Newstead:
Australia's Most
Open Source Town

Dave Hall
16 Jan 2012

Key Numbers

• Town Founded: 1855
• Shire Founded: 1860
• Shire Abolished: 1995
• Population: around 400 + ~200 in surrounding district

Location

In Town

• Rural Transaction Centre
• Renewable Newstead
• Swimming Pool
• Community Garden
• Playground
• Community Bus Service
• Events
  • Newstead Live
  • Chopped
  • Smaller niche events
• much more...

Technology Today

• Community website
• Internet cafe
• Free WiFi
• Wordpress blogs
• Open source CMS powered sites

Website - newstead.vic.au

• Drupal powered
• Funded by Bendigo Bank and Mount Alexander Shire
• Built with donated time
• Maintained by the community
• Over 60 editors trained
• 5 or 6 regular contributors
• Stage 2 revamp due by March

Internet Cafe Circa 2008

• Mix of XP and Windows 98
• All ran as admin
• Some lacked anti virus
• Inconsistent environments
• All kinds of stuff installed and saved
• Reliability issues

Internet Cafe Today

• Ubuntu 10.04
• Old HP P4s from ComputerBank
• LDAP Authentication, NFS home directories
• Envoironment partially locked down
• All downloads and documents deleted nightly
• Reliable
• Training facilities

WiFi Network Background

• Lack of Broadband
  • ADSL 1 - Mar 2006
  • ADSL2 - Oct 2011
  • Bad Copper
  • Poor 3G
• Equity
• Encourage visitors to stop

WiFi Network

• Funded by Mount Alexander Shire Council
• Free backhaul provided by Internode
• 3 Access Points
• ALIX embedded x86 routers
• OpenWRT
• WiFiDog captive portal
• Custom authentication server
• 30 minute / 100Mb session limits
• Whitelisted outbound ports
• OpenDNS for "filtering"

WiFi Plans

• Switch to mesh network
• Expand access points
• Get ADSL2+ ports
• Signage
• Marketing

NBN Rant

• WiMax around town
• Satelite for some outlying areas
• Everyone has a telephone, but not broadband
• Government policy is to encourage growth outside of Melbourne
• Newstead is a tree change destination

Funding

• Various sources of money
• Council community grants programs
• Other government grants
• Bendigo Bank grants program
• Other private sector programs

Challenges

• Less people to share the workload
• Expectations management
• Sustainable support models

Questions?

Thanks

Connect

• Twitter @skwashd
• Google+ gplus.to/skwashd
• Github github.com/skwashd
• LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/davehall
• Website davehall.com.au

Download
github.com/skwashd/lca2012-newstead

Visit Newstead!
Directions from LCA

License

Newstead: Australia's Most Open Source Town by Dave Hall is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License.
Based on a work at github.com.