Our Own Router: La Fonera
We are now working on designing our own router. Our plan is to stop subsidizing the Linksys router and, instead, make a deal with Linksys (or their competitors) by which you will find Fon ready routers in the shops of Europe and North America. Instead at Fon we will have our own router designed by us and sold on our web site.
These are some ideas for our own designs. These are outdoor designs and, of course, they are weatherproof.
Posted on FON | 8:48 pm
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Posted by teleken - March 21, 2006 11:30 pm - #
I want to sell them, can i ? and pick up a little spare change doing it?
Posted by Martín Varsavsky - March 22, 2006 2:21 pm - #
Teleken, if you are entrepreneurial in spirit what you will like to do is become what we call a Superbill. A Superbill is a fonero who installs Fon throughout a village, or neighborhood giving continous coverage in an area and gets to make half of all the revenues that Fon makes from Aliens in that area. The only investment that the Superbill needs to make is buy routers at 25 euros each.
Posted by teleken - March 22, 2006 2:47 pm - #
Thank you martin, when i buy the routers is there away the router identifies me?
and will there be advance notice when upgrades
will be added or new design changes to new hardware so i don’t overstock on obsolete products?
will there be value added services for the bills
to up sale down the road?
when do you think the small routers will be available for sale?
Posted by Alberto - March 22, 2006 3:25 pm - #
Good idea
Posted by Dabis Camero - March 23, 2006 1:35 am - #
Depending on the desired RF patterns and routing protocols, this type or radio and antenna combination could be an interesting design. If the radiation patterns are like the ones described in the drawings I’m afraid the directivity of the patterns will not allow connectivity from clients in the outdoor areas. Anyways I think it is too early to say anything because there are not in depth details of the design…. We’ll be more than glad to cooperate and help!
Cheers
Dabis Camero
Posted by Christian Frhr. von der Ropp - March 23, 2006 2:10 pm - #
Allthough an orange housing is advantageous in terms of recognition, I would suggest offering exchangeable covers in more decent colors, since especially landlords won’t be happy if their tentants start mounting orange boxes on their house wall.
With regard to the second illustration, do you actually plan to realize the backhaul through P2P routing via WLAN?
Since WLAN bandwidth could quickly become insufficient WiMAX would be the better choice.
best regards,
Christian
Posted by Martín Varsavsky - March 23, 2006 10:09 pm - #
And which color is a decent color?
Regards,
Martín
Posted by MatEng - March 24, 2006 2:37 am - #
Hi,
in my opinion, FON should be visible.
And this is the main target of this design.
If you see one of this orange boxes, you should feel like beeing home.
There is an 12 dBi Flatpannel inside !
So, that is definately a design that fits long range client-Mode or best coverage
of hotels lounges, city centres , beaches or airpot lounges.
OK, decent colors have to be available for more decent foneros.
But orange makes more noise while spreading the message
Let’s discuss more details in the forums.
Or e-mail me to give some hints.
I am verry interested in your ideas and criticism.
MatEng
Posted by AustinTX - March 24, 2006 9:34 am - #
Beige.
Posted by Christian Frhr. von der Ropp - March 24, 2006 11:31 am - #
White or wooden-brown - just those colors house walls have, so the box won’t attrack attention.
Another idea is to still provide an external antenne jack just for the case a potential installation point would limit coverage, due to the orthogonal signal dispersion from the router (e.g. if the potential point is facing a neighbouring house wall or if mounted on the roof).
best regards,
Christian
Posted by Chris Adams - March 24, 2006 3:20 pm - #
Quick question:
How much power do these things suck up on average? With a handcranked one-laptop-per-child machine giving apparently 100 minutes of power from 5 minutes of cranking, this device has me wondering how easy it would be to power off the grid, i.e. with solar power, or a wind turbine.
Posted by Martín Varsavsky - March 25, 2006 12:33 am - #
Chris,
If you mean the FON AP, we measured about 5 - 7 watt (buffalo 3.3V).
Regards,
Posted by emilp - April 20, 2006 6:56 pm - #
Hi!
Make sure to investigate an Accesspoint version, prefeably supporting power over Ethernet.
/e
Posted by eddie tam - November 5, 2006 8:30 am - #
In the US especially, you will find that a lot of housing developement communities will protest the orange colored boxes being posted on the building exterior as a blight. So, the standard greyish color would suffice.
Posted by moufid - April 14, 2007 10:06 am - #
Hi Martin!
I just discovered this post which responds to the need I was looking for : the “superbill”. Can I have more information about it. Did something was developped for people like me who wants to commercialize your wifi concept for coffes, tea saloon…
Keep hearing from you!
Posted by Dave - August 1, 2007 3:08 pm - #
Dear Martin,
just found this post.
The second picture suggests, that Fon will finally switch to a meshing mode?
Is my interpretation of this correct?
If Fon finally would use meshing, i’d immediately contact the town-officials (about 150.000 people town) and let them support (=finance) a town-wide project (they did it before with an open-source project, unfortunately the organizer of the project “retired”, before it was completed). Another project with commercial support (FON) would probably be much easier to “sell them”.
best,
Dave
Posted by Mariusz - September 25, 2007 6:45 am - #
This concept looks great, what I wonder is that you already made La Fontenna ( Indor use ) maybe this one will be good idea for any outside use ? Think about sometnig what will works just with power suply like Signal Repeter - Signal Radge Extender and doesnt have to be conected to signal cable. It can works like repeter / extender of all FON signal in his area