LCWA Copyright Policy

Consequences of downloading copyrighted material without permission

 

Our Mission

 

Our mission is to provide high-speed Internet access to people who live and work in La Cañada De Los Alamos Land Grant area of New Mexico through a non-profit member-owned and member-operated community wireless network association. LCWA embraces the concept of the community wireless network model in that the members of the association work together to satisfy the needs of the association. We are wholly non-profit, self-funded and self-organized. We strive to provide high quality internet access for all of the association's members. Because the members are also the owners, the membership itself chooses how to meet its needs, including, but not limited to, determining membership fees, bandwidth, infrastructure, coverage areas and management. All work involved in designing, constructing, and maintaining the members' access is performed solely by volunteers.

 

Who We Are

 

The Association

The Association is incorporated in the State of New Mexico as a non-profit 501(c)(12) all volunteer organization operating under a set of well- established bylaws. We meet on the second and fourth Mondays of each month at the Vista Grande Public Library to discuss issues both large and small. Members that are unable to attend but wish to know what's happening at the meetings can view the meeting minutes (see ADMIN > DOCUMENTS on the left margin) and/or join our mailing list groups to keep informed.

 

The Network

The network consists of one or more leased high speed internet connections that are propagated out to the members through a wireless network. As the membership increases, the bandwidth capacity and availability is increased to meet demand, with the operating cost shared amongst the membership. Our minimum quality of service objective is a mimimum average membership bandwidth of 3 Mbps.

Our network infrastructure consists of several wireless access points placed around our coverage area which transfer data to and from to our land lines. Members connect through one of these access points. A member site consists of a wireless bridge that links a member's computers to the network via a router. 

We have a constantly expanding coverage area because, as we grow, we install new access points that members can use. You can view our approximate coverage area from our Coverage Area Map. This map is only an approximation; you should attend an orientation meeting and/or request a site visit to ensure network access.

 

 

 

 

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 participate actively 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 atypical.

Before you agree to Internet access service, it's 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 buy, own, and maintain your own equipment (with our help).
Installation	You 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 support VPN, FTP, video conferencing, and other symmetric services.
Usage	We do not periodically disconnect, time you out, or limit bandwidth.
Firewalling	We firewall your connection, hiding your computer from outside intrusions.
Fixed IP	We optionally provide a fixed IP address.
LAN Speeds	We support 10+ Mbps between nodes on the network for short haul data transfers.
Non-Profit	We are a New Mexico non-profit cooperative - members volunteer time and effort for the community benefit.

 

 

Fixed IP Adresses

LCWA offers fixed IP addresses for our Internet Access subscribers. 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. 

 

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 connection. Membership is required for Internet access, and although there are no initial sign up fees, long-term contracts, or hidden fees, the association does require an initial membership fee of $ 50 to cover the costs associated with establishing and re-establishing members.

Monthly internet service cost for the average member 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 group-wide via our online users group.

 

Current Fee Schedule:

 

 

LCWA Fees	Basic (1-4 users)	Shared (5-9 users)	Small Business (10-20 users)
Membership	$50	$100	$150
Internet Access	$30/mo	$60/mo	$90/mo
Fixed IP Address	free	free	free
SMTP Service	free	free	free

 

 

 

 

 

Coverage Area

This map estimates the coverage area for the our network. The map is generated from a computer line-of-sight simulation using the current access points in the network.This simulation serves only as an estimate - actual signal quality varies based on many factors such as surface structures, vegetation, local interference, equipment selection, and others.

 

Detailed Map 

 

 

 

 

How It Works

 

The wireless network operates very much like a typical in-home wireless network with a few modifications. In fact, because this hardware is so widely available, it’s ideal for use in our network. What follows is a slightly technical overview of how our network is constructed.

 

Your Network

If you go to your typical electronics store, you’ll see a lot of hardware these days that let you connect your computers together wirelessly in your home using small radio transceivers. These transceivers utilize a digital wireless radio communications standard called IEE 802.11. Different flavors of this format are avialble, such as 802.11a (5 GHz), 802.11b/g (2.4 MHz), etc. Our network uses 802.11b for its access points, and 802.11a for its backbone.

In a home wireless network, there are two ends of the wireless link; the first is called a wireless access point, which acts as the host of a wireless network to send and receive signals from one or more wireless clients (or bridges). The access point is special in a wireless infrastructure network because client radios can connect, or bind only to it and not to each other. Although an AP technically only needs one computer wired to it, many of the AP’s you find these days typically have a router built in, which allows multiple computers wired to it to communicate with each other and share a single gateway to the outside world, routing information efficiently between the connections.

Some routers also contain a firewall. A firewall joins two networks together and only allows network traffic to pass from one side to the other based on certain rules. The rules generally deny unsolicited data onto your network while allowing request/response traffic from your computer. In a wireless environment its a good idea to use a firewall to avoid intrusions.

A local area network (or LAN) on such a router consists of all of the computers connected locally; either those directly plugged into the device or those bound wirelessly through the airwaves of its AP. A wide area network ( or WAN ) constitutes groups computers that are connected together, such as the internet. The firewall examines traffic to and from the LAN and WAN networks and passes traffic between them that meet the firewall rules.

Although you can get APs, routers, and firewalls as separate devices, we recommend the use of a single device that does all three - this allows for the best interaction of the three components and makes managing the network simpler.

The second piece of equipment in the wireless network is called a wireless client, or wireless bridge. The bridge is a radio that binds to an AP and passes traffic between the device wired to the bridge, and the device(s) wired to the AP, thus forming a wireless bridge between them. The wireless bridge and AP together form a direct connection, but through the airwaves rather than through a wire.

 

Our Network

Your typical in-home APs and clients have radios with rubber omni-directional antennas that resemble walkie-talkes that have limited range, of about 1000 feet into a 360 degree of coverage pattern ( hence name omni-directional ). However, if you were to narrow the beam you would increase its range. For example narrowing the beam from 360 degrees to 36 degrees results in a theoretical 10 times greater range; approximately 2 miles.

This is how our wireless network reaches your location. The access point in our case is an omnidirectional antenna located in a highly visible area that communicates narrow beam clients that bind, or uplink to it. In fact, we have several access points scattered throughout the coverage area, with at least one visible to your house. The access points that you bind to in our network are a bit more sophisticated than a traditional AP because they also have another radio that relays, or downlinks  the signal to a land based connection where the internet resides.

At your location, an uplink bridge is installed on your roof or other convenient location that uses a narrow beam antenna to connect to the access point. A special device also provides power on the same cable as the data called a Power over Ethernet, or PoE so you only need to run a standard CAT5 cable from the roof to your computer room.

Inside the house, the uplink bridge connects to a router that lets you connect one or more computers to the network. We highly recommend that you select a router that also contains a firewall, and optionally a local wireless access point for in-house use, such as a LinkSys WRT45g.

With our network we can typically reach members at distances of up to 10 miles that have a clear line-of-sigh to an access point with speeds typically in the 3-4 Mbps range. In order to support many clients on the network, our downlink connections operate at approximately 10 times that speed, thereby distributing the available bandwith to the edges of the network.

At the center of the network backbone is our dedicated internet connection, or gateway. All access points downlink through one ore more wireless links, or hops to the gateway. At the gateway an additional firewall is installed that keeps all machines in our network hidden from the outside world through a process called Network Address Translation, or NAT. In rare cases where you might want to have computers on the internet directly access your computer (such as web hosting), and we can provide a fixed IP address that maps a specific address on the internet directly to your router. In most cases, however, members will not be aware of the firewall's existence nor should they need to have a fixed IP address. One specific advantage of this firewall is that you will not be solicited by other machines on the Internet without your consent, such as port scanners and other programs attempting to penetrate your personal firewall.

 

 

 

 

Frequently Asked Questions

 

Q. What is La Cañada Wireless Association (LCWA)?

We are a non-profit cooperative located in the Santa Fe, New Mexico area that is dedicated to providing low-cost, high-speed internet access to the South 285 Corridor and other nearby underserved areas. We are modeled on the community network model, which promotes cooperative sharing of bandwidth and access. We also believe that bandwidth and access should be free of corporate control, governed and owned by the users.

 

Q. What does the service cost?

Our fees for service are determined by our members at regular meetings. Our objective is to provide 3+ Mbps symmetric access for appoximlately $30 per month. Our prices go down (and/or bandwidth goes up) as the number of members go up because we split the fixed cost of the internet connection.

 

Q. Why is the service so cheap?

No salaries, low overhead, no capital intensive infrastructure. All labor to design, build, and support the network is performed by volunteers, and we use standard off-the-shelf components and/or low cost equipment.

 

Q. What does symmetric access mean?

That means that the data rate is roughly the same whether the data is coming to or leaving your house. Typically, cable and DSL are largely asymmetric, with a downstream (coming) data rate of 256 kbps to 3 Mbps (or more) and an upstream (going) data rate of 128 kbpsto 384 kbps. Due to the wireless nature of our network, we typically see rates of 3 Mbps down and 1.5 Mbps up.

 

Q. Why would I want symmetric access?

Although it may not make a significant difference for web browsing, its very useful if you send large files, use video conferencing, VPN, VoIP, or use the internet in any way that benefits from (or requires) a low latency high speed back-channel.

 

Q. How do you justify your access cost?

We pool the buying power of our membership households. We typically inventory a small amount of working capital to help support and build the network infrastructure.

 

Q. Where does the extra money go?

There are maintenance and overhead costs, but remember: this is a non-profit cooperative. The members decide about the disposition of any extra money. There's no reason extra money, after expenses, couldn't be rebated to the members. As a community resource, the money could be used to provide access to needy households. Some of the money is used to provide access to the Eldorado public library, the Eldorado Senior Citizens Center, and the Agora. 

 

Q. What does it cost to get started?

There is equipment required at your house to reach our wireless access points. This includes a wireless bridge, a PoE device, a router, and associated cabling and mounting. Depending how adept one is with electronics and mechanics, the cost can range from $100 to $400 for this equipment. The association can't afford to front you the cost of this equipment like for-profit companies do - that's part of keeping our monthly costs as low as possible. So, you'll have to front that money yourself.

 

Q. Isn't that a lot of money to get started?

With for-profit high-speed network providers, you will most likely pay that much, and maybe more. The difference is that with for-profits, you amortize the cost of your hardware over the duration of your service contract. In addition, there's usually other overt and/or covert charges like "installation cost", "programming fee", and such. In some cases, you don't even get to keep the hardware.

 

Q. What kind of equipment to I need?

We use commercially available hardware; some of which you can find at your local electronics store. This keeps the cost low, and gives you the ability to use the equipment for other uses if you decide to not use our network anymore. In fact, some members prefer to buy their equipment locally so that it can be returned in case it fails during the warranty period.

 

Q. How do you determine your service area?

LCWA is committed to providing high-speed internet access to underserved areas. We select coverage areas based on the lack of alternatives presented by for-profit providers that either can't afford to invest in remote areas, or won't make any profit doing so. As we grow, we hope to help others that believe in the community model to create their own wireless communities or "clouds" that can interconnect to ours.

 

Q. Who installs and maintains the network?

A group of volunteers with well over a century of relevant experience in computer programming, networking, field installations, computing support, mechanical engineering/fabrication, architecture, marketing, technical writing, finance, and more. Rather than go into detail here, it's better to meet the people if you have interest. Or better yet, join us and help.

 

Q. What about email service?

LCWA provides outgoing email service to its members via SMTP. This is accessible from anywhere on the Internet and will be secure (encrypted) and authenticated to prevent spamming. For email inboxes, there are a number of providers that provide low-cost, even free, services. We are not interested in incurring the overhead and potential liability of running inbound email services with the attendant backups, etc.

 

Q. What about web hosting?

LCWA does not provide web hosting. There are a number of providers that provide this service. We are not interested in incurring the overhead and potential liability of running web hosting with the attendant backups, etc.

 

Q. How reliable is it?

We're constantly improving our network reliability while we expand. Just like for-profit organizations, we offer no guarantees for up time, but network outages are very infrequent and localized to small segments of the network.

 

Q. Is it always on?

Yes. From your computer's point of view, we are your local area network, or LAN. Connection-wise, we operate much like DSL or Satellite connections where network devices are connected into your 10/100 network card on your PC. Unlike those services, however, we operate behind a firewall, greatly minimizing attacks on your computer from the outside world.

 

Q. How do I get connected?

There are a few steps to get connected. Please review our Get Involved page to familiarize yourself with the procedure.