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Free Wireless For Fun And / Or No Profit
An Anonymous Coward pointed to this San Francisco Chronicle story about San Francisco's wireless networks there for the taking, set up for convenience but left open to anyone with an 802.11 card to grab packets, and in many cases, hop on the networks themselves. Sometimes that's intentional, other times it's not. The article mentions some of the well-known public wireless projects consume.net and Seattle Wireless, but what about your city? It would be interesting to find out and map where else folks have found (or founded) pockets of free bandwidth.
Drive-by spamming. Imagine the possibilities.
This is anonymous for a reason.
One of the problems with running an open wireless network (and Seattle Wireless thing which I have accidentally become part of -- see below) is "what if a bad guy starts using your network to do illegal things". Everything that goes out of your NAT router comes from one (fixed) IP address that has your name attached to it. So if you get an "unwelcome guest" who start using your network as a jumping off point what do you do if get the knock on the door from the police saying "we grabbed these from your network connection and we want to talk to you"? Tell them its not you but someone using your wireless connection?
I was made aware of this sort of problem a week ago on my own network at home.
I thought I'd closed down my Airport (make the network name hidden and use MAC address authentication to prevent other than my machines from attaching to my network) but I screwed up and my Airport has been running open since I got it last May (and I think of myself as a security expert). I noticed some odd activity on and off during this time (and put it down to AppleTalk being chatty) until last week I sniffed some of these HTTP request packets on my network. I didn't like the look of the URLs. Someone was using wireless access to my broadband network connection to download illegal content. Of course its difficult to trace something like this (the IP of the intruders machine is given out by DHCP from the Airport) and I don't have any direction finding gear for 2.4GHz.
I've since properly secured my Airport but I wonder if the people who are enthusiastically setting up an open to all metro scale 802.11b networks have fully thought through who will be responsible if something like this happens on their connection. You may see yourself as a free ISP but you may have problems convincing law enforcement of that if something like this happens to you.
Similarly what if you just don't know much about wireless networking and leave your system with the default settings. I wonder about the people who just buy and Airport and connect it directly to broadband net connections without closing it down.
I'm also convinced that if you want to put an 802.11b router in the open you need to put a firewall on it and maybe a proxy too and you should certainly log the packets that come over the WiFi connection. You might want to make your policy open to users of you connection (but how you might do this is unclear -- there is no infrastructure to do this yet).
Not that I now of, but I would love to see one in Brampton!
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Pilchie
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/01/29/148206.shtml
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Pilchie
I know this is talking about short-range omnidirectional signals, but it also gets me thinking about how it could possibly be used in conjunction with longer-range line-of-sight systems as bridges between these "pockets of packets", making the party even bigger. I don't know much about such systems -- the equipment would almost have to be much more expensive, but just how out-of-reach is it? Wasn't there a story a while back about some people "recycling" satellite dishes from a defunct TV service for such purposes?
For example, my house is in the Hayward hills above the San Mateo Bridge and with a view across the Bay of downtown San Francisco. If any of the people involved in this over there have a corresponding view, maybe we could set up a pair of directional antennas and bridge me in (drop me a line if interested). I can also see a lot of Hayward, San Leandro, and Oakland, so if there are any more LAN pockets there, then with another pair of antennas, I could serve as a bridge between them and SF. It's even possible that I could see someone in or close enough to Berkeley to form a chain between SF and the UCB campus, which is when it would get seriously cool.
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
If I were setting this up (which I've been thinking about doing), I'd throttle people's bandwidth at 50Kbps or so. It wouldn't be fast enough to leech MP3s, but just fine for e-mail, browsing, etc.
-Waldo
Question: Do you think it's remotely possible that someone who is doing this is a neighbor or something and doesn't know? perhaps they have their own airport and think they are using it?
Plainly... if you want to put up some 802.11b gear without proper security.. you should know what you are doing.
Actually... I'd rather prefer to keep the bandwidth unrestricted and just block out the abusers. I think the wireless net devices can block based on MAC addresses, although I'm unsure if those addresses can be modified or not (I'd assume not). That way, the only way to get back into the network would be to get ahold of another device, which would get costly after a while.
I'm not really concerned if someone leeches ONE mp3. I'm worried about the individual(s) who use this as their own private internet service instead of a momentary convienence for those who are mobile, as intended.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I can't see any real problem providing free wireless access to my neighborhood, especially if I was using it anyways. A good chunk of my bandwidth goes unused anyways, and bandwidth is a use it or lose it resource, so it might as well get used.
However, its important that this service does not get abused. It needs to be used for WIRELESS access, not 24/7 mp3 leeching or commercial services which are better and more convienently used with wired connections. However, for convienent mobile access while sitting in a coffee shop or in the car, this makes a LOT of sense. A lot more sense than a 128kbps $79 a month option from a company that has one foot in bankrupcy court.
Everyone who spends money on the wireless interface probably already has a similar setup at home, and most likely has a high bandwidth internet feed. If they provide the same public access service, then everyone will benefit.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Check out the LinkSys BEFW11S4, the D-Link DI-711 or DI-713, or the 3Com 3CRWE50194. They all have the physical specs to do what you're asking. It's just a matter of finding out if their built in firewall abilities are flexible enough for your specific needs.
-Aaron
A nice package that I could install... A firewall/802.11b combination. I plug in the cable modem ethernet in one port, and in the other 2 ports, my local protected network, and then a place to put in the 802.11b base device. That way those around me can have internet access through my connection.
Your wish is granted:
http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?pri
and the review at:
http://www.practicallynetworked.com/reviews/lin
You're welcome
http://thepoliticalgeek.com/blog/ Politics for Geeks.
Shirky isn't referring to services such as San Francisco's Ricochet, a wireless Internet access network provider from San Jose's Metricom. He wants to know whether citizens will be given free or subsidized wireless access, as if it were a municipal utility like water. He muses, "In New York, we have laws that give zoning variances for skyscrapers in return for creating public spaces. These public spaces could easily include 802.11b networks."
A better solution for Mr. Shirky's (slashdot interview) proposal would be to use the adjacent regulated spectrum that is being used for MMDS, a new broadband wireless service that is being rolled out.
The MMDS service occupies the same spectrum as ITFS (warning government website, design will make you cry), a service underutilized by universities to provide public service. The FCC is allowing these licenses to be snatched up by MMDS providers for gaining the licensees much ($40 according to itfs.org) and the public for which the service was created nothing.
Seems to me that putting some real public interest obligations on those licenses in the form of providing public wireless access would be a better use of that spectrum.
Check out GAWD. It's a DB of lots of wireless AP's. We've got "generic" mapping capabilities, but nothing fancy. We're trying to improve it currently. However, many ppl don't know their lat/long, so only a fraction of the AP's actually map to somewhere valid.
I'm down with that, as it were
The Shmoo Group setup the Global Wireless Access Database (GAWD) not too long ago. Heck we even got /.'d for it. It's a public DB of access points all over the world.
The AP's are all user contributed, so if you've got one, or know of one, feel free to add it.
I'm down with that, as it were
If you're ever at the corner of route 9 and bear creek road in Boulder Creek, California, you may be in range of my house right around the corner. We're kind of isolated up in the mountains, and it's about 45 minutes from san jose, but we're on the way to Santa Cruz, so you can stop mid trip.
/usr/music.
It's 802.11 on an Orinoco Residential Gateway. No network name or encryption. All my MP3's are on the debian server under
Have fun! 8-)
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
Anything with a DMZ port along with the WAN and LAN port will do ya. I use a 3com officeconnect firewall for a similiar setup.
Being able to get on the net from wherever you are sounds great, but there's a few problems -
...)
:)
1- most ISP AUP's won't allow this
2- what happens when somebody abuses the
connection? It'll come from YOUR IP address, so
you'll get blamed for it. Naughty things they
could do include :
- sending spam
- sending threatening emails to the President
- posting copywrited stuff to Usenet
- hacking remote systems.
You get the idea. The authorities would come after you, and you wouldn't even have any way of knowing who did it (does the wireless ethernet spec have the equivilent of MAC addresses? If so, that might provide a unique identifier, but even so
3- the least of the problems, they could use up all `your' bandwidth
There are several classes of "illegal activity" you can worry about, it you like to worry about that sort of thing, such as (more serious) crackers and (much less serious) downloaders of politically incorrect materia[l, but the problem that may cause the most interference is abuse by spammers. They're not the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse, but everybody understands them, everybody hates them, and they're not very clever but they won't go away, because there are suckers born every minute. Part of the interference will be the spammers themselves, but much of it will probably be the measures people take to prevent them that will make real wireless freenets harder to deploy than they should be.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It will also tell you where the nearest Starbucks is, which could be useful depending on how open their wireless lan access is (intentionally or not :-).
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
this topic was already mentioned on slashdot a few weeks ago but this gives me an opportunity to get in before the topic gets too long ;). has anybody set up anything like this in the Toronto area? maybe i'll get an Apple Airport card afterall :)
- j
Reminds me of the case where someone was descrambling DirecTV signals without authorization and the courts ruled that since DirecTV was sending those signals through his property he had the right to do with them as he pleased.
I suppose that could apply here where if they were sending their signals into public property or your property you automatically had a right to tap into them. It's interesting what you would consider your reciprocal signals going back into their private property, though.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Sorry about that. With some research, apparently I was wrong about the argument about the signals trespassing your property being held up in court.
Mmmm.. Donuts
The WikiWikiWeb works because:
So that's it - insecure, indiscriminate, user-hostile, slow, and full of difficult, nit-picking people. Any other online community would count each of these strengths as a terrible flaw. Perhaps wiki works because the other online communities don't. --PeterMerel
You were thinking right, but the guy was Canadian. There was no way he could legally subscribe to the service, therefore he wasn't stealing what he couldn't buy.
--
From the article: A more capitalistic venture is the Starbucks-Microsoft deal announced in January of this year, which may lead to wireless access for customers in Starbucks coffee shops.
I think The Onion already has the scoop.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Carousel is a lie!
Obviously, there's lot of things that can be done. Perhaps a free-net situation where I have to fill out a form with a copy of my driver's license to an address and then I get my Radius username and password. Hello? Universities? Computer User Groups? I guess now is the time.
How's about all those nifty HAM operators who wanted to collectively put up repeaters? This could be cheaper.
----
take a look at consume.net and email me if you'd like to ( join that | start something similar ) in the dallas area.
---
Two VeriSign ID's for "Microsoft Corporation" available cheap... PCMCIA 802.11 card included.
Maybe. If you have a PC originated vpn (ipsec client) you shouldn't have trouble, because the other IPs won't ever get into it. If you have a hardware based vpn, on the other hand, just permitting/denying access by IP is probably dangerous, because the k14413$ would figure out what the other IPs on your subnet are and try them too.
sulli
RTFJ.
SF Telecommunications Commission is useless. Good thing we don't look to them to provide anything except torn-up streets from all the fiber being laid...
sulli
RTFJ.
Try http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-0103.html
sulli
RTFJ.
There may be some that intend to let people share their bandwidth so they leave it open, but I'm sure that's not the case for most....
. . .
It's already started...
heaps more to read over on google.
cheers, swgn
*** I am the real stylewagon
Similarly what if you just don't know much about wireless networking and leave your system with the default settings. I wonder about the people who just buy and Airport and connect it directly to broadband net connections without closing it down.
Are you trying to imply that Mac users might not know what they are doing when it comes to wireless networking?
Shame on you!
"And like that
It was intended that way on purpose
Brought to you by the fine folks at the Department of Redundancy Dept.
People who deface the a publically editable website rank among people who snatch candy from babies, deface public property, destroy historic landmarks and take over channels on IRC.
Strange... I never considered "destroying historic landmarks" and "taking over channels on IRC" to be remotely the same thing.
"And like that
Stay tuned for free wireless coming to the Wicker Park area of Chicago around April 27th.
Also an "outernet" running on this network of webservers resolving the domain names of an artists choosing. Web artists get to be their very own mircosoft.com or ebay.com or whatever. If you have a site you'd like to submit to this outernet just drop me a line.
This is part of the Dept. of Space and Land Reclamation project
Check out deadtech.net and DSLR for more info on this project
Heil Sig! -Rob
...but wouldn't it be easier if you just collected the GPS coordinants of each base station in an online database? Now combine that with a gps equiped handheld...hey maybe someone could start an open wirless project. But then again I'm pobly just dreaming.
Maskirovka
Seattle Wireless uses Wikiwiki, which allows anyone to edit any pages on the site. This allows me to add relevent information to the site or correct spelling or gramatical errors that others may have without hounding a single webmaster. Its the way the entire web should be. However, there is a problem. The maturity level of some internet users would spoil it for the rest of us. SeattleWireless decided that the benefits of having a publically editable and accessable page were far more then the occasional lamer who thinks he's hacking the page or thinks that it was left there on accident. Im sure that same person went around their home and neighboorhood later that day and spray painted their name over everything. People who deface the a publically editable website rank among people who snatch candy from babies, deface public property, destroy historic landmarks and take over channels on IRC.
Well I have been running a 'legitimately private network' wirelessly for 6 years here in Colorado. Both closed and private, and as a wireless ISP. And I see no technical reasons why 'free' local wireless networks cannot co-exist with both commercial and private ones in the same area. (in case you didn't know it there are over 1,000 wireless ISPs across the country).
The only thing that suprises me is that all these new-found 802.11b users - who have become instant darlings of the press - have so little technical knowledge of how wireless networks work, and what it takes to set them up and make them as open, closed, or mixed as wanted. Buying an Airport does not a wireless guru make. Even Apple is a johnny come lately to this.
I just may set up here in Old Colorado City a 'free access' network alongside my wireless ISP network, just as 20 years ago I set up the first free 'Rogers Bar BBS' here so people could chit chat about local public issues - while I was still running the first subscription ISP service (UUCP!) in the same neighborhood. So learn your wireless onions. Being only 'free' or 'commercial' is a false dilemma. (I have so much excess bandwidth that wireless gives me, I can afford to give some away for 'community' purposes)
The ONE great value of wireless is that it bypasses the Evil Telephone Company local empire. THAT makes it worth it whether free-open, commercial ISP, or closed private! On that I think we can all agree.
Dave Hughes
Cursor Cowboy