Richmond Free WiFi Blog

Last week, we received word that our equipment provider, Meraki, was changing its business models by offer three different levels of service for its customers. These new levels, and their respective differences may be accessed via this link.

We’ve considered going with the “Pro” level of service because it initially offered the ability to keep the customized SSID, i.e. the ability to keep using “RichmondFreeWireless” as our access ID, along with the ability to keep a customized splash page and redirect options. Initially, Meraki stated they would basically allow us to keep these features, which we can currently do anyway, for a price of paying 1.5 times more for their equipment than the current pricing. This means the radios would have caused $150 and $199, for indoor and outdoor units, respectively, versus the current price of $49 and $99, respectively. Needless to say, we were very much taken aback, as were other Meraki customers. I had even gone as far as posting this message on DSLReports, where I moderated a very active WISP forum for a number of years.

Fortunately, Meraki listened to their customers and made positive changes. That being said, we’re considering sticking with the “Standard” version as this allows us to keep our customized splash page and SSID features. Meraki is still working on the code changes to make this happen. While they are doing this, we’re planning on sticking with the Legacy version (our current version) until the changes are complete, after receiving this clarification directly from Meraki:

Thanks for your inquiry. With our Standard Edition, we are enabling the ability to fully customize your SSID. We are also working on ways for users to include community information and ad support on their splash page. Standard edition products will continue to list at $49 and $99. Please let me know if you have any further questions moving forward.

We realize that our network will not make it without your support. We’ll continue to monitor Meraki’s changes and keep everyone informed.

If you’d like to contribute to the network and to our project, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Some of our generous gateway bandwidth donors are starting to use OpenDNS for the RFW network. What is OpenDNS you ask? Excellent question! Some of its features include (from the OpenDNS website. Note: Some of the features below are turned off or on by the respective bandwidth donor) Click on the picture to the right for a screenshot of OpenDNS in action on the RFW network:

• Phishing protection - OpenDNS operates PhishTank.com, the world’s most trusted source of phishing data. We integrate that data into an intelligence feed on our DNS servers to keep everyone on your network safe from phony sites trying to steal personal information.
• Adult site blocking - Safeguard your kids, protect your students, or limit your corporate liability by blocking adult websites. Our adult site blocking solution can be deployed in minutes and provides granular levels of blocking. Did we mention it’s completely free?
• Typo correction - We don’t think you should be punished with an annoying error message if you make a small typo, like typing google.cmo instead of google.com. That’s why we correct that typo, and thousands more like it every day.
• Large cache - OpenDNS operates the largest and most intelligent DNS caches in the world. As a result, when you ask us a question, we almost always have the answer. This results in an overall faster way to navigate the Internet.
• Ultra-reliable network - Our architecture was designed to withstand even the worst of network failures and still serve your DNS reliably. Feel free to dive in and learn more about our architecture and how we run a zero-downtime network.

For more info, feel free to contact us if you’re interested in helping out! If you’re ready to participate, check out our “host a node” page.

Even if you can’t host a node, you can still show your support for RFW by posting one of the following buttons on your website or blog.

Option 1:

To display this button, copy and paste the following code into your webpage:

<a href="http://richmondfreewifi.org/">
    <img src="http://blog.richmondfreewifi.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/rfw1-150-25.gif"
    alt="Richmond Free Wifi" style="border: none;"/>
</a>

Option 2:

For this button, use the following code:

<a href="http://richmondfreewifi.org/">
    <img src="http://blog.richmondfreewifi.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/rfw1-150-40.gif"
    alt="Richmond Free Wifi"  style="border: none;"/>
</a>

Feel free to use these on your own site and help us spread the word!

We’re please to announce the launch of our new discussion forum, in categorized format, at our parent company, The Virginia WiFi Company’s forum. We receive many excellent questions and feel this medium will best serve interested parties, our volunteers and anyone interested in our initiative.

Feel free to visit our discussion forum at http://forums.vawifico.org/ to join in on the conversations today!

We’re happy to announce that we’ve partnered with Speakeasy, a nationwide DSL provider with access locations specifically throughout Richmond.  Speakeasy offers the following services on a number of SDSL offerings at a competitive price:

SDSL
A dedicated line with symmetrical bandwidth.
Line Speed Options: 384/384, 768/768, 1.1/1.1, 1.5/1.5
Hardware: Netopia 4652
SLA: 99.9% uptime, 80% bandwidth guarantee, 24 hour response time

RFW chose Speakeasy to be its preferred bandwidth provider for Speakeasy’s open access sharing Terms of Service agreement.  This allows RFW to effectively expand its network without violating any sharing agreements.

If you’re interested in hosting an RFW gateway with Speakeasy service, feel free to drop us a line!