A wireless network for Hebden Bridge is a worthy goal in and of itself. I think it should be a parallel venture to the adsl. Please meet me if you are interested in setting up a wireless link. To pick a time and a venue out of the hat:

Thursday 10th April, 8pm, Nelsons

I would like to work out who might link to whom. To that end the following tools will be useful:

Streetmap of Hebden Bridge
Landmap.co.uk

The first you can work out your OS Coordinates, click on the map where you are and choose convert coordinates. For instance my wireless node is at OS 399315,427592.

The second tool can map the terrain between coordinates. For instance if you were in the middle of Heptonstall you'd put 398688,428093 in the first box and to see if you had a chance of connecting to my node 399315,427592 in the second. If you try it you see there is a chunk of hill which will kill the signal in this case.

Hopefully we'll find a set of people who between us have the geography to get pretty good coverage. I also think its a project interesting from community, socialising, building things, having a laugh point of view.

Even without getting someone with flat rate internet access to join in and share: I'm sure an islanded wireless network could be fun - a game of freeciv anyone? I also think there is a possibility of linking into Leeds given our hills and a few hops. Take a look at this

If those Silsden people can do it!

There is something exciting about this bottom up networking for oneself, its not just about getting bandwidth for work or music sharing (actually I guess we could do that on our islanded network.) Its snubbing the centralised BT types and going all self sufficient, how very 'good life', how very Hebden Bridge.

Robert

BTW. I wrote this on a wireless mac iBook, connecting to a linux x86 gateway, using ipsec tunnelling - it doesn't take too long to overcome technical problems. I think the hardest bit is going to be meeting up spending time in the pub/ wine bar!

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