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Starbucks Clashes With WiFi Hobbyists Over Airwaves
fobbman writes: "Portland Oregon's Pioneer Square (the heart of downtown) has had free WiFi access provided since February by Personal Telco, which is a local group of computer hobbyists. Now Starbuck's is planning on offering the same service on the same band in the same area for $29.95 a month, according to this story in the local fishwrap. Without regulation or licensing, and with WiFi growing, this could become a common problem."
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Here is a link about using wireless mobile at Starbucks. Here is a Wall Street article about it, and a brief intro. Here's an article praising the idea.
No, this is a legitimate story. I'm a PTP member fairly involved in quite a number of projects (though I wasn't involved in this particular node), and here's what I know:
The T-mobile installers talked to several PTP members in Starbucks as they were installing the hardware. They were made aware of the PTP node, and which channel it was on, as well as how long it had been installed (since February 2001).
T-mobile uses channel 1 on all their sites, so this is actually not an intentional act on their part, but either laziness or "corporate policy".
Channel 1 is used by these companies because software searches for an AP from channel 1 upwards. Obviously, they want to be found first.
A TV news spot (link can probably be found on the PTP site soon, I captured/encoded it and let others mirror on faster machines) was also shot today at the square, with a half-dozen PTP members sitting there trying to surf. The clip shows the tmobile and www.personaltelco.net AP's flashing in and out, as they stomped on each other. Performance of both network (we presume, no one has wasted $30/mo on a T-mobile account) sucked badly.
And for the curious, the Pioneer Courthouse Square Starbucks node is fed by a *satellite* connection, meaning horrendous latencies. The PersonalTelco node at the same location is fed by dual T1's. Do the math on bandwidth and latency, and tell me if you want to spend $30/mo for T-mobile....
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Because if one system is free, open and public, and another is a account limited secure network requiring login and password then you have a problem. If i am trying to connect to the free wifi network and I'm in an area where the pay service is stronger then I'll be the one my card will see, and if both networks are on the same channel this will continue on in a constant power struggle. He who has the stronger signal would be the default node so to speak.
iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed essid starbucks
udhcpc --interface wlan0
or
iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed essid free
udhcpc --interface wlan0
For more efficient transmission, you can even program your access points to use different frequencies. There are twelve overlapping frequency bands used 802.11b, which provide for three or four completely independent networks.
Attempting to associate with a network named "Any" or "" will usually result in associating the network with the strongest signal, depending on your driver and card. This is also true in other operating systems.
Perhaps it's more of a plug than a disclaimer, but I should mention I'm involved in LANRoamer, an open source system that you can use to sell passers-by access to your wireless network and other participating networks.
You're closer to the truth than you may have realized.
The initial Starbucks wireless roll-out was a joint effort with Microsoft.
Wi Fi is unregulated in most countries.. including US
And currently most chipsets support frequency hopping to aviod cluttering.
The problems are coming in becuase Telco's are trying to make it east for themseleves by sticking to one channel. This saves on equipment costs and stuff.
In the long run this causes problems.. but remember thats how most people operate.... Find a solution only when problem comes... if preplanning was the norm the level of chaos would be much less.
The 802.11b standard is beautifuly designed but most people do not implement all the features to cut costs
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Surely you know this from working there, but for the benefit of the other readers: only 3 of the 11 channels are totally separate. They are channels 1, 6, and 11. Using any other channels will eventually result in some kind of overlap.
Do this: put an access point on channel 1, then put a sniffer on channel 2. Notice that you get most of the beacons. Move the sniffer to channel 3. Notice that you still get them, only a bit less. You get the idea. By the time you get to channel 6, you don't get beacons from channel 1 any more.
In a pinch, you can probably use the other channels to *reduce* the problems of using the same channels, but it won't totally solve the problem.
Analog cell sites have bunches of non-overlapping frequency sets. 802.11b has 3. Now imagine tiling a city with that handicap. Ouch.
I know most of you are gonna go on about how Starbucks is evil and a bunch of other irrational bullshit, I thought I'd inject some common sense from somebody who lives by Pioneer Square:
"Representatives of Starbucks and T-Mobile owner VoiceStream said they were unaware of any other wireless Internet presence in the square and had no comment on Personal Telco's objection."
Let me tell you something about Pioneer Square: Nobody's walking around with wireless devices screwing around on the web. To tell you the truth, the only way you could have found out this service was even availble was a quick blurb on the news. It doesn't surprise me at all that Starbuck's didn't even know it was there. Heck, it was sheer chance that I even found out about it. I go by Pioneer Square nearly ever day, I can honestly say I have never ever seen anybody doing wireless stuff there. (Not saying they don't do it, just saying that it's not visible.) I don't think more than a handful of people are aware of the 802.11 cloud present there.
Now, Starbuck's is right there on the square. They could set up a nice little antenna (heck, they could probably just use a $150 gateway, serious.) and it'd work just fine. This has nothing to do with trying to wipe out another service like it, it's just geography, it's just a coincidence.
"Derp de derp."
Story:
source
T-mobile was made aware of the free access both during site survey and installation (we happened to be around both times).
Nobody, especially personal telco, wants regulation, and nobody's saying that they chose channel 1 maliciously. But, there's a problem. Staying on channel 1 will hurt their quality of service just as much as ours, if not more, since people expect more when they're paying for it.
um. we're using 802.11b. the industry standard.
the problem is that the IEEE defined 14 channels, or sequences of frequency hops, 11 of which are legal to use in the US. only 3 channels don't overlap at some point. Those channels are 1, 6, and 11. In Pioneer Courthouse Square, before t-mobile, there was a weak AP on channel 11, and personaltelco on channel 1. Logically, you would assume a for-pay service interested in providing quality would use channel 6. Even the most cursory of site surveys would've detected these competing signals.
Will Personal Telco have to move again after the next commercial service comes along? How many times do they have to move until there are no more channels to move to?
Channels are finite and this is an unlicensed spectrum anyone can use. Both parties have to live with that. Starbucks/T-Mobile was just stupid by not planning better. It isn't hard for a planning engineer to whip out the WiFi and just check to see what's there on what channel.
It would be smart for Starbucks to move over to another channel. Surely there will be fewer users of their service than of the free one, so they can certainly offer a service based on better bandwidth availability.
But this won't last long. The spectrum is limited, and there is no licensing or frequency coordinators to manage it. Part 15 rules include the fact that users are subject to interference from other legal users, including microwave ovens. Basing a paid service on such rules is foolhardy. But one direction is that it's success could be used to get the FCC to open more spectrum, and a licensing structure, for just such kinds of services. It will probably have to be on all new spectrum, perhaps up at 10 or 24 GHz.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Read even more details about Part 15 rules here.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
http://www.lns.com/papers/part15/
for a paper on this issue.
Tim
Absolute nonsense. I'm an Amateur Radio Operator, and I can assure you there are no "squatters rights" on ANY frequency by ANY uncoordinated entity (i.e. Part 15).
Further any Ham operator causing willful interference can be ticketed by the FCC. Even if they are interfering with secondary services, if it can be proved they are doing it just to cause harmful interference, they can be fined heavily for this.
And finally if you can find a Ham low enough to try this, you've found the exception, not the rule. Most hams would be outraged (as I am) at the mere suggestion we use MIGHT to make RIGHT.
If you modd'ers want to find a good Troll, check the parent of this message. Bah.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
If someone has the same hardware address as your card, either: You've changed yours and your the one causing the conflict, or...
They are doing it on PURPOSE.
THe hardware address of all network cars are unique when they leave the factory. If there is a conflict it is likely someone changed theirs intentionally.
As for the 'batch of NICs', I know it happens, but it does NOT happen often any more. It is likely they are snooping yours. Do yourself a favour and enable encryption.
I travel almost constantly, so having home-based broadband was not serving me very well. The service provider T-mobile charges a fixed price (about the same as broad band) for access at all its partner locations. So far, they are in Starbucks, American Airlines, and several hotel chains. Pretty much wherever I go around the country, I am a short drive to a point of presence.
Also, some locations are very, very fast. At the Starbucks down the street from my work site in Houston, I downloaded all 5 CD's of Red Hat 7.3 in under 3 hours. It beats the crap out of dialing out through the hotel PBX.
Finally, as long as the two networks are using different SSID's why does it matter? You have a 11 Mb pipe no matter how you slice it. The two should be able to share the waves without problems.
Is it so bad to pay $1.50 for a cup of coffee, and $0.50 for refills, while you surf and do your big downloads? The soundtrack sucks, but headphones fix that! And, someone else cleans up afterwards.
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Sure. The problem is that they don't want to co-exist. The new entry has decided (whether for competitive advantage or sheer laziness) that they are entitled to use channel 1 at all of their locations and are unwilling to compromise in cases where that channel is already heavily loaded.
Each provider will only respond to packets with their SSID, but that alone doesn't solve the basic problem of CSMA/CD technology, which is that the total capacity of a medium decreases as a function of demand due to lost efficiency when collisions occur.
Ideally, the 802.11b standard would have required the use of load balancing and provided for dynamic WEP key changes. Maybe next time.
Send them an e-mail
f ?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/front_page /102975810817580.xml
Send them this letter:
Dear Starbucks:
Your company has begun using the same transmission channel that a non-profit organization uses in Oregan.
You may find information about the issue here:
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ss
I acknowledge that the channel which your company is broadcasting on is public, and therefore not regulated; however, as this organization has been at the Oregan site prior to your network's existance, it reflects badly as an attempt to take over a public channel. I may choose, therefore, not to buy my coffee from Starbucks, as I disagree with the actions which your company is taking. I am not asking for your company to stop using it's service, merely to change the channel at this location, as Personal Telco has been using this channel for the prior 6 months. I would be very grateful if you would recognize the prior existance of an organization on channel 1, and change your channel, so as to stop the signal interference from the 2 networks clashing (thereby reducing both their speeds).
Thank you for your time,
**************INSERT YOUR NAME HERE***************
I sent my letter. Did you send yours?
-=Lothsahn=-
1) "Starbucks main interest in this is merely to prevent people from sitting around their retail stores and using their computers for free." What computers? The idea is that people bring by their own laptops and use the WiFi access that Tmobile provides.
2) "those who want to even go near the place will be forced to pay Starbucks a damn subscription fee just to try and use what they once where able to use for free." Wrong again. Starbucks doesn't make a nickel off of the access, Tmobile does. Starbucks gets their money from the coffee you drink while sitting around surfing.
The problem here is Tmobile, who wants to charge you for WiFi access instead of letting you use someone else's free access. Get it straight.
// I will show you fear in a handful of jellybeans.