Frequently Asked Questions
Here are some questions that come up often. If you think we should add
something here, please contact us.
Table of contents
Customer Premises Equipment - the equipment at a member's location.
Point-of-Presence - a (Wakenet) wireless distribution point where
member's antennas point in order to acquire wireless Internet.
Bridge POP - an installation of
antennas and radios which are used to relay the signal from one POP to a faraway POP.
Nowadays, combination firewall/switch appliances are sold. The
firewall feature are a set of software rules which essentially
build a moat between your internal network and the cold
cruel world known as the Internet.
The switch aspect of the unit allows the sharing of a single
Internet connection with several computers.
A transformer which provides power to the Radio via its Ethernet cable. Placing
the power supply externally keeps costs down as well reduces the
amount of equipment which needs to be installed outside.
The device used to communicate with the local POP. Typically, an external antenna is
attached to this device so it can cover long distances. Antennas are
essentially amplifiers.
The radio is powered via a Power-over-Ethernet
The radio's output to the member is ethernet which can be plugged into
a computer or a switch/hub.
Ethernet comes in different rating; Wakenet uses Category 5e
rated cables made specifically for outdoor use.
Uninterrupted Power Supply - Simply, a device which has the
smarts to provide power to attached devices between two energy
sources: the wall outlet or its batteries.
During a power outage, the switchover is so fast, the attached devices
will not detect a power interruption. When the power comes back on,
the device will switch back and recharge its batteries.
The more batteries a UPS has, the longer it can run the attached
devices during a power outage. Of course the larger the UPS, the more expensive.
A UPS also protects sensitive equipment from brown outs and may
protect equipment from lightning interference. If a direct strike
were to occur, most UPS manufactures provide coverage - check the
warranty on the box before making your purchase.
Getting connectivity is dependent on the strength of the wireless
signal between your site and the local Wakenet POP.
There are several factors which influence the signal strength:
- The distance between your site and the Wakenet POP
This can usually be mitigated with a larger inexpensive antenna.
- The density of leaves and pine needles between your site and the
Wakenet POP
Either a different antenna and/or pole-mounting the antenna away
from the home to get away from the foliage may help. The antenna
can be up to 100 meters away from the home without a repeater.
- Physical obstructions between your site and the Wakenet POP
Similar to foliage, the antenna can be installed away from your
home to bypass the obstruction. If this is not possible, a new
Wakenet POP may need to be installed - see Neighborhood Captain on what's
involved.
We believe there will be some cases where the installation price for
the potential member is too much and thus installation will not be viable.
Wakenet's philosophy is to give the potential member all the
information available so they can make the best decision for themselves.
Our official government name is Association du reséau sans fil de
Wakefield (Wakenet) and Wakenet Wireless Association (Wakenet). We
prefer to go simply by Wakenet.
Wakenet is a provincially registered non-profit organization (NPO) whose goal is
to provide low-cost wireless broadband connectivity to our community.
Our goal is measured, incremental growth.
See our history.
John Kingsley and Pablo Sanchez, rural Wakefield residents.
The satisfaction of helping the community is their only compensation.
Their time and computer expertise is donated on a volunteer basis.
Yes:
- The radios use the unlicensed 2.4 GHz frequency range.
- Our RF power levels conform to the limits set by FCC and Industry Canada.
- Our Internet provider allows sharing of the DSL connections.
Another group (COOP Source Internet) has been more visible in the
local news. Is that who you are thinking about?
Wakenet is not a COOP and is setup as a non-profit organization (NPO). The
main difference is John and Pablo make all the decisions. In a sense,
we're dictators and we hope we're benevolent. :)
The key for us is we want to get things done and even if it turns out
later it's a bad decision, we can refine and improve. We don't want
to get mired in endless meeting cycles.
Probably not. :)
See our pricing information.
If Wakenet believes you are near a Wakenet POP, Wakenet will do the
following:
- Before you purchase any equipment: We'll conduct a site survey
to ensure you can literally see the POP.
- We'll bring wireless Wakenet equipment and conduct a Link
Budget test. Given the time of the year, we'll need to
ensure when the leaves come out, you'll have enough signal
strength to punch through the foliage.
- If Wakenet believes you can be serviced, you can buy your equipment
from Wakenet (see pricing) or buy your own. If
you buy your equipment from Wakenet, we'll help you
install it provided you help with other installs.
If you buy your own equipment, you'll need to conduct another
test to ensure it will work.
- Wakenet will help configure your computers too.
Wakenet doesn't receive any warranty on the equipment it purchases so
none can be extended to the members. If the equipment is
dead-on-arrival though, we will have some flexibility to send it back to the vendor.
Note: The equipment Wakenet sells to its members does go through a
burn-in period to ensure there are no dead-on-arrival scenarios at the
member's home.
Absolutely!
The radios we use consume very little power: 2.18 watts for a CPE and
3.3 watts for a POP The yearly hydro cost for a CPE, running 24x7, is 95 cents at 5 cents/kWh and for a
POP it's $1.54.
Because our primary DSL connection is within 1 KM of the Central
Office (CO), we get practical download speeds up to 3.4 Mbps
and upload speeds up to 650 Kbps.
The secondary DSL connection (which is only used when the primary
connection is down) is slower because it's 6 KM from the CO. Its
download speed is 288 Kbps and its upload speed is 288 Kbps.
You may wish to read this section: How
can you offer high speed Internet when you have so many homes sharing
just a few DSL lines?
Yes, Wakenet has been on the air providing broadband connectivity to rural
Wakefield since April, 2004. Read our history.
These web pages are on the Wakenet gateway machine. Your request
traveled 12 KM through the air: 6 KM to the server and 6 KM back to
the primary DSL home.
To some extent, yes, everyone can download as much as they want. Pratically
speaking though, our primary upstream ISP sells us an allotted amount
of bandwidth per month. If we go over this amount, Wakenet needs to pay an overage
fee, which means the members need to pay.
At the moment, we're ask members to self-regulate their downloads and
if we continue to go over, we'll have to figure out how equitably
handle the problem.
Yes however please see Can
I download as much as I want?.
Wakenet does not condone any illegal activity.
Currently, the only cap is on uploads from Wakenet's web server.
Otherwise, we're not planning any download caps or upload caps.
As with everything, as we learn, we'll need to fine-tune the system
and may require us to institute caps on say, P2P.
We're using Traffic Shaping (also see How
can you offer high speed Internet when you have so many homes sharing
just a few DSL lines?) to ensure even response during high demands.
We believe in growing the system in a slow, measured way.
If you want service in your area check for availability and register or
make it happen by becoming a Neighborhood
Captain for your neighborhood.
The system has been running well since April 2004. We have primary and
secondary DSL lines (with automatic failover - see High-Availability). This
reduncency minimizes the amount of downtime. To date, the following
problems that have occured:
Please realize that nothing is perfectly secure.
Just like the locks on your house, someone can
break into the system given enough effort.
Also there is a tradeoff -- often increasing
the security requires spending more money.
The older parts of the network use WEP and the
newer parts use WPA. It is recognized that WEP
isn't perfect (WPA is more secure). However at the time the network
was initially constructed, the affordable radio units
only had WEP. Now the cost of WPA radio units
have come down and they are affordable so we are starting
to use them in the newer parts of the network.
When the older units with WEP fail we will replace them
with WPA enabled units.
That said, we think the network is secure enough.
We run a firewall on our gateway which isolates all the
homes on our network from the Internet traffic at large.
We also keep our server up-to-date with any security patches.
We recommend the following practices whether you use Wakenet or any
other ISP:
- Use secure websites for sensitive transmissions such as online
credit purchases or banking. Most sites use a secure server.
- If connecting to remote computer system use a secure connection (ssh) or VPN.
- Run your own personal firewall in your home; Wakenet can help
you install good quality freeware software to do this.
- Frequently scan your system for viruses and spyware.
We don't monitor individual traffic nor do we keep any logs
(such as the web sites you have visited).
What we do track are aggregrate statistics like how much
data is downloaded and uploaded. This is needed so that
we will know when to increase system capacity.
All personal information such as member phone numbers and
address information is kept confidential.
There are two reasons why the system works well. The first is that
when everyone is using the Internet, people use it in a sporadic way
(they click on a link, read the page and then click again).
The chance that two people will press enter at the same time is
small.
The second thing we do is Traffic
Shaping (also known as
Bandwidth Shaping) to handle simultaneous access. Traffic Shaping
allows us to prioritize the network traffic so that most activities
can be carried out without significant degradation.
The final thing we can do is add more DSL lines as we need them.
At the moment, we have a single static IP. If the need arises,
Wakenet can buy a subnet and assign static IP adresses to those
members who require them.
Our plan is to give VOIP packets a higher priority over other packets so even
during heavy periods, VOIP should work fine.
More than likely the answer is yes. We've successfully used Cisco's
VPN software and left it running for days without a hitch.
Because all Wakenet equipment uses Uninterrupted Power Supplies (UPS),
short power outages (which are common to this area) do not affect
connectivity.
For example, if you had a sufficiently sized UPS and we had a 30
minute power outage, Wakenet would continue to run.
Also, at the Wakenet server location, there's a 2200 volt-amp UPS
(big!) and a generator; however the home owner needs to be around to
start the generator.
Whether you have an existing dial-up account or not, Wakenet
recommends you get a free account with the good people at National Capital
FreeNet; another non-commercial, non-profit organization.
Yes, you're allowed to share your connection. You're still bound by
Wakenet's
end-user agreement so if you share your connection, be
certain you know what is going on.
Now, having said the above, we would rather people constrain sharing
their connection only to their primary residence so we can
equitably share the cost of the network.
gate.wakenet.ca (the machine serving these web pages) is a
member-donated PII 266 MHz machine with 192 MB of RAM. It has two
disk drives: a 4 GB and a 30 GB drive. Eventually the web server and
the plotting software will be hosted on a machine with faster drives
and more memory.
The machine is running Suse 9.x with the latest patches and a
customized iptables ruleset for the firewall. If/when we get a
second primary DSL connection, we'll load balance between them.
Wakenet allows its members to create and publish their own web pages.
All pages are published below the main http://www.wakenet.ca
level. Your web pages are accessed by using a tilde ('~') plus your
Wakenet e-mail account name:
http://www.wakenet.ca/~my_wakenet_e-mail_account_name
Users may request a subdomain with their account name instead:
http://my_wakenet_e-mail_account_name.wakenet.ca
Note: No tilde is needed.
At the moment we don't regulate disk space usage; please try to be reasonable.
If you have your own domain and you're a Wakenet member, you can have
it virtually hosted on our server. The bandwidth available to
web serving (both Wakenet and non-Wakenet pages) will be limited so
using minimal graphics on your pages is preferable.
If you own your own domain and you're a Wakenet member, you can have
your domain's e-mail delivered to Wakenet's e-mail server. You should
be aware we take spam measures which will also apply to your domain;
for better or for worse.
Please use the following values when configuring e-mail:
- POP3 - mail.wakenet.ca
- SMTP - mail.wakenet.ca
Wakenet members enjoy a reasonable number of e-mail accounts -
yes you can almost have as many as you need. At the moment
there is no limit on disk space allocation. If necessary, we'd rather
purchase a larger drive than to restrict people.
Wakenet members can also POP3 and SMTP their e-mail securely by using
port 995 for POP3 and port 465 for SMTP.
Like most ISP's, Wakenet provides a Newsfeed from our upstream provider.
Point your newsreader to news.wakenet.ca
For the Sender Address, please use a bogus address to minimize
spam (e.g. honeypot@wakenet.ca).
Wakenet has a time daemon available for its members. Point your
machine to ntp.wakenet.ca.
Wakenet has a DNS cache-only server available for its members. Set
your primary DNS value to 10.1.1.101.
Wakenet has written custom code to shape our inbound and outbound
Internet traffic.
We give priority to highly interfactive activities (e.g. ssh,
telnet, VOIP) and lower priority to downloads (e.g. P2P, FTP). By
implementing traffic shaping, we can maximize our network
connection(s) to their full extent.
At the moment, Wakenet has two DSL connections to the Internet.
Because the download speeds are significantly different between the
two, Wakenet uses the second connection strictly as a backup.
We've written custom software (net_dog) on our gateway machine
to automatically fail-over to the secondary connection if the primary
connection fails. When the primary connection returns, the
net_dog detects its availability and switches back.
Because all Wakenet members point to the same gateway machine, the
toggling between the primary and the secondary connections is
transparent to them.
At some point in the future, when the demand arises, a second
primary DSL connection will be provisioned. At that point, Wakenet
will configure the gateway to load balance across the two
similar-speed connections.
If we don't offer a service, please don't hesitate to contact us; there may be other folks who
need the same service.
For example, we've added rules to the firewall to port-forward a
specific port to a member's location. We can do this because it's
our network.
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