Okay, so CPLUG got a chance to flex it's geek muscle tonight. Outfitted with 12-14 laptops, we braved the outdoors (a significant step for many of us). But we've gotten to far to stop there -- we proceeded to create our own Wireless Mesh Network. We used LocustWorld's bootable Mesh Network CD.

The jist is that each node in the network is an Access Point. So, we start with a base station, connected to the LAN with a cable, and broadcasting with a wireless card. Someone walked 100 feet away, fired up another laptop, which connected to the base station. Someone else walked further out from that, doing the same.

Soon enough, we had moved out of the Intellimark parking lot, and rounded the corner onto the street. So we're working our way down the street with a goal of reaching the other Intellimark building. We managed to spend half the night playing in the street without anyone being hit by a car. And of course, everyone on the node has full Internet access.

However, like true geeks who will never be understood, we did manage to attract the attention of the local police. Sean showed them that even though he was 800 feet from the building, he was still getting signal. They seemed amused. After talking to a few of us to see if we were actually serious, and carried the same story (he actually started asking everyone how their signal was), the two squad cars got together to discuss what a bunch of geeks we are. Boy, they got that right :-) I can't believe it though -- they have computers inside the squad cars, but we didn't think to ask if they could boot up one of our mesh network CD's. We could have gotten a few hundred more feet.

Anyhow, armed with a Zaurus, which would make for a good end node since it couldn't boot the Mesh Network CD (Nate had those honors with a Palm last year), I made my way to the end of the chain. This took me into the other Intellimark parking lot. And then voila, I reach the sidewalk in front of Intellimark. Woohoo! If you look closely, you can see the green signal light on my wireless card. Success!

Earlier on, it was beginning to look like we may only get part of the way to our goal. It turns out Chris had several USB wireless adapters, which seemed to get some incredible range. A few of us booted with them. We also discovered a 75 foot ethernet cable, which allowed us to drag the base station outside. Actually, you can see the laptop behind the door in that picture. It didn't quite make it outside, but the antenna from the wireless card did. And that would be plenty :-) That, combined with all the great folks who were able to bring laptops, hardware, and CD's to make this work, we reached our goal and went from one Intellimark building to the other. In all, it was about 2100 feet. Here you can see a rough map of our network. That map is slightly off -- we cut off a bit of that last corner, plus it shows you going in the far entrance near 11/15. We hadn't gone quite that far.

Thanks to everyone who participated! A special thanks to Nate and Dean for creating all these CD's. As always, thanks to Andy for opening the doors of Intellimark to allow us to meet there. He somehow managed to convince them that we wouldn't break anything if given Internet access.

We're already planning another event for next year. A little more daylight might make the pictures turn out better. And the software didn't work properly with all our wireless cards, we could get even more people on the network with some modifications to the CD. Hooray for Open Source :-)

You can find more pictures at my photo gallery, Nate's gallery, and John's gallery.