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First National 802.11b ISP
JScarpace writes "The chairman and founder of Earthlink,
Sky Dayton, will introduce his newest company today, a wireless ISP called "Boingo" which will resell 802.11b access being provided by smaller ISPs around the country. Sky hopes to build up Boingo the same way he built up Earthlink -- by buying or partnering with enough smaller providers to offer a national service." An overdue idea and a stupid company name. Course it'll never get to me... the
downside of living in the sticks. Those of you in real cities may be one
step closer to the dream. update yup, another duplicate. Pre coffee
story posting should be forbidden. Ah well, maybe the flamers will get it
out of their system early ;)
I asume this works on the cell principal - what is the latency going tobe like?
is this the same story that timothy posted not so long ago, or is it just me?
do not read this line twice.
another earthlink... NO THANKS!
Now, where have I seen this story before?
Someone should do a review of which Slashdot editor posts the most repeat stories.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
what with the state of play with WEP and wireless in general i guess anyone can harvest a few logons for spoofed ISP access , now where's my wireless card and laptop........
perl -MIO::Socket -e 'IO::Socket::INET-new(PeerAddr="some.windoze.box:1
one step closer to the dream.
...of sniffing all of my neighbor's traffic, rather than just that of the ones with enough money to buy their own access point.
Security seems it would be an issue with this sort of setup. Anyone know how he's handling it?
--saint
Wireless to me is ready made for all those places that have been left out of the higher bandwidth game. No wiring, no messing with the phone company, just contract an agreement to stick an antenna on the local water tower and rent a closet at the local city building du jour.
Sit back and watch the subscribers sign up.
Anything is possible given time and money.
So, will one of the local partners be called "Oingo"?
Best Slashdot Co
B.O.I.N.G.O
Badly Overdue Implementation of Networking Given Out
Ok, so relevant ones are boring. Surrealism ahoy...
Big Orange Invincible Newborn Gibbon Observer
Butt out! I Now Gyrate Openly!
Bendy Octopus In Never-ending Girly Outburst
www.onlinescam.com - May contain nuts
Ahh yes... and what else would they call it? CmdrTacoNet?
thelocust[dot]org
What's up with that name?!? Do new customers receive a pogo stick when they signup?
Fellas (-who-are-complaining-that-this-is-a-repeat):
There are 2 separate stories about wireless ISPs related to Earthlink. The previous story is about the announcement, by Earthlink, of a fixed wireless service that would use a roof-mounted dish to provide access. It's not clear it it would use 802.11b or something else. But the key seems to be that it's fixed.
The other story (i.e. this one) is about Sky Dayton's announcement of a new company that will be some sort of aggregator for 802.11b service from various ISPs around the country, and provide mobile service (a la Ricochet/Metricom, which Dayton derides in the little miniinterview/PR linked to above).
These certainly *seem* like different stories, don't they.
I live 'in the sticks' (Iowa). The city I work in only has 30,000 people. It somehow managed to nab @home while it still existed, 3 wireless providers, and 8 dialup ISPs (Including Earthlink via Buyout). I live in a town of 3,000, and next april the DSL goes live, and will start to annialte the 3 wireless providers there (what a waiste). One of which is Prarie Engery Cooperative.
Basically what they do is partner with all the power companies around here, and make deals to provide Dialup and Wireless. But somehow I don't see the math working out. They have 5 customers paying $50/month (ouch) for 128k, thats $250/month income. 128x5=1.5Mbit~. Obviously not everyone is on at the same time, so they probably are getting by with a 512K line, which in Norht Iowa is around $600 a month.
Another ISP is offering 3mbit wireless... they only have 2 T1's, which is 3mbit roughly, so how can they offer 3 mbit to each customer? Oh, thats right, beacause their equipment only tags up about a 600k throughput! Sad.
Anyway, I don't see how anyone can efficiently provide high speed access affordably in 'the sticks'
Can all fish swim?
I thought that was what the thrust of this article was. Something about it being easier to do in the sticks, what with a more predictible customer base, personal contact and service for clients, not having to ramp up to a HUGE base so quickly, ability to front-load all the investment costs, etc..
In a related story, the IRS has recently ruled that the cost of Windows upgrades can NOT be deducted as a gambling loss.
it's just the cliche, derivative logo that sucks.
Its time to get the van on the road and the free ISP usage starting
*snort*
Smells like Ricochet's bastard step sibling.
But wait, here's a novel idea: Let's get several $mil from some VC's, put up this new service, and sell it at the same price as already established and more available cable and ADSL!
They need to stick to airports and hotels and quit making it seem like a cutting edge idea.
Phooey.
by buying or partnering with enough smaller providers to offer a national service
so say for the sake of argument this company of his goes good and grows pretty well, then let's say Joe Shmoe wanted to start a similar company.. from the possible scenarios i can think of he'll either
a) possibly (though most likely not) hit it big
b) partner up with Boingo!
c) fail and go out of business, and have his assets be bought out by Boingo!
Ever since Verizon merged with 7 phone companies into one, service and PR has become awful with them... i guess the bigger they get, the more out of control they become
"The ones who dont do anything are always the ones who try to pull you down" -- Henry Rollins
This is more likely the next incarnation of magic lantern.providing an ISP that's widespread and insecure.
let's see terrorist training camps in the sticks = WEP = simple decryption
If this takes hold in a big way, I'm having a hard time imagining people adopting 802.11a outside of the enterprise space.
802.11b seems suffficient for most applications which might have a net pipe upstream rather than direct local connections to servers.
I expect we won't see people using 802.11a equipment to take advantage of the promised 54Mbits (more like 10 to 25 in practive and at a shorter range than 802.11b) until the 802.11g spec gets finalized. 802.11g will create a compatibility layer between 802.11a and 802.11b, which occupy seperate spectrum space.
-carl
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
Their theme-song should be "Dead Man's Party" from Oingo Boingo (popular 80's band similar to Simple Minds and Men at Work). It goes like this:
It's a dead man's party,
Who could ask for more?
Everybody's coming,
Leave your body at the door.
(Leave your body and soul at the door).
Great time to start this. Not only won't they be able to sell the company or IPO it, no one has money to buy the service.
[Can't find the album? rent that 80s movie where Rodney Dangerfield goes back to college - Oingo Boingo is the band he has at the big bash he throws. . . and they sing the song]
Good luck Boingo, you're gonna need it.
...cutesy name, big plans, foggy implementation, airhead CEO... why don't we just link to here?
I don't really want to run an ISP, but when you are 5 miles up a mountain road with no hope of cable or DSL, you have to start getting creative. As it is, some guy down the street tried to convert his cabin (burned down and then rebuilt as a much nicer place) into an executive retreat. As a part of his master plan, he had QWest drag up some lines for high speed access (probably a T1 capable line). His plans fell thru, but they might be my hope for something better than 33.6 ;-)
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs." -- Switchfoot, Ode to Chin
I assume the Government will be grabbing packets out of the sky. I wonder just how easy it is to pickup stray packets from 802.11b. Anyone done extensive research on the subject?
Go see ramdac
I'm banking my money on two Satellite-modem up-and-comers.
www.wildblue.com should have hopefully reasonably priced satellite modem access, even though the ping-times will be high (300ms+). Download speeds of 3Mbps. It's supposed to be available in mid 2002. But if it's like DirecPC, it will suck, big time, and everyone will get FAP'd all over the place. Nevertheless, it's my only real hope at this point.
www.teledesic.com is supposed to be available in 2005. Low ping times (comparable to T1), super-fast throughput (64 Mbps), but whether or not it will fly (pun intended) is questionable, IMHO.
-Slashdolt
Well, at least as far as fixed wireless access is concerned. Last time I checked, my local provider offered some pretty pretty cheap rates for synchronous 2 Mbps service. Hell of a lot cheaper than a T-1, that's for sure.
Is your company running tools written by ma
I currently live in a city of 250,000, and my broadband choices are ISDN and cable. Fortunately, I happen to live inside the small radius of digital-ready cable service, so I have decent connectivity.
I'm getting ready to move to a small city in Nebraska, and my access options are completely amazing (to me, at least). Fifty dollars will get me 512k wireless or 640/272k DSL, both with static IPs and unfiltered inbound traffic. I was afraid that I'd be stuck with a 26400 dialup, but I'm actually getting a good upgrade for less money.
Living in a small town doesn't have to mean losing service, as I'm pleasantly discovering.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
An overdue idea and a stupid company name.
;-)
Hmmmm - who said that? Oh yeah, it was a guy who calls himself Commander Taco.
There was a network that had no strings and Boingo was its name-o! B O I N G O B O I N G O B O I N G O and Boingo was its name-o! BTW: Is it "it's" or "its" here? -Rick
security is always your responsibility, not the hardware vendor, or isp, or anyone else. your responsibility.
be empowered, take control of your destiny, use ssh. :)
so I won't be giving him a dime for anything.
San Antonio, home of "Hyperoam" and "XRamp" - two ISPs that blanket the north side of town with 802.11b signals. You can literally sit in a Luby's parking lot and watch POP3 passwords go by in the clear.
The best part is that they make claims of how secure they are, and they aren't even using WEP. If they were, it would be time to whip out AirSnort and get cracking, so to speak, then the sniffer would be ready to go again.
I can't see how anyone could possibly run a commercial ISP with this sort of technology. It's way too easy to sniff, and even easier to disrupt with more transmitters.
FYI, in your sig, that should be "you're ugly too", not "your ugly too".
"you're" is short for "you are"
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
here:
http://80211b.weblogger.com/2001/12/19
Their business model differs from others in that they aren't building infrastructure. I get the impression that they just want to do all the "service" stuff. It's an intertesting approach, perhaps the biggest draw being a VPN available.
Still, at $7.95/connection for one service tier, it ain't cheap.
Look it up.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Does anyone know of any 802.11 ISPs currently in New York. When Ricochet went down I thought that was the only option. Thanks
"or is it just me? " should read:
"or is it just I"
The above correct just might let you get that \
IPO.
Thanks in advance,
Woot_spork
If this is a duplicate, where's the other one? Surely you don't mean the story about earthlink's fixed wireless service?
This isn't about earthlink. Have some more of that coffee.
Ohhhh... Now I understand why Jud moved his lists from boingo.com to letterip.com!
I hope you did a good deal in the sale, and keep up the good work: it is a appreciated.
Lets see if this equivolent statement gets moderated up to +4.
Seriously, I don't like Scientology any more than the next guy, but it has no worse a history than most other religons, (it has never sponsored a Spanish inquisition etc etc). I am aware of how Scientology milks the people who subscribe to it for money, and how they try to suppress those who criticise it, but still - a knee-jerk reaction of "This company is run by someone of religon xxx, so f**k them" should make people rather nervous, and certainly should not be moderated up.
It is the dictionary definition of "-1 off-topic".
Bullshit
What if this guy were a member of the fucking Taliban? Would you still be saying that?
http://www.earthlink.net/home/broadband/hswireless /coverage/
Is it just available in one city or what?
What city is that anyway
but still - a knee-jerk reaction of "This company is run by someone of religon xxx, so f**k them" should make people rather nervous, and certainly should not be moderated up.
You should have used "Jew" as an example instead of Catholic. That would have REALLY gotten people riled up, although it would have sent your moderation score rocketing in the other direction.
What's your damage, Heather?
Authentication doesnt have to be clear text...
Accounts can be linked with MAC addresses, use a RADIUS server like a modem pool, etc.
Didnt anyone see on Slashdot the RSA announcement on Fast Packet Keying.
Does anyone read anything on 802.1x or Cisco's LEAP. Of course people are trying to make wireless networking more secure, and interesting projects are being created daily.
Doesnt anyone here remember when telnet was all clear text? :>
Boy - for a technical crowd you guys sure have little faith in technology.
I judge people on their actions, not on their beliefs. If that person simply agreed with the Taliban, then yes - I would still be saying that, if he actually participated in any of the things that make the Taliban so unpopular, then that would be different.
All we know about this guy is what he believes, there is no evidence that he personally has done anything wrong.
The one service that gives you instant Wi-Fi access in hundreds of premium hotels, airports, coffee shops and other high-traffic public locations
Which makes sense, 300 feet nodes wouldnt cover all my apartment complex, and they would still need a Internet pipe. Whats bad is almost everyone in our apartment complex shared a T1 that an ISP put it, and ran cable modems to each unit. Then the ISP went out of business for over expansion. But they made thier money off us. And no DSL, we are over 19000 feet from our CO. Because the telco didnt plan growth, we are only 2000 feet from the central office up the street, if we were only put on that one, we would have have 1.5mbit dsl.
-
"There is no other Telephone Company" - Verizon
This is a place no high speed internet connection is available at all. Pathetic, isn't it? You wouldn't think this is the heart of Silicon Valley.
This happens far too often and waistes slashdot bandwith, etc. How about you modify your OWN system to alert you of possible duplicate postings as your posting these storie? It wouldn't take but a few minutes per story to verify that they haven't been posted recently. I'm not ranting, I'm just giving my .02$.
-GG
A DSL line in most places in the US is about $40/mo. An 802.11b hub with NAT under $200 fixed cost. A cafe or restaurant needs almost no help to do this -- just buy the line, pay the $40/mo, and reboot the access point if something goes awry.
At $40/mo total cost, they don't need to bill their customers for this.
If they don't charge their customers, then why does there need to be billing for this? And if there's no billing, there's no need for accounts.
And if there's no need for billing or accounts, there's no need for infrastructure.
Ergo, Boingo is a parasitic organization trying to figure out a way to charge for a problem it is creating.
I can't seem to find anything about it via Google, but this sounds similar to iridiums plan to provide calling service all over the world. Iridium relied on base stations that accepted the call and routed it onto the landline networks. They had a massive problem cutting deals with all of the these monopoly telcos (many of which are state owned in the developing regions of the country) and not losing their shirts in the process.
I hope this turns out better!
it's not going to stop until you wise up, no it's not going to stop. so just give up.
I've been using an 802.11 provider for around 12 months now. Really!
Of course, its the guy down the hall -- and he still hasn't figured it out. Seriously though, I see 3 unprotected AirPorts in my building. Actually, my provider is ADSL based, but when it flakes out, I'm only a quick switch away from... well... whatever they use. :) :)
What's the difference between this and what Sprint Broadband has offered and already quit offering. And my ISP, JORSM Internet, has been working on supporting this for some time and believe do offer it to non residential customers already although there website don't say anything about it. Just thought it was wierd to hear about something on here that i knew existed for months.
-Al-
I know everyone is focused on the sniffing/security aspects of this technology. I however, being an evil guy at heart amthinking, wow wouldn't it be easy to just get my own wireless card and flood the airwaves with random useless packets. At least with a guided medium you can trace the wire back or at least cut it. Hunting around for a laptop that could be anywhere is gonna be a lot harder and following a cable ( At thats hard enough already.) Imagine how easy it would be to do a DDOS now.
----ZiN----
-ZiN-
is IRS tax fraud. They are calling themselves a religion to justify their bilking of membes out of thousands by selling worthless services, and not paying taxes on what they sell. Religious and non-religious people alike can object to this.
sulli
RTFJ.
you urban sprawler. South San Jose should be open space! Arrgh.
Simply create a new section, "Duplicates," like "Ask Slashdot (I Can't Find Google)" or "BSD (Is Not Dying)." Then if the article is found to be duplicate, an editor can simply move it to this section. Users who don't like duplicates can then exclude this section from their homepage.
sulli
RTFJ.
I always thought this was an idea that Starbucks should have deployed. I think that there is one on every block in San Francisco.
I've said this before (although you wouldn't know where to look since I'm an anonymous coward), and I'll say it again:
Taco, don't you get paid to write for
In Austin, there's actually a company (Heartland cable) that offers wireless cable in the outlying areas, and also provides high-speed internet service over the same signal. Wireless is perfect for rural areas, because you don't have to run hundreds of feet of cable to service small numbers of customers. You just piggyback your nearest cellular tower and get them all in one go.
I had a great ISP, reasonable rates, 50 meg personal web space, UNIX shell account, etc. & the other thing....
Then they got swallowed up by Earthlink.
Services were reduced, rates rose. Now only 10 megs, no shell, not even scp. They moved everything to new servers and broke everybody's cgi scripts and screwed up a whole bunch of URLs and domain names. Where before I paid ~21 bucks a month before, now they want $24.95 for their premium dialup. Plus $1 for a paper invoice. Plus $1 because I won't give them my credit card number or (gasp) my checking account #.
Nevermind that they totally screwed up my bill because they lost the records that I had prepaid for an entire year with my old ISP (Earthstink assimilated them after 9 mos). Then they send me overdue notices, threatening collection (for that which I had prepaid).
Bybye Earthstink.
But wait, I get to call a national, toll free number for tech support and sit on hold for hours listening to crappy music. O, Joy! (Heck, I can sit on the can for hours and listen to crappy music; at least I'll feel better when I'm done!)
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
Boingo: a statement of QoS. That is, you can expect your connectivity to go boingo boingo boingo like a bouncing ball up and down and up and down and.........