Apologies for the lack of blogging here lately - but things have been kicking along, selling Meraki, spreading the word and all that.

Just letting you know that Free Australia (Canberra) Wireless will be sponsoring the upcoming port80 meeting to be held in Sydney the night before the Web Directions South 2008 conference (25-26 September) at the Harlequin Inn on the 24th of September and contributing to the bar tab.

Also we’ll probably also be sponsoring the main conference itself … just got to finalise that soon.

Sorry for the rush and that I didn’t give you all a chance to place orders - but I was contacted by a guy in Hobart the other night interested in getting involved in the Free Australia Wireless project … and seeing I’m going to Hobart in a few weeks I thought I should grab a few Merakis to take with me! Plus I’ll be passing through Sydney on the way there so maybe the Sydney folk might need some, plus I have 3 people here in Canberra wanting Merakis.

So I’ve grabbed:

8x Meraki Minis
2x Meraki Outdoors
1x Meraki Panel Antenna

Also this news is a few days old now but if you haven’t heard the NSW Government has once again scrapped plans to roll out free wireless in the Sydney CBD and major areas. I think this is the third time now?

Just shows that even with a budget of millions of dollars - it’s just not the way to go about. It’s a flawed model and approach. It goes to show who has the greater power and influence and ability to make this happen. Us.

So how many nodes and access points have we got in Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth now under the Free Australia Wireless project? Forty? Let’s add a few zeros to that figure. Let’s make this happen.

Another interesting article, brought to my attention by Justin: Free Wi-Fi, but Not for All

Read the story on Australian IT.

A wireless mesh network here would have helped as a redundancy mechanism - although even assuming that there was a saturation of nodes in place (and as far as I know there would be lucky to be half a dozen advertised open networks) to cover that sort of area is beyond the capability of a mesh network if there were no gateways in that region and the entire mesh was running off the closest gateway nodes to the communication blacked-out area; Meraki advises no more than 10 hops off a gateway, so with 200 metre range Meraki Outdoor units you could at best cases penetrate 2km into a suburb that has no gateway nodes operational. But still - that’s better than nothing. That could have reduced the number of affected homes and businesses by 20% in this case.

Just to illustrate another benefit of wireless mesh networks.

First day of the 2-day Wireless World 2008 tri-summit and exhibition, with JJ and myself working flat out all day promoting Free Australia Wireless, explaining how mesh networking works, what our plan is and some of the finer details … occasionally with some one-on-one sessions with people lasting over 20 minutes. We had about 90 fliers at the start of the day and finished up the day at 5:00pm with only 4 left.

Really good day, got lots of people interested in the project and got a chance to hone our project spiel and a better idea of which points to emphasise or explain in more detail or in different ways - although luckily most of the exhibition visitors had at least some basic knowledge of 802.11 and WLAN.

Also got some good contacts in government and other vendors that we can follow up in the coming weeks to discuss opportunities and gain support for Free Australia Wireless.

On the right here is a pic taken by Chris Rodrigues (one of the event organisers) of a 20 minute Meraki installation and configuration demonstration I gave yesterday in the main presentation area of the exhibition.

Unfortunately I had to return last night back to Canberra so today JJ, Matt and Ajay will be looking after the Free Australia Wireless stall, and Mark Pesce will be delivering his 30 minute presentation at the Wireless & Mobility Summit next door to the exhibition this afternoon.

Sorry, and how could I forget to recognise the assistance of Alison who came down to the stall yesterday just to say hi to JJ and myself … and ended up helping out with promoting Free Australia Wireless and answering questions about mesh networking topography and Meraki specifications - at one point even looking at the stall herself while JJ and myself had to go off at 3:30pm for the Meraki demo. Thanks Ali!

Also have a read of Mark Pesce’s latest blog post Everywhere which is what his presentation today will be based on.

JJ took some photos of the stall and my presentation and I’ve also put up an article on Norg.

That’s right - if you’re on Twitter then go to the FreeAusWireless profile page on Twitter and follow. We’ll be microblogging our exhibition at Wireless World 2008 in Darling Harbour, Sydney, over the next two days.

Once again - if you’re in Sydney then it’d be great if you could drop by the Free Australia Wireless exhibition stall at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre (stall #65) and say hi.

The plan is that I’ll be driving up tomorrow morning (leaving Canberra around 5:00am) and will be behind the stall with JJ and Ajay tomorrow, and then on Thursday it’ll be JJ and Matthew. Also Mark Pesce will be giving a half-hour presentation to the (paying) Wireless World convention participants on the Thursday.

We will be giving a 20 minute demo of Merakis and maybe JJ’s new FON tomorrow at 3:30 - that demo will be in the free area of the exhibition.

If you can make it to the Wireless World 2008 exhibition in Darling Harbour next Wednesday or Thursday (2-3 April) please contact me for a free printable PDF ticket to the exhibition:

Email: nboehm [AT] purecaffeine [DOT] com
Mobile/SMS: 0409 288 464

Following on from yesterday’s coverage of Free Sydney Wireless with mention of other free wifi projects around Australia including our own Free Canberra Wireless in The Sydney Morning Herald (which I blogged about yesterday) we have been contacted by Association and Communications Events (ACE) who run Wireless World with an absolutely awesome offer: a free promotion stand/stall at Wireless World 2008 which is happening in Sydney on 2-3 April and also possibly a slot in the conference schedule to present - we’re currently in a mad rush to put together some ideas for our presence at the conference and line up a speaker; we have about 40 hours from now to get back to them with our response … but we’re definitely going ahead with at least the stall, which I’ve been told may be placed next to Google or Nokia.

I spoke to Chris from ACE this afternoon and talked about Free Canberra Wireless, Free Sydney Wireless and other similar initiatives around the country. I believe Matt also setup a Facebook group for Free Melbourne Wireless today. Also I explained BarCamp to him as he had heard that there was a BarCampSydney planned for the weekend before or after the Wireless World 2008 conference and was considering cross-promotion opportunities or perhaps some sort of integration.

He’s really keen on the idea of rolling out city-wide mesh networks at a community grassroots level (as am I, obviously) and it’s very cool that he’s managed to swing this for us simply because he believes in the concept and wants to support it.

I plan on going up for the conference to help man the stand/stall and be involved in anything else we get happening - although I won’t be presenting. Public speaking at that level is a little out of my league.

Very exciting times!

Also, in light of recent burst of interest and acceleration of the project I will be placing an order with Meraki next Thursday 21 February. I’ll be getting a few surplus units but if you’re interested please let me know just so I can make sure you’re covered. I’ll also be getting some booster antennas around the same time. Onselling price for the Meraki Mini units - which is cost price, no profit to me - will be $60 with this shipment as I should be able to get a discount on bulk shipping and by keeping it under the $1,000 import tax threshold (which we unfortunately invoked on the last shipment, cancelling out the discount we got on bulk shipping).

Free Sydney Wireless is probably organising a shipment soon too - drop by the FSW Facebook group if you’re interested.