone carrier, and they did not provide DSL. I was able to get a CLEC
to provide DSL services.

As the subdivision built and more phone and data services were
provisioned on the bundles accompanying my phone line - the DSL
service got worse and worse. Eventually, it got to a point where I
could 'sense' network loading based upon whether the DSL modem would
sync and provide service.

It worked fine during low times of usage - the mid of the day, and
the mid of the night. However, during peak usage hours of 7am-9am,
and 4pm-10pm it would never work.

An interesting problem, which I solved by moving.

-Nathan

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

"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.