Wireless Intranet: Your Office at the Club!
by Alan Harrington

The Co-op, with the assistance of Darryl Ebenezer of Ebenezer Consulting, has decided to sign up for and connect to the Wireless Intranet network that serves the Maleny community. What this means is that members and the public now have the opportunity to access high-speed Internet communications without the high cost normally associated with the usual telecom carriers.

A number of nodes (access points) have been established in the central Maleny area, including at the Butter Factory and at The UpFront Club, and these are connected to each other by a wireless network. These sites are high public access areas that are designed to create opportunities for community members to experiment with the service and explore potential applications free of charge. The objective is to build the local community's capacity to share information, expand on its creative potential and enable it to try out the range of possibilities offered by an alternative to the high-cost broadband suppliers.

Intranets facilitate collaboration between groups of individuals working on projects and can greatly improve the efficacy and scale of possible activities such as planning and project management. This sort of networking is empowering, as it can provide the local community with all sorts of relevant information, therefore enabling that community to be more in control of its own destiny.

There are a number of potential applications for this high-speed, wireless Intranet system. One is information sharing and data transfer. Another is video-conferencing, which is more usable on a wireless network as the images are bigger and the frame rate is much faster than with phone/modem lines; members can talk to each other live, as if they were in the same room, without any charge. A third application is the provision of free local phone calls between VoIP (Voice-over Internet Protocol) members.

Members could showcase artistic works, browse an online catalogue of community resources, provide real-time views of the weather using a camera positioned on their back verandah, and so on.

Other advantages of wireless networks include easy and cheap relocation (unlike cable-based networks) and suitability in buildings where it is not possible to run a cable.

This initial step is aimed at providing Maleny with an expandable infrastructure which has the potential to link with adjoining community-based wireless networks and provide a strong base for future opportunities to grow to include broadband linkages.
So, you can now sit down at The UpFront Club (or on the seat in front of the Co-op, for that matter) with your laptop and connect to the World Wide Web for free. In effect, the Club becomes your office!

For further information on the Maleny Community Intranet Project (malenyunwired.net), contact Darryl Ebenezer on 0407 696 792 (mobile) or via email at darryl@ebenezer.com.au.

[From "Maple Street Co-op News", October/November 2006; published by The Maple Street Co-operative Society Ltd, 37 Maple Street, Maleny, Qld 4552, Australia, tel (07) 5494 2088, email maplest.co-op@serv.net.au,
website http://www.maplestreetco-op.com.au]