Re: Marina base station coverage?

I think you're missing my point on charging for service. It's
infinitely easier to reduce rates than it is to go from a free service
to a for pay service. Start by charging for the connectivity and then
give the good guys a "deal". That makes you a good guy instead of an
evil bill collector.

No, I got your point.

I'm saying the for the minimal cost of this hardware, and the free DSL
uplink, there's not much incentive to bother dealing with accepting people's
money. Once you take money from them they start getting expectations. If
it sucks then I'll just dismantle it. I can simply punt to getting my own
comcraptastic cable modem and stuff an AP in the dock pedestal. I have
absolutely no desire to put myself in a position where people are paying me
money and bugging the crap out of me for 'support'. I'd rather it cost me
some trival amount of money to maintain it and remain free of their contact.
If they wanna make it better than what I have planned they're free to figure
it all out for themselves.

And let's back up a second, the marina here has sister sites. They've
attempted to get some pay-for services going and it's not gone well. Mainly
because they made the mistake of giving expectations. This is not the case
here.

Incidentally, I forgot to mumble something about installing a RADIUS
server and using WPA-RADIUS for authentication. That solves two
problems. You get easy user identification along with individual and
temporary encryption keys which are different for each user.

No, I have no desire to deal with the likely conspiracy nuts that want to
winge about someone 'knowing' what they're doing on the net. Sure, they're
idiots for thinking it, but start tying a username/password to it and things
go downhill. Not to mention the jackass calling me in the middle of the
night having forgotten their password. Again, open and NO support seems
like a much better situation.

Sigh. You can probably get away with herding corporate employees, but
herding cats and sailors just doesn't work. They have their own
expectations of what constitutes proper reliability and operation and
on how to contact tech support at 1AM.

Let's be clear, NO SUPPORT. If it's up, it's up, if not, tough. I'm 6'4",
not shy and know the value of my time. If they want something better
they're more than welcome to go do it. But make no mistake, I won't be
giving them any impression they can bug me about a damn thing.

I have the same problems with
my neighborhood LAN, where some neighbors seem to think I run a public
utility. I find it best to be tolerant and not vindictive as I have
to deal with these people on a regular basis.

Ah, neighbors are somewhat different than slipholders in a non-liveaboard
situation. I can move my boat to another marina, it's not as easy with a
house.

But don't think I'm missing your point. Thus, from the outset, this is a
free service with absolutely no guarantees or support.

Nope. I've found it just the opposite. Friends and neighbors have
different expectations than customers. That's another reason why I
suggested charging for the service. That will turn your friends and
neighbors into customers.

They're more than welcome to become someone else's customers. I do not want
those headaches, period.

Manual bandwidth management and throttling is a necessary part of WISP
management. The trick is to walk that fine line between managing
abuse and outright censorship.

Ah, now here we completely agree. I have no desire to censor content. But
if some nitwit insists on moving a virtual freight train of porn over the
airwaves while everyone else is being reasonable then it's time to throttle
that consumption. Not based on anything other than excessive consumption.
Sure, they can play MAC address games but I've low expectation of that
considering the audience.

It's also considered good form to inform abusers of the problem their
causing.
The way I do it is to charge the neighbors by their traffic volume.

Yeah well, when you do this you raise the spectre of having snooped not on
just how much they wasted, but on what. Trust me, they tend to get their
knickers in much more of a twist when they think their content patterns are
being monitored. To drop service intermittently, when no expectation of
reliability is implied, is perhaps a far less confrontational mechanism.
I'm fine with them thinking I run a shitty service, all I want is my
occasional Wifi bandwidth without hassles.

After all, this is a upscale, pleasureboat marina we're talking about here.
Having WiFi on it ain't exactly a 'critical' need like one might expect in a
residence.

On a different neighborhood WLAN, they include everyone's monthly
traffic report so that the whole neighborhood can get a feel for the
typical usage, why someone is paying more than everyone else, and how
badly they're hogging the system. Everyone abuses the bandwidth for
the first month. After that, no problems. The report also reminds
them that someone is watching.

Yes, having open webpages showing consumption works wonders for
self-policing behavior modification. At some point, should consumption get
out of hand, I'd certainly want to implement it.

BoFH rules apply!

Only in support newsgroups. In reality, most of the banter in
alt.sysadmin.recovery is wishful thinking and is more a reflection of
what IT would like to do to employees and customers, and not how they
actually perform their duties. I would be seriously worried if you
actually believed many of the stories and retaliatory suggestions
posted in alt.sysadmin.recovery.

What, you mean I can't electrify the handrails to improve the support call
numbers? <grin> <EVIL GRIN>

And I'm not talking about those pikers over in a.s.r. I'm speaking more in
terms of the classic BoFH perspective.

The biggest challenge I'm expecting is avoiding freeloader abuse by folks
anchoring just outside the sea wall of the marina.

If you lock up the system with WPA-RADIUS, that won't be much of a
worry.

Manually ditching freeloaders, or even having some scripts doing it, seems
like a lot less hassle.

But we're also planning on not broadcasting the SSID and changing it
on a semi-random basis.

Security by obscurity? I thought you had some experience in such
things? All that hiding the SSID does it allow users to setup their
own wireless networks on the same channel, create mutual interference,
and create difficulties for users to connect.

Yeah, there's plenty of truth to that. But given the location of this it's
not like I'm expecting a lot of interference or other services sprouting up.
Besides, the folks hosting the uplink ain't real bright. Not broadcasting
the SSID lets them think something's hidden. I know better, you know
better, etc... but it's all about humoring them. At some point, as things
evolve, there's certainly room for change.

Also, you get the honor
of going around and informing everyone that the SSID has changed and
helping them make the change to their PC's.

NO SUPPORT. A posted sign, if they can't figure it out from there that's
just tough. And I'm not just playing the *** here. This is a frill and
if the folks want to make use of it they're more than welcome to educate
themselves on how. I have no need to add customers, nor am I building a
service on which I need growth, click-throughs or anything else.

Incidentally, your site survey with Netstumbler is inadequate. You
should use Kismet with a Linux LiveCD so that you can see networks
that hide their SSID.

True, on my list of things to do. And to do on a regular basis.

This is certainly 'not secure' but it's a bit of
security-through-obscurity. There will be a notice posted in the club
house with the current SSID. And since it's free, they'll get what they
pay
for, support-wise.

Right. Zero security with rotten service and secret handshakes from
the start. Were you planning on this adventure being successful or is
self-sabotage part of the plan?

Hey, if it works for me and three other folks eager for access then it'll be
a success. That it might not work for the 100 or so other slipholders
really doesn't bother me. Thus far no more than a dozen folks have
expressed any interest whatsoever. Frankly, I expect it to remain that low.

Incidentally, with such an open
system, it's difficult to keep a knowledgeable user out of the system
by just MAC filtering as you propose. Anyone with a search engine can
figure out how to change their MAC address.

And sitting on their boat for a few hours in the afternoon evening means
it's pretty unlikely they're going to waste the time/effort. This is
basically a frill to let them fire up the laptop, get/send mail and check a
couple of web pages for weather and event info. Should needs grow beyond
that (and I'm not saying it couldn't happen) there's plenty of opportunity
to improve it. Even if that means going to a pay-for model (run by someone
other than me, that's for sure). These are boat owners, they're used to
getting absolutely gouged for everything, often with very little resembling
decent treatment.

Basically, you have to provide everything that a wired dialup/DSL ISP
provides. You have infrastructure (hardware), support, setup help,
information dissemination, billing, abuse mitigation, maintenance,
upgrades, complaints, backhaul, etc. With wireless, you get the added
enjoyment of a shared and unreliable distribution mechanism.

Eh, two access points and a likelihood of about a dozen users. I'm not
exactly worried about infrastructure and costs.

There will be no support. If they get it working, great, otherwise,
pound
sand.

Wishful thinking. When the boat owner, from whom you usually borrow
tools and supplies, wants help with his computah, you have the option
of playing ignorant, playing busy, or just get it over with and help
him.

Hey, if they fire up the blender and make some margaritas then we'll talk.
I've met most of the slipholders and, by and large, they're a nice bunch.
If anything a NoCat splash page or wiki will sprout up to help them. But no
phone calls or handholding is ever going to be implied, offered or provided.
Besides, I'm already the one known for having the tools and supplies and
they're right nice about asking me for things.

Usually the latter is easiest. You can't run a service without
some form of support. However, make sure you charge (or trade) for it
or your help will surely be abused.

I've been a consultant for 2 decades and my wife's an attorney. I'm well
aware the value of time.

I'm really only expecting about 8 or so vessels will even bother making
use
of it.

Walk around and count computers on board. If laptops, about 90% have
wireless built in. Figure on all of them wanting to connect.

Already have and spoken with folks about it. They're fine with the general
plan. This is not a service 'sponsored' by the marina or part of their
slipholder contract. It's an unsupporte freebie and they grasp the concept.

You might want to price the cost of more than one IP address from the
ISP. That will make separating the office LAN from the freeloaders
much easier using two routers. Also, look at the Sonicwall TZ-170SP
wireless router which has separate security "zones".

True, and if traffic volumes are such that it's an issue I'd definitely go
down that road. The office network here is ONE machine, very infrequently
used for little more than mail and web surfing. There's no restaurant,
snack bar or other activities going on that require anything more than very
minimal bandwidth.

180 is magic. I don't see how they do it. In most cases, it's easier
and better to use 120 degree sectors. Note that you can't use the
same channel on adjacent sectors as there will be havoc where they
overlap at the boundaries. The choice is really based on your
coverage area.

Good point. I'll pickup the 120 and see how well it covers. If that's not
enough then a spare AP and another 120 on the pole should work nicely.

The 120 might be better in that it'd avoid serving anything on-shore.
That
and it's quite a bit less expensive than the 180.

Yeah, probably 120 is safer.

Once again, thanks Jeff!

-Bill Kearney

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