Neighborhoods Unplugged

Welcome to the Neighborhoods Unplugged blog. This will be the online classroom/discussion area for our community wireless networks training. We'll be posting our questions, comments, assignments, and other information on this blog, and participation will be required. We encourage you to post (please be responsible as to what your write) and comment on other people's postings.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

final day of the Wi-Fi class

Hello, everybody. Thank you all again for going through this program. We learned a lot from teaching this class and working throughout the summer with you, and hope you learned a few important things as well.

We'd like you to take a couple quizzes, just to see how much your skills and knowledge of networking technology increased. Go to this link, and print out your answers.

How Stuff Works: Wi-Fi Quiz

When you're done, take this evaluation survey so that we could get a better idea on how to improve this class in the future.

Thanks again, and we wish you all the best.

-- Davis and Bruce

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Tesing the Network

Testing your network

The easiest way to test your network is to take a laptop into each apartment and see how well it works to browse the internet.

The first thing to do is to set the laptop to look for an SSID of only "AP Wireless". On Windows XP, this is done by right-clicking on the wireless network icon in the taskbar "notification area" (the small icons near the date/time display on the right). Then select "View Available Wireless Networks" from the pop-up Menu. Next a dialog like this will appear.

Click on the "Change the order of preferred networks" link on the left and you'll see a list of networks that this computer will attempt to connect to.

For the purposes of this test, you'll want to make sure it can't connect to anything except AP Wireless so remove any SSIDs that appear in this list by clicking "remove" until the list is empty then click "add" to add " AP Wireless ". Next click on "OK" twice to save and close these settings.

Now you are ready to test!

It is important that as you wander around, you turn off, then on the wireless adapter on the laptop (most laptops have a switch for this so they can be used on airplanes where wireless isn't allowed). As you enter a new apartment or room that you want to test, turn the wireless switch to the "off" position, wait a second or two, then turn it on again. It will usually take a few moments to find the network again and once it says "connected" in the taskbar (if you are using a Windows Laptop), then you are ready to test. RO.B.IN wireless networks default to an SSID of " AP Wireless ", so this is what you'll want to be looking for (you can change this and we'll cover that a bit later).

Why do you have to do this? Wireless adapters in computers like to stay "locked" onto the wireless access point (in our case, one of the open-mesh routers) unless the signal gets really bad. Since you are wandering around and open-mesh networks have many such access points, if you don't switch off then on your wireless adapter, you'll get false results as it may be trying to talk to a router that is now farther away then another which would have a better signal. Users typically don't wander like this, so by turning off then on your wireless you'll see what a stationary user would see.

At each location, it's a good idea to refresh a page with lots of graphics a few times. You can use http://www.yahoo.com as it typically has several images. You should see each page load in under 5 seconds with no missing images if it is working well.

If you have some areas that don't work or don't work well, try moving the closest router to a location closer to the Gateway or add a Repeater and retest.

Friday, August 8, 2008

FREE Young Adult Seminar-One Day Only

Please forward to all young adults in your network who would like to meet
with technology leaders such as Oracle, Microsoft, Google and Ebay, and
learn about jobs/careers that are available in their company. The event is
FREE. Further information can be found at www.cajbcc.org.

YOU ARE INVITED TO ATTEND A FREE ONE-DAY SEMINAR

Young, Gifted and Black, Empowering Tomorrow's Workforce

Thursday, August 21, 2008
8:00 am - 5:00 pm

Westin LAX Hotel
5400 West Century Boulevard
Los Angeles, California 90045

Find out from young adults how they became successful entrepreneurs:
(Invited)

Camille Winbush (Actress and Owner) Baked Ice
Angela & Vanessa Simmons (Presidents) Pastry Shoes
Jasmine Lawrence, Self-made millionaire at 16 (Owner) Eden BodyWorks
Chrysta Wilson (Owner) Kiss Mybundt Bakery
Dante Lee (Owner) Diversitycity.com

Find out about exciting careers in technology from industry leaders:
(Invited)

Microsoft, Cisco, Google, Oracle, Apple, Intel, EBay

You will also meet some of the most successful Black Business Owners in
California at our Networking Reception.

TO RESERVE YOUR SPOT, CALL (916) 552-2395 OR E-MAIL: cajbcc@cajbcc.org.

OR REGISTER ONLINE AT: www.cajbcc.org

THIS ONE DAY SEMINAR IS FREE TO ALL YOUNG ADULTS AND INCLUDES COMPLIMENTARY
MEALS AND A GIFT BAG

Bring a Friend!

SPACE IS LIMITED. . . SO ACT NOW!

Monday, August 4, 2008

well i being learning lots of differentt things that are so interesting
for example was how to connect the wireless and even with the node

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Neighborhood map

This is a picture of the neighborhood we'll be deploying our neighborhood, the street is outlined in red:


21st Street, between San Pedro and Griffin.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Neighborhood Resident Meeting Postponed

Our presentation to the resident block club, which was originally going to be held this Thursday, has been canceled, and is rescheduled for next Wednesday at 6 PM (August 6). Sorry for the inconvenience, folks...but this will give us more time to prepare our presentation.

NETWORK DEMO

I've posted a step by step Demo that we will go over in class.

http://www.basicwifi.com/AUD/APCC/APCC_demo.htm