A Fox 43 news clip from March 30, 2011  about the Y-FI partnership with the YCEDC

It has been a while since I’ve updated you on the progress with Y-FI, York’s Free community wireless initiative. The project which I started in late 2009 with just 2 nodes, grew throughout 2010 and now includes over 30 wireless nodes in York City. The pace has been quickening and I’m receiving more and more inquiries from residents and businesses that want to participate. Much of the current coverage area surrounds Central Market, Strand-Capitol and the Beaver Street shops, but we’ve branched out into other areas of the city.

In 2010 we developed partners and installed several nodes in the Avenues. We also have a cluster forming around the E Philadelphia/N Queen Street intersection. Most recently we’ve begun a partnership with the YWCA to rollout Y-FI in parts of the Olde Town East neighborhood, allowing the YWCA and the neighborhood association to continue their service to their neighbors. Y-FI is fortunate to have many supporting partners, both residents and businesses. Our website is always the best place to see who is supporting Y-FI. Our network growth sees user traffic over 10Gb per day and loads of users. I’m thankful for the support this idea has received thus far and I’m excited about where 2011 is going to take us.

And that brings me to …

Yesterday we announced that Y-FI is now in partnership with the York County Economic Development Corporation to expand and grow Y-FI in York City. This is a great strategic partnership for Y-FI and allows both the YCEDC and myself to focus on what we do best. The YCEDC is able to bring its large wealth of development knowledge and its long list of resources to Y-FI, to help our community network grow larger and more consistently through 2011. Their staff has relationships with many of the business owners and potential supporting partners downtown and can make the vital connections that will allow Y-FI to flourish.

As you may know, IT and internet networking is not my full time occupation. The development work on Y-FI happens after hours and on weekends. It takes numerous hours to setup and maintain the network. Keeping the network running consistently and performing well, leaves few hours left for developing the supporting connections that continue to be critical to Y-FI’s future. That’s where the YCEDC will make it’s biggest impact.

Y-FI is completely free to use and enjoy, but that means we have costs that we have to develop funding for. Working with our existing partners, our new partners and the YCEDC I’m hopeful we can raise the funding needed to expand over much more of the central business district as well as being able to support the growth in other residential areas. How can you support Y-FI and the greater community? I’m glad you asked Visit our website for ways several ways you can help Y-FI continue brining this free tool to our city.

For More information about the Y-FI / YCEDC partnership
Click this link to see the Press Release.

Thank you. We look forward to providing expanded free wireless coverage in York City this year!

Here at Y-FI we are working to continually expand our network. We currently have 15 network nodes placed in and around the area of N Beaver Street with Central Market being the epicenter of our growing network.

We gladly welcomed new support for our network from Idea Tree, a software development company. As a young software startup, Idea Tree sees the value of providing our free wifi using our mesh network and was eager to help us expand even before their office space was complete. The staff at Idea Tree regularly telecommute and enjoy central market and have found the Y-FI system to be invaluable.  Idea Tree who recently relocated their office to Clarke Ave just behind Central Market gave us a great launching point to expand our coverage into Cherry Lane which has been a target for us since our network’s creation.

Our coverage now extends into Cherry lane court and covers the seating area.  The shade tree coverage and the tables and chairs make Cherry Lane and excellent place to take your work outside and enjoy the fresh air.

If you haven’t checked it out, take a look at our network node location map.

An Open Letter about the progress at Y-FI.

At this moment there are 2 locations up and operating. As you may know, Central Market is now completely covered by our signal and we have just recently brought online the Music & More by Williams Study Center on west Philadelphia St. The traffic on the Central Market repeaters is great and I can see that a number of people are making use of the system which is very exciting for us! We have had some great press in the newspapers and that has really increased our contacts.

We have meetings scheduled all over the city with people interested in helping push Y-FI forward. Meetings along Beaver Street; Meetings in the Newton Square Neighborhood; Along North George street and beyond…

This brings me to my question:

Right now we’ve been working to put nodes wherever people are willing to share and host them. Are there specific areas YOU would like us to target? (certain parks or certain streets or ???)  I’m asking because I want to start coordinating with partners who have offered support so that we can make that happen. I wanted to know if there were any places you, our users, thought we should specifically focus on.

So where is Y-FI headed?

Good Question – We want 2010 to be the big breakout year for Y-FI. I would love to see a healthy chunk of the Central Business District covered and possibly portions of the southeast neighborhood or other residential areas.  We could use a few downtown businesses who are interested in supporting Y-FI to contribute beyond the cost of the repeaters so that we can increase exposure and offset costs when we are trying to infill critical locations. Some of the corporate contributions have come from some of the very small businesses in and around Central Market and they have been very helpful but don’t cover the costs of implementing this kind of network. The costs of the hardware and the associated cabling and supplies as well as marketing materials is beyond what we are currently brining in. If anyone has any ideas as to approaching and securing some corporate donations I’m all ears. Their donation would come with large advertising exposure on our website that every user of our network would see. A corporate donation of $500 would make a very large impact in our small network, and several would enable us to blast out into 2010

I think that’s where we’re at for now. Big things are going to be happening in 2010 and am thankful for all of the support we have been given so far and the support people are lending in the future. I thought maybe this could be an open chain for questions, or discussion about where folks think it would be beneficial to focus effort in 2010. Feel free to comment back with your thoughts/concerns. If you are interested in seeing who is already supporting Y-FI you can visit our supporters page on our website.

Thank you to all those who have supported and continue to support Y-FI!

If you know anything about our brief history, you know we’ve been working towards bringing free wi-fi to York City using a technology from Meraki, a mesh network company out of California that developed out of a MIT graduate project.  The hardware Maraki produces and their software back end work very well and we were pleased with the test results from our setup scenario.

So what’s the deal?

From a first glance the Meraki system would work great for what we’re trying to do, with one hitch; the cost of the hardware.  The purchase of Meraki hardware also pays for licensing to use their custom designed management software, but the real fact is that the Meraki hardware is 3-4 times the cost of Open-Mesh hardware. Open-Mesh has developed a back end management software for mesh networks that is just as capable and is completely open source. The best part is that there are several different manufacturers that make O-M compatible hardware.  Now we can select hardware based on the needs of each location, and almost all of them are 50%+ less cost than the comparable Meraki hardware. As we set to build this network, the performance of the network is important, but the cost of hardware is something that we can not ignore. The Meraki hardware cost would be a significant stumbling block for getting businesses and individuals to participate. We have already heard from a number of downtown businesses that the cost of the Meraki hardware would keep them from participating, where as the relatively low cost of the open-mesh hardware would be a much easier pill to swallow.

So why would you care?

Users of the Y-FI network will not notice any difference between the performance of Meraki’s system and the Open-Mesh system.  The advantage is that we will be able to build out the network much faster with less costs. It is our hope that now that our first nodes are installed that we can expand our network quickly and effectively using the Open-Mesh hardware and software.

Just a quick update on Y-FI:

We’re meeting regularly with businesses downtown and and people are getting excited.  When they get excited WE get excited.  

So Who are we looking to meet with?

We want to meet with everyone who wants to know more about Y-FI.  This is a community effort brought together by people who see this as a major tool to encourage people to stay downtown.  From our About Us Statement:

Y-FI is a York, Pennsylvania, community-based wireless internet mesh network venture focused on the delivery of secure, free Wi-Fi services to downtown visitors, commercial and residential property owners. The Y-FI mission is to help everyone gain access to technology and the internet by partnering with businesses, community organizations and local residents.

We NEED the help of everyone who wants to participate.  We need people willing to share bandwidth.  We need people willing to give Y-FI financial support to help us purchase hardware and spread the network. We need people who are forward thinking and willing to help us push this project ahead.

So Where are we headed?

We have a big partnership coming together that will be the springboard for Y-FI and we can’t wait to announce it. We’re also excited to be meeting with several different community groups that have ideas at how Y-FI can be useful to their causes.  We hope Y-FI helps change the way internet access happens in York City!