comments inline ...


when last we saw our hero (Sunday, Jul 28, 2002), 
 Austad, Jay was madly tapping out:
> Like I said, I've never set up a network with a private AS before,
> the only ones I've set up had their own public AS number.  So I'm
> unsure as to how confederations and such fit into this, but from the
> sound of it, it seems like a confederation is simply like an OSPF
> area.

well -  from the perspective that a confederation allows you to 
break an AS up internally from an iBGP perspective much like OSPF
allows you to bust things up into areas i suppose that is true.  there
are more differences than there are similarities, but we digress. ;-)
for more information on the topic ref the following. [1]

> 
> In any case, I think we are jumping ahead of ourselves by discussing
> BGP and all that.  We don't even have a base network to play around
> with yet, the conversation just went the way it did for who knows
> what reason.  

i'll second that... w/o any nodes to play with this is largely moot.

> 
> My problem is, I live in brooklyn park, and I have lots of tall
> trees, so to set up a link with anyone else I'm going to have to get
> a nice tall mast and hope the city doesn't come over and break my
> knees for violating some ordinance.  I have a friend in North
> Minneapolis though that would likely be willing to let me put up an
> antenna at his place, and he works for a local ISP also, so it's
> possible that they might be interested in putting an antenna on
> their roof (near Surdyk's).  I'd like to put one on the roof of
> where I work, but out building people barely let us put our
> satellite feeds up there.  

i don't think that your dilemma is particularly unique here in the
twin cities.  avi and i aren't too far from each other here in ne
minneapolis and i'm pretty much at the top of the "hill" from a
topographic perspective and there's no way i'd be able to reach him
w/o some determined effort utilizing a chainsaw.  

in messing around with some decent topographic data that i managed to
get my hands on a while ago (courtesy of some friends with national
geographic maps) i saw that w/o towers or APs on big landmarks we'd 
really have our work cut out for us and no shortage of roadblocks.

handwaving about FSO and other technologies aside, putting APs on
buildings downtown is fraught with some different challenges, i.e. -
you'd have to be on top of the tallest buildings within the downtown
area with fairly high gain antennas to compensate for the LOS issues.  

putting antennas on the plymouth building (visi location) is of
dubious value given the relatively modest height of the facility and
the surrounding buildings.  getting on other buildings with decent
connectivity might be better but i surmise that this would be priced
a bit rich for our tastes.


> 
> If anyone is planning on doing this, are you looking at 802.11b, a,
> or that motorola canopy stuff?  802.11b is 1/5 the speed of 802.11a,
> and 802.11a isn't too much more expensive.  Wouldn't it make sense
> to use a faster technology?


.11a seems to offer the greatest amount of b/w for the buck but my
only hangup with it is the modest distance that it can support.  this
may not be as big an issue with the appropriate antenna h/w.  perhaps
the RF wonks amongst us can comment on this ...


{ snipped - misc previous correspondence }


references
----------

[1] - 
http://www.botwerks.org/rfc_archive/rfc-1965.txt
http://www.botwerks.org/rfc_archive/rfc-3065.txt
 
http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/cisintwk/idg4/nd2003.htm#xtocid77

-- 
steve ulrich                       sulrich at botwerks.org
PGP: 8D0B 0EE9 E700 A6CF ABA7  AE5F 4FD4 07C9 133B FAFC