Easton Residents Network

Easton Residents Network

In 2003 Bristol Wireless were invited to take part in a funding bid with the Easton Residents Network. Ten new PCs were purchased from LinuxIT running Redhat Linux. Bristol Wireless put in a bid to connect the machines to the local wireless network.

The original bid was to cover:

• Access points
• Cable
• Antennas
• Cable fittings
• Rigger
• Setup

The ten residents recipients are:

• Siti
• SABREE Bannerman Rd School
• Greenhaven Sheltered housing
• Goodpenny Island Residents
• Bates Close Neighbourhood Watch
• Shaw Close Residents
• Clifton Place Residents
• Bristol Muslim Society
• Millhouse Sheltered Accommodation
• Rosevear Sheltered Accommodation

To date all the machines are up and running, only one is not connected to the network. Shaw Close Residents are not able to see the network at this time. The modem is setup to allow some temporary Internet access. We intend to fill in the dark spots in and around the area as more access points get installed.

Greenhaven, Millhouse and Rosevear all had antennas fitted secured to the building. Bristol Wireless are planning to make three locations a major POP (Point Of Presence) distributing wireless access around the area. One of the POPs might be Princess Royal Gardens. Up to now all wireless connections have been running in WDS (Wireless Distribution System) mode. WDS hasn't been tried over such a large area and as it has proved to slow up the network, we have had to rethink the topography. We're in the process of changing the node structure.

In some cases the machine is in a communal area. We have set up a LTSP (Linux Terminal Server) for Princess Royal Gardens which we will be extending to Greenhaven, Bristol Muslim Society and Rosevear. This is a neat way of having thin clients (old PCs) attached to the new Redhat server. This system rocks. The server is plenty fast enough to run 10 client machines simultaneously.

The residents who have received the machine are in some cases computer novices. It's necessary for a lot more support to be made available to all the users. Two hours structured training has been given to six of the residents to date with the last four people getting their session in the very near future.

In all the project has been more work than we first imagined. The pitfalls have been: not asking for enough money for professional rigger to install the antennas; underestimating the time it takes to set up and configure the machine. In addition, most machines have been placed a long way from the access point so a fair bit of cat5 cabling had to be undertaken. The whole process took two people about three hours, assuming they have all the bits. Transport has turned out to be another issue. It's difficult to do this on a bike, although we have managed. Timing - finding a resident at home when there's a volunteer available- has also been problematic. Training on a one to one basis is very time consuming and probably not the best use of trainers time. We should consider running structured training sessions in an IT centre. We should have checked out all the machines to see if they are complete and working. We should also have added user accounts and showed users how to switch on, access applications and switch off before they leave.

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