Subject: [NEXTEL-1] SPOKANE LAUNCHES DUAL-USE MUNICIPAL WI-FI NETWORK

From: NEXTEL-1
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 00:06:05 -0400

Letting Police Share A Municipal WiFi Network

Contributed by Mike Masnick on Monday, June 21 2004 @ 1:28am

 There are plenty of stories about municipal WiFi networks for police
and other public safety officials, and plenty of others
 about municipal WiFi networks for the public. However, Muniwireless is
pointing out that Spokane may be the first that's
 providing a single network for both kinds of use. I don't know if it's
really the first, but it's still interesting. Among the
 reasons usually given for not doing this is the security of the info
traveling across the police network as well as the fact that
 you don't want the police network to go down because some teens are
downloading movies in the park. The Spokane
 system does away with the first problem by making everyone use a VPN -
which could actually increase the second
 problem in that it slows everything down. It's not entirely clear how
they guarantee that public safety gets the bandwidth
 they need, however.

techdirt.com
===========================================================================================================================================================================
SPOKANE LAUNCHES DUAL-USE MUNICIPAL WI-FI NETWORK

While other cities have created city-wide wireless broadband networks
solely for use by public safety employees and are paranoid about sharing
them with the public, Spokane is taking a bold step and has become the
first city I know of that has deployed a dual-use city-wide Wi-Fi
network.

Spokane's city-wide wireless broadband network starts with a 100-block
downtown area.  The city claims it is largest municipal Wi-Fi network in
the US. The network has two domains: (1) the city's private domain which
it will use for public safety, mobile workforce, and automated parking
enforcement and (2) the public domain, SpokaneHotzone, which is devoted
to public access offered through OneEighty Networks, a local ISP. Users
get the first two hours of access per day for free. By the fourth
quarter of 2004, OneEighty hopes to make additional hours available
through the purchase of a day pass or a monthly subscription service.

The 100-block downtown wireless coverage spans Division West to Cedar,
and from Spokane Falls Blvd., south to the railroad viaduct. Secondary
coverage is available in areas north and south of downtown, including
Riverfront Park.
The city began the project last year at the Hoopfest basketball
tournament, and the official launch of the network coincides with this
year’s tournament. The SpokaneHotZone will have a tent at the tournament
where spectators and players can surf the HotZone, check out scores and
player stats using laptops provided by Itronix.  Also, members of a
SpokaneHotZone street team will be roving through downtown with Itronix
GoBook Tablets showing people how to log onto the HotZone.
“The City of Spokane is achieving recognition in this country and around
the world for our innovative projects,” said Mayor James West. “We just
celebrated recent awards for All America City and Top U.S. Intelligent
Community that highlighted our community’s investment in broadband
infrastructure and state-of-the-art applications.  The SpokaneHotZone
gives us a distinct advantage over other communities that aren’t using
these new technologies as an economic development tool.”

Details of the project

The wireless network is a natural extension of the fiber-wired downtown
network of buildings, known as the Spokane Terabyte Triangle
(www.terabytetriangle.com), and provides additional connectivity for the
city’s mobile workforce, businesses, residents and visitors. Terabyte
Triangle's purpose is to maintain a specialized zone in downtown Spokane
where businesses have access to cost-effective, high-speed connectivity.

The wireless network uses a combination of Wi-Fi base stations and
bridge/routers.  The high placement of the base stations, together with
their azimuthal spatial filtering, makes them suited for additional
purposes:
- coverage to clients well outside the central area;
- coverage to very distant Bridge/Routers to fill coverage holes; and
- spatial diversity to enhance link performance.

As is usual for many cities, Spokane has high buildings in a central
district and low buildings outside this area. The use of base stations
at these high central locations provides client connectivity out to
several miles. A bridge/router placed at a distant location allows a
hole-filler to be placed in an important coverage location, without the
need for wired backhaul. Throughput measurements have shown good
connectivity to a laptop client, to several miles, along one of the
major streets extending from the central district. To further enhance
coverage and link reliability, the placement of two high Wi-Fi sase
stations provides spatial diversity. The separation of the two base
stations facilitates alternate paths to clients and bridge/routers.

In ongoing phases of the Spokane project, additional Wi-Fi coverage will
be provided.  The placement of a central set of Wi-Fi Base Stations
provides a framework for the provision of this extended coverage at low
added cost.

Five Vivato Wi-Fi base stations and twelve Vivato outdoor bridge/routers
are installed throughout the downtown area to provide wireless
connectivity to cover 100 blocks This core is about one mile long by
0.32 mile wide. Again the five Wi-Fi Base Stations additionally provide
direct access to clients over many square miles around the 100 block
city core. New deployment phases are planned which include additional
outdoor bridge/routers, utilizing the existing base stations for low
latency wireless backhaul.

All the Vivato wireless base stations are connected using a wired
backhaul to the city’s network and all bridge/routers are connected
using wireless backhaul. Wireless backhaul is provided using a wireless
protocol called Wireless Distribution System (WDS).

As mentioned earlier, the wireless network will include two domains.

(1) City government: they will use the Itronix iCARE client and server
utility; security will be implemented using iCare VPN client. City of
Spokane domain users include the police and fire departments,
computer-aided dispatch services, downtown parking violations
department, sewer department, etc. This domain will also be used to
promote the concept of the mobile worker for the city’s work force by
allowing wireless access to the city’s computing resources and database
information. Access to building floor plans, fire inspection reports,
mug shot database, and equipment repair manuals are all examples.

(2) Public: for the public domain part of the network, residents,
businesses and visitors to the city willl have access to the Internet
and VPN access to their own private networks through VPN.

To see the area covered by the network and the network design and
implementation plan, click here.
(Source of technical details: Vivato Metro Cities Wi-Fi site)

Note: if you happen to be in Spokane on June 23, you might want to
attend the official launch which takes place at 10:00 AM at Riverfront
Park. Bring your Wi-Fi enabled device!

More details coming: I am trying to get additional details from Spokane
about the costs of the project (equipment, backhaul, maintenance, etc.)
as well as the rollout schedule for the entire city.
Posted by Muniwireless June 20, 2004

http://www.muniwireless.com/archives/000372.html

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