LCWA Services

  Membership

LCWA offers membership to anyone interested in getting involved in our wireless community. Although anyone is allowed to attend our weekly meetings, voting privileges are only extended to members in good standing. Members are also entitled access to all of the online discussion groups and are encouraged to actively participate in all aspects of the association's operations. Members are not required to sign up for any other services (like internet access), but are required to sign a simple membership agreement and pay a small initial membership fee.

  Internet Access

LCWA optionally provides its members with basic high-speed continous Internet access. This service is provided under the assumption that the nature of your access is typical of a residental, home office or small office. When you agree to access, you will sign a service agreement that you should read beforehand, particularly if you consider your case to be somewhat non-typical.

Before you agree to Internet access service, its important that you understand the differences between the services that a commercial Internet Service Provider (ISP) provides, and what we provide. Here are some of the major differences:

Equipment	You do buy, own, and maintain your own equipment (with our help).
Installation	You do> perform your own installation (with our help).
Mail Services	We do not provide mailboxes (but we have a list of free providers who do).
Web Hosting	We do not support web hosting (but we have a list of free provides who do).
Dialup Access	We do not suport dialup numbers (but you can keep a backup ISP).
Symmetric Features	We do support VPN, FTP, video conferencing, and other symmetric services.
Usage	We do not periodically disconnect, time you out, or limit bandwidth.
Firewalling	We do firewall your connection, hiding your computer from outside intrusions.
Fixed IP	We do optionally provide a fixed IP address (at extra cost).
LAN Speeds	We do support 10+ Mbps between nodes on the network for short haul data transfers.
Non-Profit	We do not make any money - members volunteer time and effort for the community benefit.

  Fixed IP Adresses

LCWA offers fixed IP addresses for our Internet Access subscribers at a nominal monthly cost. Most subscribers will not need to use a fixed IP address because the network infrastructure contains a firewall and utilizes Network Address Translation (NAT) as one of the ways to protect the network from outside intrusions. By default, your computer cannot be seen from the internet, but if you need computers on the internet to directly access your machine, you will need a fixed IP address.

  SMTP Support

LCWA offers local and Internet-wide SMTP support to our Internet Access subscribers. SMTP service allows you to use our network to send mail to other email recipients anywhere on the internet. This service does not allow you to receive incoming mail - it is provided in the event that your existing mail service provider does not allow you to use their SMTP service from outside of their network. For more information on SMTP service, click here.

  Rates

LCWA fees are determined periodically by the assocation at regular meetings. In the interest of bandwidth fairness, the assocation has decided to create 3 classes of members based on the number of simultaneous users sharing a single uplink connection. Membership is required for Internet access, and although there are no initial signup fees, long-term contracts, or hidden fees, the association does require an initial membership fee to cover the costs associated with establishing and re-establishing members.

Monthly internet service cost is mandated never to exceed $60 per month, and targeted to $30 per month. Whenever rates are changed, members are notified both individually by registered e-mail addresses and groupwide via our online users group.

Fee schedule as of May 1, 2006: