Wireless Lariat Country A Report on Laramie, Wyoming's Wireless Net David R Hughes Principal Investigator NSF Wireless Field Test Project. It may be in an improbable state - Wyoming - where Internet telecommunications has faced a very mixed reception, but there is a project in Laramie involving advanced wireless data communications that has been evolving into an interesting wireless-community model. Five high speed - 2Mbs Persoft radios - carrying TCP/IP protocol traffic links a University, a non-profit community Internet Service Provider, and three high tech businesses in town, as well as modem dial up customers, while the local school district prepares to link to the same wireless net to connect its 11 sites. Laramie is the 'college' town of Wyoming. 35 miles from Cheyenne, the city of 26,000 houses the University of Wyoming with roughly 10,000 students. With a unique mix of typical young college students, and highly educated faculty, in a town proud of its conservative cowboy state reputation, it represents quite a cultural and economic spread, from the Union Pacific railroad whose tracks run right past the yuppie Overland Restaurant to modern art galleries right across the street, and a cement plant. Since the cost for a T-1 Internet backbone feed from the nearest commercial point of presence, in Cheyenne, is $3,000 a month - from MCI - no local commercial ISP had emerged up through 1995. There is an extension of a service with the domain wyoming.com but it has been so slow and uncertain as a business, that it had an inconsequential practical impact on connectivity in the town. The University, housing a node of Westnet, the academically-rooted regional NSFNET provider, has been providing Internet access for all its students and faculty. But, as typical in such university 'free' connectivity situations, even though 50 dial in modem lines are supported, busy signals have greeted those affiliated with the university trying to get online nights and weekends. Enter Wireless Lariat. Several years ago, a dynamic electrical engineer, with Silicon Valley computer skills, moved to Laramie and put down roots there. Brett Glass, persistently overcoming skepticism, bureaucracy, political maneuvering, has managed to organize a non-profit Internet Service - Lariat - which derives its Internet feed from the University, paying the University for it, via a pair of Persoft 2Mbs spread spectrum 'Intersect' radio bridges, thus linking Lariet's server to Westnet and beyond to the Internet. The system at the University is 4 floors above the computer center, linked to an omni antenna on the roof, which pretty much can reach across the city - from its center. The distance to the edge of the city is less than 3 miles. So the Intersect radios, using WaveLAN technology, can support the 2Mbs E-1 speeds across the city. The radios operate in the 902 to 928 MHz FCC Part 15 no-licence bands. Lariat, operating a BSD UNIX server, on a DX4 100 MHz Pentium 486, is housed in a building owned by Glass in a residential area. Its Persoft Intersect radio - costing approximately $4,000 - is linked to a small Yagi connected to the chimney of the house. The antenna is so placed that heat from the furnace will keep the critical parts of the antenna ice-free in the Wyoming winters. Lariat had, at the time I investigated it, 6 outside-line 28.8 modems, for dial up service, at a public cost of only $4.25 a month, with 1 hour usage limitations per day. Its growth already will necessitate more dial up lines. The economy of using the Wireless T-1 link to the University site and Westnet permits passing on the savings to public subscribers. Even though all university students and faculty have free access to the net at the college, and by dial in, the cost to the college - approximately $55 per modem telephone line (charge back cost for internal accounting) - inhibits them from simply adding lines to meet demand, with no offsetting revenue. So even faculty and students subscribe to Lariat, and are thus able to reach the university resources, and the net, through Lariat, at very low cost, in part made possible by wireless at such data rates that it can grow substantially in number of simultaneous users. The installation of the data radios - always a matter of significant factors affecting communications, from potential interference to line-of-sight conditions - was aided by the presence in town of many highly skilled Ham radio operators. They were able to use Spectrum Analyzers and scanners which are part of the equipment of the local Public Radio station - KUWR - to assist in antenna sighting and determination of interfering signals, as well as periodically help Glass test the throughput of the radios. (He reports that they have been operating, since installed at the beginning of 1996, at optimum efficiency across Laramie. And there is no reported interference from other types of electromagnetic emissions) From the time Brett Glass of Lariat contacted Persoft, a Wisconsin wireless company, - after getting nowhere with a competitor wireless company - it cooperated generously with him, and his community networking ideas. It provided technical advice, and initial wireless site-survey assistance, and discounted the radios. But one of the most interesting developments beyond the above has occurred, as three independent Laramie companies have signed up with Lariat, purchased their own Persoft Intersect Bridge radios for $4,000, integrated them into their own local computer systems or network, and used their wireless links to Lariat, and the radio at the University, to be connected to the Internet. Since the 5 radios 'peer' at this time - all radios communicating with and through all others, rather than have forced routing, no extra routing systems have been attached to the radios at the company sites. Each business pays Lariat $450 a month for their T-1 connection. Lariat is obligated to pay the University $150 for each such connection, thus is able to keep $300 a month from each company connected, together with the community $4.25 individual accounts, to operate the non-profit service, do billing, technical installation and support, and keep the net operating. The economic model works, using the avoidance of local loop recurring US West charges by using wireless for the high speed connections. And spread sheet analyses of a local 'commercial' ISP, given the large influence of the 'free' university connections, would not work. Nor would a wired solution work, given the per month cost for local T-1 loop from the phone company. The alternative for each company would be $3,000 each per month for a traditional T-1 connection, plus the cost of a T-1 capable CSU/DSU and Router. Which would also include the US West local loop charges to the company premises. Or $9,000 a month. A very substantial savings. While the connected companies get T-1 speeds at one-fifth the traditional fiber connection cost. I visited one of the three companies, all of which have solid business reasons to have connectivity. Aspen Tree Software company is a contract employee recruiting and selection service, with national clients. It uses a sophisticated technical means to conduct highly automated interviews and screening of prospective employees for the personnel operations of large national companies. With 20 employees, and operating out of a pair of tastefully renovated Victorian style houses in Laramie, it brings in a voice-line data base T-1 from US West for voice-response automatic interviews. (it has screened as many as 200,000 prospective employees for one company). But in adding Internet accessible, Web based interviewing for greater cost-effectiveness, it required T-1 data net access, not just voice, also, which Lariat and the wireless Persoft radios have offered. I observed very fast graphical web access from the premises of Aspen Tree. The Intersect bridge is ethernet 10 BaseT linked to an NT server, which also acts as their LAN server. They are growing, and require LAN access to adjacent buildings, and are exploring using wireless LANs for that purpose. They also are interested to what extent wireless data access to their premises from the homes of future employees can permit them to expand without corresponding expansion of worker-space facilities. While it was obvious to me that this company could 'afford' a $3,000 a month long haul T-1 wired Internet connection, they are not only saving over $2,500 a month with the Persoft wireless connection for a capital outlay of $4,000, they are contributing by that portion of the $450 a month cost, to the growth and viability of a 'community' network. The other two companies are Wind River Visual Communications company, which designs and monitors web sites nationally, from Laramie. And In-Situ company, which is a manufacturer. It wanted Internet access for marketing purposes as well as contact with clients. By letting a non-profit community-oriented company provide the service to the profit-making companies, the University avoids the legal and political problem of selling bandwidth directly to businesses. While this somewhat unusual arrangement, which can, and probably will be, in the long run, challenged by purely 'business' T-1 service providers, the important reality is that this cooperative arrangement has permitted the vital building-up, to self-sustaining level, of a non-profit, high-bandwidth, local Internet provider (Lariat), which, with a few more similar business or institutional T-1 wireless connections will be in a position itself, if necessary, to buy an in-coming T-1 conventional service, such as from MCI, Sprint, or AT&T, and using Persoft bridges, to deliver T-1 access to institutions at quite reasonable prices. As well as provide general community dial up services. The University's connection to the Internet, using Westnet equipment on premises in Laramie (Westnet is operated out of the University of Northern Colorado at Fort Collins, Colorado, 60 miles away) now traverses a Sprintlink connection. At one time the University of Wyoming used a Microwave link to Ft. Collins, whose installation was over $150,000 for the required towers and equipment. Of course the Microwave was periodically affected by weather also, while the spread spectrum radios are not. One of the main, and eager, prospects for further connecting up to the Internet at affordable rates, is the Albany County School District. This district, centered in Laramie, with approximately 4,000 students, has 11 sites to reach. Most of these sites - 1 senior high school, 4 middle schools, and 6 elementary schools, and 3 administration buildings are inside Laramie proper. But there are 3 very small K-12 schools outside Laramie, while still in the county, while one school is 45 miles away in Rock River, outside even the local telephone dial area. Currently only two buildings are served by a 56kbs Frame Relay connection inside Laramie, which has already proven inadequate bandwidth for their district. So they are looking to wireless to solve their bandwidth-connectivity-distribution problem at affordable rates. Their Superintendent, Dr. Head, has tasked the technical staff to provide, not only the Internet, but a model solution to the 'Rock River' connectivity problem. At the time I visited the solutions being discussed centered on getting one T-1 wireless link to the University, perhaps 1 or 2 others to the largest schools in Laramie, but to use different radios, connected to the schools servers that can deliver 56kbs at least, relayed, to the longer distant schools, but all networked seamlessly to the Internet. This solution will also permit the School District to benefit more directly, via the Internet from the resources, perhaps including faculty, of the University of Wyoming. How this Laramie network evolves is not clear at this time. Change will come, as Westnet - one of the original 7 Regional, NSF subsidized, Internet operation - is phased out. But a wireless infrastructure, starting with educational institution and a non-profit community technical extension, has begun, whose economic advantages are already dramatically apparent. It appears that this will continue, and Laramie - at the higher and K-12 educational level, business, local government, and community level, will be connected up wirelessly for the forseeable future. The cooperative arrangement and the 'Wireless Lariat Country' solution, in short, has facilitated the building of a community network infrastructure that can cut across individual and personal Internet access, to the largest local institutions, in a town where it is not likely it would have been built otherwise for the forseeable future. And at its core are 5 non-recurring cost, high speed, spread spectrum radios, casting their overlapping loops across the city - creating a true Wireless Lariat. www.lariat.org brett@lariat.org dave@oldcolo.com http://wireless.oldcolo.com -------- The above report is a general first-visit report on a Wireless installation involving US educational institutions. Later addendums to this report may include more technical-performance details and information I was not able to gather on the first short visit.