[D-Space] [dunlug] Dunedin Makerspace/Hackerspace - call for participation

[Aldo Cortesi]

Thus spake Alex King (alex at king.net.nz):

> I don't know the answer to that, but I share your concern about "can
> we do ssh from it".  Also, the bandwidth will naturally be limited
> and I suspect it is shared with other wicked access points around
> town.
> 
> Is anyone here within range of one of the existing wicked APs and can
> test it?

I use the one at Mojo coffee every day when I go for my morning brew.
You can indeed SSH from it, and in my experience the connection is
solid and decently speedy. There might be other reasons not to go with
a third-party wireless access point, though.

As a somewhat irrelevant aside, this is a great little lesson in the
economics of incentives that the council would do well to pay attention
to. The council-sponsored Octagon Free Wireless is extremely
restrictive (HTTP-only) and totally unreliable. About half the time
I've tried to use it either the DHCP server or their proxy has been
down, and connection dropouts are frequent. Why is this? Well, if WIC's
revenue model works, they should profit more as more people use their
access points, so they have an incentive to make them good. The guys
who run the council access point have a fixed contract with no clear
feedback process or accountability, so their incentive is to lock down
access as much as possible and minimize their expenses. Voila,
microeconomics in action.



Cheers,



Aldo


-- 
Aldo Cortesi
www.nullcube.com
+64 210 718 900