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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.
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).
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);}
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
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.
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
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!
Two VeriSign ID's for "Microsoft Corporation" available cheap... PCMCIA 802.11 card included.
Try http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-0103.html
sulli
RTFJ.
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.