Cairns free net

[Tony Smith]

Hi Everyone.

If I could take a minute of your time.

I and my good friend Kent Parkinson are in the process of establishing a
free to air wireless lan centred at Clifton Beach 26kms north of Cairns.

This is a true "bucks down" adventure for both of us as I am a university
student and Kent is a former Ansett employee and
soon-to-be-university-student. The radio lan is a 100% hobby activity for
us.

The presently planned scope of our lan is to cover 300 metres from my place
to Kent's and then to try to bring a third friend, Hans, who lives around
2kms away online as well.

Our policy will be that anyone who is able to connect will be granted access
for as long as they do not unreasonably annoy any other member or members.

Access to the internet will be available via a shared ISDN single channel
connection that may in time become a dual channel.

We are currently at the "collection of equipment phase" having settled on
the use of the Linux O/S to provide the actual routing software. Currently
we have an impressive collection of "junk" hardware into which radio lan
cards can be fitted.

Sufficent experimentation entailing the testing of LRP and Freesco using
wired lan cards has provided us with the software knowledge to proceed to
the wireless networking phase with some expectation that it might actualyl
work.  Likewise we have settled on antenna designs and will shortly begin
fabricating a helical whip and two yagi antennas.

The exact type of radio card to be used is not yet settled. This will be
determined by which auctions we win on Ebay over the next couple of weeks,
but due to the non-availability of the Wave Lan Isa cards we wanted, they
will probably be Compaq WL200s or similar.

Lastly, if anyone has any hardware (particularly wireless lan cards or
aerials) that are no longer suitable for their particular needs, we may be
able to provide a ready market in the short term.

Thank you for your time.


Cheers

Tony Smith

Connected to the internet in Sunny Far North Queensland Australia
http://www.tonsyl.org