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• Access control
• Control of bandwidth usage
• Protection of your private network,PCs

More details here: http://www.ilesansfil.org/welcome/

I thought the quasi-web standard for other languages was a little flag in the corner. Not a solitary link buried in the mix that just says "Welcome" without any context.

Here's the English version: http://www.ilesansfil.org/welcome/

Ile sans fil refers to Montreal (QC, Canada)'s free wireless initiative.
http://www.ilesansfil.org/

It isn't government managed. Instead, its an NPO that offers to manage the AP, if a sponsoring store is willing to purchase the AP (~100$), pay for the DSL connection (~65$/month) and an administrative fee (50$/year).

http://www.ilesansfil.org/tiki-index.php

Close... but Ile Sans Fil (Wireless Island) is apparently a non-profit group trying to bring free wireless to Montreal. Check out http://www.ilesansfil.org/

Why would a home broadband customer want to turn their connection into a free wireless hot-spot?

1. Acessability. In return for sharing one's service one gets access to other's hotspots.
2. Neighborliness. Let the neighbor who brought home a laptop from work fire it up and check their email.
3. The sheer geekiness of this (this is /.)

I've got two net connections to my house, 6MB down/.5MB up & 20MB down/2MB up, so a typical 802.11g connection or two isn't gonna be much of a hit. The net traffic most hotspots see is quite bursty, rarely a sustained file transfer or p2p swarm. Also most hotspots start to saturate at about a dozen clients so there's another limit. Throw a little QOS & traffic shaping on there and I'm not gonna notice a thing.

However in this neighborhood it's all single family residential; a stranger in a parked car in front of a house for any extended period would cause one of the neighbors to call for a police car to wander by. However previously I lived next to a large pubic park, and was interested in sharing service to it via Île Sans Fil.

However in both locations my Terms Of Service forbid such, and not wanting any hassle I've refrained. However should my ISP enable such, or even encourage it with a reciprocity system, I'd be interested. Particularly with the knowledge that folks using my connection would have an audit trail associated with 'em in case of problem.

From the stats I've seen, very few coffee shops actually make profits from wireless access since very few customers actually think it's worth paying 6-10$ per hour simply for internet access. Most don't even have one paying customer per day.

If your goal is to have customers actually working in your coffee shop and buying food/drinks once in a while, offering free access is probably a good way to keep them as they won't have to leave to send an email (which they would probably do if sending that same email would cost 10$ while they could do it for free at home).

Internet access is cheap and wireless routers too. There is simply no maintenance to be made if you just leave it wide open.

There is a user group maintaining wireless access points and working on various free-wireless related stuff in Montreal. You might want to check their website to get informations and arguents: Ile sans fil

You can install wifidog, nocat's successor if I may call it that on top of openwrt and voilà, instant gratification. You won't become an ISP, but your users will never know the difference ;) In case you're wondering, openwrt is a replacement firmware for the wrt54g series of routers. It's a small gnu/linux distribution that does its job quite well.

Government doing it? Well, you can expect it to be ready in 10 years...

I really do prefer to trust an organization like Ile Sans Fil here in Montreal to get free urban wifi internet access in the city!

These guys are really doing something cool.

Next time, try a free Wifi access point, like those given by ile sans fil ( French page)

Next time, try a free Wifi access point, like those given by ile sans fil ( French page)

Basically, what they are doing is getting coffee shops to pay a small fee to host the access points (running a custom Linux configuration), networking those, and offering both the internet connection on the coffee house's dime and building out their own BBS-like intranet service.

Maybe the idea would be harder to get off the ground in other parts of the world, but if you can swing it, I think internet access is a big draw for people who otherwise may not bother.

People in Montreal (Quebec, Canada) are coming together to offer free wireless hotspots in local venues. For about 200$, we install all the needed hardware, give them a little sign/poster, and voila, another free public hotspot for Montrealers.

Ile Sans Fil is a non-profit community group devoted to providing free public wireless internet access to mobile users in public spaces throughout Montreal, Canada. We use open source software and inexpensive commercial WIFI equipment to share broadband internet connections.

Here is one page describing how you can get involved, with a few specs.

Ile Sans Fil is a non-profit community group devoted to providing free public wireless internet access to mobile users in public spaces throughout Montreal, Canada. We use open source software and inexpensive commercial WIFI equipment to share broadband internet connections.

Here is one page describing how you can get involved, with a few specs.

We're doing just what you've described, although the cafe pays for the hardware as opposed to a tip-jar model.

We have lots of documentation at our WIKI. The NodeSetup page might be exactly what you're asking for.

We're doing just what you've described, although the cafe pays for the hardware as opposed to a tip-jar model.

We have lots of documentation at our WIKI. The NodeSetup page might be exactly what you're asking for.

We're doing just what you've described, although the cafe pays for the hardware as opposed to a tip-jar model.

We have lots of documentation at our WIKI. The NodeSetup page might be exactly what you're asking for.

Ile Sans Fil, and community organisation I'm part of, is doing the same thing in Montreal. We build cheap hotspots and install them in various venues for about 200$, and the venue offers free wireless access.

A couple of us are doing the same in Montreal. Free wifi for everybody - but we need your help :)

I'm an IleSansFil volunteer and was just wondering if there are any other uses for this "cheap" box.