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The Wireless City
bigfatlamer writes "This week's NY Times City Section has an article (FRRYYY) on wireless access in New York City's busiest park, Bryant Park. The director of the park has installed a free 802.11b network with complete coverage of the park with help from NYC Wireless. From the article: 'With some clever engineering and hardware from Cisco Systems and Intel, the wireless park was born. Just as park users could sit wherever they liked, so too could they gain access where they liked. The eight-megabytes-per-second connection was as free as the sunshine and the green grass.' NYC Wireless is currently working with the Parks Dept. to put similar networks in Madison Square and Tompkins Square Parks. If they could do Prospect Park (3 blocks from my house) life would be perfect." NYCwireless helps those who help themselves...
Walker in the Wireless City
Yadda, Yadda, Yadda, you putz.
Yes, they allow outbound:
node faq
Is it secure? No! Wireless Ethernet is insecure by default. Any user on the Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) can spy on unencrypted traffic from other wireless users. Wired connections are generally more secure when communicating with other servers. Users are advised to use SSL to connect to web pages and mail hosts, SSH instead of telnet whenever possible, and VPNs (virtual private networks) for all other data to ensure privacy and security. You may see literature saying that the 802.11b standard includes provisions for optional 40- or 128-bit link-level encryption over the air, however, current implementations require the encryption key to be shared by all users of the wireless LAN, effectively eliminating the usefulness of this security feature in an open network environment.
Also fyi: How to find access
Amazing that this park is run by a private company and not by the city?
See company's can do nice things...
Don't bash all of them
Pah! I am sitting in Oakland (home of U Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon) with my iBook on a free Telerama connection. Apart from Telerama (which will turn to a paid service when they have the entire city covered), the City of Pittsburgh has a free net downtown, and Telerama and others cover all major neighborhoods.
When Telerama starts charging, I'll just cancel my ISP and use them everywhere. Free would be nice, but my ISP getting me wireless access everywhere in the city is great too.
Of course, Pitt, CMU and Duquesne have their own wireless points all over for their students/staff. It's already reality in Pittsburgh, buddy.
Lies about crimes
Yada Yada Yada
Interactive, engaging and site-specific applications are a click away. The Dialtone Symphony (.ram) is wholly produced through the choreographed ringing of people's own cell phones. Here are some other ideas:
The Public Review Draft of Portland's Waterfront Park Master Plan is available on-line.
The Morrison Bridge, in the center of Waterfront Park, has phone line access. An Orinoco 2500 ($1000) could drive Wi-Fi repeaters on the north end (near Saturday Market) and the south end, (near the Alexis Hotel), providing blanket coverage. The repeaters could be camouflaged as animals or Oregon historic figures. Waterfront Park also has a direct shot to the Council Crest tower where Winfield Wireless has a wireless ISP.
Rent out Segway Scooters with built-in Pocket PCs. Your GPS position would trigger Oregon Historical Society's Narrated Neighborhood Tours, Portland Visitor's Association's Self-Guided Tours, Portland Metro Maps or Lewis and Clark Maps. Wireless cameras could be helpful for the police, too.
Jacksonville Florida's free wireless hot spots provide tourist information as well as internet access. Multi-lingual kiosks, incorporating webtablets with language translation are available now. Text to speech can be output in a variety of languages. And it sounds good. Human voice samples are now incorporated into text to speech. Choose a language, respond by voice.
Parks have not caught up with the wireless society. Let's make it happen!
From NYCwireless: "We are volunteer group constructing a community owned network of computers that share internet access over radio connections. Each access point is run independently by volunteers with their own equipment." So their "sustainability" plan is to try and build a community. What? A long term strategy of building a community? What? People should be allowed access to information? This concept would be idealistic and unrealistic if it were the burden of a company, but it's not. Will people try to make a profit off it it? Probably, but overall this is significant because it's a movement where costs as well as benefits are distributed. It's not a get rich quick scheme.
Hansel USA - Chut up and read!
In the Wireless Network I worked for on my city, we had quite a few problems with kids using bandwidth for piracy and whatnot. As a result, we unfortunately had to block p2p ports, but the free service has been good for our community.
Not sure what your opinion of NYC is as a whole, but I have to tell you that Bryant park is a very, very nice area to hang about in.
I first visited it because my girlfriend works for a downtown revitalization consortium in my city, and when I went to visit NYC (this was a couple years ago) she had me take a pile of photos and QuicktimeVR nodes of the park -- as it's the very model of an urban public park these days. It's a few blocks north of the Empire State building.
Awesome grass, pretty trees, an awesome view, upscale sandwich carts (reminds me of Central Park) -- and get this:
The tables and chairs in the park aren't concrete or nailed down. They're comfortable and light and you're encouraged to shift and move around anywhere on the block.
It's a *VERY* popular lunch and sunbathing spot.
It's a pretty huge experiment that's been really successful and is being copied by a lot of cities trying to revitalize their own downtown areas right now.
Sure, you get a couple of wierdos from time to time -- but, hell! It's New York City! You *PAY* to hang around those same wierdos in the Village come nightfall.
on my wireless network (6 AP's around the city linked) you can have all ports open if you give me all your vital information (name, address, phone numbers, and then after vaildating that you are who you said you were.. you get a login that gives you unrestricted access.
works great.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
From thier site:
That is a little better than just Bryant Park.
Not true at all. In the summer there's a bar/munchies spot and movies. The "paid parties" are mostly in the non-sunbathing times of the year. And also to correct a few comments up, it's actually 10 blocks north of the Empire State Bldg.
May no camel spit in your yogurt soup.