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Free Wireless Networks at Airports
WallytheWalrus writes "Today's Minneapolis Star-Tribune is carrying an article about the installation of a wireless network throughout Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, the first of five such airports across the nation to get a uniform wireless network system. The system, which cost only $250,000 to install, will be free to business travellers passing through the airport (who have the correct hardware), and available through a number of kiosks throughout the airport. One can only hope this is the first step towards bigger and bolder public wireless network projects."
the Austin airport also HAD a free wireless network.. but because of the .com fallout, they started charging like $6.95 a day or something... It's sometimes worth if you're sitting there waiting for your flight..
ChiefArcher
With the ever-growing use of wireless links for IP data, how much more difficult will it become to track down abusers?
If I sat in an airport with a laptop, I could use the (surely) fat pipe of the building to DoS some poor person, and who would catch me? The user reports to his isp, who gives it to the airport's upstream provider who give it to airport personnel. By that time, I'm way the hell out of there.
Of course, I'm using "I" in this post hypothetically - I hate DoS and the packet kiddies that do it, but what security is being put in place to prevent it?
--
grep "xercist"
I have been a huge fan of public access to 802.11 devices connected to the internet. With enough access points at high-density points (airports, malls, coffee shops, etc...), the system could become almost as transparent as the cell-phone system is today, and free at that!
I heartily encourage everyone with a home network and highspeed internet to purchase an 802.11 access point and place it by a window. Just make sure that you place the access point is on the external side of your firewall.
I find free wireless networks outside of most businesses :)
There's two ways they could do this:
1. They could make it cheap, and ensure that just about anyone at an airport can get minimal 'net access, or
2. They could make it expensive, and ensure that high-class business-types can get a fat pipe.
Of course, the OPTIMAL solution would be to do both: Rent a low-bandwidth node for $5.00/hour, or a high-bandwidth node for $0.25/minute.
If they choose to only provide an expensive connection for corporate use, though, I'm not sure it'll be a step in the right direction.
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
Perhaps this is just a strategy of dealing with the increased delay the FAA is forcing on the airlines?
I stoped at London Heathrow a few weeks ago and they have these "XPOD" kiosks or something similar, well they run windows 98 and connect with wireless. I pulled out my NAI Sniffer and found the ip address range 10.10.10.x/24 (if I remeber) then I assosiated myself to the network and found that all the kiosk machines have the 'c' drive shared out - full accsess! and NO PASSWORD. At least the internet connection was a bit more secure, they went threw a proxy server and when I tried to brouse the internet from my laptop all I got was the xpod logo.
.cap files. kruczkowski @ hotmail.com
JKF at New York has some small network, but nothing intresting and no internet.
Frankfurt (Germany) has also some network but also nothing fun, all I see is novell broadcasts.
If anyone want, I still have the NAI
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
I have been reading about everyone screaming 'ohh my god! its wireless! its not secure!' or 'the script kiddies are going to go nuts!' You _CAN_ secure this and make sure it is only used by 'good' people (i.e. not the #isosRus user) by simply only allowing IPSec connections out to the world this pretty much elimiates the script kiddie wishing to use 'mad bandwidth' to DoS down someone else and because all the users will be connecting to the rest of the world over a VPN to there office you dont really have to worry about them attacking things from the airport network. Another point of view would be to require users to 'check-in' by setting up a DHCP server that hands out 'dead ips' that can only access one web page. That web page would be a registration page where the fills in the blanks (MAC address, cell phone number, home address, etc..) then a back end script creates a reservation or some other method to privide a 'live' ip for that user to access the outside world. Said airport might also consider (if said airport is not blocking everything but lets say port 80, 443, and IPSec) going with the transparent proxy server that one of the other users talked about. Said airport could also use the customers airline ticket SN# to track the person. You could goto great trouble to attempt to curve the abuse by a few people.. Or you could watch for abuse and disable that MAC address on the network. At any rate. Cheers.
Real men don't use GUIs.
No need to bother - it's likely been done already.
Anyone using Windows 2000 on thier laptop that's unpatched for Code Red will get infected right away. There will undoubtedly be some schmuck - who's laptop is already r00ted - that will be waltzing through the airport broadcasting away that particular snippet of malicious code. Bleah.
There should be some qualification system before you get on a public network like this, IMHO.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
I was at an ACI-NA (Airports Council International-North America) conference in Sept/01 and this was discussed by airport operators--people who were looking into implementing exactly this, but so far, people hadn't been very successful.
... if you figure that you can keep all 100 kiosks running; operating costs are low, no cost overruns on a tech job, the "freeloaders" (techies with their own hifi cards) aren't using the system as much as the paying customers, ... etc.
Being able to generate revenue from non-aeronautical streams is very important to an airport, because the aeronautical revenue (passenger charges, landing fees, bridge docking fees, etc.) are regulated. Only by these other operations--duty free, concession contracts, advertising space, selling time on a wireless network, etc.--can airports make money.
Anyways, so people were looking into it, and it was important.
As I recall, most operators had decided that it wasn't feasible because:
1. The relevant frequencies are already saturated with necessary communication. To date, this has been largely uncontrolled, and so airlines have just been using it for their remote check-ins, communication with the loading bridges, operational chatter such as emergency response, etc. So operations people were concerned that a casual browser would cut out important communication.
2. The cost/benefit analysis didn't seem to make this profitable. In this article, two numbers were quoted: $250,000 capital cost, and revenues of $6-8 per kiosk for a day of surfing (if you have your own wifi card, it's free). Just look at these figures for a minute. Upfront cost of $250,000, and assume operating costs are 50% of what the revenues are (i.e. there's a 100% margin, and we're going to assume that all free surfers don't cost us anything). Then 100 kiosks that generate $8 per day and cost $4 per day meaning a profit of $400 per day. That's $146,000 in yr 1, so there's a break-even in yr 2. That's actually reasonable
Anyways, neat to see that this is being implemented. Glad to hear that there was a work-able business plan. But I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't pan out.
Well I hope you've fathered all the children you plan on. It is indeed free, if you bring the hardware. If you want to use the kiosk, you pay.
This is kind of funny in light of the recent article discussing security devices running on unsecured 802.11b networks (as if there's another sort of 802.11 network) You won't even look out of place walking around with airsnort running...
Anyway, I'm sorry that last paragraph was so confusing. I guess assigning another meaning to the word Airport wasn't so smart on Apple's part.
Yes, I'm still a junky. Are you still a bitch?