Wireless Freenets As The Parasitic Grid

Lester67 writes: "Infoworld has a pretty cool article on the "the Parasitic Grid," which is basically people (mainly in large cities) opening up their high-speed access through 802.11b to anyone that wants to use it, and how it may threaten telecom profits. One guy has a pretty interesting use for a Pringles(tm) can too (but only after you've removed your hand)." This article ties together several of the recent stories on free-for-all community networking, and fits in nicely with the recent post on bridging networks with 802.11b.

Comments

Pringles can?

[SpanishInquisition]

What kind of chip do you have in there?

Re:Pringles can?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it be funny if, when the inevitable lawsuit happens, that Pringles is set up to be a co-defendant, just because their can helps to enhance the signal?

Oh, wait, no. That would be really sad.

Re:Pringles can?

[Decimal Dave]

This sounds more like a stringless implementation of the older tin-can communications technology.

Re:Pringles can?

[technoid_]

Whoa, can you image a Beowulf cluster of these?

Re:Pringles can?

[jejones]

It's like they say; the street finds its own use for things.

Re:Pringles can?

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of chip you got in that thing, a Dorito? - Weird Al, It's All About the Pentiums

How can this work?

[Reality Master 101]

I mean, wouldn't they interfere with each other? Would you sit down and reboot in order to DHCP an address? When you walk around, would have to reboot periodically as you went to another station?

I mean, most of the complexity of the cellular system is "handing off" in a relatively seamless way.

I don't think the telecoms have much to worry about.

Re:How can this work?

[echo]

You must run windows. There are OSes where you don't have to reboot in order to get a new IP address.

Re:How can this work?

[epfreed]

If you are useing DHCP, you don't have to reboot windows either.

Re:How can this work?

[Reality Master 101]

Alright, alright, you don't need to reboot, but it's still a pain (and you don't need to reboot Windows either).

Re:How can this work?

[Quietust]

A pain?
Windows 9x? Run winipcfg, select the network adapter, click 'Release', then click 'Renew'.

Re:How can this work?

[Reality Master 101]

Funny, but I don't need to stop talking, enter "winipcfg" on my phone, click release/renew, and continue talking.

Re:How can this work?

[echo]

Seriously? How is it a static IP change requires a reboot but a DHCPed one doesn't. Just proves that Linux is more modular than Windows. ifconfig is used by the dhcp client program to set the ip in Linux.. and it's also used to set the static ip. ifconfig does one job and does it well. Oh well..

Re:How can this work?

[mindstrm]

1) You don't need to reboot to get a new address.
2) This is more about being able to plop down somewhere and use the net, not about driving around in your car. If it were, read up on mobile-IP and such.

Re:How can this work?

[sstammer]

wouldn't they interfere with each other?

802.11 offers 3 channels, so if adjacent access points coordinate which channels they use, then they need not interfere. Access points that are further away will not interfere due to their limited power limiting the propagation of their signals.

Re:How can this work?

[sportal]

More modern OSes have less of a problem releasing and getting DHCP addresses.

Windows 2000 even has a nice feature that it monitors the link connection, when the link drops and is reestablished (even if only briefly) it sends out a DHCP address again. Works great for walking past a bunch of a access points on multiple subnets.

Mac OS X handles roaming between base stations relatively well (sometimes you have to turn Airport on and off).

This feature could probably be implemented in Linux/FreeBSD pretty easily but AFAIK doesn't currently exist. Instead you just tell your dhcp client to get another address. No rebooting.

Re:How can this work?

[smack.addict]

How is it a static IP change requires a reboot but a DHCPed one doesn't.

It doesn't. This is just FUD coming from the Linux crowd.

Re:How can this work?

[RedX]

From a command-line in NT/2000/XP, "ipconfig /renew" renews the IP from a DHCP server with no reboot required. Changing a static IP in NT does require a reboot, but 2000 and XP can handle it without the reboot. Can't speak much about command-line options in 9x as I haven't used it in ages, but I do know that changing a static IP in 9x will require a reboot as well.

Re:How can this work?

[haruharaharu]

It doesn't. This is just FUD coming from the Linux crowd.

In windows 9x, you do need to reboot to change your static IP. WinNT claims the same, but you actually don't need to.

Re:How can this work?

[Jack_of_Hearts]

If you knew what you were talking about at all, you'd realize that you don't need to reboot windows to get a new IP through DHCP.

Re:How can this work?

[norton_I]

Well, first of all, when your lease times out, you will get switched automatically. Of course, any active connections you have will be dropped, but your connectivity will continue. This will hork up SSH connections, but HTTP should be fine.

Assuming you can get information from the lan card when it switches base stations, you should be able to automate the release/renew cycle (on *ix or Win*). Even if it isn't a clean message, you should be able to monitor the MAC of the active base station on a short enough interval you can switch almost seamlessly.

The guys at O'Reilly working on this have an idea that uses a hash of your MAC as your IP address, so you can keep the same address when you move from cell to cell.

Finally, I believe that if you put point-to-point links between adjacent cells, and substantially increse the sophistication of the gateway software, you should be able to handle forwarding established connections when someone moves from cell to cell. Plus, then you could do bandwidth agregation, if you were really clever, and had a relatively dense network.

Of course, that involves a substantial amount of extra hardware, and correspondingly higher costs.

Re:How can this work?

[Anonymous Coward]

You must run Linux. There are OSes where you don't have to reboot in order to get a new IP address.

Re:How can this work?

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, its 13 (or did you just miss the 1 key?). Or is it 11? I think that's just in France. Hmm

Re:How can this work?

[pi_rules]

The Win9x commands are pretty close: ipconfig /renew_all

And, as another poster mentioned you can do it through 'winipcfg' the point-and-click way.

Justin Buist

Re:How can this work?

[Jaysyn]

that's right, winipcfg -> release -> renew -> Done. Win2k you don't have to reboot for either.

Jaysyn

Re:How can this work?

[ivan256]

Funny, your phone doesn't run windows....

Re:How can this work?

[Flower]

You used to have to reboot in NT also but that was resolved in SP3 iirc.

Re:How can this work?

[pyramid termite]

Funny, but I have to stop talking, hang up the phone and dial another number to talk to someone else. Sheesh ...

Re:How can this work?

[Sir Mix A Lot]

A lot of companies are working on support for mobile IP and mobile layer 2. It won't be long until the handoffs are seamless to the IP layer. It will require a mobile IP aware router in a couple of places, but that's not that big of a deal. As for the the 802.11 handoffs, you said that the cellular system handles handoffs (obviously). It shouldn't be that large of an undertaking to apply similar technologies to 802.11. In the end it just comes down to which access point has higher signal strength. You tell your current access point to tell your router to switch the new access point. Listen on both for a short period to collect stray packets, then switch entirley over to the new access point. At least I think this is how Mobile IP works...

Re:How can this work?

[spudnic]

So then does that require the client to select which of those 3 channels their access point is on, or does it search automatically?

Re:How can this work?

[Nobelium]

And why can't you have hand overs in 802.11b? The answer is you can. Some of the networks I know that are deployed all use 10.X.X.X network addresses. You have everyone offering community networks using those addresses. Now sure MAC addresses change, but the default gateway and such would work just fine. Then behind the private 10. address range you'd have your private-public router. DHCP would cause some problems in the hand off, but could be fixed. Use static addresses and I think your fine. Anyways, why move around. Most of these networks are not large areas. They may have point-to-point antennas, but the omni-directional ones wont have a huge range.

Re:How can this work?

[sulli]

you don't have to reboot win 98

Re:How can this work?

[Refuter]

Also, where do they sell access points for less than 100 bux? Please tell me someone.

Re:How can this work?

[Anonymous Coward]

Share the lease file with others providing net access

Re:How can this work?

[Moofie]

Wow. Way to catch the point.

Re:How can this work?

[TheCarp]

Even I know this one...

Under Windows 4.x all (not NT, I know jack about NT...and ME actually, I havn't really used Windows since OSR2) you need to do is run winipcfg.

From there you can release your address and get a new lease. Of course, only with DHCP running.

-Steve

Re:How can this work?

[Martin Blank]

The guys at O'Reilly working on this have an idea that uses a hash of your MAC as your IP address, so you can keep the same address when you move from cell to cell.

I'm still a bit fuzzy on it, but doesn't IPv6 work in a similar way, where the MAC address can be used as part of the IP address? And wouldn't IPv6 be a better protocol to run over such networks anyway? I know the drivers are still not quite mature, but this could be a good test bed. Also, with the recent news on the security of 802.11b, I'd hate to have someone listening in on my e-mail because I either didn't know about the security gaps or was too lazy to do anything about it. What about VPNs of some sort, or is that even possible in this kind of open environment?

Re:How can this work?

[oghmagod]

This thread is getting too long, so let me set the windows DHCP process down:

Windows 9x/NT4 - Must reboot, or force (winipcfg/ipconfig) a renew of the adapter.
Windows 2000 - Senses network states. Disconnecting from the network (often in 802.11) will force a DHCP renew and eventually an autoip should none be avail.

Also, for the record - walking from any 802.11 brodcast domain to another does cause some disruption in service while the DHCP neg. is completing in any version of windows.

Spoon.

Re:How can this work?

[dbCooper0]

In my experience, I can change IP addresses without rebooting in NT or above. The only time a reboot has been necessary is on changing domains, computer names, and certain services, drivers and protocols being added or removed.

In short, Windows NT or above is all us folks in the backwoods have to make a buck off of supporting. Linux is far from the mind of those that never heard of it, and probably coudn't spell it if they had.

Re:How can this work?

[wclark]

802.11(b) offers 11 channels, not 3. However, what you probably mean is that there are only 3 non-overlapping channels. You can use (say) channels 1 and 2, but you'll get less than 11mb/s, doing so. Depending on what you're doing, that may or may not be a problem.

In any event, 3 channels are not enough to guarantee that you'll be able to avoid jamming problems. For that, you'd need 4 channels (look up "Four Color Theorem" on your favorite search engine). You *can* provide seamless non-interfering coverage with only 3 channels (or even 2), but only if you can also control the location of the transmitters. With arbitrary placement of transmitters, there's no way around the 4 channel requirement.

Parasitic?!?

[1alpha7]

Matt Westervelt, one of the originators of what he likes to call a "symbiotic grid" rather than a parasitic one.

There ya go. What I do with the bandwidth on my T-1 is my business. If I choose to give it away, that's my business. There's nothing "parasitic" about it.

1Alpha7

Re:Parasitic?!?

[quartz]

From the article: Sharing a cable modem or a DSL line might annoy some folks [broadband providers], but it's probably legal[...]

Something tells me it won't stay legal for a very long time. Wait till there's enough of those guys to seriously annoy the big providers, and the watch them buy up some more laws...

Re:Parasitic?!?

[Dimensio]

I won't say most -- since I don't have the personal experience -- but I do know that the broadband provider that I use, @Home, does not allow a customer to share their access with other households. The wording is specific enough to cover LAN connections (either wireless or running Cat-5 to your neighbour's house) and dial-up. Thus doing so would be violation of a civil contract. Even if there were no legal penalties, you'd probably find yourself without access once they found out (spiked bandwidth is a symptom of such setups, the tech who installed our modem relayed a story of a guy who sold dial-up access and was caught because of that)

They don't have any specific provisions against NAT within a single household, and I'd raise hell if they started going after it.

Re:Parasitic?!?

[saider]

Wait till there's enough of those guys to seriously annoy the big providers, and the watch them buy up some more laws...


No laws are needed, just another clause in the contract.

Re:Parasitic?!?

[Greyfox]

They don't have to make laws, they just have to make AUPs. For the $40 a month crowd, there are probably already provisions in the AUP about sharing access. Mainly that you're not allowed to do it. Once you get up into the neighborhood of $200 a month for your internet service, those AUP provisions really loosen up. When you get up into the $1000 a month range for your internet access, you can pretty much do anything you want.

Re:Parasitic?!?

[quartz]

Well, yes, but if you set up a wireless connection for your laptop, which is totally within the provisions in your contract, who's to blame if your neighbor happens to point *his* wireless ethernet card at your access point? That's where a law would be needed: to make sure it's *your* fault and to give them grounds to cut off your connection.

Re:Parasitic?!?

[dermotfitz]

well, for 40/1000 the bandwidth I think I get what I pay for. Do you think they can really tell that you are sharing your connection? How can they know? From my high bandwidth usage? Prove it.

Re:Parasitic?!?

[Unknown Bovine Group]

What I do with the bandwidth on my T-1 is my business. If I choose to give it away, that's my business. There's nothing "parasitic" about it.

Parasitic refers to the Wireless clients 'sucking' bandwidth off of you, the T1 owner. Not all parasites are necessarily evil. Only if those clients also run a host somewhere is the relationship 'symbiotic'.

Re:Parasitic?!?

[GlassUser]

Well right now it will probably be YOUR ass going to federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison if they start poking around government gateways and such on your connection. This is America, "guilty until proven innocent." (At least *I* am in america)

Re:Parasitic?!?

[sporktoast]

"Parasitic" is a pretty lame term, unless your primary motive is to hook in more readers for your article.

So, which wireless resources in these areas are these "parasites" sucking dry? Kinda hard to live off the sweet, tasty blood of promises and vaporware.

Weed would probably be a better biological metaphor. Weeds are opportunistic, reproduce handily, and often thrive best in places that are underutilized by "desired" plants (roadsides, fallow fields, vacant lots, transitional areas). In fact, a great many of what folks would consider "weeds" are beneficial plants that can be used as food or medicine, or just plain provide beauty.

Re:Parasitic?!?

[sporktoast]

Dang that slash editor and my inability to correctly cut-and-paste.

"beneficial" above was supposed to point to Edibleweeds.com, a terrific site on Dandelions.

As an aside, the latin name for dandelion, Taraxacum Officinale, means "Official Remedy for Disorders". That's the kind of sentiment I'd associate with voluntary wireless networks!

Re:Parasitic?!?

[Oztun]

I don't think the question is whether parasites are evil. Parasite is a bad choice because people don't tend to think of parasites as invited.

Re:Parasitic?!?

[he-sk]

At least in Germany, it's not even legal to use the DSL service by the Telekom to connect your home lan to the internet, if more than one persone (e.g. your family) will use it.

And even if the behavior from the article were explicitly allowed, I don't think that it will work out that way in the long run. If more and more people start using the free wireless access points, prices will go up for the initial connection to the ISP and most people will close up their access point.

Re:Parasitic?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't need to write laws, they just need to amend their Terms of Service, which, btw, they can probably do w/o telling you...

Re:Parasitic?!?

[t]

A fetus is a parasite. Just ask Ani Difranco. I forget which song.

t.

Re:Parasitic?!?

[wurp]

I think they're referring to the wireless piggybackers as parasites on the DSL or cable provider, not the guy who runs the base station and is thus inviting them to use his bandwidth.

ISPs sell based on expected usage rather than on maximum throughput, and if you do things to put yourself at maximum throughput all the time, they are losing money. And we may say 'tough luck, they shouldn't allow that if they don't want to lose money', but eventually prices will go up to accomodate it and we will pay for it.

Re:Parasitic?!?

[Karn]

This is the way I see it.

If you're doing NAT, there isn't really a way to prove that you do have 100 machines behind your access point.

The only thing I can see happening that will keep people from sharing their connections is putting bandwidth caps on our connections.

I don't know if people will want to share their connection with the world if they pay an extra nickle for every MB past their limit.

Re:Parasitic?!?

[rabidcow]

Cable connections will definitely have a problem with it because you're paying for the *connection*, not for the bandwidth.

DSL, otoh, you're paying for the bandwidht (right?) so what's the problem? Why should the DSL company care *who* uses the bandwidth as long as it's being payed for?

Re:Parasitic?!?

[monkeydo]

Well, if you are doing NAT then you'd need 100 IP addresses, on the other hand if you are doing PAT, (NAT using ports instead of seperate addresses) you'd have a shitload of traffic going to high ports. That's what they look for, not utilization. Saturating the pipe with a couple of big transfers to one machine looks very different than saturating the pipe with 100 people browsing the web.

Re:Parasitic?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

A fetus is a parasite. Just ask Ani Difranco

Hey! Ani is a dyke, what the hell would she know about fetii?

Re:Parasitic?!?

[t]

She may or may not have been, but the fact remains that today she is married to a man.

t.

Re:Parasitic?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides I know with my Linksys ap/router I can make it so only specific MAC addresses will work with it. They can come down on me and say that I didn't take the proper steps to try to prevent others from using my bandwidth.

Re:Parasitic?!?

[drwho]

MAC addresses are sniffable, and trivial reprogrammable.

Parasitic?

[sulli]

What a flamebait headline. Kind of surprising for InfoWorld - usually they try just a little to sound pro-consumer. Maybe Ed Foster was on vacation?

Re:Parasitic?

[Anonymous Coward]

Technically, it isn't the consumer being the parasite, it's the person getting the free bandwidth.

a nice perk

[caseydk]

Imagine if apartment complexes began offering this as a simple perk to residence... Yes, we'll let you pay an additional 10/month to rent this card that will allow your computer to have wireless internet access...

Then you need a few techies to be willing to help set up the system... i know that i would be willing to accept a modest rent decrease in order to help supply some of the basic setup... for the long term, another solution would be required, but it's a nice way to start...

Re:a nice perk

[Luminous]

I recently moved into an apartment building that has never had any broadband access (no one has installed DSL and the cable isn't digital). As I was setting up the DSL service, I realized at a slight extra cost, I could provide wireless access to all the residents.

I'm actually going to present this to my management company and see if this is a perquisite they are willing to offer or if they would mind my going door-to-door and charging a small fee to run an apartment network.

If I were a landlord, I'd be all over this. No cables being pulled through my walls (okay, some wiring may be necessary for quality of service issues) and a selling point only upscale building have.

Re:a nice perk

[Reality Master 101]

If I were a landlord, I'd be all over this.

If I were a landlord, I'd be all over it, too -- making sure everyone understood that I had nothing to do with it. The cost of a network like this is not the hardware, it's the support.

Maybe you want to be constantly going around fixing everyone's network connection, figuring out why it sometimes stops working when the refrigerator goes on, etc, but there is no way in hell I would want to do it. And there's NO WAY I would guarantee it to a renter.

Re:a nice perk

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I still don't see why an apartment complex doesn't just get a T-1 and wire up the building. If you want access they'll activate your port and you can pay a small monthly access charge like $20. They already usually charge extra for things like indoor garage spots, why not high speed net access? In our building for instance there are 96 apartments... even at $10/month it'd easily pay for a couple of T-1's and a class C subnet. Then just run DHCP. No administration needed. Just make sure the line's up and the DHCP server is running. Hell, get someone to volunteer to maintain it for free access or something.

Re:a nice perk

[Delphis]

And for those people who say 'fuck that' and just buy their own wireless card to connect to the network with 'for free', how would the landlord notice? :)

Re:a nice perk

[bartle]

Imagine if apartment complexes began offering this as a simple perk to residence

A friend of mine moved into a complex that offered this service and he immediately signed up. He generally got the worst of all possible worlds; it was a proprietary system brought in by another company, they gave him only one box which he has to keep next to a window to get a connection, the speed is slow, and so on. I believe he eventually gave it up for a cable modem.

In theory, sharing a internet connection across a whole apartment complex sounds like a great idea. In practice though, it never seems to work out very well. The complexes that I've investigated usually offer a pretty lame service aimed more at a casual user with no preconceptions or requirements. If you are interested in real broadband access, don't rent based on whether the complex provides access but rather on whether you can get DSL, cable, etc. through a third party.

Re:a nice perk

[RedX]

How about MAC address restrictions on the wireless bridge/router? Probably still not foolproof, but it would be effective for 99% of the users.

Re:a nice perk

[Luminous]

And for want of the perfect nail, the war was lost.

Of course it is going to be buggy, and *I* as a landlord would be all over it because *I* am confident and comfortable in keeping things fixed. If a particular unit has undue problems, then I cable that apartment directly.

I'd also run an email server so I can keep track of my tenents and spy on them like in that movie. (j/k) ;)

Re:a nice perk

[Eil]

When my sister moved into her new apartment recently, and was being shown around the place she came upon a closet, opened the door, and the landlord told her, "Oh, by the way. Don't mess with anything in this closet. If you do, everyone in the building looses their internet access and yours will be the first door the technician knocks on."

I later informed her that it was probably DSL and she noted that she had no idea that it was included with the apartment. She found out later that the service charge was included in the rent whether you actually used it or not.

Meanwhile, I'm still accessing the net from a 28.8 modem (because the lines won't go any higher) and my sister just bought a new computer. Grrrrrrr...

Re:a nice perk

[Squeeze Truck]

Yes, but then the apartment complex essentially takes on the duties/responsibilities of an ISP.

My company tried to set this sort of thing up in an apartment building in Japan. It turns out that its cheaper and more efficient just to pay an established ISP for service.

Anyone remember the old commercial...

[steevo.com]

Pringles New Fangled Potato Chip.

If they only knew.

i think they need more research...

[htmlboy]

from the article:

"Internet access will be the primary mover for these free networks. Sharing a cable modem or a DSL line might annoy some folks [broadband providers], but it's probably legal," said Phil Belanger, vice president of wireless business development at Wayport Inc. in Austin, Texas, a for-profit provider of 802.11b services at airports and hotels."

If the person who's sharing their connection to their ISP has agreed to an AUP prohibiting redistribution of service, account sharing, or wasteful behavior, I'd think such a system would run into legal issues. Granted, it'd be hard to stop, but I (not being a lawyer) have to think that guy's statement to be blantantly wrong.

chris

Re:i think they need more research...

[jedwards]

What with doubleclick and all the spyware apps, there are already plenty of additional parasitic users of the bandwidth you have paid for.

Re:i think they need more research...

[Lxy]

but I (not being a lawyer) have to think that guy's statement to be blantantly wrong.

Yes, he is wrong. Most AUP's prohibit this, even though there's not much they can do. It's perfectly legal for me to plug in the Linksys router/switch/access point and share the connection with my laptop. So if my neighbor points his Linksys card at me and starts leeching bandwidth, am I violating it? Will my ISP try to stop me? By setting up a wireless access point you're giving everyone around you free bandwidth. Using AirSnort you can get the MAC addresses, reprogram your card and you have instant internet, free of charge. So, what it comes down to is that yes it's against your policy but what can anyone do about it?

Re:i think they need more research...

[Masem]

The same issue came up in the recent article on rolling-your-own DSL. Nearly every major provide prevents residental reselling of the connection, and even if this is a 'free' use, I'm sure that if someone sharing their line was discovered, they'd have their connection pulled.

Mind you, the idea is very cool, and if I were running an ISP with sufficient resources, I'd be making sure that I had a end-of-line tap with a wiretransmitter in a sufficient grid within a city such that one can simply tell people "As long as you are in downtown, you can access the internet from anywhere." I'd even pay (ie, reduce the rates) of customers already in the city to offer such a service from their homes if possible. The average consumer of broadband these days is no where near fullying using their speed, and this would be an easy buck on both sides to make.

Re:i think they need more research...

[bigpat]

I think the point is that no cops are going to come bust down your door for what would amount to a contract violation.

So, it is legal in general to do this... ie not an FCC violation, but it may get you disconnected from your ISP and blacklisted as an Internet .Communist.

Re:i think they need more research...

[Matey-O]

I'm not sure most of the big ISP's would even notice the traffic. @home had a BIG deal about multiple users in a household - sign up, get a second IP address, we'll charge you an add'l $5 (US) a month.

Since the hardware guys started selling cheap firewall/NAT devices, @Home relaxed the multiple use rules. Most likely as it would take more effort to police that it was worth.

Re:i think they need more research...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this guy who runs a simple webserver, FTP server, CounterStrike server, and one or two other small things on his cable connection (regular home use type one), and the cable company either doesn't care, or hasn't caught on to the fact that he's causing bandwidth slowdown in his neighborhood. The CS server alone usually has a full load of 12+ users at any one time. I've seen ping times in that game hit 300+ (sustained) because of all the bandwidth going in and out of the server. So yeah, it's not the nicest server around, and it's not really doing that much, but I'm sure it's running a much bigger load than ten people using the internet over a wireless LAN. It may be illegal, but the telecom/cable companies are most likely not going to catch on to it anytime soon.

Re:i think they need more research...

[dermotfitz]

case in point, the crackdown on code-red spreading windows2k servers. Only when the servers on their network were going nuts did the cable providers do anything about it. (block port 80 big deal)

Re:i think they need more research...

[dachshund]

It's perfectly legal for me to plug in the Linksys router/switch/access point and share the connection with my laptop. So if my neighbor points his Linksys card at me and starts leeching bandwidth, am I violating it?

Don't some AUPs have anti-NAT clauses? This seems like it would make a violation out of the situation you described above (not that it would be enforceable.) My cable-modem provider charges per IP address, and although I haven't looked closely at their fine print lately, it would surprise me if they didn't have some sort of prohibition on "routers" that could interpreted as applicable to NAT boxes.

Re:i think they need more research...

[trcooper]

I don't think it's that simple. If someone were to ask me to download something and burn it to a CD for them, would that be account sharing? So what's the difference between that and someone asking me (my computer) to download something and then forward it to them via a wireless network? If you're running a proxy server or routing gateway, you are handling all the requests from your private network through one machine. You're still using it for personal use, but a personal use is handling requests for friends who don't have a broadband connection.

Sure it may seem like a stretch, and I certainly don't agree with those people who say that the companies who are hurt by it are so large it doesn't matter. But, I don't think this constitutes reselling or redistributing access. It's simply handling requests using your time/bandwidth that you have paid for.

The solution to this will be to pay by the K, but I'm not so sure how they're going to sell us Americans on that idea.

Re:i think they need more research...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't see sharing connections is going to much telecomms profit, UNLESS the telecomms providers are advertising more bandwidth than they can actually provide.

If telecomms companies networks can't provide x bps if all users downloaded simultaneously at x bps, then they shouldn't advertise it, its deceptive.

Telecomms companies should be in the business of selling bandwidth, fullstop. If they sell you 802.11 "at x bps", their cost is the same whether or not YOU use all that bandwidth, or you share it, so one would hope that they're selling it to you at enough to cover their own costs, in which case they wouldn't lose money. In reality though this is usually not the case.

In other words though, the only reason they might lose money from connection-sharing, is if they actually lied about what they're selling you, and this is anyway a practice that should be highly illegal.

I would propose that providers advertise that they advertise some maximum bandwidth for off-peak times, but when the pipe is full, cap everyone's bandwidth so that the available bandwidth is distributed between the remaining people. Thus, if a dozen people are sharing one 802.11 connection, and the ISP is capping that connection to (say) a quarter of the 802.11s max bandwidth, then its going to start getting pretty slow for those 12 people, while a single user on an 802.11 would still have relatively good bandwidth. This practise must be openly advertised, of course.

Re:i think they need more research...

[PhilHibbs]

If someone were to ask me to download something and burn it to a CD for them, would that be account sharing?

Of course not.

But, I don't think this constitutes reselling or redistributing access. It's simply handling requests using your time/bandwidth that you have paid for.

huh? How can redistributing a service not be redistribution of service? And anyway, you haven't paid for it, in the same way as I haven't paid for the entire salad bar at Pizza Palace just because I bought an "all you can eat" meal.

Re:i think they need more research...

[juhaz]

Well that's easy to answer - if you violate the policy you've agreed to, they have every right to cancel the deal - and your service.

Re:i think they need more research...

[trcooper]

huh? How can redistributing a service not be redistribution of service? And anyway, you haven't paid for it, in the same way as I haven't paid for the entire salad bar at Pizza Palace just because I bought an "all you can eat" meal.

You aren't redistributing the service. You may be providing a new service by being a proxy. If you can't create any derivitive services, then anyone who has a home office and a highspeed line is in for trouble.

I have paid for it. My ISP advertises always on, high-speed access. They garuntee a specific rate up and down. This is absolutely nothing like an all you can eat buffet. Bandwidth is limited and controlled, not 'all you can use'. I don't pay for a portion of 640K, I pay for 640K.

Re:i think they need more research...

[PhilHibbs]

If you can't create any derivitive services, then anyone who has a home office and a highspeed line is in for trouble.

What do you mean?

Parasitic Grid.

[tcd004]

Yuk. I sure hope that name doesn't stick.

Condit on the run.

Re:Parasitic Grid.

[Hilary Rosen]

All the good names are taken: ethernet, undernet, abovenet and freenet. Even overnet has a few takers in various countries.

The question is, can your local wireless co-op become your ISP? Is the latency of hopping across consumer-grade access points all the way downtown where the shared internet connection lives going to suck, or suck really badly. I don't think any co-op will last long if it requires people to share their consumer-priced bandwidth in the face of telco and cableco opposition.

Re:Parasitic Grid.

[gorilla]

This seems appropriate. Appologies to Mike Batt.

Undernet, Overnet, Wombling Free,
The Wombles of Wimbledon Common are we.
Making good use of the net that we find,
Nets that the everyday folks leave behind.

(Original here)

Re:Parasitic Grid.

[Hew]

How about lessnet (as in wire- and -is more) ;-)

Re:Parasitic Grid.

[Hilary Rosen]

lessnet.com is taken.

According to dotster.com, the following are available:

lessnet.net
lessnet.org
lessnet.tv ($50/yr)
lessnet.ws
lessnet.cc
lessnet.biz
lessnet.info

less.net is registered by ibusinesses.com, but they don't have any DNS entries for it. I say we start up a co-op and sue them for domain squatting. We can pay for hardware with the money we get from them :-)

Re:Parasitic Grid.

[Anonymous Coward]

How about outernet, othernet, hypernet or fishnet?

Re:Parasitic Grid.

[Glytch]

How about the Wired?

Err, just ignore the wireless part of the tech. It's still a cool name. :)

I can think up a few more uses for a Pingles can

[gwizah]

And Im sure you ladies no what im talking about...


Oh yeaaaahhhhhhh....

Pringles can waveguide?

[44]

Anyone have a schematic or diagram for this?

Re:Pringles can waveguide?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here ya go:

1
2
3
4
5
6

Important Stuff: * Please try to keep posts on topic.
* Try to reply to other people comments instead of starting new threads.
* Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
* Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about.
* Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page)

Re:Pringles can waveguide?

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiot. You need to put the http:// in. Not doing so will result in a big hairy penis up your ass.

Re:Pringles can waveguide?

[Anonymous Coward]

here's something...

http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/448

Re:Pringles can waveguide?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite a Pringles can, but have a look here:
http://users.bigpond.net.au/jhecker/

Re:Pringles can waveguide?

[xof]

http://www.wlan2.dabsol.co.uk/tincan.gif
http://www.saunalahti.fi/~elepal/antenna2.html

and more of these on
http://www.wlan2.dabsol.co.uk/antenna-page.html

(from http://www.wlan2.dabsol.co.uk/page2.html)

:-)

Funny how things work out.

[Pop n' Fresh]

Metricom couldn't keep Ricochet profitable, but neighborhood wireless is taking off. Maybe information really does want to be free.

Who reboots for changing an IP address????

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you sit down and reboot in order to DHCP an address?

What are you talking about? *Even* in Windows you don't have to reboot for changing your IP address, if you use DHCP.

Bad idea

[eyrich]

So what happens when one of the parasites starts uploading child porn? Who do you think the FBI will arrest first?

Re:Bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

My access point (based on webgears aviator) has been up for almost 2 years now. I never had any problems like this, but maybe that's because the upstream is shaped to 16K/s.

I just checked the logs (for this month.)
Down: 3GB
Up: 12MB
(And I live out in the countrysite...)

anti
ps:
still didn't lookup my account...
(anti@webhome.de)

Re:Bad idea

[rkent]

Right. My first inclination when I heard about "Free wireless networks" was, "That'll never work. People won't give service away forever."

But then I got to thinking about Citizens' Band (CB) radio. It was a bit before my time, but my grandfather still had one when I was a child, and it was apparently all the rage in the late 70s. It was basically a huge network of private radios that people used to get help in emergency situations, warn others of speed traps, or just generally chat on the road.

Of course the difference between that and free
internet, is that there's up "uplink" from CB's. You just chat with each other. But I definitely think an "alter-net," if you will, might work; people sharing their wireless bandwidth to send email, share their webcams, whatever, even if the ISPs crack down on sharing an internet uplink.

But anyway, why this is a response to the kiddie pr0n post: the downfall of this free wireless net could be the same as the downfall of CBs. They're still available and the bandwidth is still there, except that now it's full of foul-mouthed truckers cursing all night and all day, making civilized conversation all but impossible. Even on the emergency channel, apparently, it's just people hurling insults. So to the average user, it's objectionable and serves no use.

If the free wireless net started getting up to the same level of conversation, for instance, rampant porn (or free mp3...) trading, it would probably fall by the wayside for legitimate users. Even worse, if it was used primarily for child porn or bootleg video swapping, the bandwidth would be swamped AND the cops would crack down, making it not only objectionable, but downright evil in the eyes of some. Let's hope this project doesn't get ruined the same way.

Re:Bad idea

[garcia]

well it has already been stated that an ISP is not responsible for what its users use it for. So, if you aren't violating your AUP then I am sure that you won't be able to be prosecuted...

They will try, but I doubt they would get very very far.

Re:Bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

the downfall of this free wireless net could be the same as the downfall of CBs. They're still available and the bandwidth is still there, except that now it's full of foul-mouthed truckers cursing all night and all day, making civilized conversation all but impossible. Even on the emergency channel, apparently, it's just people hurling insults.

Having been a trucker and a user of CB radio, the truckers are not the problem. Childish and abusive behaviour comes from kids playing and immature adults who enjoy annoying others within their range.

These "annoyers" are ususally people who are not truckers, but rather individuals who operate out of a base station in their home. Nationwide, cities have regular offenders. These regular offenders will get "nicknamed" by the CB community to identify the source of the disturbance.

Truckers use the CB as a tool. It is useful for situations such as, warning other drivers of an upcoming road hazard and assisting with directions for the area. On the CB you will often hear truckers advocating proper use of CB radio.

Labeling all truckers as foul-mouth offenders on CB radio is akin to labeling all hackers as script-kiddies or crackers.

Re:Bad idea

[sulli]

Forget kiddie porn. The big threat is spam. Bad guy can drive or walk around all day grabbing IPs and sending emails using open SMTPs or spam tools from a little company in Russia we all know about.

Don't think it will happen? I bet, if freenets become more popular, someone builds a customized spamming laptop (802.11, long battery life - old 486 or Pentium subnotebook is fine) for this exclusive purpose and starts selling it on eBay. It wouldn't be difficult at all!

Re:Bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

(And I live out in the countrysite...)

The word is countryside. I'm ot trying to be a dick - based on your email address, I assumed you were not a native English speaker and might want to be corrected.

Re:Bad idea

[rkent]

Labeling all truckers as foul-mouth offenders on CB radio is akin to labeling all hackers as script-kiddies or crackers.

That's a good point, a lot of my information was not directly observed but rather came from people more experienced with CBs, and of course they might have been wrong about the source of the noise.

Re:Bad idea

[juhaz]

Dunno about the pr0n, but if this kind of things start to get more popularity, ISPs just change their user policies so that sharing the connection is not allowed, and drop your line if you do share it... of course city-wide network would still be nice but not nearly as neat as free (well not free, wlan cards and antennas are rather expensive) 'net.

Re:Bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh big deal, the cards are expensive. Wasn't your computer expensive?? You need that to get online don't ya. So stop bitching, it's free man!

to all my AC's languishing in Columbian prisons !

[Anonymous Coward]

Have hope, for soon VA linx will be bankrupt ! your souls shall be set free from the eternal bonds of Michael's censorship. Dont despair, despite the despicable and deadly conditions your living under. There is hope for the future, Until that day, Fight the good Fight and always post under AC !

We Will Prevail !

Future View

[arestivo]

The interesting thing about this type of network access is that eventually everyone will be a part of the wireless network and the Internet as we know it will no longer be necessary.

Think about it: Free, quick and mobile connectivity for everyone!

Re:Future View

[fishnet]

In order for the detachment of a cooperating wireless network from the commercial wireline network you are implying the wireless network must support packet routing from cell to cell. That is, you would have to be willing to pass and route packets from the guy next door to a node closer to it's destination. Seems like the real problem is controlling abuse.

Re:Future View

[palfreman]

I don't think we need worry about abuse. For real abuse (read spam) we'll use a mixture of restricted access - like WEP keys and a "locals only" policy for associating - and for bogeyman abuse (read kiddie pr0n) if it really bothers you home in on the signal coming off their card. Anyway, such people rarely have the technical skill to conceal their activities, and tend to get caught. It isn't anything we need to worry about. I am more worried about getting disassociated from the basestation all the time.

Is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Could this post be... FIRST?

Re:Is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

No but you're the 2.2millionth, you fucking idiot.

Sub-$100 WAP???

[Kevin DeGraaf]

Contributing to its mass appeal are the low-cost solutions available. For less than $100, a volunteer can buy an access point

What? Please tell me where to buy a sub-$100 wireless access point. My credit card is standing by at the ready...

Re:Sub-$100 WAP???

[frknfrk]

I think they mean that is is sub-100 to use an existing computer as a WAP: add one of several sub-100 WiFi cards to an existing PC running Linux (free) and you have a sub-100 WAP (I guess). The cheapest REAL WAP I can find is 185 bucks for the USR access point. Asante, D-Link, and 3-Com are not too far behind (190s), ditto Netgear, Linksys, and on up to Lucent and Cisco. As for myself, I've had my Orinoco setup for about a year now, my wife loves it, my immediate neighbors love it, and I'd like to spread it across my apartment complex but we are not allowed external antennae :) I'll have to give the Pringles can idea a shot...

Re:Sub-$100 WAP???

[baptiste]

OK - so they must have slipped on the number keys, but the Linksys WAP11 can be had for < $200 after rebate! Granted, the Linksys sucked on early firmware versions - I had to powercycle mine often. But with 1.4f, its been a dream.

Re:Sub-$100 WAP???

[Russ Nelson]

Ephraim is confused. He's thinking of 802.11 PC cards, not access points.
-russ

Re:Sub-$100 WAP???

[cavemanf16]

Damnit! So you're the one that stole the domain name I wanted! lol.

Re:Sub-$100 WAP???

[frknfrk]

i'd be more than willing to set you up with an email alias, even possibly a shell account provided you aren't evil :)

yeah, right.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Once you pop, you can't stop!"

I think the opening blurb pointed out a hitch there. Like the telcos are going to let the proletariate erode their profits -- even in the name of erasing the digital divide. I'm sure that we'll soon start seeing some changes in TOS for DSL providers (all three that are left, that is).

I still like Cringley's idea of leasing direct connections from the TELCO and putting wireless access points on the ends. Does anyone have numbers on what a kilometer of fiber and the neccessary modem equiptment costs?

why don't you do all us a favor and..

[GaylordFucker]

secure the 802.11b protocal first before you go any further... thanks...

"might be legal" quote ... doesn't mean you can

[Shivetya]

"Internet access will be the primary mover for these free networks. Sharing a cable modem or a DSL line might annoy some folks [broadband providers], but it's probably legal," said Phil Belanger, vice president of wireless business development at Wayport Inc. in Austin, Texas, a for-profit provider of 802.11b services at airports and hotels.

Now, its true it might be legal to share the cable modem or DSL, doesn't mean the providers have to let you. They could simply change their terms of service. Since these lovely providers seem to be competeing in the wireless market as well I am sure they can come up with inventive ways to slow the spread or stop it.....

Still you have to get people out there to use it, and perhaps the reason it flourishes now is because its too small for the behemoths to notice.

Re:"might be legal" quote ... doesn't mean you can

[Anonymous Coward]

many TOS already have a line that says that only one computer can be hooked up to the line, and some have anti-server clauses also.

You can do it in Winblows

[Augusto]

You don't have to reboot in windows to do this.

Just type in ;
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew

Of course, my WinNT laptop sometimes get confused and I really have to reboot to make it work. But that's not most of the time. Hey, it's Windows after all ! LOL !

Re:You can do it in Winblows

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, all you trolls are experts at renewing your IP leases. If you know what I mean, and I think you do.

Re:You can do it in Winblows

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh, what do you mean? I always post penis birds from my AOL account, and I keep the same IP for weeks under Windows98 without firewall.

Who says you have to walk around..

[BigSlowTarget]

Heck - free highspeed internet access for anyone who buys a card? Why waste it on your laptop - plug in a server or two and start really using that bandwidth

who's responsible for the script kiddies?

[random735]

When some script kiddie gets a wireless connection
in NYC and proxies through some volunteer's ISP
to run amok, who's responsible? The person
providing the access point, of course.

you certainly won't catch me running one of these free access points.

Re:who's responsible for the script kiddies?

[toupsie]

Shhhh!!!!

Re:who's responsible for the script kiddies?

[baptiste]

who's responsible? The person providing the access point, of course

Er, funny I don't recall ISPs being sued successfully for a hacker using their network to attack. If you were alerted and didn't cut their line - OK maybe then, but I doubt you'd be responsible though life would get interesting.

Obviously these articles are light on the details. I've seen descriptions of setups many of these freeneters use and they aren't just plugging an AP into their LAN. They are proxying the access and restricting bandwidth. They are also logging IPs and such to give to the authorities if necessary.

So setting something like this up properly takes time to avoid or at least deter hackers. So I'm curious - though many of the packages out there exist in pieces, is anyone looking at a 'freenet' package that makes setting up and administering a fre network easier? i.e. providing a setup GUI or script to help restrict access to godo guys or at least reduce the chance of some idiot grabbing all your bandwidth.

Just curious - I know I could hack together a system out of existin gpackages - but it might be neat to see a project started that tied it all together.... Kind of aLinux freenet-proxy or something liek that (freenet NOT meaning the real freenet - but parasite net just sounds nasty :) )

Re:who's responsible for the script kiddies?

[Anonymous Coward]

ISPs aren't held responsible because they are big companies. Individuals who run networks like this would surely be labeled "rouge" in the case of a hacker using their network, and consequently the system will work overtime to make sure they get shut down. A nice side benefit will be that the profits of corporate ISPs will be protected.

You read it here first. A few months from now it will happen. These networks are a temporary phenomenon at best. Companies with interests to protect will find a way to shut them down.

Paying for Bandwith not access

[timmy the large]

I think that this will merely speed up a shift away from paying for access and towards paying for bandwith. If alot of places start doing this you won't be able to pay for X dollars for high speed internet access, you will pay $X/Mb. This way ISP's aren't losing money on the deal. People need to remember that eventualy someone will need to pay for the bandwith. Maybe donations to the networks that are providing free bandwith will help offset there costs. ISP charities!!

Re:Paying for Bandwith not access

[baptiste]

I think that this will merely speed up a shift away from paying for access and towards paying for bandwith.

I think that some ISPs will try this no doubt. But the uproar among users will be immense given the sharp rise in big ads on sites. SO more and more users install ad blocking software to block those ads to save bandwidth which in turn kills revenue on sites relying on ad revenue and those sites disappear, and - oh it coudl get ugly.

But I have to wonder if metered bandwidth is going to fly. They tried and failed to do it with local phone service. Same for dialup.

Besides, when we have something liek 95% of the fiber underground sitting dark - at some point the upstream costs HAVE to go down and bandwidth at that level becomes less of an issue. Besides - I'd expect the ultimate result of this - slower throughput for users as the LOCAL backbones of a network load up and they refuse to upgrade their upstream pipe. IN a way - thats the best option. I'd rather see a telco slow down the upstream throughput vs going out of bsiness paying for never ending upstream upgrades OR trying metered service.

Only time will tell. Right now I pay for 384kbps SDSL and its pretty much ensured bandwidth to the telco (via DSLAM ratios of customers to the backend T1) So any bottleneck I'd face won't be my pipe - it'll be their upstream connection. BUt you cna bet I'm gonna use that 384kbps for whatever i please :)

So how does one go about organizing?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just set up an "open" WLAN access point. So how does one go about organising this "parasite" network?

There is a database at http://www.shmoo.com/gawd/ but it doesn't seem to be well frequented. I live in Germany. There are only 3 entries :-(. I know that just about every Technical University in the country has lans, as well as tons of companys that don't have any security at all.

We need:
1) a quasi standard setup
2) a database with a map an geo data for organising everything
3) publicity

what do you think?

Stick it to the man

[loydcc]

Good. That's how the net should have been in the first place. Kind of like Tesla's idea of delivering free electricity through the air to anyone who wanted it. When wireless bandwidth becomes broad enough for all who want it then voice over IP will replace the cellphone. Let the peons pay for AOL, us clever folk will build our own net and only other clever folk will be allowed on it.

Re:Stick it to the man

[Anonymous Coward]

funny thing is... he also invented wireless and the AC induction motor (you are using AC?) as well as the tesla coil (your monitor?) and the crappy florescent light that keeps bugging out over your head (which some have hacked into a wireless network ;) hmmm...

freedom

[bigpat]

let's let them (companies with competing proprietary wireless networks) try to make this sound evil and try to regulate it.

You can't get anymore american than Neighbors communicating with eachother and donating equipment for community use.

If you have the means, then I see this as a civic responsibilty to make this happen.

The telco companies are not going to like this

[ioman1]

Expect a law to be passed soon prohibiting this type of action. I think it is a great idea, but the telco companies will surely not stand for thie type of thing.

Re:The telco companies are not going to like this

[baptiste]

Expect a law to be passed soon prohibiting this type of action.

You're probably right since the braindead politicians don't understand technology. But how would this law be enacted? They can't ban wireless - it would never fly. OK - so they try and write it to say you have to take steps to secure your wireless access to only those on your property - IE SSIDs, WEP, MAC addr vlaidation. OK. SO what if someone does those things but the IDs 'slip' into the wild. How do you pin that on the person? You risk making it very risky to even use 802.11 for your own purpose . Besides - you go into court and say 802.11 can easily be hacked - sorry, I did what I could (makes WEP's problems seem like a good thing :) )

Plus if you are using NAT - how would they know you're doing it and not just downloading lots of family pictures? They can't. Unless they ran around the city sendign requests to their own servers and trying to link the IP address with teh request and the time. But again all this proves is they found an open net and if you have an SSID, well how do they make the case.

For example, all teh freeneters agree to use an SSID of NYC in New York City. Whats a telco to do then? You complied - used an SSID. Are you going to make it illegal for the person leeching? How the heck would you FIND them to even prosecute them? Use a court order to grab the logs from a hoemowner's firewall - yeah good luck.

Trying to legislate this would be more troubl ethan its worth. I'm sure they will try, but the first time something like this was tried in court it would be a defense lawyers field day.

Re:The telco companies are not going to like this

[hrieke]

A law would not be needed - all the telco / ISP would have to do is amend the contract to be prohibitive to this activity.

Then they would add a receiver in their repair trucks / vans and as they cruise the neighborhoods on their daily business they would note the network being broadcasted. A simple check to see if it's theirs and *bang* you're banned.

Re:The telco companies are not going to like this

[alen]

I see the ISP starting to limit the number of computers that can share a link. They would be well within their rights.

And what do you mean by braindead politicians? You mean our government shouldn't interfere when somebidy decides they wantsomething for nothing. Somebody has to pay for the routers and people who run them. Or do you volunteer your services for free to run an ISP?

Re:The telco companies are not going to like this

[baptiste]

they would add a receiver in their repair trucks / vans and as they cruise the neighborhoods on their daily business they would note the network being broadcasted.

But this would in effect ban using 802.11 at home, something I doubt the ISPs are itching to do. And to find out which ISP you are tied to they would HAVE to log into your freenet to do it - its not trivial.

Re:The telco companies are not going to like this

[baptiste]

I see the ISP starting to limit the number of computers that can share a link.

They already do this - one IP/MAC address - but NAT and MAC spoofing renders this limitation pointless. What are they going to do, ban NAT (which is questionable that they could even do it)

somebody decides they want something for nothing.

Something for nothing? The person with the ISP connection is paying for it. The ISP is getting paid for that connection and bandwidth. What they want to do with it is up to them (or at least should be IMHO) I doubt that TOS said "You can only consume X amount of bandwidth, etc" Heres a stickler for you, whats the TOS going to say - onyl family members may use the connection? What about roomate situations then. OK so they the connection can only be used by systems on teh premises - OK, so that means a coffee shop can do it. See how its not so black and white?

Re:The telco companies are not going to like this

[DavidTC]

And, of course, attempting to break into your network to check it, even using a well known local password, would be...a felony.

Which kinda makes your contract violation look like small potatoes, doesn't it?

ENOUGH ALREADY!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, jeezus fucking christ, you can set up your dorm/apartment/block to share wireless fucking internet access. We know. Stop posting it already.

CYIaBCoX SUYA?!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhh, master bateman, so nice to see you again. Shall we get down to business?

Can.

You.

Imagine.

(sounds like a Tom Sellek/AT&T commercial)

A Beowulf cluster of Pringles cans SHOVED UP YOUR ASS?!!!!

thank you.

wasteful?

[twitter]

an AUP prohibiting redistribution of service, account sharing, or wasteful behavior...

What could be more wasteful than letting that connection sit all day doing nothing? Oh I forgot, it would be OK if it were sucking up addverts all day.

No, there is nothing the cable company can do if you are using NAT or masq. They will have to ban wireless, and I doubt they have the nuts to do that anymore than they could force Windoze on their users.

Re:wasteful?

[Maditude]

No, there is nothing the cable company can do if you are using NAT or masq. They will have to ban wireless, and I doubt they have the nuts to do that anymore than they could force Windoze on their users.

And, when more (a number of them already are) broadband ISP's start putting all their vict^h^h^h^h customers behind NAT, then this isn't going to be worth much at all.
I think I'd go back to dialup if my ISP did that, tho.

Re:wasteful?

[haruharaharu]

What could be more wasteful than letting that connection sit all day doing nothing?

What exactly are you wasting? An idle line on the fringe of a network means less load on the core and less cost to the ISP. If you have no need for it during the day, then any usage is wasteful. Likewise, you shouldn't be repeatedly downloading the same ISO all day.

Re:wasteful?

[topham]

It is possible to determine if someone is using NAT in many systems. Linux is one. I believe FreeBSD's NAT system is much more difficult to determin. (All operating systems tend to open unspecified ports in specific sequences, ie: 1025 is used for a request, then 1026, etc. But using NAT Linux uses much higher port numbers in a different pattern. Making possible to detect.

Re:wasteful?

[elflord]

What could be more wasteful than letting that connection sit all day doing nothing?

That's not wasteful at all. How can not using something be wasteful ?

No, there is nothing the cable company can do if you are using NAT or masq.

I don't think they'd care, as long as they don't see a lot of bandwidth absorbed by your connection. If your machine is sucking up all the bandwidth, they might notice something.

Re:wasteful?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that somewhere down the line where a neighborhood is connected to the rest of the Internet, the bandwidth squeezes down to something alot less than the maximum capacity of each household's cable modem. Their whole business plan of providing broadband so relatively cheaply (compared to, say, the equivalent number of T1s) is based on the idea that the majority of their users are going to be idle most of the time. A good chunk of the stuff in AUPs is there for the explicit purpose of having an excuse to cut you off if you come to close to maximizing utilization. It's a stupid excuse, but its the only one that lets them sell it so cheaply, at least untl they upgrade their shit.

At least that's my educated guess on how all this works, I'm still talking out of my ass.

Re:wasteful?

[norton_I]

In 2.4.X, linux defaults to using the same outgoing port that the originating machine used, then tries sequentially from there, rather than using ports in the 60,000 range (as prior kernel series did).

You could still probably detect it, but A) it would be inconclusive, and B) it wouldn't mean anything if it were. I have two computers behind a NAT based firewall, and lots of people use those linksys (or other) "Cable/DSL routers" that do NAT automatically.

Re:wasteful?

[SensiMillia]

True, as it is forbidden to use NAT on the university network I'm on (they don't want 15 students paying for 1), the university tries to detect this.

Solution: just change the range of ports in the Linux kernel, recompile, done

Re:wasteful?

[twitter]

What's wasting is the wire. It's going away every day the sun shines on it, used or not. It would be better to use it. If I can't, why not my neighbor who's walked outside the range of their transmitter? By the same token, I'm better off if my neighbor is doing the same thing when I wonder out of my range.

Re:wasteful?

[twitter]

That's not wasteful at all. How can not using something be wasteful ?

That's easy. Nothing lasts for ever. If you don't ever use it, you wasted your resources to build it or foolishly saved it till it died on it's own. Nothing is more depressing than cleaning out unused things from a dead family friend's house. It makes you wish they had enjoyed the things they owned, or shared them with people who would. That cable behind your house is much easier to share than other possesions. We are all better off when we can have what we want when we want it, than we would be hoarding what we could share.

Me, I'm still working on serving. Sharing of cycles and bandwith will come later with more experience.

Re:wasteful?

[Karn]

Maybe i'm not reading your post correctly, but I think what you're saying is if ISP's already do NAT then customers can't do it.

People can still run NAT if their ISP does. Packets will get translated twice, but it doesn't matter.

I don't see any way ISP's can prevent users from sharing access from their machines. They will probably have to go to metered accesss or something.

Errors in the article

[Gaewyn L Knight]

Several people on the Bay Area Wireless User Group mailing list have pointed out a large amount of factual errors in this article.
Such things as that the pringles cans are ANTENNAS not REPEATERS and that you can not get ANY wireless fully 802.11b access points for under about 160$ new (even on ebay).

For some more on this check out the mailinglist archive at
http://lists.bawug.org/pipermail/wireless/2001-A ug ust/thread.html under the subjects "Did you know you were a parasitic grid?","Infoworld writer responds
" and "Unprofessional conduct on the part of Ephraim Schwartz". Definately shows how little this writer actually knows...

Re:Errors in the article

[frknfrk]

Not true, buy a wireless card for around $80-$90 bucks (several models to choose from), plug it in to your existing old 486 laptop (free) running linux (free) and you've got a sub-100 access point. granted, it isn't quite 'NEW' but it sure works (and nicely, as a firewall/access point/print server).

Re:Errors in the article

[Gaewyn L Knight]

Yes but you can not use this as a bridge. It can only be used in either "AdHoc" or IBSS mode. It can not be used as a true access point.
Once someone learns the correct bit to flip in the pcmcia cards we should be able to do just as such but for remote access by clients you just can't run in IBSS

Re:Errors in the article

[frknfrk]

try checking out this article linked to from bawug. I do this at home already (FreeBSD, Lucent Orinoco Silver card.

Re:Errors in the article

[Anonymous Coward]

you can not get ANY wireless fully 802.11b access points for under about 160$ new (even on ebay).

I can not get to the mailing list archive (slashdotted?)
What about the SOHOware Netblaster NCP600? SOHOware claims its 802.11b compatible and only $149 from them directly. It's at Bestbuy for $159.99.
Sorry about the anonymous, I'm at work

Re:Errors in the article

[Gaewyn L Knight]

Unfortunately, from the documentation, it appears only to handle ad-hoc and IBSS mode... if computers A and B are connected to it they can not see each other unless they are close enough to do it anyways. A little playing with routes on a linux box could fix this but the NCP600 is a little short of what you would want to allow public access...

Re:Errors in the article

[AnotherBlackHat]

Funny, I didn't see the word "repeater" mentioned anywhere in the article, or any actual dollar amounts. A less trusting person than myself might assume that you didn't read the article.

Re:Errors in the article

[Gaewyn L Knight]

Dollar amount reference is in:

"Contributing to its mass appeal are the low-cost solutions available. For less than $100, a volunteer can buy an access point, and Kennedy says he uses a Pringles potato chip can in his coffee shop to enhance network performance. Performance degrades the farther away from an access point a user is located."

As to thre repeater... the article seems to have been revised in that respect since the first post. However the other errors do still exist...

Re:Errors in the article

[zerblat]

Normally, no. But there is actually a Linux driver for Prism2 based cards that supports BSS mode, ie it lets your linux box + Prism2 card act as an access point.

U R A dufus

[Anonymous Coward]

that only works for people reading some version of "oldest first".

Re:U R A dufus

[Anonymous Coward]

If people point out that if someone is viewing newest first it is on the bottom, then say that by
"top" you mean "best".

read my explanation dammit

Re:U R A dufus

[Anonymous Coward]

Crap. You'll probably insist I read the article next. Oh well, no one ever said trolls had to be coherent.

Hey Rob! For the formatting options, could you add "goatse enhanced" in teh 2.21 patch (which we know you're frantically working on, trying to plug all the holes in 2.2)? thx.

Original connection?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is the original connection done? The center of the wireless? Somewhere the wireless needs to be connected to the rest of the internet. If it's cable or DSL, all the provider needs to do is limit bandwidth. Say to several GB's a month. Something a normal person would never approach in the course of normal browsing. The wireless people will be way way over the limit if it's used by many frequently.
Not to be a troll or anything, but I don't think the providers are in much danger. Someone still needs to use them.

psot

[Anonymous Coward]

frist

Interesting, but it will change

[prisoner]

the way that ISP's charge if the movement ever gets any real momentum going. They'll switch to a price per meg instead of all you can eat. Either that or they will change the TOS to forbid it. That being the case, only business class lines will allow this and I don't see too many business setting up free wireless access points, either.

Liability

[Bronz]

I have one major concern on these wireless freenets... what happens when the freak who lives in a van down by the river pulls up outside of my pad, taps into my wireless access point, and starts threatening the big Dubbaya, or maybe arranges for some kiddie porn or something. Isn't there a fear of being the last identifiable link in the chain, and assuming liability for letting people use your connection?

Re:Liability

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you set up you gateway to do some authentication, and require people to sign up before they can have access. DUH.

Re:Liability

[vs]

Theres no fear. Just certainty.

Re:Liability

[Jaysyn]

You can do the same thing at most major airports in the U.S. It hasn't become a big problem, yet.

Jaysyn

Co-op ISP?

[Gregoyle]

I've been thinking about this for a while, and this is a good time to bring it up.

I've been reading articles about the incredibly low cost of fiber lines relative to T*'s; with common prices for a 1.5 Mb/s T1 being about $850/month and a 12Mb/s fiber line being approximately $1500/month. Also, with the fiber line you can get bandwidth upgrades without any physical modifications; you just call the provider, they flip a switch, and boom, more bandwidth.

Why not create a non-profit or not-for-profit a la Spindl3top that goes out, leases a fiber line, and then provides instructions to roll your own DSL. People could also use 802.11b with directional and omnidirectional antennae. You could, say, provide the wireless access for free (maybe with a bandwidth cap) and charge a small fee for the DSL access or no-bandwidth-cap wireless access. People would be able to split a mega-fat pipe at cost. Hmm, maybe if I run into some money I'll... ::goes to find some money::

Re:Co-op ISP?

[twitter]

That cost is not so bad for a high density area. If you split it out between 100 people over ethernet, you would do very well. I'd like to see neighborhood nets like this grow up. Heck, 100 people is a reasonable sized net on it's own.

Lariat

[Gregoyle]

I meant to include this link.

Presenting the All You Can Eat Supermarket!

[Hobbex]

Having seen the wonderful success that the "all you can eat" model has had in buffé resturaunts, I started the All You Can Eat Supermarket (tm). The model is simple, people come in to the store every day, and for a low price, they can take as much food as they wish to eat that day.

Of course, on entering, you have to sign the "Terms of Shopping" agreements, that by which you promise not to:
- Take food and then decide not to eat it.
- Share food with others.
- Save your food for another day.
- Eat more than three meals a day.
- Puke after ingesting the food.

If somebody signs these agreements, then they should stick to them, shouldn't they? If they aren't, then they are STEALING from me. If they don't like the terms, they don't have to shop at the All You Can Eat Supermarket (R) at all.

Well, it turns out that there is actually a large population (an you believe it!) of lowlife scum, who come to the All You Can Eat Supermarkey (TM), and then go home and feed their entire families with the food, or refrigerate leftovers and eat them for lunch the next day! If that is allowed to continue, then I will loose business, and people will loose their jobs!

Therefore, I am on my way to Washington to lobby for the passing of strict laws that allow monitoring of all food consumption of all people, so that this wholesale stealing of food cannot be done. So maybe that might hurt peoples privacy, integrity, and freedom - but how will business survive without it?

Re:Presenting the All You Can Eat Supermarket!

[Anonymous Coward]

But how are you going to apply this model to wireless communications? Impose limits on the used bandwidth?

Re:Presenting the All You Can Eat Supermarket!

[jea6]

I only need empty (i think) Pringles cans. Thanks.

Re:Presenting the All You Can Eat Supermarket!

[poot_rootbeer]

Help me out here, Hobbex. I can't figure out whether you're pro-supermarket or anti-supermarket.

I also can't figure out how morons don't know the difference between "lose" and "loose".

Re:Presenting the All You Can Eat Supermarket!

[CrackElf]

This is not a mom and pop grocery store. These is the telocos and time warrner. Do not try to tell me that they are tight on making ends meet. Bummer for all of the dsl providers that dropped out. But the real reason for the failure is that the telecos were stealing from them (overcharging for the last mile, and putting roadblocks in to connecting to the customer etc.)

Re:Presenting the All You Can Eat Supermarket!

[Hobbex]

Help me out here, Hobbex. I can't figure out whether you're pro-supermarket or anti-supermarket.

That you even need to ask indicates a lot about you...

I also can't figure out how morons don't know the difference between "lose" and "loose".
... and this confirms it.

Actually, we do it on purpose so that we can find more people for our "shallow fucks who I shall ignore in the future" lists.

Re:Presenting the All You Can Eat Supermarket!

[Anonymous Coward]

an idiot and an asshole. great combo.

Re:Presenting the All You Can Eat Supermarket!

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll find some prime candidates on the freenet mailing lists.

Re:Presenting the All You Can Eat Supermarket!

[fleeb_fantastique]

*laughing*

You will 'loose' business and people will 'loose' their jobs.

I love a good, loose job. But I only need to ask my significant other to help me out with that.

And if you've created an All You Can Eat Supermarket, it sounds like you've already created a loose business. If it's too loose, though, it might run afowl of the law.

I've heard of people loosing their accounts, which strikes me as a severe security violation. And I honestly feel more people should loose their mind.. get rid of those old, outdated ideas, and explore something new.

I remember loosing a soccer game. It was amazing to see all those people in the stands tripping over themselves to get a score. Very amusing.

Meanwhile, I've been having trouble with the cap on this bottle. I wish I could just lose the cap.

I don't know about you folks...

[mystery_bowler]

but I'm not sharing my connection with anyone until I can be almost 100% sure those who are using the connection aren't just using it for warez, mp3s and porn.

Re:I don't know about you folks...

[frknfrk]

Just have a notice stating that all connections may be monitored for content, and if people don't like that they don't have to use your network. And when you find them using kiddie porn you blacklist their MAC address.

Re:I don't know about you folks...

[Ichabod]

but I'm not sharing my connection with anyone until I can be almost 100% sure those who are using the connection aren't just using it for warez, mp3s and porn.

So is almost 100% like 99%? ;)

Also, if you aren't using broadband for mp3s/warez/pr0n, what the hell are you using it for? I don't need broadband to buy from pricewatch. ;)

Re:I don't know about you folks...

[anichan]

Huh? There's more to the Internet than warez, free music, and pr0n? Where?

Re:I don't know about you folks...

[Anonymous Coward]

IANAL but IMO you're better off never mentioning the possibility that someone might do this. You might for instance log yourself publicly saying "whatsa Pr0n?" because by installing yourself as local connection monitor... someone might one day take you up on the offer and make it an actual requirement.
FWIW the Seattle group encourages people to use ssl or a vpn, a perfectly obvious "good thing(tm)" when on wireless anyway. So... the "hall monitor" job might by pretty non trivial. (Although for some reason I'm not on my anonymizer account right now... hmmm...)

Re:I don't know about you folks...

[praedor]

With *nix, you can't just block their MAC. I can change my MAC with a few keystrokes. It really is trivial. I think you'd be better off if you could cut their connection upon detection of undesireable traffic, though how would one do this? Also, wouldn't you, the connection owner be potentially held liable? The way it seems to work right now, SUSPICION or mere complaint of traffic in warez/copyrighted software could get you cut out by your ISP.

Interesting problem, though. Someone downloads kiddie porn using your connection, someone tracks this download to your IP but there is no sign on any of your hardware of this crap because it is actually on some perv's laptop. You STILL get to enjoy having your system confiscated and picked apart while law enforcement tries (and fails) to find the offending crap on your disks.

I suppose you would have to setup a (pain in the ass) proxy through which the freebee users would have to go through.

Grass-roots Networking (was Parasitic Grid.)

[sstammer]

Bob Lucky of Telcordia/FCC has called it Grass-roots Networking. That's a more appealing name.

consume.net

[labratuk]

This kinda thing has already been going on in the London (UK) area for a couple of years. It's not exactly the same, but the principle is very similar.

It's here, and speaking of which I wonder how its getting on: I havent had a look for a couple of months.

Re:consume.net

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not legal in the UK...

Tragedy of the commons

[Gnaythan1]

This could be a wonderful thing. I can see it working as long as it stays in small isolated areas full of smart techie people who don't mind sharing. But what happens when some sharklike business major realizes he can save a few bucks by routing into the middle of the free network, slowing everybody down to a crawl? For that matter what's to stop a telecom setting up a deliberate bandhog on all the free systems so that people will still want to pay for their (relatively) quicker service? I'm not as technically inclined as I'd like to be, so please answer as if you're explaining this to your grandfather.

Re:Tragedy of the commons

[Cirvam]

its easy to fix. you either null route the ip that they are using or you just block their mac address. If they are clever enough to bypass that setup an authencation scheme or rate limit their ip.

"several"...

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

This article ties together several of the recent stories ...

Yes, indeed. several stories now. When does reduntant become a bad thing?

Re:I can think up a few more uses for a Pingles ca

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL! Nice work. ;-)

foo

[Anonymous Coward]

bar

A GREAT perk

[daveym]

Hey where do you live? Sign me up!

Seriously, for a large apartment complex, this would be a really great setup for the building, even if you did have to hire someone to run/maintain everything full time. I think it would be really inexpensive for a large building (say, 200 units)......

Re:A GREAT perk

[Anonymous Coward]

45000 / 200 units, $20/month per apartment for staff and no other overhead,.

Re:A GREAT perk

[attobyte]

1,544,000 / 200 users = 7,720.

Not a connection I want

Re:A GREAT perk

[theancient1]

Back in the modem days, I remember my ISP used to maintain an 11 to 1 modem to user ratio, which was the level required to provide "no-busy" service. Further, they only needed enough bandwidth to support a fraction of that, since most of the "active" connections would be sitting idle. Assuming 9% of those 200 people are active at peak times, and further assuming that half of those connections are idle (on average), that gives you a download rate of 172k, which is pretty decent. I'm not sure how much those ratios have changed with today's always-on connections, but you're unlikely to have all 200 of those users dowloading at full throttle at the same time.

What if you just skipped the Internet?

[Anonymous Coward]

And built a wireless network. You'd still have to get over the ocean, true...but, even a nationwide or regional wireless net could be very useful.

Control freaks' worst nightmare, though.

Washington Square Park/NYCWIRELESS.NET

[toupsie]

Just last night I took my TiPB (Apple Titanium Powerbook) to Washington Square Park (NYU Campus) and hooked into the NYCWireless free 802.11b network (link) at the northeast end of the park using my AirPort card. This was the first time I tried out one of these "Parasitic Grids". I was quite impressed. Sitting out on the grass (ignoring the guys selling grass), I was surfing Slashdot, downloading updates to Fink and chattin' with my friends on IRC. I was quite impressed with the speed of my connection (about 36kps) and my ability to roam from spot to spot in the grass in order to hear the guy playing violin better. Being able to take my computer into the great outdoors, tuning into a free wireless network and getting work/fun done to me has to be one of the best advancements in computers yet. Now the computer does not dictate the environment it works in, I do.

On a side note, any coffee shop that wants to kick Starbuck's ass ought to buy a cheap DSL line/Cable modem and hang a 802.11b base station and give away free bandwidth for the cost of a $4.95 mocha carmel frappa latte skim half-caf double-decaf cappachino.

Re:Washington Square Park/NYCWIRELESS.NET

[fm6]

Only 36K? I suppose that's reasonable for a free service. Indeed, if that were available where I live, and I thought it was likely to be a permanent service, I'd order my 802.11 card right now -- and ask the operators if they are accepting donations.

But it'll never compete with DSL. And if you're getting that little bandwidth out of an 11 megabit connection, the system must be close to saturation -- and being totally unusable.

Re:Washington Square Park/NYCWIRELESS.NET

[cybrthng]

there is no system, it is a public network. 36k isn't bad for sitting at a park reading slashdot.

can't cary your dsl to park. if you want global 802.11 11mbit then your going to have to pay for it.. otherwise shuddup and thank them for setting up free access.

Re:Washington Square Park/NYCWIRELESS.NET

[eggboard]

Can't be 36K - there's no support in the protocol for that. It's possible that you were hanging off a node that had a "56K" modem connecting it to the Net, or something like that. The protocol supports 1, 2, 5.5, and 11 Mbps (raw, not throughput), but you're, of course, relying on the broadband (or not) connection.

Re:Washington Square Park/NYCWIRELESS.NET

[sportal]

Ok, so this must have been a typo. It must have been a 36kbytes/sec download not a 36kbits/sec download.

I have used the Washington Square Park connection many times, and depending on the site I can get up to a 400kbytes/sec download. Better than most DSL and cable modems.

Node Owner of NYCwireless Node #1 www.nycwireless.net

Re:Washington Square Park/NYCWIRELESS.NET

[Anonymous Coward]

You got it, it was a typo. Thanks for starting the nodes! We need to get one started in SoHo near Cafe Tina. Guess I will have to convince them that it would be a good business move. :)

Re:Washington Square Park/NYCWIRELESS.NET

[stripes]

And if you're getting that little bandwidth out of an 11 megabit connection, the system must be close to saturation

It may have been, but there are other possibilities:

• The transmitter signal was marginal, that cuts bandwidth a lot
• The transmitter signal was fine, but the receiver wasn't sensitive to pick up the laptop's signal so well
• The base station to laptop signal was great, but that base station had no wireline, only another wireless connection, and it wasn't so hot just then

Plus all the other reasons an IP connection may suck one day, and not another.

Re:Washington Square Park/NYCWIRELESS.NET

[Anonymous Coward]

On a side note, any coffee shop that wants to kick Starbuck's ass ought to buy a cheap DSL line/Cable modem and hang a 802.11b base station and give away free bandwidth for the cost of a $4.95 mocha carmel frappa latte skim half-caf double-decaf cappachino.

...with a twist of lemon.

Re:Washington Square Park/NYCWIRELESS.NET

[c_g_hills]

I am guessing he didnt mean the link speed, but the actual throughput. The connection could have been saturated by downloads or other users at the time.

Use Service Packs

[jekk]

And NT doesn't require a reboot either *if* you get a recent service pack. I've been doing it that way for a year.

Re:Use Service Packs

[geomcbay]

Actually, in my experience (YMMV) even early versions of WinNT 4.0 didn't need a reboot when you changed the static IP. Win NT *thought* it needed to reboot, and it would inform you thus, but if you chose not to reboot when prompted the changes still took effect and the new IP was usable. Just a bit of stupidity in the configuration management UI.

WAPs in Richmond, VA?

[thesolo]

If anyone wants to set up a few in Richmond, email me, as I will be doing this within the next two or three weeks!

Re:WAPs in Richmond, VA?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm also working on something similar in Roanoke, Virginia.....
I'd at least like to get it going downtown.....

Re:WAPs in Richmond, VA?

[WirelessFreak]

Might want to check out Frontier Broadband. We're offering fixed wireless access in Richmond utilizing FHSS gear as DSSS gear is too prone to interference for densely populated areas. We've been considering placing public access points around town but are open to working with ya, if you'd like.

Drop me an email at the address above sometime.

Later! :-)

bla

[Anonymous Coward]

bla

Win95 IP command is winipcfg

[Anonymous Coward]

Run it Start:Run:winipcfg hit release, hit renew (or all if you have multiples)

I pitched that ages ago...

[Greyfox]

I pitched that idea a while back while I was living in an apartment complex. You could run a T1 in and provide reasonably fast access for a nominal extra monthly fee. In an apartment complex, it would be feasible to wire the whole place up, and you'd think a landlord would dig the idea of appealing to the (extremely well paid) IS/IT crowd. They didn't go for it though. No vision.

Re:I pitched that ages ago...

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't go for it though. No vision.

Spoken like someone who has never had to provide support. The landlord has EXACTLY the right vision -- they don't want to have to support this insanity. It makes no economic sense, unless they could find a company that would come in and do it professionally and provide support.

This is why the landlord owns apartment buildings and you rent in his apartment building.

Who reboots for changing an IP address????

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you sit down and reboot in order to DHCP an address?

What are you talking about? *Even* in Linux you don't have to reboot for changing your IP address, if you use DHCP.

Microwaves are for cooking

[aozilla]

I think now we know what's really responsible for global warming.

Nice metaphor

[jekk]

I like your analogy. It's both rich and accurate.

On the other hand, I have to point out that the OBVIOUS solution is to start charging by bandwidth. While I'd probably pay LESS that way, I still wouldn't want it... it would force me to be worrying all the time "am I downloading something here that's too big? Will I be billed for this?". I'd rather pay a little extra for the convenience of the flat fee.

But as you point out, this decouples the fees from the actual costs, which makes the economics somewhat unbalanced, and the only way to balance them is to introduce arbitrary restrictions.

Re:Nice metaphor

[ethereal]

How about offering tiers of flat fees for different bandwidth caps, and allow the user to specify a point at which their connection should be cut off rather than risk further charges? That way you can still pay a flat fee most of the time, but retain some flexibility.

You could even specify it per day or per hour of the day, so that "parasitic" users don't run up your bills so high that you can't surf the 'net for the second half of the month.

Re:Nice metaphor

[Hobbex]

On the other hand, I have to point out that the OBVIOUS solution is to start charging by bandwidth.

Yes, that is what I am arguing for. No, I'm not happy about it, since I probably belong to the group of people who are using more than they pay for from the broadband account. But there is no sane option.

I think most people get turned off by metered services because of companies have been using them as an excuse for exorbitant prices in the past - but it doesn't have to be that way. It does mean that the end of these sort of wireless connection sharing schemes, as well as all the filesharing networks, but that is what micropayments are for (no I don't advocate micropayments on a user layer, but on an infrasturcture layer, like Mojonation are trying to do).

it would force me to be worrying all the time "am I downloading something here that's too big? Will I be billed for this?"

By that same logic, shouldn't you be worrying about what it costed you every time you eat a little food as it is? We are adults, we are supposed to be able to budget ourselves, and supposed to be able to handle costs, even when they are incremental.
I'd rather pay a little extra for the convenience of the flat fee.

Though you complimented my analogy, you really didn't understand it. Maybe I would prefer the All You Can Eat Supermarket model, even if it meant a little inconvenience, and even if it was actually more expensive for me (just like you with the ISP). Maybe I would even be a good citizen and respect the TOS. Maybe there are many people like me. Does that mean that the All You Can Eat Supermarket works? NO, because there would still be enough people who were going to abuse that it would be driven out of business - and trying to actually enforce the TOS would mean a loss of freedom for everybody - even those who don't even shop at the All You Can Eat Supermarket. Society cannot protect businesses that try to base their income on unenforcable contracts at the cost of freedom to everybody - even if the business seems like a good idea to both customer and seller alike. That goes for food stores, ISPs, and (though we won't discuss that today) copyright holders.

Re:Nice metaphor

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, I recently moved to an apartment with a gas stove. Got my first bill last month, and it was quite reasonable. I'm certainly not worried about my gas bill every time I use the stove. The point is simply that as bandwidth costs go down, maybe a per-bit price becomes more acceptable.

Re:Nice metaphor

[rabidcow]

The trouble is, no one would offer that. Why cut them off (and then people call in complaining about the service not working, getting all irate, etc.) when you can just keep the bits flowing and charge them more?

Re:Nice metaphor

[crucini]

I agree with most of what you're saying. Two points, though:

We're heading towards paying by transfer not by bandwidth. Paying by bandwidth means paying for KB/s channel capacity. Paying for transfer means paying for GB moved this month. There's also the possiblility of paying for 95 percentile bandwidth usage - the highest KB/s you achieved in the month after discarding the 5% highest time windows. This seems to be quite popular with colocation providers.

I think in practive we'll have "all you can eat*" for casual users, where "*" means "up to 3G per month." Most people won't know or care about the cap. Those who do will pay for transfer past the cap. Much healthier than all the crappy things they're doing now to reduce usage.

If ISP's are making money on transfer, they have an incentive to upgrade their network. Also, they'll encourage grassroots networking rather than fight it.

Re:Nice metaphor

[stripes]

There's also the possiblility of paying for 95 percentile bandwidth usage - the highest KB/s you achieved in the month after discarding the 5% highest time windows. This seems to be quite popular with colocation providers.

Actually UUNET for one has offered that since at least 1992 on at least T1 service, and they have had resale terms on lines (T1 wholesale) for roughly that long too.

The questions is whether consumers move towards wanting to pay that way, because providers already want to charge that way :-)

fool

[Anonymous Coward]

baro

The small print

[KarmaBlackballed]

in future broadband vendor's contracts will surely include "access is not to be shared beyond home of subscriber" or something like that if it is not like that already.

I think my cable company already has a clause like that so neigbors don't get together with one HBO subscription.

Somebody mod this up!

[jekk]

Somebody please mod this one up, before the "parasitic" term sticks!

Re:Somebody mod this up!

[c_g_hills]

Parasitic is not meant to be a derogatory term, its a technical term describing the nature of the network. Ie, the users (parasites) leech (feed) off the host. If they were to serve up useful content to the network, then it would be a symbiontic relationship.

Spoil sports

[MeNeXT]

All this sounds like fun.

Unfortunatly we have idiots in this world such as spammers. I could just see someone with a mail server connecting to one of these and starting to SPAM. The trouble that this would cause for the individual providing the network is unimaginable.

CommieNet (was Grass-roots Networking)

[Anonymous Coward]

... seems more appropriate. Wonder what all these wireless people are going to do when the high speed internet access providers start going belly up because they can't make a profit? Oh wait... that already started happening.

#2222222

[Anonymous Coward]

First post #2222222.

What was this story about anyway.

Am I missing something?

[schporto]

OK we complain if someone has open ports on their servers allowing others to log into their servers and send spam endlessly, start DOS attacks etc. And here we're lauding people who want to comepletely open their networks? Gee if I was a spammer I'd be loving this. Just walk along and keep poping into different networks and send my bs. Nice.

-cpd

eat my shorts excite@home!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I hereby patent the phrase "eat my shorts, @home" because I'm now providing wirelss net access to 5 people who otherwise could not afford it. God bless 802.11b, and God bless DHCP, and God bless /.

Amen

Yes you can do that but then ...

[Augusto]

What's going to happen is that they might come up with a horrible solution that maybe requires you to run some authentication client on your PC, and it'll probably be windows only ! Yuck.

I hope they don't do that , but they might.

Re:Yes you can do that but then ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe they'll make you run some horrible authentication client and it'll be windows only. So it won't know squat about your *nix NAT box.

Sounds like the best of all worlds to me -- the windows using masses are kept on a short leash and the (assumadly) clueful users get free run. Yeah, baby!

Re:Yes you can do that but then ...

[JHromadka]

What's going to happen is that they might come up with a horrible solution that maybe requires you to run some authentication client on your PC, and it'll probably be windows only ! Yuck. They have it. It's called PPPoE (PPP over Ethernet). My Linksys router logs on for me so I can share my connection among my Mac and PCs.

Re:Yes you can do that but then ...

[Augusto]

Yes I have a linksys, so they can work around that. I'm thinking of introducing yet other type of client software to cripple routers and keeping track of the numbers of PC using the network.

But again, hopefully I'm being paranoid and this won't happen. But I wouldn't be surprised.

Re:Yes you can do that but then ...

[t]

I think you meant to put "assumedly", but somehow assuMADly seems much more appropriate.

t.

bar

[Anonymous Coward]

foo

Or Columbus, Ohio?

[RedX]

Guess I'll finally give up my search for an existing project in Columbus and send a shout out for others in the area (specifically the Dublin/Worthington area) that might be looking to get one of these going. Surely the OSU area has something in place, connecting the suburbs will be another story.

Re:Or Columbus, Ohio?

[aserra]

There are some people thinking about doing this in Columbus. OSU has nothing in place (that I know of). I think it could be time to at least map the city and find out what is out there so far....

Re:Or Columbus, Ohio?

[RedX]

By "OSU" I was meaning the campus area, not something officially endorsed by the university. Surely someone in one of the residence halls is sending some 802.11b to one of their buddies in off-campus housing, or a few of the houses pitched in for a single RR connection. Anything to be able to afford a few more beers each month.

BTW, if you could point me to a way to contact those folks, I'd certainly offer help in getting something started.

Re:Or Columbus, Ohio?

[iamsure]

Feel free to contact me. There are motions to make it happen already.

Re:Or Columbus, Ohio?

[WirelessFreak]

The dslreports wireless forum has several WISP directories which might be able to help you out. Two of them are of a national level.

HTH! :-)

#2222222

[Anonymous Coward]

This is post #2222222.

What was this story about?

Invaded

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot has been invaded by Martians!
o o
/ \
| |
\ ______/
/ \
| [@][@] |
| ^^ |
| VVVVVV |
\_______/
| |
___/ \____
/ \
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| |_____| |
VVV _____ VVV
/ \
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
/ | \
|___|___|

2222222 yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

test seeing if we are at 2222222 yet

i say 22222

[n3r0.m4dski11z]

i say have i got 222222 yet?

getting closer to 2222222

[Anonymous Coward]

almost at 2222222! Post somemore!

bobo

[Anonymous Coward]

bobo

asdf

[Anonymous Coward]

asdf

#2222222

[Anonymous Coward]

7 2's were are you?

What was this story about?

22222 coming up

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep posting people. Someone will get 222222 that way!

2222222 is there a chance?

[cr@ckwhore]

did I win? filter lameness filter

#2222222

[Anonymous Coward]

It is mine folks stop posting.

What was this story about?

This is called a Co-Op.

[Anonymous Coward]

The trick is knowing the other members of the community. If you can't trust the other members not to steal from you, then the system falls apart.

By actually knowing the people you do business with, you create a trust relationship and it's much less likely that you will be stolen from. On the other hand, your costs will be higher because knowing you customers is expensive and doesn't scale well.

Your response seems to imply that you think we should switch over to a different system. One where you pay for the amount of access you take. When the phone company does this, they found that the majority of the cost for metered service was in the metering. It was more effective to give people as much as they could take, without trying to measure it.

Re:This is called a Co-Op.

[visualight]

ROLF!!!

Re:This is called a Co-Op.

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU THE MAN NOW DOG!

Congrats on nabbing the two millionth, two hundred and twenty-second thousandth, two hundred and twenty-second post!

Fuck you LambdaMOO!

Re:This is called a Co-Op.

[praedor]

This is basic game theory. It wouldn't work as a trusted service because there IS an incentive for cheating. Cheaters gain while those who play by the rules get screwed over. You CAN'T trust your neighbors.

It doesn't matter if you trust your real, physical neighbors. All it takes are a few roamers - those people from outside your known circle coming in and taking advantage by downloading lots and lots of files. They gain, you and your trusted neigbhors lose. According to game theory, defectors (cheats) will gain BIG amongst a solid group of cooperators.

With the free wireless net deal, same thing. You may well trust those people around you generally but there will be cheats among them (the larger the group served, the more likely this is) and there is always the outsider - someone who cruises around tapping into wireless networks to do what they want, damn the spirit of the system, damn the other users, to hell with you, the guy providing the pipe.

If this sort of 802.11 network stuff gets too extensive, you can bet your ass that the pay system will go from flat fee to per byte. The telcos WILL seek to maintain/increase their profits and minimize their costs. At that point, you as the pipe provider, lose ALL incentive for providing the pipe to the freeloaders. A few "defectors", downloading mp3s, porn movies, etc, screws you over, using up lots and lots of bandwidth at a direct cost to you. Maybe, if the level of defection isn't too high, you can make out OK with a donation system to help cover costs. You take advantage of the few who will be willing to donate some of their money to you for the free service

Overall, I think the whole thing is kinda cool, however. If I ended up in a rather remote location lacking fast internet connectivity, I would definitely consider setting myself up as a local ISP/DSL provider ala the "role your own DSL" article listed yesterday. But I'd drop it faster than a hot turd as soon as the cost to me went from a flat fee to a per byte type of system - if I also was running into a defector problem: a few heavy bandwidth hogs driving my operating cost above what I was willing to give up or able to recoup via donation.

Re:This is called a Co-Op.

[Anonymous Coward]

When the phone company does this, they found that the majority of the cost for metered service was in the metering

Nonsense.. the telco here in South Africa (a href="http://www.telkom.co.za/">http://www.telk om.co.za/ charges metered access and they make a killing. The biggest money, of course, is in the busines market, not residential... a friend of mine works in a bank, for example, and their bank branch alone spends more than R50000/month on telephone bills. In the small company I work (less than 20 people), we pay over R1500/month just for crappy *modem* internet access (the entire phone bill itself is much higher) (the ISPs are cheap, they charge flat rate, but you can pretty much only get dial-up access). They have a government-protected monopoly, so there is no competition.

Our local cellphone cartel (two companies which don't compete, one of which is 50% owned by Telkom anyway) charges extremely high metered prices for cellphone access (almost R3/minute). (Note: you can't just do straight currency conversions to compare .. we don't earn 8.4 times what we would earn in dollars) There is big money in this sort of price gouging. Of course, monopolies (not counting Microsoft) often don't make as much money as we think they do - why? because they run their businesses extremely inefficiently (no incentive to improve), leading to much higher costs. It took almost a month just for me to have ISDN installed at home, for example, and they made several mistakes along the way .. their employees are too lazy to follow up on anything, or lift a finger to do anything - I had to phone several times a week just to get them to eventually discover that they had made mistakes with my order.

Telkom is supposed to get a competitor next year May .. but I already smell a new cartel forming ..

7 2's for me??

[FortKnox]

Maybe I got 7 2's in my pid??

#222222

[Anonymous Coward]

First post #2222222. Whoopeeee!

tp!

[Anonymous Coward]

top post

Re:tp!

[Anonymous Coward]

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Re:another post.

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot has been invaded by Martians!


o o

/ \

| |

\ ______/

/ \

| [@][@] |

| ^^ |

| VVVVVV |

\_______/

| |

___/ \____

/ \

| | | |

| | | |

| | | |

| | | |

| |_____| |

VVV _____ VVV

/ \

| | |

| | |

| | |

| | |

/ | \

|___|___|

Internet? We don't need no stinking internet...

[gnovos]

If this network DID become as ubiquitous as the writer thinks it will be, then the need for actual internet access will be nill. The wireless network will BE the internet for all practical purposes.

Access point + lunch + clean clothes for only $1!

[gbroiles]

Even better, buy a power cord for $1 (many models to choose from), plug it into your existing PC (free), plug in your existing 802.11b network card (free), install Linux or a *BSD (free), get your mom to take you out to lunch (free) and do your laundry (free), and you've got an access point, lunch, and clean laundry for $1. Whee!

D'OH! Soooo close

[Anonymous Coward]

HA!

The thing with the Pringle's can?

[blair1q]

Yeah.

It only works if you color the rim with green magic marker.

--Blair
"Peace. Out."

Re:Internet? We don't need no stinking internet...

[Hilary Rosen]

This isn't going to take you from city to city. At least not in 30 hops or less. Just like you can't take side streets all the way across the country. At some point you have to get on the [shudder] superhighway.

Many problems; few solutions: a flaiming rant.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's inject a little reality into this pipe dream before it get's completely out of hand.

First, you can't put more than three 802.11b access points within signaling range before they start stepping on eachother, reduceing througput to nil. That has the effect of not allowing you to adequatly plan a "grid" in the first place. Do you think anyone who buys 802.11b technology is going to opt-in for more gear that uses another frequency range (which would be required to successfuly build a grid assuming that the proper signal usage/propagation studies had been professionally done in the first place)? No, they're not, because they're going to be pissed off after three of their neighbors decided to do the same thing they're doing. I wouldn't be suprised if 802.11b ends up having the range of bluetooth after 5 years.

Second, telecos aren't going to wait for "law makers to do something about it... they'll just deploy 802.11b themselves and shit on everyone's day (far cheaper than lobbing). Don't believe me? Check this (from the NZNOG (high clue factor) mailing list):

> From: "Neil"
> Subject: CLEAR Net Tempest
> To:
>
> Hi All,
>
> Has anyone else had any problems with Clear's 802.11 wireless
> internet service (http://www.clear.net.nz/services/tempest.html) as
> a source of interference? They have just done a rollout in Rotorua
> and totally stoped 3 separate wireless networks that had been running
> together nicely for the past year or two.
>
> [...]

So there you have it... NZ is not exactly the world's most densely populated piece of land. So, if this trend has *started* in NZ, you can count on it having already happened where *you* live. Go spend some time on the wireless ISP mailing lists. If you started monitoring the number of "Help, I'm being stepped on by a freenet AP with a 500mw amp attached to an 18db antenna", you'd begin to understand just how unviable (for freenets *or* ISPs) this technology is.

Third (it's a technical nit, but an important one), I'm getting sick and tired of "technology reporters" refering to 802.11b as five times faster than this or that and refering to 802.11b as "wireless ethernet". Anyone who's used it knows you'll be lucky to see 400kbs... and it degrades quickly when more users are added (any wonder why the low end APs are limited to ~15 stations?)

Finally, anyone who puts up a freenet or even a private use access point without WEP/SSID broadcast en/disabled deserves to have the feds kick their door in when some shit-stain manages to get into .smil through some misconfigured .mil network using *your* wireless gateway.

Also, why bother doing anything organized. Anyone with a modest clue can look at GAWD, or any of the other misconfigured accesspoint documentation projects, and realize that the key is not in being organized, but disorganized and completely clueless. If freenets want to succeed (and fail at the same time), they'll hand out, like candy, access points to the most clueless mofos they can find.

Folks, 802.11b has *serious* scalablity problems. Anyone planning to "build a grid" using 802.11b is doomed to failure. It was designed to solve the "ugly wires in the house" problem, not the "last mile" problem. Oh, sure, there are a few free nets operating out there and I really do wish them luck with their growth, but their eventual destination is cobled together network that preforms poorly under the best conditions. I espically get a kick out of those who are talking about "roaming across the grid".

Basically anything above 900mhz that's non-FHSS sucks so increadibly badly that those who opt-in on this technology are going to end up pissed off... eventually.

Umm...no.

[Skip666Kent]

But it's a Nice Thought(TM)!

Re:another post.

[Anonymous Coward]

. . . . . . . . . + .
. . : . .. :. .___---------___.
. . . . :.:. _".^ .^ ^. '.. :"-_. .
. : . . .:../: . .^ :.:\.
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. . . :..|: . . ^. .:|
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. . . .. : -::::.\. | | . .:/
. : . . .-:.":.::.\ ..:/
. -. . . . .: .:::.:.\. .:/
. . . : : ....::_:..:\ ___. :/
. . . .:. .. . .: :.:.:\ :/ I AM BEING DEREZZED
+ . . : . ::. :.:. .:.|\ .:/|
. + . . ...:: ..| --.:| TRON II !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
. . . . . . . ... :..:.."( ..)"
. . . : . .: ::/ . .::\

Problem city.

[Anonymous Coward]

If the telopolies and cable co's get ahold of this, they'll start restricting their access.

Perhaps, they'll start making us go through weird, proprietary proxies and odd ball protocols, so we can't route traffic, or otherwise use Linux/FreeBSD....

Really #2222222 last post.

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost. Just like the lottery. I never win.

Now, what was this story about?

/. is really broken. The /. coders are getting to be as bad as the m$ programmers.

I keep getting tags in my posts.

802.11

[Mr804]

802.11 is great. I can't wait until someone does something crazy on it like email the prez to eat his crank.

British Columbia network

[Rix]

The article mentioned a net in British Columbia, which I assume means Vancouver. Does anyone know who's running this?

Re:British Columbia network

[NaturePhotog]

A quick search on Google suggests http://www.bcwireless.net/ as a good place to start.

Stealth Mode

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who thinks "Stealth Mode" means anything other than "I'm a complete moron who lost a lot of money in the stock market." should be put to sleep.

Aggregate this you dork.

We should have...

[Heem]

There should be some type of agreed upon sign or other type of marker to mark out a house that is broadcasting wireless packets. Something like, i dunno.. a pringles can on the mailbox. This almost makes me want to move away from the beach and into a city to play wireless internet/intranet... Get an apartment on the 13th floor and hang a string of pringles cans out the window.

Sometimes...

[tsphere]

Sometimes you just have to let those hard-to-reach chips go.

--dante

I am sexy teenage girl!

[Anonymous Coward]

I provide permission to grasp my buttocks.

I would like to marry you, but am in impoverished country (can not say which for the government monitors all communication). My parents wish to sell me for the price of five strong oxens, but you must arrange to leave me out of the country. If you come to here, officials in the government will allow you to take home me to your country for the price of twelve strong oxens. Five strong oxens to my parents and twelve strong oxens to the government and you can take home me to your country for us to be married.

Please help me, peoples in my country are dying. I am using country's only Internet terminal (I trade oral sex for Internet access) and may not be using able to it again for large time, so please reply soonly!

Grassroot Wireless vs. Commercial and Municipal

[weez75]

I live in Jacksonville who is working on a free public wireless zone (municipally sponsored). You can tell that there are pros and cons to a city running something like this such as reduced access, reduction of profits for businesses wishing to compete in this space, increased privacy concerns, and guaranteed standards. Businesses offer guaranteed service, fewer freedoms, more privacy issues, and the potential for an oligopoly. In comparison, grassroots wireless requires a good-citizen mantra. It requires Joe Consumer to open his bandwidth up, provide the access point, pay his bill on time, and manage the solution. In return it's unregulated and open to innovation and creativity. It's a tough decision as to whether businesses, governments, or individuals should run these zones...

nice, but...

[geomcbay]

Such networks are nice if you live in geek-centric neighborhoods...The big problem is that if they ever got the mainstream exposure to become really useful to a large number of folks, much of their utility would be lost as the wireless networks would wind up getting bogged down, both at the wireless access points themselves and especially at bridges used to let people out into the general internet (generally participator's cable modems or DSL lines).

Somewhat like gnutella in that it would be very hard to find a balance between enough users to be useful and not so many users that everyone gets saturated.

Common Pasture Problem

[lewisatlewis]

Wonderful idea.

The problem seems like an economic one called the common pasture problem:
(see http://dieoff.com/page95.htm ) In the same way that a group of farmers will all overgraze a common pasture, a few people will abuse a free network, and people in areas of high density (say, living next door to a coffee house for example) will have their personal connections saturated.

Check out the link above or do a google search for common pasture and economics.

-Lewis

Re:Common Pasture Problem

[lewisatlewis]

Just noticed someone else already posted about the "Tragedy of the commons."

This is entirely the same concept.

-Lewis

Routing?

[Asgard]

What sort of routing system would such a system use -- How does one WAP (say linux based) know that a route to the wired internet is two hops over *there* on an all-wireless basis?

Re:Routing?

[ahodgson]

normal routing protocols could handle that. the access point with internet access could announce a default route.

the difficulty with wireless routing, I gather, is that some connections may be 1-way. ie node A can send to node B, but node B can't talk to node A.

But you know when you eat food

[netjeff]

First let me say that I agree that in the long run we will need to pay for bandwidth used rather than all-you-can eat. However there is a legitimate problem.

One user noted:

it would force me to be worrying all the time "am I downloading something here that's too big? Will I be billed for this?

To which you replied:

By that same logic, shouldn't you be worrying about what it costed you every time you eat a little food as it is? We are adults, we are supposed to be able to budget ourselves, and supposed to be able to handle costs, even when they are incremental.

The difference here is that I can't accidentally eat too much food. But it is easy to accidentally use a bunch of bandwidth (at least given the state of software and networks today).

If we go with a pay-for-what-you-eat model on bandwidth then we will need to have better feedback from our software telling us what we are about to eat before we start.

Re:But you know when you eat food

[Hobbex]

The difference here is that I can't accidentally eat too much food. But it is easy to accidentally use a bunch of bandwidth (at least given the state of software and networks today).

You can leave food out and have it spoiled. Or forget to eat it before it goes bad. The real difference is that food is prepaid not billed afterwards (unless your living out of the hotel minibar) but there is no reason why bandwidth can't be prepaid if that is what you want (my cellphone usage is prepaid, I "charge" the account with $25 worth of usage when I need it - no rolling costs at all).

Somebody else mentioned natural gas for which you are billed by usage. And electicity. And water. And hot water. And telephony. Do those really keep you up at night?

Re:But you know when you eat food

[Moofie]

I don't know about you, but my long distance bill keeps ME up at night. It's more expensive for me to call Arlington, TX (where all my friends from school live) from my home in Plano, TX 40 miles away than it is for me to call my grandparents in California. Usurious long distance price schemes are the BEST example of why we need to find better ways of paying for bandwidth than $/megabyte.

Re:But you know when you eat food

[netjeff]

Somebody else mentioned natural gas for which you are billed by usage. And electicity. And water. And hot water. And telephony. Do those really keep you up at night?

Water: I think I know when I'm using that (barring a leaky toilet perhaps).
Telephony: I know when I'm using my telephone.
Electricity and natural gas: You have a point on this one. But most appliances that drain a substantial amount of electricity have a sticker on them giving expected usage. Barring some kind of mechanical breakdown (rare for most major appliances) the electricity consumption will be near the sticker on the appliance.

I'd love it if my software had a sticker showing estimated network usage. But even that won't work for a web browser.

Metered bandwidth is also problematic for people who's computer is infected by a DDoS. The state of consumer operating systems today make it difficult to detect this state. It is these sorts of deficiencies in software that make people uncomfortable with metered bandwidth.

Re:But you know when you eat food

[danila]

I have a cable modem connection with payment by bandwidth used. It was a source of some frustration when I suddenly found that the monthly traffic went up almost 2 times for the last 8 months. There are several PCs hooked to the same connection in my family and some of the traffic of course is generated by others. However, I was not able to find out how much traffic was e-mail attachments, how much my web-surfing and how much some file-sharing networks.
Anyone knows a solution to that? A small, lean app that can give the stats on the fixed connection usage by app, servers, time, etc.

Re:But you know when you eat food

[aTMsA]

The obvious solution is th have a DSL/Cable modem/whatever with a counter, so you can always see how much troughput have you used since last bill. Maybe instead of that there could be a special bridge for the LAN that would do this function, one you could program to shut the conection if certain threshold is surpassed(some program doing something while you sleep.

It would be no different from the other utilities, only you have to think what happens if you don't live alone(kids use too much phone, someone spends 5 hours taking a shower, someone leaves the fridge door open...). There are already meters for all of the above, so one for bandwidth isn't so strange.

Re:But you know when you eat food

[ahodgson]

There are a few utilities that interface with the Linux firewall tools to collect and report those kinds of statistics. Search freshmeat. Useful only if your traffic is running through a Linux firewall of course ...

A little more info about CBs

[niteshad]

I've only ever used CBs in the Midwest (Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois), but my family and scout troop never had a problem finding a quiet channel to use for our own communication. As late as 1999 we used CB communication to assist in keeping our drivers alert and, if we were traveling in a convoy of vehicles, to keep everybody in one group on the road.

My experience has always been that the "dirty, foul-mouthed truckers" (who also run hidiously overpowered, illegally amplified CBs) tend to concentrate around CB channel 19. If you go a couple channels either way on the dial, you'll find a nice quiet station, with at most a couple people talking on it. BTW, channel 9 is the emergency channel, usually monitored by the State Highway Patrol, so don't use it unless you really have an emergency!

Who cares if it's free?

[ka9dgx]

Funny... but you don't get phone service for free {as in beer).

--Mike--

Re:Microwaves are for seat warming

[twitter]

Ahhh, nothing like it on a cold day. Direct warming of the flesh by radar. It's also good for global population control. Try one today.

relax

[twitter]

The trolls will go away when they realize their battle is lost and the financial incentive dissapears. Poof, like a dot com shit bomb. All gone, and the media will be left to people who care to use it. Joe Sixpacks will go back to cable TV as that gave him what he wanted to begin with.

Great Parable

[Uttles]

I think that's a great illustration of how silly ISP's can be about their service. If they sell you the bandwidth then damnit you can do what the hell you want to with it!

Problems.... and Solutions ? -- Down to reality

[hexa00]

This kind of community sharing poses several problems.
1. The Speed - If too much peaple connect to your Cable Connection it will be slow hehe :) 5 users on my connection would get max 2k/sec upstream.

1. Solution - If we could use the bandwidth of multiple access points , a little like Kazaa's Find more souces for download.

2. Bandwitdh, for an access point this can be a problem if you connection is fully used 24/24 you may have to pay for your bandwidh (using your connection like this could get you a 30-60GIG bandwidh ez)

2. Solution ? - Maybe here , you could impose limits on your share bandwitdh

But in the end ...

You want to create a free wireless service yet
you can pay a laptop and a wireless card ?
what's that crap ??

What would really be interesting is to build a cooperative system. In witch each user would pay by the bandwidh he uses a very low fee ,, could be around 5-10$ /Gig (no montly fee)
Access Points would get let's say 3-7$/gig for each gig of traffic they provide.

That way we could have quality access points controled by local folks who do not care about making profit or not.

- To have a good stable and fast access point
For 300$/month you could get a colocation service
At your local non profit ISP :) hope you have one
And a computer of 1000$ with a wireless card and an antenna could do the job

Your bandwidh cost and monthly cost would be covered by the little fee to users
and they would get Stable Fast Access to the Internet via something not Evil :)

And you could still get access to the little access points who can't spend 2000$

I think this would the way to go to build something that can scale ....

Having some sable infrastructure is really a must have for any network
The current article seems more suitable for very little scale then for an entire city !

(Major access points could even do profits ,, that they could reinvest to expand the network)

I think I'll give this system a try near my university.... this fall :) (University Of Montreal) if you wish to help email me hexa00@videotron.ca

Bruce Sterling

[StupidEngineer]

Doesn't this remind anyone else of the internet as described in "Heavy Weather"?

Re:Bruce Sterling

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes! I was just thinking that earlier on today.

the first Internet civil war

[daveking]

The harder the telcos fight free networks, the sooner free networks will destroy the telcos. Let's hope they fight really hard. The Internet must be owned and operated by its local users.

There is still one thing that telcos can help us with. Wireless freenets will give us a huge distributed network which none of our existing heirarchical routing mechanisms can handle. Geographical routing and IPv6 should solve the problem. It would be nice of telcos to work out the details, while they still exist.

Instead they will probably fight the future. They will abuse government to restrict the spectrum we need. They will also restrict the interim services we buy from them. Note that Internet access, by definition, connects any set of networks to the rest of the Internet. If telcos restrict the network topologies allowed use their services, they can't call those services 'Internet'. That would be fraud.

Re:the first Internet civil war

[Anonymous Coward]

> The harder the telcos fight free networks, the sooner free networks will destroy the telcos.

You're an idiot who obviously doesn't understand the technical issues at hand. If telcos start to deploy 802.11b, you'll be lucky to get your access point to work beyond your back yard.

For telcos, a wide eployment of 802.11b access points would probably cost them less than what they spend of coffee and donuts.

Re:the first Internet civil war

[Graymalkin]

You are a fucking moron. Do you even believe the crap you spouted off? Free networks will not destroy telcos and do not have the ability to. Unless you as a volunteer want to pay the thousands of dollars in property fees to run you own copper wire and set up your own switches which you own, the telco is the only way you're going to get a wire to your house. You also need to have a fairly large cash reserve to operate a wireless network of any sort because you need to pay for frequency licenses and station operating license. You can't output more than a watt of PEP on ISM (2.4 and 5.2GHz) bands because that would cause interference with other equipment. I don't think granpa will appriciate your wireless network interfering with his pacemaker. Running off at the mouth about wireless freenets creating routing problem is ludicrous. Geographical routing and IPv6 will solve problems? What the fuck is geographical routing? Next time research for twenty minutes and think for ten minutes.

Re:the first Internet civil war

[Anonymous Coward]

You kiss your mamma with that f*cking mouth ?

Think about it MORON, they said the same thing about start-up cable companies not so long ago.

History will repeat itself, and you're still a whining fat bitch.

kinda like usenet

[Anonymous Coward]

once AOL allowed the masses to use usenet, all we got was spam spam pr0n pr0n spam spam pr0n pr0n/ it is truly very sad. usenet was great for a couple of years there 8?-94

Re:Nice metaphor - NOT

[Hangman Jim 99]

its rich, but not accurate. All You Can Eat supermarkets (just like ISPs) are designed around an estimate of how much you could eat.

Unfortunaetly, this also equates to how much you are allowed to eat.

People like you who seem to think that its your right to have close to free bandwidth should ask the local ISP what his upstream bandwidth bill was last month.

Win9x ipconfig is not fully implemented

[Archfeld]

Under 2k, nt sp4 or better and win me you can "usually" change ip's without a reboot. Note the use of USUALLY, sometimes it all goes south and a reboot is all that fixes it.

Need Help with this Idea

[HBergeron]

I have been noodling this idea for years, now looks like the time...

Washington D.C. has these old fire call boxes on almore every block - 5 foot tall cast iron things with a 1ft by 1ft by 5 inch opening where the call box used to be. The posts themselves have (had) connections to wiring conduits (to reach the fire dept).

How difficult/expensive would it be to install an 802.11 node in every box, blanketing the (often very low income) city with wireless access for the price of an 802.11 card. The nodes themselves could wire into any one of a number of broadband networks now strung through the city.

What are the interference/spectrum issues (I've heard there are some problems with this broad an implementation of 802.11)?

Assuming a fairly direct shot to a broadband pipe directly beneath these posts, what would be the acutual cost of setting up the node and wiring it into the network?

I'm sure there are many more questions, this is just off the top of my head.

Workpad z50

[d314]

I bought a z50 for $200s a year ago. It runs windows CE 3.0 2.1... whatever they call it now. I go to school in Capitol Hill, Seattle, and was wondering if anyone has had luck getting this HPC to run on a wireless network.
Please send info on compatible cards and necessary software.
Thanx, Peez

Re:Workpad z50

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at NetMotion Wireless [www.netmotionwireless.com], not very far from you. We've had good luck with a number of different WLAN cards, including Lucent/Orinoco, and several CE devices.

What price "free"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Y'know, I'd really like to share with my neighbors, and I'd really like to borrow wireless from neighbors adjacent to parks and other public places, and I love to see cool solutions spring up spontaneously from duct tape and individual efforts.

OTOH, my DSL CLEC is Chapter 11 with $1.4 billion in debt, *their* competition is already dead, my cable modem ISP is following shortly, and the remaining Baby Bell could get tired of pushing their crap-quality losing DSL venture uphill any old time.

Am I helping my community by sharing my broadband connection, or is my community screwed in the end when we ALL have to re-connect our 56K modems?

Just asking, and just a little worried.

Re:What price "free"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't see something like this destroying isp's userbases. I like having someone to curse at when my connection goes down :)

Similar Article...

[jgrumbles]

Not sure where I first saw this article mentioned, I think it may have been /. Anyways, has a few more methods to sharing your broadband using dry copper lines. It's an interesting and very provoking read, as is this article on Infoworld.

Nobody will pass any laws

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll just add language barring this to the AUP.

how to coordinate it

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds like a great idea, but there is no way I can individualy talk to everyone in my apartment block and surrounding ones to coordinate it. Could someone who is better versed in this technology answer some of these questions. I hope I am not being redundant but I didn't see answers to these in other post so I think I am safe.

How easy is it to scan for connections, and how does each hub interfere with each other? If two hubs are close enough together would they establish a link, or would I have to use a card in my machine to try to link the network together? Since I have no way easy way to know what other people are doing around me what happens if a large amount of people in the same area try to do this? Are there any other technologies that would be better suited to do this with?

Cable Modem; Business DSL; Consumer DSL; Work/Home

[billstewart]

Most cable modem services have pretty aggressive AUPs, which explicitly prohibit reselling service, and may either explicitly prohibit free sharing with too many people, or else have enough weasel words that they can drop you anyway. Some DSL ISPs are also that way; others are more flexible. Some of them have different policies for residential-priced DSL than for business-priced DSL - the latter can do a lot more, but cost more money.

One fairly serious problem with systems like this is that people who are using DSL to access their offices as opposed to the Internet have to be careful to set up the wireless LAN to connect to the Internet and not their VPN. For instance, if you're using a separate 802.11 box, you're probably fine, but if you're using an 802.11 card and also the DSL/Cable in your PC, you need to be sure that it's not routing to the inside of your VPN. Using one PC as the 802.11 gateway and a laptop with 802.11 card and VPN software is probably safe.

If you're using a Linux or BSD box for the 802.11 gateway, you've got some flexibility in building firewall rules so that the wireless guest users can only talk to the outside internet and not to your home machines. I don't know if anybody makes Linux transparent-firewall code that would let you intercept specific ports or not - it's probably worth doing some kind of proxy for SMTP that indicates that your machine was just relaying the mail, and limits the volume of traffic so spammers can't send huge quantities of mail (if they can only send small numbers of messages, that cuts down the abuse to a level that discourages drivebys as well as reducing the chances that your ISP will get complaints.)

DSL/Cable Providers' REAL attitudes about this

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is that DSL and cable modem providers will have the same two-sided attitude about this that they do about Napster. Officially, it's "No, we're opposed to that sort of thing", but unofficially it's "Duh! Napster's our best advertising method! Anything that gets more users to buy service is good, and the extra bandwidth demand is small enough not to cause trouble very often." And unlike Napster, where the cable company has to worry about copyright lawyers hassling them, shared wireless doesn't have that kind of problem.

#2222222!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, it's like winning the jackpot in Las Vegas, only you don't get any prizes and you look like a total geek when you mention it to your friends! :\

Infrastructure needs to make these successful

[billstewart]

Another poster mentioned that this works much better in geek-heavy urban neighborhoods than in random locations. He's right, and the recent articles in the press have been missing the infrastructure questions. To the extent that these networks can piggyback on DSL or Cable Modem users, they can access real bandwidth (unless there are too many bandwidth hogs per wireless gateway, but that's not too likely in most places.) Mostly the upstream bandwidth is 128kbps; downstream may be a bit more, or a lot more for cable modems. It's fine for email and web browsing, but not very useful for running servers on (one of the recent articles suggested that a small company could just pop up a wireless modem and have their server online. Most cable companies and some DSL providers block port 80, and you can't really trust a volunteer-net for your business, though it's just fine for your home website with pictures of your kids.)

The interesting potential for a wireless net is building a Fidonet-like backbone of wireless nodes that talk to each other without needing wired access points. If most of your demand is local, and you've got enough users close enough together that are running routing protocols, that can work, but unless you implement it carefully, routing tends do get ugly, you get lots of slow many-hop connections to get anywhere real, it flakes out whenever a well-connected node moves (causing the routing protocols to reconverge, slowly), and it's tough to get networks like that to load-balance well, so the traffic to the outside world is likely to concentrate on one or a few wired gateways - much nicer if that's a cable modem than a 144kbps IDSL line that's in the middle of town.

Also, many of the gateways are designed for a NAT environment - instead of using real addresses, everybody's recycling 192.168.1.* over and over again, and diagnosing problems becomes really ugly. It's a bit easier if somebody coordinates a backbone running on, say, 172.16.*.* with mandatory decent antennas for the backbone nodes, but keeping a system with lots of users from getting flaky can be tough.

The Mobile IP standards work addresses some of these issues.

Like that's a bad thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

*My* web site has software, mp3s and topless pictures on it... all copyright me. It isn't inherent that those filetypes are pirated; it just seems there are a lot of lame clods out there with not a creative bone in their bodies :-(

And yes it was fun taking the piccies ;-) purely for research purposes...

Sweet Dreams are Made of This

[Dr. Mutex]

Dial your long distance Co's 800 access number, then call your friends (assuming your calling card rate is good, otherwise switch to a LD company that gives you a good rate).
The industry term for this is 800 dial-around.

You could also do this with a prepaid phone card.

SLOWdot.org

[Anonymous Coward]

seems like old news to me, there was already a USAToday article about this weeks ago...

http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ccarch/2001-08- 01-maney.htm

sig follows.
-=-=-
"It's not like your minds are as open as the source you love..." - DraKKon to the majority of Slashdot(users).
-=-=-

what about abuse of your precious landline?

[mr_walrus]

i presume these wireless lans essentially use
dhcp/nat type setups to map the roving users
through the home internet connection.

any abuse/misue of the net leads to
tracing back to the guilty IP#. doesn't this
put the home connection at risk to some stranger
either willfully, or through stupidity, causing
the wireline service provider to pull the plug?

everything else on the net i've ever seen has
been abused pretty badly so far...

i myself have only *one* choice in broadband
service, i'd hate to lose it to strangers
via charitable naivety...

Replace the commercial Internet? Maybe...

[BillX]

...but we need to come up with a new protocol specifically suited to wireless physical networks. TCP/IP is not the best suited to take advantage of a wireless grid, the ultimate of p2p networks.

Today's so-called "p2p" network is not P2P at all. It's more along the lines of: Person to ISP to Upstream Provider to Upstream Provider [etc.] to Backbone to Downstream Provider [etc.] to ISP to Person. This provides numerous places between one user and another where the data stream can be hijacked or cut off for whatever reason--numerous "choke points" where an unwholesome third party can leverage control over a user's service via threats, lawyers, technical measures, fiber-seeking backhoe, et cetera.

/* Beware -- switches to Long Rant mode */

Problems with TCP/IP:

• The majority of users are still using single, slow, intermittent links to an ISP--typically modems running at 53K or lower. These links don't usually last more than a few hours at most; they tie up the phones, and piss off the ISP when users stay on too long.
• The redundancy originally intended for the Internet is lost as each path from the backbone to individual users forms a *tree* instead of a grid. As bandwidth is still a limited and metered commodity, each carrier/ISP/reseller/etc. linking end-users to the Internet typically buys "a line" (or at most "a few lines") from a single upstream provider, who in turn has "a line" to another upstream provider, and so on, up to the backbone. If one of these lines is saturated or broken, everyone below the break is cut off from everything on the other side! So much for redundancy.
• Those on faster, fatter, more permanent connections are still limited by the tree problem, and quite often impeded by a NAT/firewall acting as the tree branch. This means that even users with "ideal" connections to other users with "ideal" connections are severely limited in what they can transfer, as incoming requests get filtered out or lost by the NAT. NATs are necessary because the pool of available IP addresses is limited, and blocks of addresses still have to be purchased from somewhere. Unfortunately the NAT is still the only way in and out of most high-speed local networks.
• Traditional pseudo-P2P networks (Gnutella et al) face additional problems, above and beyond those of the TCP/IP Internet itself. Gnutellalike systems attempt to create a grid of peer-to-peer links, while still using the traditional tree-like Internet structure. It is entirely plausible that packets from a randomly-selected pair of next-door neighbours in Lowell, Indiana travel from Lowell to Gary to Chicago to San Francisco and all the way back (it would be far more efficient in this case, and probably faster, to just slip a diskette under the neighbour's door :). Bearing in mind a typical Gnutella packet propagates through up to (and above) 7 different TCP/IP users between its source and destination, that's an incredible amount of distance for the packet to needlessly travel.
• Expanding on the earlier "not P2P" example, this packet goes from person -> ISP -> upstream -> backbone -> downstream -> ISP -> person -> ISP -> upstream -> backbone ....you get the idea... -> downstream -> ISP -> person.

What's needed is a geographically-centric protocol which allows a computer system to establish multiple routes of varying speed, duration and quality, over a variety of media (twisted pair, coax, radio, microwave, infra-red, laser, fiber...), and maintain a fairly comprehensive picture of the "quality of service" of each link.
/* switches to Mad Scientist Brainstorming mode */

The protocol would take advantage of the physical geography of the networked machines. Machines physically close together, as in an apartment building or even an entire subdivision, would be able to transfer data among themselves at incredibly high speeds (Ethernet, Wireless Ethernet), this becoming less and less the case as the physical distance between the machines increases, as in transfer between two distant subdivisions--interference and line noise, as well as the journey across multiple (possibly saturated) hubs and gateways, would increasingly constrict data flow as machines grew farther apart. This emphasizes the importance of choosing the "closest" of multiple available resources (multiplayer games, shared files) over more distant ones. The QoS information available by querying machines (or embedded in the packets themselves) would make this possible.

(Note: The speed drop between distant machines may be mitigated somewhat by the fact that there will probably be more possible (and roughly equidistant) routes between them. This of course does not help interactive transfers such as games one bit!)

A single any-order transmission (file transer, etc., as opposed to highly interactive processes where packets must come in sequence) could be split up and sent to its destination by several routes, the amount of data being sent through each depending on the QoS for that line. Each packet would be assigned a number. At points during the transfer, the receiving machine would report back which of the numbered packets have been received, so that any that have not shown up in a reasonable time can be retransmitted, preferably over a link that is not dropping so many.

The permanent or semi-permanent nature of most links/routes will permit "always on" connectivity (limited to what's on the wireless/etc. net), not currently possible for most (modem-afflicted) users.

Some form of Asymmetric encryption to persisitently identify a trusted person/server, secure packets against snooping by intermediate parties, and limit packet spoofing would likely be required (especially if the plan is to eventually run persistent WWW servers over this proto). (I'm not up to snuff on this, unfortunately; anyone else care to comment on possibility?)

Why isn't this method being used in Battlebots?

[oghmagod]

One of the main problem with the tournament is the use of the RF remotes and the lack of frequency. I would think that 802.11 would be much more interactive and dependable than the four way analog control boxes? It would be cool if concert halls and sports arenas jumped on the band wagon with 802.11. Heck, there might be a reson to go watch baseball afterall.

Nooch.

Come on Northern Virginia! (NOVA)

[caryw]

Come on Northern Virginia, we are the second Silicon Valley of the United States. The number of techies in No. VA exceeds that of anywhere else in the country. Someone step up to lead the building of one of these wireless networks.

- Cary
(Chantilly)

But access providers could limit the spread..

[TallG]

A couple of problems with the model:

1) Who is goign to be the first in the neighbourhood to get the connection, and then have everybody else use what they are paying for? It is only goign to work if sufficent people are prepared to pay and support those unwilling/unable to pay.

2) If providers notice that take up of connections are reduced, and those line they have sold are max'ing out on bandwidth they will either increase the price for their services, or they will introduce usage based billing.

If you control the tap to the water main you will be able influence, and measure the flow of water!

Re:Come on Northern Virginia! (NOVA)

[WirelessFreak]

Hi, Cary. You might want to check out NoVA Wireless. Perhaps they can assist ya! :-D

Re:WAPs in Richmond, VA? - here's a link for ya!

[WirelessFreak]

Feel free to check out a recent article that Richmond.com did on us. Hope you'll find it helpful! :-)

802.11b != UMTS/3G

[_Gus]

Confusion. 3G radio comms has nothing to do with the sort of thing you use 802.11b for. Both camps use the words 'wireless network' to mean different things, hence the confusion is understandable, but there is absolutely no crossover - yes they are both radio data systems, but thats where the similarity ends.

Bandwidth isn't free

[speedbump]

Its a lovely thought that you poor students could just wander to the city park and hook up to a wireless grid, so you can IRC or whatever, but somebody, somewhere, has to pay for one or more connection points to the Internet.

What is intensely interesting about a city-wide wireless grid is that all those repeating monthly telecom expenses are localized to the access points. This slays two avians with one projectile weapon: reduces overall internet access costs, and cuts profits of the Baby Bells, who have a deathgrip on our communications infrastructure, and who have done everything they could to stifle competition in the marketplace.

Why would the ISPs let this go on?

[Chuk]

If the ISPs that these ParaNet providers are using for their Internet connection are in competition with the ParaNets, won't the ISPs make it a TOS that you can't use your system as a ParaNet host?

Even on eBay?

[GPS Pilot]

When you say "even on ebay," you're implying that there are places where you're likely to find even lower prices than on eBay.

What might those places be?

Re:Even on eBay?

[DavidTC]

Erm..if someone says 'You can't find a price this low, even on eBay.', it imples that the lowest place you'd find a price would, in fact, be eBay. It means 'If you search all the places, including eBay in the search, you won't find a price that low'. The obvious reason eBay was included is that people would expect it to have a lower price then most places, and thus it has been explictedly included as having been checked.

At least in our earth English.

802.11b access in Dallas

[erc]

I've had free 802.11b access in my apartment complex in Dallas for months. If you're just south of Skillman/635 in Dallas, you have a fair chance of being able to connect, lease an IP address, and surf off my DSL connection. It's great fun to be able to sit down at the pool with my IBM 240 laptop and surf, ssh into the corporate servers, read email, what-have-you...