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Open Networking
New10k writes "Here is a feature article on guys in Seattle, San Francisco and elsewhere who are bringing the Open Source ethic to the idea of an available to all wireless Internet. Includes a short explanation of telco vs. free methods of providing access." I know folks who do this already, just not with permission (roam around cities with sniffers and find networks that aren't locked down ;)
I think this kind of misses the point. Ala Heinlein: TANSTAAFL, and everyone knows it. Of course hardware costs money, and of course running it costs money. This is a big-ole "DUH". Implementation is not free. That's not what "free as in beer" means. The beer recipe is downloadable gratis, but running the microbrewery is not.
But "free as in beer" means that the Intellectual Property *is* free. That vapor about which everyone is so worked up, patenting, and suing over is free. The details are out there, for free, is non-proprietary, and open to comment and further development.
The idea behind all this open network development is not so that you, or anyone for that matter, can get a cheaper lunch, it's so that those odd people out there who like burning themselves occasionally with solder might tweak with something that they're not going to get sued for reverse engeneering, folding, spindling, or mangling. Maybe, just maybe, an open development model might eventually come up with ways to make it as cheap or cheaper than commercial service... but that's not the point. That's a potential side effect of people who want to tweak.
So if you don't want to muck around with wiring, schematics, frequencies, climbing up on your roof, network settings, etc... feel free to just buy service from your local carrier. That's why they exist. It's an easy choice.
But the moment you want to start helping out that local carrier, or figure out how their tech works so that you can tweak it for your own benefit... forget about it. Their stuff is neither "free as in speech", nor "free as in beer".
The article said "Rain and walls also clog the pipes." This is different than saying 802.11b won't go through walls at all.
I'm typing on my laptop using a Lucent 802.11b card now, and I can tell you that walls do "clog" 2.4GHz signals. My data rate drops from 11Mb/s to 2Mb/s if I walk out my back door and sit on my porch.
These "community network" folks are pushing weak signals at distances they weren't designed for. Walls would do significant damage to their signal strength.
Without encryption, it would be like having a hub on my DSL modem that anybody driving by could plug in to...
Man, it would take a very hand and nerves of steel to accomplish a feat such as that.... =]
Karma: Dyn-o-mite!(mostly affected by Jimmy Walker reading your comments)
there's the same WaveLan PCMCIA card that's in my Linux laptop .... 802.11 is something that Apple adopted, not something they invented .... like lots of other coold stuff (like CD Drives, bitmapped displays etc etc) Apple is a great early adopter but just because you first saw it from them don't assume that they thought up the idea .... (oh yeah I love my Apple Airport - makes a great/cheap 802.11 RF router for my Linux network)
etherpeg.org have source code for an applicaiton that sniffs JPEGs and GIFs from 802.11 nets and draws them on the screen - great fun in public areas running AirPort.
Also, this is not an Apple-developed system. I believe that it was pioneered by Lucent. In fact, I'm pretty sure that Apple's implementation is Lucent's.
Fuck 'im up, Tim! His views are invalid! -Pirate Corp$
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
By the way, I'd like to hear more about cruising the streets with a sniffer looking for open networks. How's that done, and what does one do to 'lock down' the network? I've been thinking of putting in a wireless network, but I hadn't thought about this hazard.
Here I go with a bit of karma-whoring (joke)
Go here to read about a loose coalition of london people trying to set up a similar scheme.
And go here to read all the comments from when this subject was last posted on /. just over a week ago.
Ben^3 (wondering whether CmdrTaco et al have goldfish DNA)The Slashdot Paradox: "100% Overrated"
It seems to me that rather than trying to take wireless LAN technology which is realy designed for short range in-building networking and fixing it to big external antennas (which is basically what these guys are going), it might be a better plan to take technology from the HAM community and adapt it to these unlicenced bands.
The article is vague, but I very much doubt that these wireless LAN radios have the strong signal handling required to operate well when connected to a large external antenna.
Summary: An interesting idea, but one that needs as much imput from radio expert as it does from computer experts. RF engineering is not as simple as it sounds once you start dealing with a lot of signal over a large area.
G1DGL
"Free as in beer" software is not really "free as in beer". Someone has to pay for hardware, electricity, web hosting, whatever... So there is a cost, but it's so small that the creator is absorbing it, or perhaps ad banners or sponsors.
This is hardly free either: "$800 to buy all the components needed to get hooked up". (that's US) + maintenance + time.
Here in Canada I pay 40 bucks (Canadian) a month for ADSL or Cable (I've used both). My adsl connection will actually run 2 machines straight of the ADSL-modem (with a hub) (anyone with sympatico can do this).
So at that rate, this scheme might pay for itself after 2 years, but in 2 years I'll probably have a faster and cheaper connection anyways.
-... ---
Since this is obviously a big threat to large telecom providers like ATT, MCI, etc., I wonder if they will lobby the FCC to step in on their behalf. This kind of movement has happened before, most notably with micropower (around 1 watt) FM radio stations.
A couple of years ago, I became interested in setting up my own radio station so I investigated the FCC requirements for getting a broadcasting license. It turns out that the application fee for getting your broadcast license is several thousand dollars and the associated paperwork takes a team of lawyers to complete properly. Not only that, but the FCC won't even CONSIDER giving you a license if you're broadcasting at less than 100 watts. The equipment for that level of power gets pretty expensive for the average citizen. IMHO, these requirements don't benefit the public at all, it just artificially restricts broadcasting on the public airwaves to the big companies that can afford the price of admission. I suspect some heavy lobbying was involved...
I wonder if the large telecoms and their teams of lobbyists will try to get the FCC to step in on this...
This
These types of RF networks have been in use by companies for quite a few years (i.e. manufacturing data collection)
Like the TacoMan said, many of these networks aren't secured very well.
Half a dozen manufacturing plants that I integrated RF data collection devices for did not use any type of authentication of encryption and relied solely on frequency channels to identify remote RF terminals.
For a few hundred bucks, Intermec and others can provide you with ISA cards to tap into RF networks and even PCMCIA cards that you can plug right into your laptop.
These devices setup an IP connection that ties a psuedo terminal on a unix server to the ANSI/VT100/etc emulation terminal running on the data collection devices themselves.
Some of the newer models provide a light weight web browser configured for various ports on a unix server to handle the data collection interface.
Almost all (95%+) of the data collection applications that are attached to the other end of these RF terminals are running on critical enterprise servers so that they can be close to the databases they feed.
It always baffled me that the IS tech's would be so lax on security simply because it was 'RF'.
As a side note, eavesdropping on an RF network is orders of magnitude easier than typical networks (ethernet / ATM) and effectively impossible to identify. For a few hundred bucks anyone can make a RF 'tcpdump' with a laptop and RF PCMCIA card that will trap every single IP packet flying over the RF networks.
So, the moral of this story is:
RF entails much more security risk than typical networking. Beware when you implement an RF network, and keep security at the top of your to-do list.