Improvements to local wireless network coming

Some time around Jan.1, Nevada residents will get a belated Christmas present from the city government -- free access to the citywide wireless network without the need for an Internet connection. This was what city officials planned to do when they unveiled their plans in the fall of 2002 to build a network to provide high-speed digital communications for city emergency workers as well other city workers in the field. Tuesday night, Mark Mitchell, the city's network administrator, told the city council that the city is ready to open the citywide network to the public and other Internet providers.

When the system was established, the city granted Neighborlink, which provided technical assistance to the city in setting up the network, exclusive access to the network for 18 months.

"The general public won't need an Internet connection to access the city's Web site as well as the Web sites of non-profits," Mitchell said Friday afternoon.

Most other local Web sites will also be accessible without using the Internet. "When the network is opened to the public you will be able to transfer files from one computer to another over the network or chat with a friend," he said.

"The citizens paid for it and they should get the benefit out of it," he said.

Mitchell said that it will take a few upgrades to the current equipment and some engineering assistance to open the system, but the plan is to have it ready to go around Jan.1.

While other towns have provided hot-spots where users can access the Internet for free, this may be a unique program.

"I don't know of any other open wireless network operated by a municipality," he said.

Opening the network to the public is just the next step in an ambitious program to make high-speed digital communication available everywhere in town and perhaps in the county.

In addition to the wireless network, the city currently has they are planning to build a fiber optic cable network to provide even higher speed communications.

"We're planning to build a fiber backbone to link city facilities together as well as the schools, the hospital and other facilities and let other companies run fiber to homes," Mitchell said.

With the wireless network Mitchell said that users can have up to a one-gigabyte connection, the fiber will provide a much faster connection.

A one-gigabyte connection is about 15 times as fast as a 56-kilobyte dial-up Internet connection.

"It will be like hooking one computer directly to another computer. It will handle data faster than your hard drive can write it," he said.

The fiber network will make it possible to send live video over the network.

The city is in the first stage of building the fiber backbone. Workers are laying conduit for fiber along Walnut Street as they are laying new waterlines to link the city hall with the water treatment plant as well as the Vernon County Ambulance District.

"I'm very excited about the fiber," he said.

However, that will probably take 10 years to become a reality and will not replace the need for a wireless network for emergency crews in the field.

Mitchell told the city council that the city has been issued a license from the Federal Communication Commission to build a wireless network on a frequency only for use by public safety agencies and will let the city use encrypted communications for secure links to sent data to emergency workers in the field. Only two other licenses for this frequency have been issued in Missouri. One is for the state of Missouri and the other is for St. Charles. The network will be useful in case of a disaster since it will provide multiple ways of communicating between the workers in the field and the city's Emergency Operation Center in the city hall, or if the city hall is destroyed with a back-up EOC at the Vernon County Ambulance District, or the airport.

In a worst-case situation, the city's new emergency truck has the capability to function as an EOC. If the wired connection to the Internet were to go down, then the city will have the capacity to hook to a satellite phone to provide access that way.

The current city-wide network uses a frequency band that is unlicensed and is useable by anyone. This is the same frequency band that wireless network routers use as well as garage door openers and similar wireless control devices.

Mitchell told the council Tuesday that there is another wireless technology, called WiMax that may become available for a public network that would allow the it to cover the entire city and some of the surrounding county with a single antenna on the city's 140-foot tower. The entire county could be covered with several antennas. The user would only need an antenna several inches tall inside the house instead of the current need for an outside antenna that is in direct line-of-sight of the transmitter antenna. However, that frequency is still not available and may not ever be available for unlicensed use because some of the large telecommunication companies want the frequency for their use. It would give cable and telephone companies a lower cost way to provide high-speed communications over the last mile, rather than running fiber to each house, he said.