Tech25 Feb 2007 17:18:13 by Marco
I’m sending in this post from FOSDEM, which means that my biggest complaint (actually, I think only complaint) for last year has been solved: the WiFi works! Bit of a weird implementation (lots of separate networks names instead of roaming) but I can see why they chose to do that: the broadcast traffic on a big roaming LAN with hundreds of laptops is enough to smother the average wifi connection. Of course last year’s FOSDEM was powered by a couple (my guesstimate is about 3 or 4) Linksys WRT54Gs and their built-in antennae. This year I’m seeing professional towers with omni-antennas and an unidentifiable grey box that houses the actual access point.
Anyway, thumbs up.
Actually, the bulk of access points this year *were * WRT54GLs. Only in the hallways there was other equipment, kindly provided and maintained by a team of Greenpeace. Last year most of the ap’s were custom embedded devices borrowed from a sponsor, which turned out to be unreliable. And there were a lot more than 4!
I noticed those in the rooms, yes. Last year, too. And they worked ok back then, until they were discovered and pounced upon by hundreds of wifi-seeking geeks ;) (There were less, as far as I could tell, than this year.)
I didn’t know about the embedded devices. I saw a single WRT54G(L) in the Janson room, the largest room there was, without help from other APs or even any better antennae than the standard ones. It worked for about half an hour and then broke down, after which I never saw it working again.
I also noticed in the booklet that greenpeace was providing the wireless in the halls this year. And by the look of the installations, also in the Janson room. I wondered: why greenpeace? Doesn’t seem like the kind of organisation I’d poke at to do this.. Though they did a good job anyway.
Also I wonder: why is there no internet in the Chavanne room?