Spokane (WA) turns up shared P/S, municipal, and public city wide wireless network

>Spokane launches
>  dual-use municipal Wi-Fi network
>While other cities have created city-wide wireless
>broadband networks solely for use by public safety
>employees and are paranoid about sharing them
>with the public, Spokane is taking a bold step and
>has become the first city I know of that has deployed
>a dual-use city-wide Wi-Fi network.
>
>Spokane's city-wide wireless broadband network starts
>with a 100-block downtown area. The city claims it is
>largest municipal Wi-Fi network in the US. The network
>has two domains:
>
>  (1) the city's private domain which it  will use for public
>safety, mobile workforce, and automated parking
>enforcement and (2) the public domain, SpokaneHotzone
>(http://www.spokanehotzone.com/), which is devoted to
>public access offered through OneEighty Networks, a
>local ISP. Users get the first two hours of access per day
>for free. By the fourth quarter of 2004, OneEighty hopes
>to make additional hours available through the purchase
>of a day pass or a monthly subscription service.
>
>The 100-block downtown wireless coverage spans Division West to Cedar, and
>from Spokane Falls Blvd., south to the railroad viaduct. Secondary coverage
>is available in areas north and south of downtown, including Riverfront
>Park.
>
>The city began the project last year at the Hoopfest basketball tournament,
>and the official launch of the network coincides with this year's
>tournament. The SpokaneHotZone will have a tent at the tournament where
>spectators and players can surf the HotZone, check out scores and player
>stats using laptops provided by Itronix. Also, members of a SpokaneHotZone
>street team will be roving through downtown with Itronix GoBook Tablets
>showing people how to log onto the HotZone.
>
>"The City of Spokane is achieving recognition in this country and around
>the world for our innovative projects," said Mayor James West. "We just
>celebrated recent awards for All America City and Top U.S. Intelligent
>Community that highlighted our community's investment in broadband
>infrastructure and state-of-the-art applications. The SpokaneHotZone gives
>us a distinct advantage over other communities that aren't using these new
>technologies as an economic development tool."
>
>Details of the project
>
>The wireless network is a natural extension of the fiber-wired downtown
>network of buildings, known as the Spokane Terabyte Triangle
>(http://www.terabytetriangle.com), and provides additional connectivity for
>the city's mobile workforce, businesses, residents and visitors. Terabyte
>Triangle's purpose is to maintain a specialized zone in downtown Spokane
>where businesses have access to cost-effective, high-speed connectivity.
>
>The wireless network uses a combination of Wi-Fi base stations and
>bridge/routers. The high placement of the base stations, together with
>their azimuthal spatial filtering, makes them suited for additional
>purposes:
>- coverage to clients well outside the central area;
>- coverage to very distant Bridge/Routers to fill coverage holes; and
>- spatial diversity to enhance link performance.
>
>As is usual for many cities, Spokane has high buildings in a central
>district and low buildings outside this area. The use of base stations at
>these high central locations provides client connectivity out to several
>miles. A bridge/router placed at a distant location allows a hole-filler to
>be placed in an important coverage location, without the need for wired
>backhaul. Throughput measurements have shown good connectivity to a laptop
>client, to several miles, along one of the major streets extending from the
>central district. To further enhance coverage and link reliability, the
>placement of two high Wi-Fi sase stations provides spatial diversity. The
>separation of the two base stations facilitates alternate paths to clients
>and bridge/routers.
>
>In ongoing phases of the Spokane project, additional Wi-Fi coverage will be
>provided. The placement of a central set of Wi-Fi Base Stations provides a
>framework for the provision of this extended coverage at low added cost.
>
>Five Vivato (http://www.vivato.com/) Wi-Fi base stations and twelve Vivato
>outdoor bridge/routers are installed throughout the downtown area to
>provide wireless connectivity to cover 100 blocks This core is about one
>mile long by 0.32 mile wide. Again the five Wi-Fi Base Stations
>additionally provide direct access to clients over many square miles around
>the 100 block city core. New deployment phases are planned which include
>additional outdoor bridge/routers, utilizing the existing base stations for
>low latency wireless backhaul.
>
>All the Vivato wireless base stations are connected using a wired backhaul
>to the city's network and all bridge/routers are connected using wireless
>backhaul. Wireless backhaul is provided using a wireless protocol called
>Wireless Distribution System (WDS).
>
>As mentioned earlier, the wireless network will include two domains.
>
>(1) City government: they will use the Itronix iCARE client and server
>utility; security will be implemented using iCare VPN client. City of
>Spokane domain users include the police and fire departments,
>computer-aided dispatch services, downtown parking violations department,
>sewer department, etc. This domain will also be used to promote the concept
>of the mobile worker for the city's work force by allowing wireless access
>to the city's computing resources and database information. Access to
>building floor plans, fire inspection reports, mug shot database, and
>equipment repair manuals are all examples.
>
>(2) Public: for the public domain part of the network, residents,
>businesses and visitors to the city willl have access to the Internet and
>VPN access to their own private networks through VPN.
>
>To see the area covered by the network and the network design and
>implementation plan, visit http://www.vivato.com/metro/index.html
>
>Vivato Metro Cities Wi-Fi site: http://www.vivato.com/metro/index.html
>
>Source: http://www.muniwireless.com/archives/000372.html

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