Title
Wireless Internet in Sac Town
Author

John Culbert
American River College, Geography 26: Data Acquisition in GIS; Fall 2005
Contact Information: email: johncjr@pacbell.net
Abstract

This article will look at the planned depolyment of Free Wireless Internet and what wireless access points already exist in those areas by identifying deployment areas and what accounts currently exist.
Introduction

The City of Sacramento is installing Free Wireless Internet throughout it's borders. This raises the question of what will happen to the accounts that exist and are being paid for.
Background

During the next year, Wifi will be deployed in phases throughout the city with the first two deployments in the downtown area. Caesar Chavez Park will be the test deployment where the contractor will demonstrate thier capability and the city can tune and test thier management and accountability. Shortly after the acceptance, a larger area around the City Hall will be configured. Eventually, the entire city will have Free Wireless Internet at thier disposal.
The map to the right shows the first two areas of deployment of Wireless Internet in the Downtown area. The orange is the Cesaer Chavez test area with the yellow space being the second phase.

-click image for a larger view-		 Planned initial deployment
Methods

Using information recieved from the City of Sacramento MIS, I created a the map of the deployment area. I then set into motion the plan of War Driving the area. My coverage would include a one block buffer around the deployment area.
War Driving Coverage area
Coverage area indicated in purple. A drive plan was created to drive this total area.

-click image for larger view-
War Driving is the use of a PC (laptop), GPS and an application that detects Wireless Internet Access Points. The GPS provides the Lat and Long of the detection.
War Driving Equipment
War Driving Data
Network Stumbler detects Wireless Access Points then correlates the detection site to the GPS Latitude and Longitude. Because the application registers multiple instances of the same Access Point, I average the Latitude then the Longitude of each different Access Point to get a single point on the map.

-click image for larger view-
Results
By overlaying the planned City Wireless coverage area over the War Driving Data, we can see how many internet accounts could potentially convert to the City's Free Service.
War Driving Data with planned WiFi Deployment
Analysis
  • Within one block of the proposed first two phases, the area driven, there are 550 separate wireless access points.
  • Further analysis could be done to determine how many separate providers exist in that same area.
  • These numbers show the potential loss of business to Wireless Internet Providers in the Downtown area.
  • There is still a large area left to be serviced by the City Wide Free WiFi program.
Conclusions
The sampling done in this project is just a small piece of the total proposed area. Once the City of Sacramento has completely deployed thier WiFi solution, many commercial providers may loose great amounts of income from citizens for the Free Internet over thier paid service.