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Re: [PLUG] PLUG Wireless/ Co-op?
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Before they shut down, they started crippling the network in phases, they
couldn't just break contracts with people (like XO does :P), so they just
stopped offering services on new service contracts.
a.) everything worked
b.) disabled peer-to-peer routing for modems made or subscribed after a
certain date.
c.) tried to disable even local peer-to-peer connections for modems made
after a certain date by sabataging the name servers.
d.) I heard they were going to labotomize the BIOS in the newer modems at
some point to disable the peer to peer mode entirely.
The reasoning?:
a.) Most people wanted internet, they weren't going to support private
networks anymore - and you had to buy internet access now.
b.) The hardware cost of the modems is supposedly above $500 each, and
they sold them for $100, counting on people signing up for service. They
didn't want people buying 20 of them at $100 each and making a private
network they would never recover their losses from. (hence C above).
I wonder why they just didn't sell them like cell phones:
$100 with service.
$600 without.
They would have had more happy customers that way. Oh well, all you have
to di is change the network number on the modems to fix D from above (or,
in modem emulation mode, connect them beforethe dialing one registers with
the nameserver).
-- noah silva
On Thu, 25 Apr 2002, Kevin Brosius wrote:
> gabriel rosenkoetter wrote:
> >
>
> ...
>
> >
> > > another interesting thing I heard is that the fixed stations and the
> > > mobile ones have the same electronics, but different firmware. I think I
> > > should disect one of the fixed ones.. (who owns them anyhow, if ricochet
> > > isn't in business in phila anymore?)
> >
> > Well, *someone* bought the rights to them (no, I don't recall who,
> > but I'm sure google could tell you). In any case, I'm guessing
> > Philly's Finest wouldn't love to see you hoisting yourself up there
> > with a tin-snips and a soldering iron... ;^>
> >
>
> Not necessarily. The last official plan I heard was that Aerie was only
> buying the equipment in a few select cities, and the rest of the network
> would be abandoned. More recent articles I've read seem to imply that
> Aerie might have gotten the whole thing, but I'm not sure.
>
> I had a couple ricochet modems when the network was turned off, so I did
> a couple experiments with it to see what was and wasn't still working.
> When they 'turned off' the network, the first thing to go was connection
> to the internet through your ISP. I was using WWC (Wordlwide Web
> Connect), and that connection was lost within the first week.
>
> Routing over the network seem to work for about a month after that, at
> least in my area. I could do starmode connections between two ricochet
> modems across the poletop network for 10-15 miles around my home. But,
> about a month later this ceased to work also. I theorized that there
> was some central routing equipment that was finally turned off at that
> point.
>
> I exchanged some mail with one of the contributors to the Linux ricochet
> driver, in Denver (IIRC), and he said the starmode routing over poletop
> radios was not working at his location for most of that time.
>
> --
> Kevin Brosius
>
> ______________________________________________________________________
> Philadelphia Linux Users Group - http://www.phillylinux.org
> Announcements-http://lists.phillylinux.org/mail/listinfo/plug-announce
> General Discussion - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mail/listinfo/plug
>
>
______________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group - http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements-http://lists.phillylinux.org/mail/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mail/listinfo/plug
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