MetroFi rollout not making visible progress
Posted by Russell Senior on 14 December 2007In early October KGW Television News reported that MetroFi was halting deployment of their network. KGW quoted a vice president at MetroFi, Lou Pelosi, saying that they would be turning on SkyPilots that had been deployed, but not deploying new ones, barring a new commitment of City funds or more private investment. This was followed by corrections and clarifications from MetroFi indicating that they intended to complete their rollout within the three years provided to them in their contract with the City of Portland. Oregonian reporter Mike Rogoway quotes MetroFi spokesperson Denise Graab:
“We never said that we weren’t going to expand this network,” she said. “There’s going to be dozens of new access points going live over the next few months.”
However, since we started monitoring the status map of the MetroFi network on October 26, only one new SkyPilot has been deployed (on the roof of the new ExpressNets store at N.E. MLK and Brazee) and (despite Mr. Pelosi’s remarks) none of the 89 out-of-service SkyPilots have been brought online. (One out-of-service SkyPilot was briefly deployed at N.E. 44th and Broadway, but it disappeared before it was turned on, possibly to be moved to ExpressNets). So, the grand total progress is one new (special case) SkyPilot in the last 7 weeks.
At this rate, under favorable assumptions MetroFi will complete its buildout in about 375 years. So, has MetroFi suspended its buildout or hasn’t it? MetroFi says one thing, but the objective evidence seems to say something altogether different.
KGW is reporting that MetroFi has stopped deployment
Posted by Russell Senior on 5 October 2007… pending an agreement with the City to buy services, a so-called anchor tenancy. Here’s what Logan said a few months ago in the Willamette Week:
Kleier says that about six months ago, the company asked him to buy more network subscriptions than the city “could possibly afford.â€
“We said our contract didn’t have any commitments. And that was the end of that discussion,†Kleier says.
It will be interesting to watch how this plays out.
Logan replies to Sideguide query
Posted by Russell Senior on 26 September 2007Here is what Logan Kleier reports in reply to my query about the MSN Sideguide software:
MetroFi is not currently using this product, but is working with MSN on its rollout. They do not have a specific rollout date scheduled for Portland.
According to MSN and MetroFi, this product will not exclude non-MS operating systems. Non-MS operating systems will still be able to utilize the free ad banner network. This product is designed as more of a substitute for the current ad banners.
Given this information, MetroFi remains committed to fulfilling all of its privacy obligations under its contract with the City of Portland.
MSN Sideguide?
Posted by Russell Senior on 26 September 2007I happened to read about something this last weekend that had the potential to make MetroFi substantially less attractive and/or useful, particularly to people who do not use Microsoft operating systems. The link says, in part:
Codenamed Shadow, the main purpose of MSN Sideguide is to fund the free wifi networks that Microsoft is currently testing in Oakland and Portland with its ISP partner, MetroFi - the wifi connection will be dropped if Sideguide is not running.
There are two problems with this:
- Assuming Sideguide runs only on Microsoft operating systems, and if it is required as that quote seems to indicate, then a substantial fraction of laptops, including Apple and Linux based systems, out there won’t be able to use MetroFi-Free
- Even if Sideguide runs on non-Microsoft operating systems, this seems to require running some foreign software on your system, which introduces both security and privacy concerns that are not present in the current advertising system. The Sideguide software apparently monitors your surfing behavior as well as possibly what is on your system’s harddisk.
I have made a query to Logan Kleier, the City’s project manager about this, and he said he was looking into it. I managed to connect to MetroFi-Free today by parking near a SkyPilot while out running errands and saw no evidence that it had been deployed yet, but the link above clearly indicates that Portland is a target for this.
Video of Preliminary Results presentation now available
Posted by Russell Senior on 27 June 2007The presentation would be a bit different today, given what we’ve learned since in completing our analysis and in further investigation into the text of the Unwire Portland RFP, but this ~one hour video of our March 2007 presentation at the Personal Telco Project monthly meeting provides a description of the approach we took. Oh, and the lighting lacks a lot, but the audio is good and the information is there.
Thanks is due to Gus, who ran the camera and Seth who transcoded and edited the video.
Results presentation at PLUG Advanced Topics
Posted by Russell Senior on 18 June 2007At the last minute, I volunteered to talk at the PLUG Advanced Topics meeting on our methodology and results. It is held at Jax Bar in downtown Portland, on Monday June 18th at 7 p.m. Caleb should be there too. We’ll try to show off some of the Free Software tools we used in our study in the process. If you are interested and/or want to ask questions in person, this is an excellent opportunity.
Additional Long Term Testing
Posted by Caleb Phillips on 10 June 2007
In our report, we raised concern about a reduction in throughput experienced at one of our long-term-test sites. We indicated that more research was needed to determine the extent of this reduction. To this end, we carried out another long-term test (at site B - as referenced in the report) from Wed Apr 25 16:28:06 PDT 2007 to Thu May 24 06:05:41 PDT 2007. At this site, and during this test, we found a mean downstream throughput of 1.86 Mbps (for a 5MB file) and 1.66 Mbps (for a 1MB file). This is in line with our results before the reduction at site A. So, at this point we can say that MetroFi has not throttled throughput accross the network, and the reduction at site A must have been either temporary, or, is not 
network-wide. Of course, to explain the cause or extent of the original reduction would require a broader investigation. Other testing metrics are also similar to previous results, implying that MetroFi has not made significant changes to their network in the last month. It is worth noting, however, that we’re still seeing a strong correlation between packet-loss and time-of-day, suggesting that as interference from other networks, or usage, increases, so does packet loss. This new data-set and some graphs are available in the repository.
Uptown Services report finally appears
Posted by Russell Senior on 26 May 2007On Friday, May 25th, sometime after I sent out a press release which included a note that the Uptown Services report had not yet been published, the City published the Uptown Services report. You can download it here: http://www.portlandonline.com/shared/cfm/image.cfm?id=157216.
Caleb Phillips and I have been awaiting its release to try to understand how they reached such different conclusions from ours on the question of outdoor coverage.
Recall that we found, in a random sample, that we succeeded in achieving a connection in 31 of 53 tested locations, a rate of 58%. Further, we calculated the probability that that rate of failures would occur by chance if MetroFi was meeting the 90% coverage standard at about 2 in a billion. In contrast, Uptown Services reported in its Executive Summary that MetroFi provided outdoor coverage in 95% of the POC area.
Having had a chance to look over the Uptown Services report, it looks like there is a plausible model to explain the discrepancy. Here it is:
- MetroFi tells the City of Portland that they should expect a connection if the received signal strength is -79 dBm or greater based on some testing MetroFi did (City Project Manager Logan Kleier: “MetroFi has found that -79 dBm is the minimum necessary signal strength to achieve a 1 Mbps modulation rate based on the utilization of a 30 mW wireless client, such as an Intel 2915ABG, in non-line of sight conditions at 300 feet from an access point.”)
- The City of Portland tells Uptown Services that they should use the -79 dBm received signal strength as a surrogate for a “connection”.
- Uptown Services does their drive testing with a Proxim Orinoco Gold 60 mW radio and a 5.5 dBi roof-mounted omni-directional antenna.
- Uptown Services performs their proprietary analysis, which involves creating a grid of 100-foot squares, averaging the received signal strength values found within the squares, and then counting the proportion of squares within 500 feet of an access point with an average signal strength of -79 dBm or greater, and finds that about 95% of them do. Since the contractual standard is 90%, Uptown Services finds that MetroFi passes that standard.
There are several problems here:
- The ability to get a connection is largely determined by the transmit power and antenna gain of the client device. This is because network communication requires two-way communication, both that the client hears the access point and the access point hears the client. The access point is loud (a 400 mW or more transmit power and a 7.5 dBi antenna), very near the maximum allowed by the FCC. Client devices can hear the access point from potentially great distances. The limiting factor is whether the access point can hear the client device from those great distances.
- The original Unwire Portland RFP (Sections 2.2.1.2 and 2.2.1.5) indicates that the network should support coverage for common client devices, builtin as well as plugin PCMCIA and USB radios. These typically have 30 mW radios and low-gain antennas (2.2 dBi or less).
- It is not at all clear that the MetroFi-supplied -79 dBm received signal level is relevant to these common client devices.
- Logan Kleier claims that the Intel 2915ABG radio is a 30 mW device, but it is not clear that the FCC disclosures agree (see page 6 of 91). There are values reported there than imply that the peak transmit power is as high as 250 mW. If true, that would amount to a discrepancy of 9 dB in MetroFi’s favor.
- The City of Portland relies on the -79 dBm received signal level without, apparently, verifying it in any way. There is no indication in the Uptown Services report that they tried to verify it. Logan has not indicated that the City has verified it.
- Uptown Services performs their drive testing using a radio with a 5.5 dBi antenna gain. Most client devices do not have such a high gain antenna. Compared to a typical client device, it is at least 3 dB optimistic. Therefore, even if the MetroFi -79 dBm standard is accurate, the cut point that Uptown Services should have used to compensate for their antenna should have been no lower than -76 dBm. Unfortunately, the level of detail necessary for a reader to compensate for this is not available in the Uptown Services report.
- It is not clear from the report (at least as of my initial reading) how the 100-foot square grid cells were aligned, and how much of the cell needed to be within 500 feet in order to “count” in the calculation.
Another item of note, page 13 of the Uptown Services report indicates that the MetroFi network failed the extended availability test, providing a connection in a fixed location for only 91% of the time over the course of a month-long test, less than the 99% required.
As Caleb and I, and perhaps you dear reader, are able to examine the Uptown Services report more closely in the coming days, additional notable issues may be discovered.
Results Complete, Report Finished
Posted by Caleb Phillips on 23 May 2007We are proud to announce the final version and full public release of our report on the Unwire-Portland Proof-of-Concept network. You can find it on the results page along with all of our data, source code, and configuration. In addition to being a revealing analysis of the network deployment in Portland, we hope that our approach and experiences testing the network can be a useful example for other burgeoning municipal wireless networks.
Of course, we’re very interested to hear any questions, comments or well-founded criticism.
Report Draft goes to Review
Posted by Caleb Phillips on 3 May 2007Just a quick update. Russell and I have completed a full draft of the report and have sent it to several people for review. We are lucky to have had several very qualified individuals offer to review the report. Once the review process is complete, and we have responded to their criticisms, we will publish the report publicly here.
Incidentally the full report from Uptown Services is still either unfinished, or has not been made public. We are very interested to see the report in full, with hopes that it justifies some of the questionable methodologies mentioned in the Executive Summary.
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