So, some people out there may have heard that the City of San Francisco has been trying to get a municipal WiFi network setup for a while now. I am not sure what the status is, but it ran into some decent opposition (as it should have IMHO) when they brought on Google and Earthlink to manage the network. One of the reasons given for spending taxpayer dollars for doing this was so that underprivileged kids and families will have internet access. It is a pretty silly argument when you consider that if someone can’t afford $15 (Yahoo/SBC DSL) for internet access on a monthly basis, it is highly unlikely that they have or can afford to buy a computer.

One of the things I came across today was the SFLan project that the team over at the Internet Archive is part of / runs / I don’t know. The idea is pretty sick. They use donated bandwidth to provide up to 5 Mbps connections to any node in the city for free. Basically, you pay $1,100 to setup the node and for the equipment and you are done. It seems, from what I have read on the IA forums, that there is a need for some more staffing and tech support resources on this project and I am going to see if I can help. I just realized that the Internet Archive’s San Francisco office is in the Presidio (about 1,000 yards from my front door). It appears that many of the SFLan nodes are still operational, but the node map page (script) is unreachable.

Could be nice to use the 2nd WAN port on my Xincom 502 Twin WAN Router again and pump a 5Mbps connection into it. Realistically, it is a great solution for small condominium buildings like ours which has 12 units. $1,100 plus whatever it would cost to purchase a managed switch and to home run it to each unit would more than pay for itself in less than a year’s time (even if everyone was using AOL dial-up). Hopefully, I can get a hold of the dude that has been running it tomorrow.

tags: broadband, free, internet, internet archive, sflan, wifi, wireless