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Tracking and advertising. These things emit BLE beacons that apps on your smartphone pick up. This allows for analytics in malls, geofencing ads, ... (Look up Eddystone and iBeacon.) That coupon app for your supermarket chain? Allows them to track your every move through their store, from the moment you enter to when you check out.

Other uses include "indoor GPS" (having the app show your location in the building on a map, ...).

https://documentation.meraki.c...
https://www.arubanetworks.com/...
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/...

Except that's a completely different tech, Meraki does not block any frequency. The Meraki AP's target the rogue AP's by sending deauth's, not by jamming frequencies.

https://kb.meraki.com/knowledg...

That's exactly what Marriott were doing.

Except that's a completely different tech, Meraki does not block any frequency. The Meraki AP's target the rogue AP's by sending deauth's, not by jamming frequencies. https://kb.meraki.com/knowledg...

Yes, the possibility of doing wrong is obvious but that root CA installation is very common when dealing with 802.1x authentication with Windows clients. Its a side-effect of how stupid Windows' handling of certificates is.

cf. this vendor's suggestion https://kb.meraki.com/knowledg... to disable certificate checking altogether to make it work instead.

Then I guess Meraki "accidentally" put out a FAQ on the acquisition too. http://www.meraki.com/company/cisco-acquisition-faq

....at Wireless Ypsi, which is a successful community-based mesh network here in Ypsilanti, Michigan. It uses the Meraki network technology; here is Wireless Ypsi's page on the Meraki site.

....at Wireless Ypsi, which is a successful community-based mesh network here in Ypsilanti, Michigan. It uses the Meraki network technology; here is Wireless Ypsi's page on the Meraki site.

Take a look at the integrated cloud mesh creations that Meraki has on the market. Based on what I remember from their demo, their solutions may be rather viable for a network like you've described -- and they're reliable enough for use by Comfort Inn, as well as MIT, Stanford and a fair number of other big names.

Pretty cool for not requiring any software installation. http://meraki.com/tools/

Hey everyone. I'm a software engineer at Meraki (mentioned earlier in the thread by dotwaffle) and wanted to chime in and offer what I can. Our gear is commonly used at conferences, including the most recent LeWeb, a conference in Paris with about 2,000 attendees and VERY heavy WiFi use (social media types that are tweeting, blogging, posting photos and accessing WiFi from their cell phones and laptops). We covered a 12,000 square foot room and other areas without any downtime or customer complaints. This was a huge improvement over the 2008 conference, when poor WiFi topped the list of attendee complaints.

Dotwaffle posted a link to our blog post about LeWeb which is worth re-linking. That photo was taken when the speaker asked everyone to hold up their iPhone.

We used MR14 access points with channel spreading and band steering enabled. This allowed us to use the entire wireless spectrum and avoid congestion on a single frequency (both of these are 1-click options when configuring your network). I'm happy to answer any technical questions you might have, or you can visit our website to learn more.

Hey everyone. I'm a software engineer at Meraki (mentioned earlier in the thread by dotwaffle) and wanted to chime in and offer what I can. Our gear is commonly used at conferences, including the most recent LeWeb, a conference in Paris with about 2,000 attendees and VERY heavy WiFi use (social media types that are tweeting, blogging, posting photos and accessing WiFi from their cell phones and laptops). We covered a 12,000 square foot room and other areas without any downtime or customer complaints. This was a huge improvement over the 2008 conference, when poor WiFi topped the list of attendee complaints.

Dotwaffle posted a link to our blog post about LeWeb which is worth re-linking. That photo was taken when the speaker asked everyone to hold up their iPhone.

We used MR14 access points with channel spreading and band steering enabled. This allowed us to use the entire wireless spectrum and avoid congestion on a single frequency (both of these are 1-click options when configuring your network). I'm happy to answer any technical questions you might have, or you can visit our website to learn more.

Seriously, try Meraki. Their software is pretty neat, and it'll auto configure to give you the best situation.

A case study: http://meraki.com/general/2009/12/09/does-it-scale-absolutely-blazing-fast-meraki-wireless-at-leweb-conference-in-paris/

• How is AA going to prevent me from setting up my Meraki repeater once I'm aboard and start re-selling their service for a lower price?
• Are people going to be able to access Skype? How loud will they be allowed to talk before I am allowed to garotte them with my $4 headphones?
• If the engines on the plane fail, will I be blocked from twittering "Ahhh! Gonna die!"?

The possibilities are endless.

Hmm, must be an older condo. All the new ones I've seen come wired.

Well, I'm afraid that my suggestions involve spending money or time, but maybe you don't mind. You might also consider whether you might be getting other interference (microwave running, 2.4Ghz phones, etc).

First, you could buy a different WAP. 5.4Ghz is an option, or one that transmits at higher power. Cisco Aironet comes to mind--they've got better radios and transit at 100mw instead of the Linksys 80mw. That's professional level equipment.

However, that solution moves the problem to someone else or puts you at the mercy of the next guy doing the same thing. Do you have a condo association? You could organize a co-op or partner with a company like Meraki that does this sort of thing for a living. In the long run that will save all residents hassle and, if you get enough buy-in, money.

If you're going to do that, set up a Meraki mesh network and use one or two business class cable and/or DSL Internet feeds.

How about doing something like taking a BiQuad Antenna and those old Direct TV or 10 and 12-foot Satellite dishes and turning them into long-range 2.4GHZ transmitters/receivers? This is open desert area we are talking about, so line of sight is definitely available for such devices.

How-To: Build a WiFi biquad dish antenna
http://www.engadget.com/2005/11/15/how-to-build-a-wifi-biquad-dish-antenna/

By taking the technology and means of how it was done before (as seen the in above how-to), one could most likely expand the network by adding in the means of a Merski Wireless Mesh Network, thus keeping the costs down to a minimum (utilizing the ad-supported capabilities of the Merski solutions).

2 outdoor meraki units would be a cheap, reliable solution. The outdoor units come weatherproofed, POE, with 25 feet outdoor cat5 pre-attached.

If it's clear line of site you'll get the range easy. Meraki has two basic equipment types - standard and pro. There's a $100 price difference. Basically standard lets you whitelist 5 mac addresses, pro lets you have as many as you want, along with other features.

I have a half dozen meraki to do the 'last mile' to my house and for connecting some business clients. It's reliable and the range is impressive. I get about a half mile with my laptop to the nearest meraki - far longer ranges between meraki units. They're simple to setup, plug and play and a nice web admin.

If your parents have surrounding neighbors, you could possibly create a WiMAX Mesh Network with something like Meraki. Meraki's mesh networks cover dramatically more geographic area and reach more users than other wireless networks by relying on sophisticated mesh routing technology to increase range and network capacity.

Site: http://meraki.com/

The biggest ad hock mesh I know if is Meraki's San Fran Mesh. However with the feds having CALEA hanging over every open hotspot, I don't see alternates really growing that well. What average person is going to be able to comply with the real time snooping/sniffing/auditing requirements, let alone sweat the 10,000 a day fine, just to let others use the Internet? If it's not plug and play simplicity it's not going to happen.

The biggest ad hock mesh I know if is Meraki's San Fran Mesh. However with the feds having CALEA hanging over every open hotspot, I don't see alternates really growing that well. What average person is going to be able to comply with the real time snooping/sniffing/auditing requirements, let alone sweat the 10,000 a day fine, just to let others use the Internet? If it's not plug and play simplicity it's not going to happen.

That's more or less what's happening in SF: http://sf.meraki.com/

http://meraki.com/

get your neighborhood to use this....mesh network, multiple gateways, redundant paths to the internet until/unless the whole neighborhood/network is down.

just for the sake of redundancy....

http://meraki.com/

http://meraki.com/

get your neighborhood to use this....mesh network, multiple gateways, redundant paths to the internet until/unless the whole neighborhood/network is down.

just for the sake of redundancy....

http://meraki.com/

Check out http://meraki.com/ !

Meraki is the other company I was thinking of. Like FON, they supply wireless hardware with the express aim of you sharing your connection. The Meraki stuff looks quite good too in terms of having an extended connectivity range.

Too bad that:

http://lunapark6.com/usb-hdtv-tuner-stick-for-windows-linux-hauppauge-wintv-hvr-950.html

won't be of much use as an off-the-air device (the coax part will still be useful) by the time the government OTA switch-kill happens.

I can't WAIT til Meraki:

http://meraki.com/

http://www.dailywireless.org/2007/03/05/meraki-rocks-the-casbah/

http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/03/meraki-mini-wifi-router-also-does-mesh/

rolls out in SF. I wonder what the consumer-pricing tiers will be, though, when they go full-active instead of technology demonstrator to the Bay Area (or SF).

Honestly, I don't think cable is worth $50+ per month. It's nice enough to be able to go to the library. If SF main cuts off public (2 or 3 hour) internet access, I'll just go to San Jose State/MLK Library. There, they don't even make you get a library card and sign into some lame-ass, per-day, time-restrictive crap that SF does. For such a liberal city, San Fran is trounced by SJ when it comes to allowing the public to surf and download. I downloaded about a GB of upgrades in under 55 minutes at SJSJ/MLK's (DSL?) connection.

The conspiracy-theorist-bug in me makes me think comcast and t-moble have a bug up their asses and don't want SF tampering with their their business models. I think they've paid off somebody to limit patron access. Even if you only go to SF Main 2 times a week, once your day's two or 4 hours is up, that's it, unless someone else with time on that day generously gives you access on their card. Of course, that's risky, sharing time to a stranger.

Does anyone know if SFSU allows the public to come in and surf via one's own laptop? I know SJSJ/MLK is a special case: it's university and county/city sharing, not private like campus-students only.

Instead of using commercial firmware in our APs, let's either start using mesh friendly firmware, or even hardware solutions like the http://meraki.com/ units, and create massive mesh networks on our own. Please, use any of the APs in my house, and link your APs to mine.

THere is plenty of highly effective interference mitigation techniques, time domain correlation and transform domain excision, for example. I have no idea why current wifi doesn't use these techniques to their fullest. Still, interference is an issue only because it is not being adressed, not because it is insoluable.

As for ISP bandwidth, technically, if you have a CDN (via satellite downlink) the amount of bandwidth actually needed is minimal. Thats because if you are dealing with these neighborhood internets, most of the bandwidth would be carried between local nodes, and never hit the wider, carrier based internet.

The curent interest in neighborhood internets had been considerably stoked by the collapse of major municipal internet deals, and whats happening in WIMAX. THere is a lot of (clandestine) political support for this, many elected officials are seriously concerned at Comcast's hold over communications with their constituents, and, in many communities, a little less exposire to outsiders is something they would prefer.

NBC is currently available over the internet, and soon, all major channels will be. With the advent of Vongo, Itunes, Vonage, Skype, etc etc, there will be little need for a Comcast (or any telco's) presence in these neightborhood internets, Comcasts role (and business revenues) will be subsumed by the neighborhood internet itself...and the immense revenues associated with it. For about $15-$20 a month, you can get the equivalent of comcasts $100 triple play (phone, TV, Internet) and all that money STAYS in the neightborhood, provideing an enormous increse in the efficiencies of local economies and lowered taxes.

For example, the one of the first shopping centers ever built, Lincoln Village, in Chicago, has 941,262 residents with an average income of $69,362 within a five mile radius. That same five mile radius could be covered by a single neighborhood internet easily. Lets do the calculation.

Google's Maraki mini's cost $50 and covers a 150 foot radius. http://meraki.com/oursolution/hardware/mini/meraki_mini_guide.pdf
THey have all the desired qualities (interference mitigating, next generation mesh network, Hosted NOC available, etc. http://meraki.com/oursolution/hardware/mini/meraki_mini_guide.pdf

Lets see how much the hardware cost would be. (God, I hope there are no mistakes, I am doing this math in my head as I type)

Circle packing problems are difficult, and in the presence of unreliability, rather imprecise; the ad hoc networks research is full of articles on how to calculate this. So lets just assume a fudge factor, and that a Meraki minikit can handle 250 square foot area, or about the size of a two large ranch homea in the area with 20% overlap onto neighbors. It is also about the distance between three street lights in the area, so, even if residents won't cooperate, it is known that the city will make any infrastructure available for free (Chicago has already put that on the table for Sprint, etc. They would do far more for a 501(c) with revenue sharing and local employment and business development like I am planning.)

And lets assume, instead of a five mile radius, we have a square ten miles on a side, or about a hundred square miles. With 5280 feet in a mile that is 528,000 square feet 528000/250 = 2112 mini merakits, at $50 each (presumably, for that amount, we could get them a lot cheaper... Some far east manufacturers could produce them for about $5 each, if you didn't mind killing a lot of child laborers in the process) Lets assume we have a significant failure rate, so lets say, 2500 mini merakits. SO, roughly, $20,00 dollars and since it takes less than an hour to install a Merakit (more like 5 minutes, plug it in an let er run) 2500 man hours at $50/hour. (Yeah, I know it's overpaying, but its money FOR THE NEIGHBORHOOD. If you let each homeow

THere is plenty of highly effective interference mitigation techniques, time domain correlation and transform domain excision, for example. I have no idea why current wifi doesn't use these techniques to their fullest. Still, interference is an issue only because it is not being adressed, not because it is insoluable.

As for ISP bandwidth, technically, if you have a CDN (via satellite downlink) the amount of bandwidth actually needed is minimal. Thats because if you are dealing with these neighborhood internets, most of the bandwidth would be carried between local nodes, and never hit the wider, carrier based internet.

The curent interest in neighborhood internets had been considerably stoked by the collapse of major municipal internet deals, and whats happening in WIMAX. THere is a lot of (clandestine) political support for this, many elected officials are seriously concerned at Comcast's hold over communications with their constituents, and, in many communities, a little less exposire to outsiders is something they would prefer.

NBC is currently available over the internet, and soon, all major channels will be. With the advent of Vongo, Itunes, Vonage, Skype, etc etc, there will be little need for a Comcast (or any telco's) presence in these neightborhood internets, Comcasts role (and business revenues) will be subsumed by the neighborhood internet itself...and the immense revenues associated with it. For about $15-$20 a month, you can get the equivalent of comcasts $100 triple play (phone, TV, Internet) and all that money STAYS in the neightborhood, provideing an enormous increse in the efficiencies of local economies and lowered taxes.

For example, the one of the first shopping centers ever built, Lincoln Village, in Chicago, has 941,262 residents with an average income of $69,362 within a five mile radius. That same five mile radius could be covered by a single neighborhood internet easily. Lets do the calculation.

Google's Maraki mini's cost $50 and covers a 150 foot radius. http://meraki.com/oursolution/hardware/mini/meraki_mini_guide.pdf
THey have all the desired qualities (interference mitigating, next generation mesh network, Hosted NOC available, etc. http://meraki.com/oursolution/hardware/mini/meraki_mini_guide.pdf

Lets see how much the hardware cost would be. (God, I hope there are no mistakes, I am doing this math in my head as I type)

Circle packing problems are difficult, and in the presence of unreliability, rather imprecise; the ad hoc networks research is full of articles on how to calculate this. So lets just assume a fudge factor, and that a Meraki minikit can handle 250 square foot area, or about the size of a two large ranch homea in the area with 20% overlap onto neighbors. It is also about the distance between three street lights in the area, so, even if residents won't cooperate, it is known that the city will make any infrastructure available for free (Chicago has already put that on the table for Sprint, etc. They would do far more for a 501(c) with revenue sharing and local employment and business development like I am planning.)

And lets assume, instead of a five mile radius, we have a square ten miles on a side, or about a hundred square miles. With 5280 feet in a mile that is 528,000 square feet 528000/250 = 2112 mini merakits, at $50 each (presumably, for that amount, we could get them a lot cheaper... Some far east manufacturers could produce them for about $5 each, if you didn't mind killing a lot of child laborers in the process) Lets assume we have a significant failure rate, so lets say, 2500 mini merakits. SO, roughly, $20,00 dollars and since it takes less than an hour to install a Merakit (more like 5 minutes, plug it in an let er run) 2500 man hours at $50/hour. (Yeah, I know it's overpaying, but its money FOR THE NEIGHBORHOOD. If you let each homeow

Sprint would probably disagree with you, they are building out a WimAX network with Mobile-Wimax using similar thiord + generation mecsh technologies for about a year now. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/080806-sprint-nextel-wimax.html?fsrc=netflash-rss

Strictly speaking, I am probably wrong in calling mobile WiMax a UWB technology, but there really isn't any overarching term for these type of spread spectrum technologies that I know of.

Thing is, these technologies are in their infancy, and highly disruptive. The big gamble with Sprints efforts is that there are other companies that can do it far more cheaply. Nodes are so cheap ($50.00/node, retail) that Google is sponsoring it for the third world (see Meraki http://meraki.com/) just to get the advertising revenue and audience. China Sat and China Com can do it even cheaper (the units are made in CHina, and, many people have speculated that Google and China have some sort of agreement about this (And, yes, there is only circumstantial evidence, but there is a LOT of circumstantial evidence.)

It does not even need to be a government or a company, there is also the healthy grass roots community networking movement as well, the whole picocell/ mesh network thing is working out quite well in a number of areas, both rural and big city for metropolitan area networks. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_community_networks_by_region.)

And yes, the telco's are profitable, for example, AT&T has been hiring a lot. But they have been hiring consultants for serving their customers business applications needs, not for telecomm. I have always been disappointed by AT&T, AT&T would have been able to make Google look like amateurs, if they had the sense to retain Hurd or a similar talented leader as president. Like I said, C4i and management control is where all the US telco's fail.

I really don't see how the US government could prevent it. The US is part of a worldwide telecommunications network, and if you think physical borders are problematical, try handling electronic. I can't think of any way to formulate a law that would provide that sort of protection without completely cutting off US businesses from the world. It's like the oil embargo's, except oil, at least, has to be physically shipped.

The other thing I should point out is business models. Except for CDN's, you really don't need much in the way of worldwide internet connectivity for business. Yes, I know that's somewhat heretical, but think about it. Just because the world is flat, doesn't mean it isn't immense as well.

And more importantly, people are not concerned about the world, they are concerned about their local area's, and most especially, themselves.

That point is best illustrated by your insistence that the US will somehow magically protect the US telco's by protectionist tactics. It is not that the US government does not want to, it's that it is impossible...by protectionist tactics. (Bear with me, this isn't going to be easy to explain, I am trying to stuff a graduate degree in economics onto a single post)

In my studies of the competitive strategy of nations, I have been incredibly impressed, awed even, in the tactics that the US has used. Although to the naive, it may seem as though America is losing an economic war with the rest of the world badly, in actuality, in most areas, the US has made impressive conquests. The US telcos are a rare exception, not a rule. And the US government did it without even going near real protectionism. I wish I could explain it in detail, but the readings I might suggest you look at are either incredibly dry( some of Angus Maddisson's work http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/) or popularized and only true in a general sense

I'm posting this through SF's small-but-growing grassroots WiFi project called Free The Net. It's a venture headed up by Meraki, a company that makes access points for WiFi-meshing purposes. As far as I understand, all bandwidth is provided by AT&T. Meraki sets up the main APs, and then asks users who can see the signal to set up a repeater somewhere, such as outside their house or on a street-facing window. The repeaters and APs discover the network and can automatically provide redundancy if at all possible. If you're living in the right neighborhoods, it works pretty well. Best part vs. the method mentioned in the article: everything is free. No ports are closed, no traffic denied. Downside: There's a frame at the top of your browser which links to news articles (why? are they getting revenue through it?), although I'm sure it could easily be hacked around. Other downside: the ISP is AT&T.

I know people are probably familiar with the Google/Earthlink deal falling through in SF, but this somewhat unknown project is taking off; so far, I'm pretty impressed.

Why do we need a teloco to allow us to do this? DIY is always better.

Wasn't Google going to do something like this?

maybe they should just look into meraki.

This looks a similar idea to the solar wifi mesh box thingy that Meraki are doing.

They are a startup, partly funded by Google, that are offering free wifi in San Francisco and doing some very neat things with simple to setup wifi meshes.

Instead of trying to churn out 48 Volts which is serious overkill to run a Wifi router, it seems to make more sense to engineer it for lower power. Slashdotters may remember the articles announcing Meraki's stuff. They built a cheap, low power autoconfiguring mesh network Wifi router. The indoor one is $50 and the outdoor is $100. They're bringing a solar product out as well, but apparently it's not ready for sale yet. Oh, and did I mention they run linux? Of course, any solar contractor could hook up a panel, inverter, and battery set to run one off solar now. The difference is the pre-engineered solution has the potential to be cheap.