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... most recent ranking of internet speeds ...

Notice all the things they don't say: Australia doesn't have half the country on E3 lines and half on dial-up, which most other countries do; nor is there a lack of competition and budget broadband plans; although a change of government caused slight fragmentation, there are no compatibility issues Let's look at the big bonus, since the government owns the network, net neutrality can't be destroyed by a greedy tel-co.

One tel-co even rolled-out mobile wi-fi with the national network: It works that well.

... taking bathroom breaks as her shows buffer.

Yes, you got Australia there, they have have to wait two hours before actually watching a movie: Maybe they should go to the cinema instead; we all know that offers on-demand viewing. A big part of the problem doesn't involve the network: I can stream sit-com shows (std-def video) from the USA and barely notice the occasional flicker.

The core function of smart phones is not making calls, (even to the point that MMS is no longer defined as a telephony service) which is why so-called subversives want to use their phone. If one removes the battery, one cannot write memos, take photos, record interviews. Most phones use a SIM, which contains your billing details and it can be removed. Those telecom companies aren't going to spy on you for free, (yes, you're paying them to watch you) so the solution is obvious. Unlike 'dumb' phones without a SIM, your smart phone will still do everything else. Which means, that if one uses a roaming wi-fi service like Fon (or some domestic variant), tracking the handset may still be possible.

... Does the world need another $200 home router? ...

At that price I'd want 802.11ac, ability to permanently undo updates, export settings and a highly configurable firewall. The big thing in wi-fi at the moment is Fon The idea is to build a nation-wide wi-fi network like mobile phones have. It isn't created by the internet backbone building radio towers but by putting a hotspot in every shop, home and office, similar to the femtocells.

Typically speaking these connections are made via a third party (such as Fon) who would appear as the IP address owner/ISP for that connection. So Bob buys an access voucher and accesses some kind of illegal content through my router. His connection, however doesn't go to my ISP, but is VPNed (or similar) straight to Fon, by the router. So when the feds get his IP address and they look it up they see that it is owned by Fon. They'll ask Fon who it is and, depending on how they keep their records, they'll either say "ain't got a clue" or "It was Bob. This is his credit card number". The only time I can see the identity of the owner of the router being relevant is if the police needed to pin down an IRL location (say to try and figure out the region in which a paedophile lives).

IANAL, but provided you don't breach your ISPs rules about connection sharing (in many cases Fon is built into the router by the ISP, so this should be a non issue in those cases) all potential liability would lie on Fon as the service provider. All your router does is provide a route for Fon's customers to connect to the Fon network.

Sounds like what FON has been doing for years except on an opt-in basis.

Lots of people do this all over the world.

The last time I was in Paris for an extended stay, back in 2009, at least one of the major ISPs was doing this on all their customer routers. The world did not seem to come to an end (or at least I haven't noticed it - maybe I'm oblivious). I can't recall if it was SRF, Numericable or Orange or "free" or one of the other big telecom companies, but they certainly had a lot of hotspots. They might have started working with FON to get an international system going I seem to recall.

https://corp.fon.com/en

The "public" wifi did not eat into the subscriber's bandwidth or whatever data caps they had. I don't know how (or if) they addressed the potential for honeypots stealing credentials.

I have a cheap fon router which provides two wireless networks. One for my family and one non-encrypted.

The non-encrypted network normally requires a logon, but some IP addresses can be excluded from that requirement. You might choose to exclude all requirements so that your guests get straight access.

You also get to rate-limit the connection too.

If you run a connection and leave it turned on you get free logon to other peoples fon hotspots too - and there are thousands in the UK.

http://corp.fon.com/how-it-works

I'm surprised nobody is bringing up FON. http://www.fon.com/en

It's reasonably popular in Europe AND they partner with some ISPs...

"I'm very surprised that someone hasn't came out with a simple already setup wireless AP that segregates the guests from your local network, restricts it to some configurable bandwidth, and is secure enough to not be easily hacked through."

http://www.fon.com/

http://www.fon.com/ has been promoting and doing this for years. You can even make some money if you want.

Actually, I think I HAVE seen such devices. They present two SSIDs to the world, one of which is a guest setup that prevents LAN access and restricts bandwidth, the other behaves more traditionally with WPA2 or what-have-you.

The only problem is that I can't for the life of me remember who made it, or what model it was, or if it was actually the behavior of one of the open-source firmwares out there.

That would be the Fonera, made by FON

Incidentally, that little device also happens to be the basis of one of my favorite pen-testing tools, the wifi pineapple

Why open your internal network up to every Tom, Dick, and Harry on the street, when you can easily supplement it, and your income as well?


Assuming you don't want to charge others for the access, there's really nothing stopping you from setting up a secondary, open wifi router on the DMZ of your network.



Everybody has a DMZ, right?

But what if you got everyone on board and you could go anywhere in the world and have access to free WiFi?

I thought FON http://corp.fon.com/en was doing this worldwide already. You install custom firmware on your router, share your Wifi with the community and then you can use other people's Wifi. They even have a google map with available FON locations. In my town of 100K people they have around 20 FON spots, which is not enough for blanket coverage, but better than nothing.

Maybe you can adapt a FON hotspot and socialize WiFi-sharing. Fon uses an unencrypted public network, but you need to have a login to access it. Or you can pay for access. More information can be found on http://fon.com/

Well if everybody just signed up for FON we'd be pretty close. We'd still be using the carriers but we'd have WiFi access anywhere a FON subscriber is nearby.

Like Fon?

I agree that Japan's problem is not lack of money. However, Japan does have a serious problem in regards to appropriate allocation of resources in response to recent events, specifically when it comes to transparent measurement data of radiation (which is not unique to Japan). So, if you wanted to donate to Japan, this was a good way to do it.

Personally, though, I see this developing into something like the fon network, with global participation only requiring you buy a compatible device. In times like these, I think spending money to participate in such a network (regardless of where you live) would be a very good way to spend your money.

See http://www.fon.com/ The secret is to buy a little router which also enables you to freely share other foneros's wi-fis when you travel. It's kind of like a wi-fi social network.

Have you ever heared of Fonera?
Sharing is easy and safe, and it gives you back free internet all over the world on any device :o)

A link to FON would be helpful. It really doesn't get much easier that this. FON even helps you set up selling day passes for non FON members so you can actually pay for your broadband by sharing it. The service is international so anybody with a broadband connection can do exactly what you want to do just by buying their $49 WiFi hotspot.

You can do more sophisticated traffic management with DD-WRT than with the stock router firmware.

Take care, though. There have been several cases of the FBI busting in and making life hard because of child porn traffic on open routers. You could also look at a FON router. They allow for some management of traffic (and cashing in).

Isn't this exactly what Fonera is all about? You buy their WiFi hotspot and connect it to your Internet connection creating a separate WiFi hotspot from your personal secured WiFi and anyone who also owns and provides a hotspot is able to access it. That way you don't get freeloaders because only people who opt-in can access the network. There are even some ISPs who are starting to deploy them.

Not difficult, but as the article (briefly) points out, there are plenty of people who are quite happy to share a little of their bandwidth in exchange for the knowledge that others will do the same for them. There are even businesses based on that very premise.

Sure, pointing at an open hotspot as if it exonerates one from any suspicion would be foolish, but I'm inclined to think that so is smashing down someone's door and throwing them down the stairs based on an IP address.

The barrier is getting everybody to sign up

Unsecured doesn't imply incompetent - there are people who happily leave a public WiFi connection to the net which is securely isolated from their internal network. Hell, there are businesses built on exactly that premise.

Join Fon if you can determine that there's a Fonspot near where you're staying or get your connectivity here in Germany. There are multiple Phoneshops in every street of every city and town here, the hassle will be much less than if you try to get german connectivity in the US. Most people speak usable english here, so you'll have no trouble negotiating in a Phoneshop.

If Fon isn't an option I'd try and find out if there is a T-Mobile WiFi Hotspot near where you're staying (probably is) and get a Flatrate code for a month or so. T-M. Hotspot had that sort of thing a few years ago - you'd buy a card with a code which, once activated, you could use for a month. They probably still have simular offers - iirc you can purchase them directly at the T-Mobile webshop.

Bottom line: If Fon isn't an option, don't worry and just come over here, you'll get your daily internet fix one way or the other.

http://www.fon.com/en/

Maybe google should buy them out and start with that network

I think the concept of Fon is excellent. But not all that useful in practice.

I live in a fairly populated area, and there are ~7 Fon routers within a five mile radius of where I live (Go to http://maps.fon.com/ to check around where you live). But every single one of those hotspots is in a residential area. Which is (I think) why I've never actually seen a Fon hotspot when I've been looking for WiFi. And, in the 6 months or so that I've ran a Fon hotspot out of my home, I've had zero outside connections.

I think the key to success for Fon would be to target businesses where people are typically looking for WiFi. Coffee Shops, Hotels and the like. The way it is now, I'd have to camp out on someone's Cul-de-sac to find a Fon hotspot.

How similar is this to FON ?

I heartily applaud their attempt to get free coverage. But even if they fail there's still a lot of great stuff on the horizon. The coverage of commercial services like FON is increasing fast. At the same time, the new G3 phones are coming online (new iPhone, anyone?) and tethering is starting to look like a more and more attractive way to get high-speed Internet on the go. I'd love it if Internet were free everywhere, but I'll take iPhone tethering (yes, it's probably against the TOS) as a fallback.

Kudos to them.

FON.

Why are they taking a loss? Fon sells a router for $50 and looks like an interesting alternative. They make money selling access to the customer network to non-members.

this has been solved you can share with people who share http://www.fon.com/en/

If they think there isn't money to be made (and can't figure out the potential of giving cable/DSL subscribers free WLAN access on the road as an extra, much like Fon does), well, then, as has been proposed years ago, just let someone else do the job, such as the Baptists.

The delegate is in serious need of dismission. People don't deserve to ear such idiocies from officially elected people and should be able to fire them!

For instance I have set up several FON access points at various location with the intention of sharing WiFi. So I doubt that to share wifi is illegal, even remotely unlawful it may be it's my right! http://www.fon.com/

Yes, because nobody like FON might actually have a legitimate business out of that or anything, right? Or that systems tend to connect to wireless by default? Or what about places that offer free wireless such as a starbucks? Is it grab a coffee, surf the web, go to jail?

Not to be personally attacking you but come on dude. Any amount of logic should show the absence of logic from the MD.

Oh whups, that 5 second key, not so easy. That would be a very easily crackable form of wireless, yet again. More complicated types take more setup. Or, lets use your example. You saying you can sue someone taking one of the donuts you left out and/or that said person is a criminal?

Methods that would fool more people (and be more simple) = Mac address filtering. Someone will not be able to figure out why they simply can't connect to your router, etc.

I've kept my mobile numer as SSID. If anyone needed wireless they could call in for the password, none did. After one year switched to FON ( http://www.fon.com/ )

I'm pretty sure this is what FON does - well, not unencrypted externally, but tunneled so that it doesn't affect your home system. You can then connect to anyone else with a FON access point for free.

There are already a number of organisations/initiatives around that actively encourage you to purchase their wireless routing products and then open up access to everyone.

I'm a member of FON, which allows you to allocate a specific amount of bandwidth for sharing if you're using one of their routers - say 1MB of your 8MB ADSL, which neatly overcomes the first poster's issue of not having enough bandwidth for their own nefarious purposes. After being a member of FON for 12 months they actually sent me three free wireless routers at Christmas, which I gave away to friends hoping that they too will join and share bandwidth.

There's another company I heard about, US based, that does something similar, but I can't think of their name right now.

However, I wonder about my ISP's stance regarding sharing WiFi for free with others. Does it violate their Ts&Cs? Do I care enough to actually find out? No!

> Seriously. I leave mine open

I don't. Anyone off the street can then download kiddie porn over my connection and my ISP will gladly hand over my details when subpoenaed by the courts. Even if I'm miraculously NOT found guilty myself, I'm unlikely to get my computers back for some months - if ever. If people want to share their network, then you should use something like FON FON. But even then, I'm not sure they log exactly who used your network on what time/date etc so it may be of little help if you get taken to court. Leaving your network completely open by disabling the security features and therefore permitting ANONYMOUS usage of your personal connection that's in your name has to be one of the stupidest ideas I've come across.

Sharing wireless look what these guys have done. http://www.fon.com/en/

The mobile device market is ~3 billion people strong, 3 times the PC market IIRC.

IMO this is what is driving Google - a chance of quadrupling their market.

Currently if you own a mobile/pda/smartphone you are locked-in in more than one way, making it virtually impossible for you to take control.

This Google initiative will force, hopefully, the mobile providers to provide communications services the same way you have with internet access today (on second thought, better than we have today).

You will end up with a device you control, capable of transparently adapt to the available communications providers - the micro communications provider will become widespread (e.g. http://www.fon.com/en/ already points the way). It can be a thin-client device and use google services (mail, docs, etc) or it can be fat-client and use google services and/or google mobile desktop ;)

Google will profit from it, you will profit from it, the mobile and fixed communications providers will also profit and a new market is open for local micro communications providers - your restaurant, coffee shop, bus, subway station, ferry, municipality, etc.

this will happen via the backdoor. already consumers are getting FON-enabled routers and sharing their connections with other FON members. look at the map they provide for coverage in say London http://maps.fon.com/
we don't need no government input; this will happen, very cheaply, and very soon.

http://www.fon.com/en/

Fonero teamed up with Neuf Telecom to do more or less the same deal.

http://blog.fon.com/en/archive/business/fon-and-neuf-cegetel-begin-rollout-of-new-joint-service.html

I knew I'd read something about the FON network before, The Register covered a story about FON users protesting about anyone being able to have 15 minutes of free access through their router without having to sign up to the service:

June 29 2007 - Fon VoIP network being disrupted by protest over Wi-Fi adverts

And there's still a heap of wifi users who have hidden their router in a lake

...but will BT pay for it?

Yes. Summary: When somebody accesses the Internet through your connection, they pay for it, and you get half.

According to the Fon maps, the US is pretty well set there, depending on where you look, of course.

Q:If I am a Fonero and have BT do I need to sign up?
A: Yes

Q:I am a Fonero but not a BT customer, can I access BT Fonspots?
A:Yes, all Foneros can use BT Fon Hotsposts and vice versa

Q:I am a Fonero but not a BT customer, can I use BT Openzone hotspots.
A: No, but if you had BT Total broadband then Yes.