[PLUG] Metrofi does not connect (was Rogue of the week)

[Alan Olsen]

On Jan 10, 2008 10:17 AM, Keith Lofstrom <keithl at kl-ic.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 09, 2008 at 02:06:47PM -0800, Alan wrote:
> > > Chief rabble-rouser Russell puts Metrofi in the spotlight.
> > >    http://wweek.com/editorial/3409/10212/
> >
> > My laptop can see a MetroFi node from my desk at work.  I have never
> been
> > able to get an IP address from it or connect in any usable way.
> >
> > Amazingly bogus crap.
>
> What MetroFi promises to do - blanket a city, outdoors and by implication
> indoors, with 802.11B wireless access - is probably technically
> impossible.  You would probably need as many access points as there
> are light bulbs in the city now, for similar reasons.
>
> As far as "you can see them, but you can't connect", though, the
> reasons are similar to the light bulb analogy.  You can see a street
> light from a long way away, but it is a lot less likely that someone
> at the street light can see *you* from a long way away.  Each Metrofi
> radio is greater than 100mW (200mW? 500mW?) and only transmits into a
> flattened cone of space, while typical built-in Wifi is a meager 5mW
> and spews energy in all directions.  So your laptop may be effectively
> invisible to any access point at an appreciable distance (say, farther
> away than 10 feet, through walls, trees, or above or below the cone).
> They deliver more radio power to you than you do to them.
>
> You may have more luck with a PCMCIA wireless card (some PRISM2 cards
> are 200mW), if you can find one with a proper chipset and Linux drivers.
> Or maybe not, no cards are as powerful and directed as the Metrofi
> antennas.  Adding a large dish antenna to the card and pointing it at
> the Metrofi antenna might be enough.  That may violate some FCC rules.
>
> Connection is not nearly as much a problem with a typical PTP node (the
> access points are indoors in specific places, mostly, in the same room
> as you are), or with a Meraki mesh (zillions of cheap access points, if
> one can't see you, others probably can).  But those are limited area
> coverage, hundreds of square feet rather than hundreds of square miles.
>

Actually the problem may not be the wireless card at all.  DHCP appears to
be pretty screwed up on the latest Fedora 8.  They just pushed out and
update to that and some other network apps.  Hopefully that fixed the
problem.

The card itself works very well.  It has much better reception than the
Athros card or the Prism2 card.  Kistmet shows a huge number of networks.  I
just can't connect to them very well.

If I have to i will revert back to Fedora 7.  It will be a pain though
because there are things in F8 I really need and don't have the time to
build for F7.