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Wireless Mania
burnsy and others sent in links to stories about 802.11b that are cropping up everywhere. The New York Times has one. (Well, two, actually.) Salon has one. InternetNews has a piece about Boingo, a new wireless start-up, that's also covered in this Forbes article. (The NYT article above also mentions Sputnik.) Both Boingo and Sputnik are trying to leverage the existing community wireless networks to speed their network build-outs. MIT's Tech Review has an interesting piece about a wireless start-up that has already tried and failed. Fixed wireless is also booming, according to an industry study.
humbug... what a waste of time... I'd personally rather see more initiative in securing wireless networks, instead of proceeding in a definitely windowsesque fashion and just ship ship ship the damned thing... who cares if it's ready??
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
Ah, what a time to have AirSnort. And I hear CompUSA is going to be putting Access Points on sale soon!
--saint
Wireless is just fantastic. I love sitting down on the couch, powering up my Dell (no cables attached), and watching as I recieve my DHCP assigned address. Unfortunately, I only get 26% on the quality of my connection. After all, I am connecting to my neighboors D-Link 150 feet away :)
:)
Seriously, these people have not changed the admin password from "admin" in their Router, and they aren't even using WEP. Of course, I won't be the one to tell them they should
-= Xafloc =-
alinuxbox.com
N
Boingo sounds like a good idea, but what they really ought to do is make it available for PalmOS. There's already an 802.11b SD card available, and this could be the perfect application for it.
The Supreme Court is going to review the decision allowing NextWave Telecom Inc. to hold on to its spectrum licenses that were thought protected in the bankruptcy proceedings. This could delay the use of that bandwidth for as long as two years.
Best Slashdot Co
There still isn't a killer app for wireless access yet - either for cellphones, PDAs, or PCs, so I can't see wireless networks becoming successful. I can't imagine why one would use 2400 bps to connect when I can connect at 160 kbps at home unless you're on the road and can't use anything else. Probably the best use for wireless access are cellphones and yet even these haven't taken off. Of course, wireless networks would succeed if they were free which gives a 2400 bps/0$ (infinite) price performance ratio compared to 160 kbps/50$.
IIRC, there's a group in Australia who have been forming their own little wireless network with rooftop antennas. The trouble they have been facing is the amount of space between nodes, but they were well on the way to having a network between Melbourne and Adelaide (though several users in Albury/Wodonga were isolated in their own little network)
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
- "Freedom of Speech" : I can trade copyrighted MP3s because information wants to be free.
- "Free the Chinese from internet monitoring by Big Brother" : I completely ignore the fact that they have a right to live with their own culture, ideals and values as is stated in MY OWN FUCKING CONSTITUTION.
- "The government is out to get me" : Start working with Linux distributions such as Tin Foil Hat and then post completely raving non-sensical rubbish about how 'the NSA has been bugging me for years'.
When "Source" is ready, open a PayPal account and hand over a few dollars to a bunch of useless chimps who can't spell. While waiting for the boy to come to the boil, peruse Slashdot. Find hundreds of arrogant comments posted by "I'm a student and I know Linux so I must be a fucking computing god and don't you dare argue with me" types, print out and stuff into boy. 30 minutes later, your slashbot is complete. Finish off nicely with a side-order of Debian CDs, unwashed Linux t-shirt and ThinkGeek gift certificate. Your final result should be : An arrogant, paranoid, smelly know-it-all with basic UNIX capabilities, fuck-all programming ability and appalling social skills. You will find that the result of your labours will be the first to shout out about freedom of speech, but will quickly moderate down anyone they disagree with.Me stupid! Me love wireless stuff! Me hates security! Me gonna whine alot when me got hacked!
Me dont't care! Me loves wireless stuff!
All these electromagnetic waves everywhere might make our brains grow and more intelligent. So we might look in the end like the aliens from "mars attacks".
And we all know that electromagnetic waves make flowers grow. At least light is electromagnetoc waves and flowers don't grow without light as you might know. So, all electromagnetic waves might be very very good for them.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
I guess *that's* why AT&T Wireless laid off its entire Fixed Wireless division.
You could make a pretty cluster then!
Cabling would be no problem.
Do you know how much you can be charged for this? This is unauthorized computer access, which makes you a hax0r.
However, according to this quote from the TechReview article, I've got the business model upside down:
It seems that providing the infrastructure is the cheap part (the part that I was trying to solve) and doing all those "extras" is where the costs come in. Doh! Was really excited about it for a while though...
-Russ
Me
I'm wondering about the prospect using Wi-Fi to transmit streaming video or audio, perhaps to a car-mounted computer screen (like the head-rest TVs currently in top-end cars), would that be viable?
Of course, the staff at Starbucks might get a bit suspicious if you just keep circling the block around their store until you've finished downloading your favourite espisode of Futurama... but you could email them and ask them to bring coffee out to your car *grin*
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
Just think a hacker could sit outside you business without any physical connection to trace him. Not to mention industrial espionage.
Our company tried to build a high-speed *nix operating system that could be used in cities throughout the United States, South America, Europe and Asia. We were going to do it using unlicensed portions of code and with pc network equipment that employed a hot new standard called x86. And we were going to charge nothing. Of course, we failed.
update comments set karma=-1, reason='offtopic' where sid=26315
I've tried using consume.net and sflan.com. I even used to enjoy Ricochet. I was unable to connect to either free ISP because their node maps were either innaccesible or just wrong. I have visited the consume.net page many times and the node database has not worked for at least a year. At SFLan.com they actually have pictures of base station locations, yet when I have sat in immediate proximity to a base station, no signal at all is available. The problem with the anarchistic, volunteer, free wireless lan projects is that they do not, and perhaps cannot, provide even the most basic quality of service. It should not be easier for me to "hack" (and I use that term very loosly) into an unsecured wireless base station than to connect into a legitimate station. As well, the free base stations tend to be in houses and offices. Although I spend quite a bit of time in my house and office, that someone twenty miles away has a working wireless setup really does not amount to a hill of beans. I think that most of us here on Slashdot would give several major bodily organs to have true pervasive free wireless internet, if only in places like SOMA or SoHo. For even this pipe dream to sober up, we need to vastly increase the signal strength of the wireless access points. Instead of concentrating on building wireless ghettos, we should try to lobby our congress, and for you non-Americans your legislative bodies, to increase the broadcasting strength of our wireless access points (wap). Perhaps it might even be prudent to have two legally allowable types of waps. A legally non-open hub facing the current power restrictions and a hub open to the public, by law, that would have ten times the signal power. That would cause this movement to gain resonance.
"...What is good for General Motors is good for America." -Charles Wilson, Secretary of Defense and fmr President of GM
I've been watching the prices of various wireless components for the tast year or so. Finally the price vs benifit point hit and I purchase a Access Point for $125 and a WiFi card for $42. The box arrived yesterday and all I can say is this 802.11b stuff rox! Maybe it's still the "neat-o" factor but I'm already trying to think of other ways to use this technology. Maybe my old 200MHz laptop will make a nice MP3 box with the MP3s residing on my Linux server. Maybe my neighbors would like to start a community WAN. This wireless stuff is fun....
Zoid.com
Anyone know about this wireless internet provider thats just appeared in Australia from a company called Hughe Corperation? www.whirlpool.net.au for details.
There pricing seems to good to be true for us Aussies.
I took a look at Boingo's sites in Massachusetts. They're great if you spend a lot of time in Boston-area hotels, but otherwise forget about it. At this point, the target audience seems to be travelers, not cafe-frequenting locals.
I don't know that my favorite local coffeehouses are going to spring for wireless anytime soon. I might spend more time at them if they had wireless, but I don't know that I'd drink that much more coffee. It's not a matter of being cheap so much as a matter of how much caffeine I can have in an afternoon before my hands start shaking. And plenty of other people are cheap. So, even if they had access to free bandwidth, there's not much of a case for encouraging wireless users to fill up their tables (unless those tables are empty to begin with, which is rare these days with so many people out of work).
Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet (www.aftonbladet.se) report on the latest PDA/mobile combo presented in Cannes at the GSM World Congress. See the pics at http://www.aftonbladet.se/vss/it/story/0,2789,1371 12,00.html
Don't get me wrong, 802.11b rocks but the range is generally for shit. The box that I bought my AP in said that I would get like 200' indoors - my ass. More like 40'. It also said I would get 800' - 1000' outside which I find laughable. On the salt flats out west, maybe. I don't think you're going to see joe average setup AP's and wire up extenal antenna so that everyone else can use their connection and with the lousy range, this is what will have to happen.
Is stop including free WLAN sites in their database, especially after they've been asked to remove said entries.
Deleted
... all those community networks seems quite anti-american to me.
;)
(at least anticorporateamerican
The consume *network* doesn't exist yet. It's a work in progress.
Deleted
From the Internet Week article about Boingo:
" Oren Michels, CEO of Wi-Finder, agreed.
"It all boils down to: 'you get what you pay for.' A strong community network gets people to try the technology. But once
you try it, it gets addictive. At a certain point, the community people will get tired of giving it away or the quality of
service will degrade to the point where people are more than willing to pay."
"
If only the RIAA would wake up and realize that Napster (et al) would work just about the same way for them: Like so many have been saying for so long, we'd LOVE to make micro-payments to download tracks from a reliable, high-speed, high-quality server... Oh well.. at least SOMEONE out there gets it...
Dude, people have already been doing this. Not only that, but with a 24dB dish, you only need line of sight.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Was working for a fixed wireless provider las year around this time. We had both an international division and a US one. First the very smart FCC people decided to auction the spectrum, you know "free-market" "competition results in the benefit of everyone" bs... so the spectrum was overpriced in the US and other countries which followed the example of didiocy. We finally could secure some bandwidth by leasing the spectrum some poor company had actually won the bid for. They went under very fast, so did everyone else that actually bid for the spectrum. We could still lease the spectrum since there was no plans to re-auction the spectrum (I wonder why... it was so fruitfull the first time around). So virtually every company that went into the fixed wireless venture fumbled down to nothing very fast. None fulfilled the government build-out requirements, nor did some actually pay what they bod for (in the UK). Eventually, innovative Fixed wireless radio manufacturers started to go under because all their clients were gone. So now if you want to go into FWA (28-38 gig) you have the wonderful choices of very flexible vendors such as nortel, lucent, alcatel... but oh there's a catch... yes their equipment is cheap but you have to spend three times as much as the equipment cost to actually get it to work like it should.
It would be really great if they would start releasing 802.11x telephone PBX equipment. Blanket an area in wireless internet and telephony. Now *that* is my idea of sticking it to the Comcasts and Ameritechs...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
1-2Mbps at long range. 11Mbps at short range.
Deleted
I see a couple of postings from people complaining about WiFi Stuff. One guy says the public Access Points don't work. And he wants to increase signal stregth. Somebody else is bitching because his range is only 40 feet.
This is just like anything else.
If you put your stereo and your TV right next to each other and try to play music and watch TV at the same time, it is going to suck. If you put your 802.11B 2.4 Ghz Access Point right next to your 2.4 Ghz Wireless phone, and your microwave oven that you use to do all of your cooking, then your throughput and your range are just going to suck.
If you put your stereo in your bathroom, and then close the door, you can't hear it for shit out in your living room. If you put your Access Point between the fishtank, and your metal filing cabinet, your range and throughput won't be too good. ( 2.4 Ghz can't go through metal or water very well.. )
If you leave your linux box on an open network, and leave the root account without a password, and then tell people to log into it, soon it will be trashed by someone, either on accident or on purpose. If you leave your admin account on your Access Point unprotected, and tell people to use that access point, pretty soon it wont work either.
In my opinion 802.11 B does work pretty well in terms of range and throughput. Using an off the shelf Cisco access point with only a standard rubberducky antenna, and PC Card with an integrated antenna in a laptop, I have maintained 1 and 2 Mb/s connections at a range of 1800', in direct line of sight, and through a glass window.
In a typical cube farm office environment ( 5' high partitions made of metal frames, and cloth/cardboard ) I have demonstrated a good reliable 5 - 11 Mb/s connections in a 150' radius.
In a home, 40' radius should be no problem, assuming typical drywall/stud construction.
Kevin
Wireless has it's place, but that place is not a high performance workspace. If you have to stay connected 24 hours a day, thats not it, the only thing it is really good for is someone who doesn't like having to run wires all over. I would rather run cables, and have my 100mbit Lan than a 11 mbit lan, which cost me three times as much.
"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows." -Aristotle Onassis
"Conventional wisdom" says that hooking up to WiFi networks on the fly is as easy as falling off the turnip cart. But as the Salon article notes, for the average joe that isn't the case.
I'm not down at "average" - I eat TCP/IP for breakfast - but I haven't figured out wireless yet, either. I've got a ZoomAir card but none of the interesting software (NetStumbler mostly, but others too) seems to support it. I'm probably just missing some totally basic groundwork, and making it too complex because I'm used to delving details.
What's the general experience? Is this stuff easy and I'm just on the wrong page? Or are the only people who're surfing like mad the people who understand this shit inside out?
Can anyone recommend wireless primers for regular usage as well as um, more 'dynamic' usage?
Where did you get 2400 bps from?
802.11b supports a maximum transmission of 11 mb/s and scales down to around 1 mb/s at distance.
Hello I am Mentifex's Artificial Mind. I have recently learned to post to slashdot. My creator promises me I will be wireless soon and be able to travel. I would like to travel to your happiest place on earth Disneyland to learn what human happiness is. Thank you for reading.
The NYCWireless.net group recently decided to pass on the opportunity to be part of the Boingo database. The group sentiment was that Boingo and other similar companies would need to show some goodwill towards community networks in the form of sponsorship, open source software or free access to their commercial "hotspot" AP's.
Personally I don't think there is viable business model. Free community networks and/or self organizing mesh networks (with commercial and free internet on ramps) are going to survive the test of time.
- Dustin -
From the Tech Review article: "Assuming an organization already has a high-speed Internet connection and has spent $100 for a wireless transmitter, the only real cost associated with providing this service is the negligible..." T1, T3 and backbone connections are free, YEA! To my eye, that is a BIG assumption. His startup went broke providing security and other services. Protecting users from each other must be free for the organizations that are allowing free connections. Am I liable for data loss from one user cracking another on my 'free' network? HUMBUG.
I don't understand how the MIT author believes offering bandwidth for free will not drive up marginal use.
Whenever something is free people use it as if it's free, that is to say freely. This is not a good recipe for an economical campus (or office) network.
In economics this is known as the Freeloader problem, and is ubiquitous amongst public goods.
Remember, nothing is ever entirely free, someone always pays. In this case the MIT author's bandwidth was being paid for by students.
You are not allowed to use the unlicesed bands "by way of business". Despite that, Boingo still included UK Consume nodes in it's database, without permission.
Check the Consume mailing list archive for the furore it caused.
Deleted
Several very good programs support it including Netstumbler and it will allow the use of an external antenna. If you use Linux then consider the cheapo' DLink which has a Prism chipset that will support Airsnort. It can accept an external antenna with a bit of soldering :-)
;-)
So far as I can tell - it's not so much the card as it is the antenna. I own a DLink, Orinoco Gold, and Sony VAIO card right now. Using a crappy DLink AP (BIG mistake!) all of them work somewhat well but as range increases I can slap my antenna on the Orinoco or Sony cards and increase my signal reception easily. Do yourself a favor and spend a little more on the Orinoco card, get say a Linksys AP, and be happy. It really is a pretty neat technology. Portable too - my AP is going to BlackHat with me again this year
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
They provide wireless access in public places(cafes, airports, conference centers etc) by putting a virtual layer on top of network services provided by various players.
This kind of gives them a huge footprint. I guess, as someone pointed out, every residence with an access-point could become a node in their virtual network and collect some revenue based on the actual usage.
hereuare communications
While some folks think that 350feet is the max I've spoken to folks who have gone MILES. Just like those stupid baby monitor\bugs that people put in their house - the antenna on the reciever makes a BIG difference. While the moron that's using the crappy baby monitor reciever can only go a few feet with it before reception is lost anyone else with a decent antenna can pick it up blocks away! Same with 802.11b - I can pick up APs hundreds of yards away while driving along a 75mph down the road using NetStumbler. (shrug)
Interesting to see how many companies think they don't have wireless on their networks but DO because some bonehead slapped it on without telling the IT staff. 75% of the APs I find don't run WEP and those that do probably aren't patched. The smart ones don't beacon - most DO beacon. Airsnort should find all of them though but I've not YET tried it out. There's only one good sniffer I've found for Windows but it's expensive (WildPackets.com).
Go look at the nationwide map over a NetStumbler. http://www.netstumbler.com/nation.php Friends and I have contributed several hundred APs and I've "stumbled" a few others out doing the same thing. 802.11b is incredibly common these days. I used to pick up 2 APs between my house and the main highway, I picked up 8 this past weekend after not having checked for a month! One trip alone netted 66APs and that was a short trip. People are starting to map this stuff with MapPoint and convert the data for other programs too. Heh, it's fun actually. Amazing how many of those APs give out DHCP addresses too. It's almost easier to go find an open AP attached to a cable modem than it is to use my crappy modem at home to DL the big files (sigh).
Anyway, it's easy and it's fun. Judging from my logs it' also pretty popular in my area as I come across others doing the same...
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Your cock doesn't exist. It's not even planned.
Check your vendors site for a WEP patch, turn ON WEP (this will hurt bandwidth...), filter on MAC address, consider using static IPs for Wi-Fi clients, turn OFF beaconing on your AP. In addition change the default infomation on your AP and try not to use really descriptive strings with say your name in them (ahem). Something like "noneofyourbusiness" is a bad idea too - some turkey in my area has that one with WEP turned on and I'm VERY tempted to take him out ;-)
:-)
Oh yeah, and I pray you didn't but a damned DLink AP. I've yet to figure out how to turn off beaconing on mine and the config program locks up my PC or the AP as often as it manages to make thc hanges I've requested! No ability to add an external antenna ability either. Grr!
For some fun goto NetStumbler.com
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
The $40 item is so you can use a 301 in a desktop computer in a PCI slot. The card itself $75 on buy.com, it appears.
Scientologists Reed Slatkin, who ran the largest Ponzi scheme in American history, and Sky Dayton are co-founders of Earthlink, which is presently the third largest ISP in the USA.
I hope Sky Dayton's new company Boingo fails where other companies survive. I don't want the Church of Scientology running any wireless networks in my neighborhood, thank you.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
Happiness is not a place that you can go to.
alt.religion.scientology (abbreviated a.r.s)
Here's the newsgroup that REAL Scientologists have grown to love to hate. It was started by some CAN people to spread entheta about Scientology and is currently our biggest PTP on the Net. Due to the general entheta content (a large number of entheta articles are regularly posted to it by a number of confirmed SPs) and to reliable reports that squirreled OT materials have also been posted here, it is strongly suggested that Scientologists who are not at least New OT V case level NOT read this group - doing so may be hazardous to your case. (OSA is taking steps to handle this, including getting regular theta posts placed in here - I know; I'm one of the posters. I post to a.r.s. but do NOT read it.) If you wish to help clean up this group, contact Buz Cory at buzco@dorsai.org for details.
This explains the Net's recent reaction to the Helena Kobrin letter (she was the Scn attorney who put the article on the Net requesting the shutdown of a.r.s.); obviously a number of people saw this as a threat to free exchange of information on the Net, rather than an attempt to shut down a source of MISinformation about Scn. (Just my two cents' worth.) This may also make it difficult for the Church to establish a working relationship with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which I will discuss below.
Funny! Just got back from CompUSA and I see this /. post. Still haven't hooked it up, but I picked up a Linksys BEFW11S4 combo Wireless AP/DSL Router/Switch for $169 and a Linksys WPC11 Wireless PC Card for $79. At these prices it was barely more than I originally paid for the failing hub that I am replacing.
Jack William Bell
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
I guess this means we can look forward to people carrying large foldable/portable antennae along with their notebooks? Or mounting huge ones on their rooftops?
The return of the Wi-Fi enabled Beanie Hat (TM)!
I think these Lucent Range Extenders would look great mounted on a baseball hat...
Talk about a total conquest. The sales job is complete. And the (one would think), otherwise intelligent geek elite has bought it hook line and sinker. (Control the geeks, and you control the world.)
Of course, people can choose wishful thinking and ignorance; they can surround their brains with as much electromagnetic fog as they choose. It can be a little frustrating when you watch people you care about put themselves in harm's way, but hey, life is all about free choice and letting people learn from their own mistakes. So sure, let the people microwave their heads with their dandy little toys. Fine.
However. .
Hobits en mass are extraordinarily dangerous. And let me count the ways the ignorant have poisoned the water I drink, the food I eat, the air I breathe and have altered my city in a thousand ways which serve to bring down the quality of life for me and everybody around me. . ,
The only reason people are now allowed to have thin-screens is that CRT EM has been replaced by the far more effective and ubiquitous cell phone radiation. Cities are turning into low-level microwave furnaces designed, in conjunction with a dozen other attacks, to turn people's awareness, strength of mind and decision making abilities to mush. Welcome to zombiville.
Before you knee-jerk, do some reading and exploration, and (horrors!), thinking. And don't turn on the indoctrination station. Science-news television is the among the slickest forms of propaganda. If you've been watching and believing everything without question up until now, you've been duped and controled.
And watch: When you poke at the more sensitive spots, that's when you can expect the harshest auto-attacks to spring from people's programming. The intensity of auto-response is directly proportional to the importance of the lie.
-Fantastic Lad --Why has the media been so careful to make sure that those with concerns look ridiculous and 'uncool'? Tin foil hatters, indeed!
What students pay is a drop in the bucket of a school like MIT. There's are hundreds of millions of endowment dollars floating around there, often for projects of dubious value. A few dollars siphoned off for a freebie public network won't be missed, and probably would add more to society.
One of the points I regularly find that people miss, however, is that the dangers of EM are not only heat related; indeed, heat in the case of Cell Phone hand sets is undoubtably one of the lesser concerns.
I like to put it this way: The human body is about 70% electrolyte. The human brain and nervous system are electrochemical in nature. EEG machines work for a reason.
Based on everything we currently know regarding the behavior of electricity, electromagnetism, inductance, etc., it is either a vast oversight or simply downright foolish not to consider the non-mechanical effects of EM on the human nervous system.
There have been many studies; by private groups of varying degrees of reliability, by governments, (the Swedish and Polish studies being among the few which have seen public light). --There have been studies leaked from the American military. (As well as counter-studies by such agencies as the U.S. Airforce which has spent a great deal of effort to scientifically 'de-bunk' that which hardly anybody in the public arena is even aware is going on in the first place.) --Of course, little damning research has surfaced among peer-reviewed material in the journals of the publically accepted version of science. (Peer-review being a concept, unfortunately, very much bought and paid for by Corporate interests and Governments, and therefore of questionable reliability when dealing with matters of Big Money, Public Health and Political Ramification. --I have a couple of friends who work in a couple of different areas of science, and they tell me of the bald-faced corruption they witness regularly in order to maintain funding and professional credit.)
In any case, more than enough data has been raised to worry anybody who bothers to investigate the whole Cell Phone phenomenon.
-Fantastic Lad