Chebucto Wireless
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

2. Why do I need to organize my neighbours? Why can't I just wait for you to bring this service to my area?

3. What's a node? Who can be a node host and what does it involve?

4. What can you tell me about a Chebucto Wireless connection?

5. How secure is Chebucto Wireless? Is it safer to use than hooking up to an open wireless connection?

We are looking to provide Chebucto Wireless service to many parts of the Halifax Regional Municipality over time but for the time being we are going to concentrate on low-rise residential areas with a clear line of sight view of the top of Fenwick Place. If this describes your part of town, then perhaps you should be talking to your neighbours about getting together.

The requirements for us to bring Chebucto Wireless to a neighbourhood are there should be a central permanent location with a clear line of sight view to the top of Fenwick Place, the skyscraper on Fenwick Street in Halifax. We say permanent because since this location will be the hub of the connections of the whole neighbourhood, it must be something that is going to stay around. This hub location should have low-rise residential housing around it, within half a block.

Next, it takes about three wireless nodes distributed around an average size city block to provide coverage to that block and the facing blocks. These nodes would be hosted in private homes. Your neighbourhood will need about 10 - 15 of these nodes to be viable. Each node needs to be within a half block or so of its closest neighbour node. You can find the node signup form here.

Finally, we will need about 35-50 NEW Chebucto Plus members to be in this neighbourhood. Since a Chebucto Plus membership costs just $125 a year ($75 a year for the node hosts), this should be the easiest part of the organizing.

We would love to have the resources to do that but the truth of the matter is that we don't. We are a community-run charitable organization on a small budget and the only money we get is what comes in as membership fees and donations. We are not receiving any government funding at this time.

We can bring low-cost non-profit community-run highspeed Internet access to your neighbourhood, but only with the help of you and your neighbourhood. For more on this idea of a community helping itself to get a new service, see The Story of Chebucto Wireless.

A node is the backbone of our Chebucto Wireless service. It's a modified personal computer with no hard drive and a wireless card installed. Depending on the neighbourhood wireless reception conditions, a node may need to be connected to an exterior antenna. All a node host needs to do is leave the node plugged in and turned on and leave it alone.

Anyone can be a node host who is in one of our coverage areas. Ideally you should be someone who is going to be at that address for a while, since your neighbours will be depending on your node for their connections. As a reward for hosting a node, your personal Chebucto Plus membership will be only $75 per year. You do need to pay the electricity for leaving the node powered on. A node uses less electricity than a normal personal computer since there is no hard drive to keep spinning. We've calculated power usage for a node at about $46 a year. A node does not require anything else than the electricity. There is a $150 deposit on the node equipment, which is refundable upon the return in good condition of the node equipment.

We are taking applications for node hosts now. This application is not a binding agreement, we are putting your address on a map to see where the clusters of node hosts are so we can figure where the best areas to bring Chebucto Wireless service to are. You can find the node host application here. Node hosts will be expected to sign a Node Host Agreement.

A Chebucto Wireless Free Access service connection is a highspeed connection to web pages of local area businesses and organizations as well as web pages belonging to the Halifax Regional Municipality, Nova Scotia Provincial government and the Government of Canada. It will only support web page access and no other Internet service. All Internet services are supported on the Chebucto Wireless Full Access, which requires a Chebucto Plus level membership. For individuals this is $125 per year and for node hosts, this is $75 per year. There are no other fees that need to be paid to Chebucto to use the Chebucto Wireless Full Access.

Like any wireless connection, the Chebucto Wireless service can be disrupted by severe weather conditions so it is not suitable for people or businesses that are dependent upon their Internet connection being available at all times. As well, electrical power outages can cause the service and/or network to be unavailable. Wireless signals do not travel well through leaves or water and can be disrupted by sufficiently powerful electrical equipment or other sufficiently powerful source of radio interference.

The maximum connection speed on the Chebucto Wireless service is 11 Mbit/second and actual end-user connection speeds will vary depending on wireless reception conditions, network traffic levels, speed of the computer, and other such variables.

The Chebucto Wireless service is not recommended for online gaming where low latency is a priority, or heavy downloading such as power-user levels of Bit-Torrenting. It is perfectly suitable for highspeed web-browsing, email access and normal levels of downloading.

The Chebucto Wireless Free Access is an open connection. Since it can only access local area web pages and these are all open access anyway, there is no expectation of privacy so this is the same as accessing any open network connection. However when you access an anonymous open wifi connection, you have no guarantee that your traffic is not being recorded or redirected without your knowledge.

The Chebucto Wireless Full Access connection is completely encrypted and private. No one can intercept and read this traffic or redirect it elsewhere. It is safe to use. As well, Chebucto Community Net is the oldest independent Internet Service Provider in Nova Scotia and we have a long track record for respecting the privacy of our users. Our Privacy Policy can be found here.