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I was using eMule (for eDonkey) to grab some files. I forgot about it and left the thing on.
After a couple days, I get this email from my ISP.

Greetings,

We have recently received a report that there has been activity originating from your circuit that is in violation
of the Speakeasy Acceptable Use Policy. The IP address in question is:

xx.xx.xx.xx

The following complaint is concerning copyright infringement from a shared filesystem or server at this IP. We
request that you immediately cease and desist this activity and remove any content that is possibly considered in
violation of copyright laws.

If you are using a wireless network on your Local Area Network, it is possible that it has been compromised. If
you are using a wireless network, we highly recommend you at least take these steps to ensure the security of your
wireless connection:

* Use Network Segregation- place your access point on a separate subnet, with a firewall separating wireless and
internal (wired) users

* Update your access point's firmware

* Change the administrator password on the wireless unit

* Change the default SSID of the wireless unit

* Disable SSID beacons/broadcasts

* Enable MAC address filtering

* Use WPA authentication and encryption

* If possible, use VPN connectivity

Please contact your vendor for further assistance, specific to your wireless device.

Here are a few good links that provide information and best practices for the security of a wireless network:

http://www.lawtechguru.com/archives/2004/08/01_w ireless_networking_best_practices_version_20.html

http://www.giac.org/practical/GSEC/Thomas_Stripl ing_GSEC.pdf

http://wifinetnews.com/archives/002452.html

For your reference, please also visit the Speakeasy Security Zone at:
https://www.speakeasy.net/security

Note: You will need to login to MySpeakeasy in order to view this page.

PLEASE NOTE: Speakeasy, Inc. is legally obligated to forward this notification to you, regardless of the scan
results appearing in the original complaint sent to us. Additionally, we believe it is important for you to be
aware that these scans of your machines are taking place.

It is vital for the security of your personal network and the Speakeasy network as a whole that you address this
issue. If we continue to receive similar reports about your circuit, we will be forced to temporarily suspend your
broadband service until this issue is resolved. Please understand that we consider an interruption in your service
only when it is absolutely required to ensure both your security, and the overall security of the entire Speakeasy
network.

PLEASE ALSO NOTE:
If this is your first notification from abuse@speakeasy.net, there will be no Service Ticket created for this
incident. If there have been abuse incidents reported on your circuit in the past however, there will be an open
Service Ticket on your account. To ensure that your service is not interrupted, it's important that you update us
once you have resolved this issue. Please call Speakeasy Support at 800.556.5829 or login to MySpeakeasy
(http://www.speakeasy.net/myspeak) and update the open Service Ticket referencing this issue.

Please review the relevant portions of our Terms of Service under "Moderations of Use" and "Acceptable Use Policy"
at this link:

Speakeasy AUP/TOS
http://www.speakeasy.net/tos

We thank you for taking the time to address these Internet security concerns,

Network Security Department
Speakeasy, Inc.
abuse@speakeasy.net

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) is a U.S. trade association that represents the

I was using eMule (for eDonkey) to grab some files. I forgot about it and left the thing on.
After a couple days, I get this email from my ISP.

Greetings,

We have recently received a report that there has been activity originating from your circuit that is in violation
of the Speakeasy Acceptable Use Policy. The IP address in question is:

xx.xx.xx.xx

The following complaint is concerning copyright infringement from a shared filesystem or server at this IP. We
request that you immediately cease and desist this activity and remove any content that is possibly considered in
violation of copyright laws.

If you are using a wireless network on your Local Area Network, it is possible that it has been compromised. If
you are using a wireless network, we highly recommend you at least take these steps to ensure the security of your
wireless connection:

* Use Network Segregation- place your access point on a separate subnet, with a firewall separating wireless and
internal (wired) users

* Update your access point's firmware

* Change the administrator password on the wireless unit

* Change the default SSID of the wireless unit

* Disable SSID beacons/broadcasts

* Enable MAC address filtering

* Use WPA authentication and encryption

* If possible, use VPN connectivity

Please contact your vendor for further assistance, specific to your wireless device.

Here are a few good links that provide information and best practices for the security of a wireless network:

http://www.lawtechguru.com/archives/2004/08/01_w ireless_networking_best_practices_version_20.html

http://www.giac.org/practical/GSEC/Thomas_Stripl ing_GSEC.pdf

http://wifinetnews.com/archives/002452.html

For your reference, please also visit the Speakeasy Security Zone at:
https://www.speakeasy.net/security

Note: You will need to login to MySpeakeasy in order to view this page.

PLEASE NOTE: Speakeasy, Inc. is legally obligated to forward this notification to you, regardless of the scan
results appearing in the original complaint sent to us. Additionally, we believe it is important for you to be
aware that these scans of your machines are taking place.

It is vital for the security of your personal network and the Speakeasy network as a whole that you address this
issue. If we continue to receive similar reports about your circuit, we will be forced to temporarily suspend your
broadband service until this issue is resolved. Please understand that we consider an interruption in your service
only when it is absolutely required to ensure both your security, and the overall security of the entire Speakeasy
network.

PLEASE ALSO NOTE:
If this is your first notification from abuse@speakeasy.net, there will be no Service Ticket created for this
incident. If there have been abuse incidents reported on your circuit in the past however, there will be an open
Service Ticket on your account. To ensure that your service is not interrupted, it's important that you update us
once you have resolved this issue. Please call Speakeasy Support at 800.556.5829 or login to MySpeakeasy
(http://www.speakeasy.net/myspeak) and update the open Service Ticket referencing this issue.

Please review the relevant portions of our Terms of Service under "Moderations of Use" and "Acceptable Use Policy"
at this link:

Speakeasy AUP/TOS
http://www.speakeasy.net/tos

We thank you for taking the time to address these Internet security concerns,

Network Security Department
Speakeasy, Inc.
abuse@speakeasy.net

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) is a U.S. trade association that represents the

Speakeasy used to be that way, but I've been getting calls from them to keep my download usage to under 100GB per month at their SF POP. That works out to only about 300kbps continuously. Speakeasy's going downhill. They don't have the money to upgrade capacity, so they're writing log analyzers to catch people going over 120GB/mo and calling them up to warn about TOS. The TOS has a section on "Moderation of Use". Read it.

My broadband ISP charges me for excessive uploading and demands that I sign up to a commercial package -- and I can't argue, as I'm supplying a commercial service.

One solution to this part of the equation is to get an ISP without such assanine rules (like the one I use, for instance). Of course, that's a solution for you, not for the service, because they're unlikely to have a successful internet business model that begins, "First, get all your customers to switch their ISP..."

Try these guys if you want to host servers on a "home" connection http://www.speakeasy.net/

Speakeasy, for instance, is happy for you to share your DSL connection.

http://www.speakeasy.net/netshare/terms/#wifipolic y

Of course, the above-linked written policy of allowing me to share using WiFi (which policy has been in place more or less unchanged for years) has little to do with bandwidth ratios. Casual WiFi users don't tend to use enough bandwidth to worry about. If the bandwidth became a problem, I'd just cap it. And if any illegal activity is reported to me, I'll deal with it just as any other ISP would.

By the way, I can just about max out my connection if I want to, it turns out. One of the advantages of paying just about triple the market residential rate is that I don't tend to get a lot of heat about my enormous download traffic. Sure, all ISPs oversubscribe their backhaul lines. Some do it more than others.

I used to have a commercial account with another ISP. If my bandwidth needs go up much further, I may need to get one again. Meanwhile, I'll stick with this high-end consumer account, which does indeed, as a matter of written ISP policy, to which I have linked above allow me to run a WiFi endpoint.

As for your point about lawsuits, well, prepoderance of the evidence is a funny thing. It turns out you can get screwed by it in almost any part of your life, on and off the Internet. Some of us aren't cowardly enough to order our lives around the possibility.

Speakeasy (http://www.speakeasy.net/) does not block port 80 or 25 (or any other port) on my ADSL connection. I've been a happy customer of theirs for years, though definitely wish they had lower prices for higher upload speeds.
    -Dave

Mine doesn't on a 384/768 residential line. Neither does Speakeasy. In fact, I've never had to deal with blocked prots because I refuse to do business with ISPs that block ports.

http://speakeasy.net/ works for me. 6Mbps/768k, no bandwidth cap, servers allowed, and 8 static IPs. ~$120/month, but so worth it.

quoth http://www.speakeasy.net/business/dsl/

I can't recommend them highly enough. Pick-up-after-a-few-rings, by-a-person-who-can-talk-dBs-and-DNS grade service, 24/7.

And that's on their residential product.

> We decided to go with cable internet

Mistake #1.

You're a business. There's no reason a business should be using anything less than SDSL. It costs more for a reason - it's reliable.

quoth http://www.speakeasy.net/business/dsl/

> Symmetrical dedicated line DSL with throughput SLAs, rigorous uptime and repair time.

That means they guarantee it'll be fast, it'll work, and if it doesn't, they'll fix it fast.

If a couple hundred per month for internet is too much for your internet-dependent business it sounds like you've got bigger issues than packet loss.

Speakeasy customers who resent this blatant (and sneaky, underhanded, unannounced) fee "land grab" should email the Speakeasy management team directly: mailto:exec@speakeasy.net> and let them know exactly how they feel about this crap.

I've been a Speakeasy DSL customer since early 2000, but I've started to check into Qwest and other DSL providers in my area as a result of this. They're certainly not the same "do no evil" company that I signed up with back then, and my loyalty to them has basically evaporated.

I'll miss my grandfathered SDSL line, but FWIW a much faster RADSL line from other providers looks to be $10-20/month cheaper.

Usually there's only one cable TV company, and usually they're the only ones who sell cable modem service on it, though sometimes they're more open than that, and sometimes RCN or another overbuilder put in a second cable system. (In much of the country, the telco is trying to get into the wired-TV business, as well as reselling satellite TV, and that's what's really driving much of this debate, other than political opportunism by carpetbaggers like MoveOn*.) Most US cable modem service has never been open - they went paranoid about users running servers from home for reasons that weren't very good then and make less sense now. And cable TV service was largely deployed on a town-by-town basis, driven by issues of what town councilman's brother got the installation or repaving contracts rather than by deep understanding of the futures of telecommunication, so the current large aggregators were buying a really random collection of stuff and most of them still understand pay-per-view much better than they understand the Internet.

Usually there's only one wireline telco, but that doesn't mean there's only one source of Internet broadband service using those wires. Most of the telcos will sell service in at least three forms:

• Layer 1 - Dry copper, which a company like Covad or New Edge rents, runs DSLAMs on, and sells connections to multiple ISPs as well as their own internet access.
• Layer 2 - Telco-provided DSLAM with ATM PVC across a concentrator network to an ISP-provider router, potentially to hundreds of different ISPs. Sometimes they insist on selling phone service along with ADSL, sometimes they'll sell naked DSL.
• Layer 3 - Telco provides DSLAM with ATM PVC to a router which they run (either running it directly or farmed out to a single partner ISP.)
• Layer 3.5 - PPoE to an ISP over Layer 3 service instead of over native ATM, or sometimes other router-based aggregation approaches.

* I really like MoveOn, and I think George Bush is a Chaotic Evil threat to America's freedom and traditional values, but this time they were not only wrong, but pretty clueless about the technologies they were ranting about. That's not to say that several telco honchos weren't also either clueless about the technologies or at least unwilling to talk to the public about what they were actually selling rather than about the regulatory environment in which they were selling it, or that usually clueful netheads like Dave Isenberg weren't saying boneheaded things when they should have known better, but MoveOn was way out of their league here.

None of the ISPs I've ever dealt with permit you to resell services.

Speakeasy does. I can't find any documentation on the non-current-customer portion of their site, but they allow you to resell your connect a few times, and take care of the billing (and take a percentage). Its fancy, and nice.

I suggest taking a very close look at the fine print. It's your account and your responsibility. You have all the work of managing a neighborhood ISP but none of the legal protection. NetShare FAQ

Until you max out your own connection:

Because signing up as a NetShare Admin means you will be sharing your existing broadband connection, you will need to expect some decrease in your own service levels the more NetShare Customers you sign up. If you experience a serious decrease in speed levels as you add more customers, you may want to upgrade your broadband connection. If you do not wish to upgrade, we recommend communicating to your NetShare Customers what you expect their usage patterns to be. Netshare FAQ

Congratulations, you are now minimum-wage tech support and full-time System Nazi,...err, Network Administrator.
Never forget that you take the hit, not Speakeasy, when anything goes wrong:

Speakeasy believes that shared wireless networks are in keeping with our core values of disseminating knowledge, access to information and fostering community, provided this usage does not have an adverse impact on the services of other customers, does not involve any illegal activity and is not otherwise in violation of any aspect of our existing Terms Of Service. Please remember that the Speakeasy account-holder is responsible for all activity originating from their DSL line, even if it is the result of other users on a shared wireless connection.

I'm happy with Filecloud for file sharing. It has a couple of free versions and a "premium" version that's $4.95/month. The quota isn't as large as I might like, only 500MB on the premium version, but it uses the open standard WebDAV, so I can mount my folder on my KDE desktop. My friends and family don't have to have any account in order to download my pictures and stuff. Filecloud works as advertised. I didn't know I needed it until (1) I bought a digital camera and (2) I found that the premium subscription is included in the monthly fee I pay Speakeasy for broadband service.

I'm using Speakeasy's rebranded VoIP service and they have some features for categorizing calls. You can block some groups of callers entirely, drop them directly to voicemail (without ringing), forward to another phone (such as a cellphone), etc.

http://www.speakeasy.net/home/voip/features.php

I'd shop around with Vonage, Speakeasy, etc and see what they can offer.

On the other hand -- I'm a pretty lazy, so most of the time I just let it ring until VM picks up and I'll call back later if I actually want to talk ;)

Flat-rate long distance + local calling for about the same as I was paying the telco is the really killer feature, however.

- Adam

I don't know exactly what you're looking for, but have you looked at Speakeasy?

My DSL provider charges me only $5 extra per month for not having a land line telephone. Even the telcos will give you DSL-only packages these days for similar prices. Your quoted prices are from the ancient past.

I think it should cost as much as the consumer is willing to pay - at least that is how it works when you have a properly working capitalist system.

Actually, with perfect competition, firms would charge their marginal cost of producing it. The intuition behind this is that if they did not, and there exists free entry (a requirement of perfect competition), then another firm would charge slightly lower, and thus get all of the customers. Of course, in the broadband industry, there exist fairly natural monopolies because of the huge fixed costs of the infrastructure and "last mile" runs.

Now consider what you said: the consumer's willingness to pay. If firms are able to charge as much as each individual is willing to pay, this is perfect price discrimination. DSL and cable operators do some degree of price discrimination by offering the different tiers of speed at different prices. If I understand you correctly, I'm pretty sure having DSL cost what consumers are willing to pay is not what you want. After all, I'd certainly be willing to pay a bit more for my DSL considering how much I use it.

When is the last time you saw a new DSL provider *other* than the phone company?

I am really worried that our options are getting smaller, and not larger - thus the prices will go up, and our bandwidth will not increase with the extra cost.

Yes, in reality, internet service is fairly consolidated. If you're lucky, you'll have three good choices for broadband (many have two -- cable or DSL -- or fewer). Still, in many areas services like Speakeasy are available as alternatives in the DSL market. In my experience, options for broadband are not getting smaller, as you suggest. Some communities or apartment buildings even form their own co-op style internet service providers if they're truly unhappy with the choices. Before, when most people were on dialup, it'd be hard to convince enough of your neighbors to want to start such a service.

As for prices, we're seeing a bidding war. I would expect this to be good for consumers, so long as enough options remain. I haven't seen evidence that DSL or cable operators are selling below cost, as some have claimed. I seem to recall paying about $55/mo 5 years ago for cable internet access (in addition to the TV channels), and now prices are (much) lower and speeds are still good in most areas. The bidding wars don't seem to be driving out players like Speakeasy, so I personally just don't see such a pessimistic trend.

A good website for bandwidth speed tests is http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/. They have multiple servers in different locations.

So I've got Cox HSI. Last year they upgraded me for free from 3Mbps/512kbps to 5/2 (in response to FIOS). There was definitely a difference, even during peak. Using Speakeasy's speed test I regularly tested out above 5 mbps down, and usually between 1-1.6 mbps up. On the phone recently with Cox, they said I could upgrade to 15/2 for $10/mo less for a year. So, doing a quick speed test after the upgrade, I now only test between 7-9 mpbs, and still only 1-1.6 mbps up. I DEFINITELY don't see anything even approaching 15. Fortunately I'm paying less for it =D

Well, when Comcast bumped the speed in our area to 6Mbps, I decided to test it with the Speakeasy Speed Test. Depending on which destination I picked, I got anywhere from 4Mbps to 8Mbps down, and 340Kbps to 360Kbps up. Seems to be consistent over days and weeks - I always get 8Mbps to the San Francisco destination, etc.

Since I'm not a torrent user, I'm more than happy with the download speed. I wish they'd quit bumping it, and would push the upload speed instead. Even when we were at 3Mbps it was pretty obvious a lot of the slowdowns were at the other ends of the various pipes, so going from 3 to 8 hasn't made much of a practical difference. But doubling the upload speed would make my ssh tunnels etc. much more usable (although things are acceptable now).

http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

Use this to test your connection speed, and make speakeasy your ISP if you want to get the bandwidth that you pay for. It may cost you a bit more, but their technical support, speed, and service policies are more than worth it.

Then there's the whole issue of the internet in general. We've seen sites that are probably paying for OC3s and DS3s for their sites and you go visit their site and there's bad latency.

Then I click on my Slashdot bookmark -- voila! The explanation, darn Slashdotters hogging up all the bandwidth.

The point being there's a lot of noise in between the last hop out of your ISP and the destination address. Get over it. It's not false advertising, it's the unpredictability of the internet. Trying doing speed tests to many destinations.

What does gramma need with 3Mbps anyway?!

Not sure of the winsudo thing. If it doesnt work out try MakeMeAdmin at http://www.speakeasy.net/~aaronmar/NonAdmin/MakeMe Admin.zip

I have been running Windows as a non-admin since 2001. A few ideas, comments, suggestions:

1. There are many things that need to be run as administrator (app installs, etc.) but this can usually be accomplished by right clicking on executables and clicking Run as... for one time access.

2. Use the runas command from Start->Run. Basic usage is "runas /user:Administrator cmd.exe". It will then prompt for a password and you'll be set.

3. Get familiar with the command prompt. There are certain administrative dialogs that are nearly impossible to run as Admin while logged in as another user. For these tasks, you can do a runas to open the command prompt and do it from there.

4. Be aware of explorer problems. The main problem with running as non-admin is that you can not (easily) get explorer to run as an admin account. There is a workaround, though. Download MakeMeAdmin ( http://www.speakeasy.net/~aaronmar/NonAdmin/MakeMe Admin.zip ) and run that. The script prompts you for the admin password (if you have renamed your admin account as I have you can change that in the script easily) then for your own password. It then launches a command prompt that is actually running as your regular logged on account, but with admin privileges. This should let you work around any remaining issues you may have.

Hope this helps. It's really not as bad as it may sound.

In addition, channel 9 is also right about the frequency used by microwave ovens, according to Joshua Wright (whose name you'll see on plenty of wireless security tools), and many inexpensive microwave ovens leak enough radiation to poison connections.

One data point in support of that: microwave.jpg. This is a long-term max-hold plot; most of the trace in channel 6 is my WiFi connection, about eight feet away from the analyzer's antenna. *All* of the crap near channel 11 is leakage from the microwave in the kitchen, two rooms away. Some of its energy is clearly bleeding all the way down to channel 6.

So yeah, anything above channel 6 is going to need to use short packets if you want it to coexist with this particular microwave oven. Much better for most people to stick with channel 1 or channel 6.

It's also worth noting that the microwave oven leaks at least 1,000 times more RF power than the WiFi hardware uses. This isn't unique to the oven I have at the moment; other microwaves I've owned exhibit about the same amount of leakage.

What we need is a (near) completley deregulated internet, and privacy on our home computers. If ATT and SBC start filtering Google and Amazon, then maybe ppl will sign up with companies like Speakeasy and other local providers.

Speakeasy has a POP in the DC area. If you can get DSL, you can most likely get them. They're not the cheapest out there, but their sysadmin packages include static IPs standard, and they have no problems changing reverse DNS on the IPs they give you to whatever you ask (which is part of why my home mail server is still going...my forward and reverse match).

I've been on Speakeasy since I moved about three years ago and I run a Debian torrent client 24/7, and I've never seen my traffic slow or had any extra charges. However, I pay double or triple what the US Cheapo ISPs offer and I expect the complete, constant service in return.

I get it - and more. Speakeasy even encourages you to share your bandwidth with your neighbors and collect a cut of the income. Indeed, they offer special services for gamers and other folks who want faster performance. If they're traffic-shaping, AFAIK it would be just to get to my advertised limit and I've never seen it. They even upped my speed without me asking when it seemed their price was higher than most competitors.

They also have rocking technical support and great attitudes. Have I mentioned I'm a Raving Fan? You want to try good service? Sign up here... (Full disclosure: referral program in use)

I've been on Speakeasy since I moved about three years ago and I run a Debian torrent client 24/7, and I've never seen my traffic slow or had any extra charges. However, I pay double or triple what the US Cheapo ISPs offer and I expect the complete, constant service in return.

I get it - and more. Speakeasy even encourages you to share your bandwidth with your neighbors and collect a cut of the income. Indeed, they offer special services for gamers and other folks who want faster performance. If they're traffic-shaping, AFAIK it would be just to get to my advertised limit and I've never seen it. They even upped my speed without me asking when it seemed their price was higher than most competitors.

They also have rocking technical support and great attitudes. Have I mentioned I'm a Raving Fan? You want to try good service? Sign up here... (Full disclosure: referral program in use)

Glad to help point you in the right direction:

http://www.speakeasy.net

They have great plans for Home/Office and Business. I've recommended them for a few companies I work with as a consultant, and they have all been very satisfied with the results. I have also been very happy with them, the few times I have had to call up their customer support at some rediculous hour in the morning to chase down a problem (during initial setup and configuration, never once the connection has been up and running, and I've got one customer using them for going on 10 years now).

The downside? They work through Covad which means three layers of companies to get your connection set up (or resolve a hardware issue outside your immediate gateway router): Your ILEC for the local loop, Covad as the CLEC for the backbone, and Speakeasy as the ISP. That said, I have had very few issues with this. The other downside? They can cost a bit more than a connection through your local cable provider or ILEC (for a given speed).

The upside? They offer accounts that are very free of restrictions (including running servers, P2P, and I remember seeing them offering to work with you to provide/bill wireless access through your connection, or allow you offer it free if you wanted). Most plans include static IP addresses (they know who their selling to), and they've been quick to resolve the few issues I've had.

Last week I tried out the Beta in advance of the release of 2.0.0

Ekiga worked well for me with consumer/SOHO SIP providers FWD (http://www.freeworlddialup.com/ ) and Gradwell (http://www.gradwell.com/voip ) as well as http://www.ekiga.net./ I imagine the final version will work fine with http://www.speakeasy.net/home/voip/ but I can't be certain as Speakeasy don't mention on their site what technology they use, or if they will tell you your VoIP username and password. I don't know how their 'Remote Office' private WAN works.

Why not try it and let the world know on the Ekiga mailing list http://www.ekiga.org/index.php?rub=8

One alternative is to get Speakeasy at home, and a low cost SIP account for the laptop (you can get a free Washington State number from ipkall, and there are many other low cost SIP options.) Configure your speakeasy account to forward your calls to your laptop while you are away. Ekiga will work fine on the laptop.

How much would the voip cost you on top of your regular ISP bill?

$27.95 per month - much less than the ~40$ we're giving to Bell right now.

They don't list the 'advanced' features that you're talking about, but still, it looks like you can do a ton more with it than with a standard POTS line:

http://speakeasy.net/home/voip/features.php

So at the very least I'll finally be able to say f-you to the 'big bells' and get voicemails as email attachments.

Just out of interest what does your contract with your ISP have to say about sharing your connection ?

My ISP says it's great. Yet another reason to love Speakeasy.

I left my AP open and named it with my address. I've met a couple of my neighbors that way. It's great!

Now, anyone who's got DSL doesn't need Vonage for their primary phone service.

plenty of people would much rather buy phone service from a company they already do business with.

My ISP encourages me to share my connection. They'll even bill the other person for me and give them a free e-mail account.

Also, I don't have local phone service or cable TV and can still get a high speed 'net connection.

I have Speakeasy's Onelink service (DSL without phone line) in Bellsouth's territory (North Carolina). I've had it for over a year.

http://www.speakeasy.net/home/onelink/

Most people have only one or two choices for ISPs, and MAYBE three if they're lucky.

It has nothing to do with luck. Move out of the sticks already and live somewhere where you can get reasonable broadband. I have at LEAST 5 choices. Sadly, I'm on the wrong side of a hill to get WiMax, though.

Mesh networks ... threaten the entire status quo

According to this recent article from The Nation, that would be a good thing. If the telecoms are trying to co-opt the net, WIFI could be our savior.

Also, this sounds somewhat like my ISP's wifi sharing plan.

The Fon site openly claims that many ISPs won't allow this kind of wireless sharing. They state repeatedly that Speakeasy is an exception to this rule. The fact is that as either a kind of member you will charge "aliens" and "bills" to connect to your point. Charging for sharing access is strictly forbidden by speakeasy unless done via speakeasy's wi-fi sharing service "NetShare"

Thier service is actually quite neat. Without any firmware needed, they track the MAC addresses on your IPs. You then login with your speakeasy id or other customers log in with theirs and agree to pay for access at the price you set. As the administrator you can choose to throttle the bandwidth shared in this way (which is managed by speakeasy's routers, so again, no software/hardware needed), and you get 80% of the fees collected.

I guess those who want to know more could use a link:
http://www.speakeasy.net/netshare/learnmore/

[Disclaimer, I don't use this service, I merely share my wi-fi. In new york there are enough shadows and wierdnesses to make my efforts pointless to all but my immediate neighbors.]

...why I pay Speakeasy almost $100 per month for an Internet connection. It's exactly for stuff like this. Speakeasy has made an entire business around giving people a completely open pipe with no restrictions, and it's the ISPs like this that I will patronize. Sure, $14.95 as a teaser rate sounds wonderful, but not to me when I consider the PPPoE travesty, port blocking, draconian ToS and the returning attitude of "we're the phone company; we don't have to care."

Since the people who actually run corporations have no personal responsiblity for their actions, they have no sense of same. Elected officials at least can go to jail, lose their jobs, be exposed as lying jackasses.

I'm happy that I have fairly high-speed internet access from Comcast now, and happier that WiMax is on the way in my area courtesy of Speakeasy, happier still that Verizon FIOS was becoming available where I used to live before moving, and still happier that all of that is happening without huge chunks of my paycheck going to pay for the government to build the infrastructure so someone else can download porn as fast as they want at my expense.

Free-market capitalism will rarely, if ever, get you the best thing possible instantaneously. It is a gradual process that evolves as demand increases for certain things and people find ways to provide it at reasonable costs - where "reasonable" is determined by how much people are willing to pay. You won't get lightning-fast nationwide internet access overnight. And that's not a bad thing. You'll end up getting an infrastructure that's not overly expensive because companies aren't going to build it unless it's worth it to them - ie. unless it's worth it to *us*. They aren't going to spend $100 million if it's only going to bring in $10 million. Nor should they. Nor should the government. It's fiscally irresponsible and it's not someplace I want my tax dollars going. The fact that the public is NOT paying for something that it does not NEED is what I'd consider the "public good."

Subject: Case ID XXXXXXXX - Notice of Claimed Infringement
Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2005 11:56:33 -0400
To: Abe Usetonsen <abuse@speakeasy.net>
From: MediaSentry Copyright Infringement <infringements@hbo.com>
 
Monday, October 03, 2005
 
Speakeasy Network DSL
Seattle, WA 98121 US
 
RE: Unauthorized Distribution of the Copyrighted Television Program Entitled Rome
 
Dear Abe Usetonsen:
 
We are writing this letter on behalf of Home Box Office, Inc. ("HBO").
 
We have received information that an individual has utilized the above-referenced IP address at the noted date and time to offer downloads of copyrighted television program(s) through a "peer-to-peer" service, including such title(s) as:
 
Rome
 
The distribution of unauthorized copies of copyrighted television programs constitutes copyright infringement under the Copyright Act, Title 17 United States Code Section 106(3).
 
Since you own this IP address, we request that you immediately do the following:
 
1) Disable access to the individual who has engaged in the conduct described above; and
2) Take appropriate action against the account holder (if other than the individual whose access has been disabled) under your Abuse Policy/Terms of Service Agreement.
 
On behalf of HBO, owner of the exclusive rights to the copyrighted material at issue in this notice, we hereby state, that we have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by HBO, its respective agents, or the law.
 
Also, we hereby state, under penalty of perjury, under the laws of the State of New York and under the laws of the United States, that the information in this notification is accurate and that we are authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the exclusive rights being infringed as set forth in this notification.
 
Please direct any end user queries to the following address:
 
Steve Rosenthal
Legal Department
Home Box Office, Inc.
1100 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036
212.512.1780 phone
212.512.5854 fax
infringements@hbo.com email
 
Kindly include the Case ID XXXXXXXX, also noted above, in the subject line of all future correspondence regarding this matter.
 
We appreciate your assistance and thank you for your cooperation in this matter. Your prompt response is requested.
 
Respectfully,
 
Mark Weaver,
Director of Enforcement
MediaSentry, Inc.
 
--------------------
Infringement Detail:
Infringing Work: Rome
Filepath: Rome.S01E06.HDTV.XviD-LOL.[eztv].torrent
Filename : Rome.S01E06.HDTV.XviD-LOL.avi
First Found: 3 Oct 2005 10:28:33 EDT (GMT -0400)
Last Found: 3 Oct 2005 10:28:33 EDT (GMT -0400)
Filesize: 359,196k
IP Address: X.X.X.X
IP Port: 26495
Network: BTPeers
Protocol: BitTorrent
    Download (untitled) 2.4k

If DSL were available by itself, I'd have gone with them instead

See above about SpeakEasy. I have them and a cell phone, its a reasonable deal, depending on your needs (I have one of their naked DSL packages but its the best one so it's $$$) their regular (read: equal-to-Cable-speeds) DSL is quite cheap, ~$50/month. They also have a fairly nice TOS. Web, FTP, and other servers are allowed (check Verizon's TOS to see that they are apecifically NOT allowed), and if you live in a Apt they offer a sort of admin-your-own-wifi-network (see: http://www.speakeasy.net/netshare/learnmore/) package that also works with their T1 service. Definitely a cool company, and first-rate Tech support. My local CO (phone exchange) was underwater one night during a particularly bad storm and they had me up and running in two hours.

try this one, instead: Speakeasy.NET -- NOT computational econometric software... but, as you say, naked dsl.

Anyway isn't this another one of those Rhythms/Covad/Northpoint etc. companies. They collocate in the Central Offices and rely on the Bells if some particular piece of fit hits the shan. I NEVER understood how that model could work; dsl service is basically a commodity meaning: no room for a middleman reseller.

For all I know SpeakEasy has its own copper wire loops and central offices, though...

Um, you know there are people out there that sell unbundled data lines like adsl right? like speakeasy. So yeah, it still costs like $60-$70, but the other points people are making are valid. A circuit you pay for has to stay up, anything else is entirely as-is.