Building Wireless Community Networks, Second Edition

Preface

Building Wireless Community Networks is about getting people connected to one another. Wireless technology is being used right now to connect neighborhoods, businesses, and schools to the vast and nebulous entity known as the Internet. One of the goals of this book is to help you get your community “unplugged” and online, using inexpensive off-the-shelf equipment.

A secondary, but critical goal of this book is to come to terms with exactly what is meant by community . It might refer to your college campus, where many people own their own laptops and want to share files and access to the Internet. Your idea of community could encompass your apartment building or neighborhood, where broadband Internet access may not even be available. This book is intended to get you thinking about what is involved in getting people in your community connected together, and it will demonstrate working examples of how to make these connections possible.

New in This Edition

The most important addition to this book is the inclusion of Tim Pozar’s excellent paper, "Regulations Affecting 802.11 Deployment.” Tim is a microwave communications engineer and ham radio operator, and he has done terrific work in exploring the labyrinthine FCC Part 15 regulations. His paper helps us all to understand exactly what is required to operate wireless equipment legally in the United States.

I will also take a look at relevant technologies that have recently entered the wireless networking world, including 802.11a, 802.11g, and 802.1x. While 802.11b is still widely regarded as the champion technology of the community wireless networking effort, these newer technologies are poised to bring interesting new capabilities to networking projects everywhere.

In addition, I discuss a number of fun new home-brew equipment and software designs that have come to light, and evaluate some new security tools (and challenges). In particular, the Host AP driver has graduated to near-production quality, and can provide a very flexible alternative to traditional APs. More on that later.