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Linuxcare Founders Go Wireless
LinuxCare founders Dave Sifry, Art Tyde and Dave LaDuke have started their second company: Sputnik. Basically, they have an ISO you can download that will turn a laptop with an 802.11b card into a wireless gateway. They also wrote a user-authentication scheme that reroutes all traffic to the gateway until the user logs in via a web form. This should sound familiar to people who stay in broadband capable hotels a lot. Using this authentication technique, the software allows you to choose who can and cannot use your gateway, and in you'll be able to charge strangers for access (with Sputnik handling the billing). This will likely get some isps a wee bit upset. NewsForge has an article detailing what they are doing. Update: Turns out the authentication wasn't written by Sputnik, my bad. They use NoCatAuth
Disclaimer: I've known these guys for a long time and am pals with them, so I waited until someone else (in this case Grant at NewsForge and the NYT) put something up independently about them before linking to them.
Sputnik didn't write the 'captive portal' authentication system. It's a GPL'd program called
NoCat. http://www.nocat.net/
Even with Ricochet coming back, this seems like a much better idea if it catches on. Granted, if there are no gateways, nobody can use it, but it'd be a lot faster than Ricochet and (it seems) based off actual usage, not monthly fees. It seems there's a lot of potential for abuse here, but I'd definately like to check this out, it seems like a good way to make a little extra cash (though I'm curious if there's a way to block out abusive users, I don't need any m4d h4x0rz cracking machines through my IP.) This will also probably violate a lot of ISPs ToSes, but who cares, most of us are violating them anyway. :)
Wake up dude. Your missing the boat. We don't need ISPs anymore.
www.freenetworks.org
All the changes that we made are distributed on the ISO. We don't screw around with Open Source licensing, God knows we've been there, and we play by the rules.
LANRoamer is a GPL'ed system that has been doing this for a while. We gave presentations on it at Bay Area Wireless User Group and Sbay.org back in June, I believe, before even the NoCat project started.
If you're into "bazaar" style software development, one thing you should note is that LANRoamer does network booting and upgrade reboots. So, if you contribute a useful feature to LANRoamer, it can be widely deployed quickly (based on our stability labels and the stability level each gateway owner has selected). Also, in addition to free accounts and revenue sharing to our access point providers, we also offer free courtesy accounts for people who run open access points (not just during a free beta), partly in an effort to thank the developers and "evangelists", but also to get them involved.
Anyhow, here is the software, including the latest LANRoamer network boot floppy or CD-ROM.
The network boot floppy currently requires that the first ethernet card be compatible with 3COM 3c59x, 8139too, Ether Express Pro 100, NE2000 PCI cards, Via Rhine, Tulip cards and PC-Net PCMCIA ethernet (the 802.11 card or the ethernet connection to your access point can be just about any card that Linux supports). Unlike NoKat (the last time I checked), LANRoamer can work behind firewalls, including NAT routers, even ones that distribute IP addresses that LANRoamer would otherwise use. Once your gateway is up, client machines can obtain addresses from your wireless gateway by DHCP and are taken to an SSL-based login page when they try to go anywhere on the web until they log in.