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How to build a wireless network for your neighbourhood - book review

You can give free Web surfing to anybody in the neighbourhood, using this book. It tells you exactly how to build a wireless local neighbourhood network not theoretically, but practically, written by a man who has built them successfully

As well as being the author of this disappointingly slim (125 pages just 23cm x 15cm in size) volume, Rob Flickenger also happens to be the sysadmin for the O'Reilly Network.

I mention this fact purely to illustrate that this is not some pie-in-the-sky "here's what is possibly possible" project book, but rather it is a hands-on guidebook that is grounded in the real world. The author not only explains how you can do it, but has already done it himself and learned the hard way, the only way, how to do it effectively and efficiently.

The "it" in question is building the infrastructure to support a wireless network for communities - be they towns, schools, small businesses or whatever. Flickenger provides the persuasive arguments for building a WiFi (802.11b) LAN on a local level - it's inexpensive, can be implemented and also can be managed by the community using them.

He goes further, however. He also presents a "warts and all" guide to deploying that network based around his own experiences when designing, building and implementing the Sebastapol Community Network (NoCAT) in Northern California which is used by O'Reilly employees (and offers free web surfing to anyone in range with a suitably equipped WiFi enabled laptop PC).

Considering the small size of the reference, Flickenger is to be congratulated on packing so much in without sacrificing either readability or the plot as it were.

His astute writing is complimented by a superb editing and layout team, resulting ion a logical structure that gently leads the reader into the subject matter with sections covering the problems of wireless community networks and possible solutions, defining project scope by way of hardware requirements and topographical mapping, before moving on to the technical nitty gritty of network layout, access point caveats, peer to peer (ad hoc) networking issues, antenna characteristics and placement, repeaters, security and so on.

As with all O'Reilly reference books, I always start at the back first and head straight for the appendices - however, in this case the US roots of the book are revealed by the fact that much of the space is devoted to a précis of the FCC Part 15 Rules governing radio emissions in the US. Flickenger can be forgiven for this because of the inclusion of a brief scheme management script tutorial for managing network schemes on Linux, and the briefer table of path loss calculations in free space for channels 1 and 11 with clear line of sight (to help work out how far your network can reach).

VERDICT: 7/10

The perfect overview of the emerging world of the WLAN as it applies to community networking in all its forms, but one that goes beyond the basics and provides the hands on detail needed to roll your virtual sleeves up and get building the wireless web wherever you need it.

Its only weakness, really, apart from its US-centric nature, is that it is not for the newbie. You'd want some knowledge of how wireless works if you wanted to get the best from this book.