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...

Comments

The net is infrastructure...

[the_verb]

As much as we want the 'net to be privately funded, it seems pretty unrealistic to expect networks like this to spring up privately. Like the road system, or sanitation, shouldn't access be a utility?

--v.

Re:The net is infrastructure...

[samfreed]

If the net is a toy, then so are all public libraries, all locations and facilities for people met and talk, and, ultimately, civilization itself becomes a toy by you.

Time to accept that change happens. When we were growing up there was no net but we had phones. When out parents grew up there was no phone but they had electricity. When their parents grew up there was no electricity.... You get the point. It took many years to get my dad to use a touch-tone phone, but eventually he did.

Security?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesnt this have security implications? If someone can anonymously access the net there is no way to trace them back...seems like the ideal camoflauge for anyone up to no good.

Re:Unacountable bits?

[don_carnage]

Perhaps a traffic shaper would be usefull as well to keep one node from eating up all of the bandwidth.

The problem with a free service like this is that it will be free up until the point where someone abuses it.

Rector Park (Battery Park City)

[smartin]

I heard that there was a nycwireless node in Rector Park, which is a little park in Battery Park City surrounded by appartment buildings. So one day a couple of weeks ago i was walking past and figured i would give it a go. Opened my ibook, fired up macstumbler and found about 2 dozen nets, 2 of which were nycwireless. I was able to connect to and use all of the ones i tried, thought the nycwireless ones by far had the best signal. I'm willing to bet that if you go and sit near enough to some upscale apartment buildings (or for that matter, live in one) you can be pretty sure of getting access for free. It seems that most people think these things are plug and play.

Always this argument...

[Thalia]

I am tired of the usual diatribe from security people that bandwidth is this great outlet for danger. Any system could be used for DOS, DDOS, Spam, spoofing, hacking onto other machines in the park, secret Chinese spy deals, and more. Get over it.

Some would liken IP connectivity to a printing press, and argue the company providing the press must watch each item printed against copyrighted, subversive, or pornographic works. Others would argue it is like electricity, a utility that is provided fairly cheaply after the initial wiring is installed, and need not be charged for at all for small amounts. The few who see it as a wilderness, full of abuse and crime and desparados checking for weakness tend to sell computer security services.

Re:Always this argument...

[Incongruity]

The few who see it as a wilderness, full of abuse and crime and desparados checking for weakness tend to sell computer security services.

You've never had your email address harvested by a spammer, have you? Through a security flaw in my University's content sharing arrangement with another university, many many email addresses were harvested and spammed bigtime. The dramatic increase in mail volume caused problems for our mail servers...nothing that the IT folks couldn't handle but it was a problem.

That kind of thing is the simplest example of abuse of the internet.

The notion that the internet isn't actually an insecure, unsafe network that should, by its very nature be "untrusted" unless secured is a dangerous one. Just because you haven't had a problem yet doesn't mean that you won't.

A free wireless connection to the internet means that someone with a laptop could sit out there and gerate millions of spams and never be traced back to anything more than a (likely spoofed) MAC address. The only way to stop that from happening is through thoughtful design and good network practices. IMHO, that includes exgress filtering on the network to prevent excessive spam...

Not an IT security sales guy, -tcp

Re:Always this argument...

[linuxhack]

Your points are well taken. I agree with them for the most part. The problem though is this, how will the law view it. If my network facilitates a DOS attack on some company's server, can I be sued? I have this feeling that the law would hold me accountable for any mis-use. At the very least, they would want me to show I made an attempt to stop the abuse.

Until the law views it the same way you do, it would be prudent to try.

Re:Always this argument...

[Fastolfe]

You bet you can be sued, unless you can demonstrate that someone else used your network to do harm. Here's the tricky bit, though: did you knowingly facilitate that user's illegal acts?

If your network was broken into and someone did these things without your knowledge, you certainly can't be held liable for his acts. If you ran your network responsibly, you can't even be called negeligent.

But when you open up your wireless LAN and let any and every Joe get Internet access through your network, and you deliberately make no effort to authenticate or gather sufficient information to a) track down abusers; or b) prevent abuse, one might suggest that you are acting as an accessory to whatever crimes are committed through your network.

It's possible, though, that if this is going to be treated like any other public utility, that the city is going to be OK with the fact that they'll just need to track these users down in real-time, by triangulating positions and using surveillance cameras, though.

And keep in mind that this is just the legal end of things. Generally when any customer signs a contract with a network provider, that contract includes bits about the customer not violating the ISP's terms of service, etc., etc. It isn't too far-fetched to assume that the city is subject to one or more ISPs' terms of use, and that they'll have to enforce those same terms on the general public that uses these public networks. If they are unable to reliably do so, the hosting ISP could be perfectly justified in enforcing penalties in the contract, perhaps including disconnection of service.

There's no reason to assume that just because it's a "city" doing this that they'll be exempt from having to honor an ISP's terms of service. But who knows? Maybe they're expecting to be large enough that they won't consider themselves customers of ISP's so much as peers...

Re:Always this argument...

[Anonymous Coward]

When you use a traditional ISP, they usually will have a log of which account was on what IP at any given time. Yes, accounts can be cracked, but some folks will be deterred.

The point is that there is no deterrence to abuse from the park WiFi.

Re:What about security?

[Loki_1929]

Please allow me to translate for all left wondering.
Note: These are not my views, only what I'm reading between the lines of the previous poster's comments.



"What security precautions have they taken to ensure that terrorists don't utilize this wireless connectivity to access bomb-making instructions from the Internet?"

Are they spying on everyone who uses the network? If not, they should. Can't have those hackers/terrorists/pedophiles/'bad people'/etc using the network; only Good People(tm).

"And even if they've been responsible enough to put a filter on the information available,"

And even if they're 'responsible' enough to censor the information (in violation of the first amendment),

"what about all the non-savvy folk in the park who don't have firewalls?"

We need to protect people from themselves; save the children; treat all people like children - pick any of the above.

"Are we to just stand by while their hard drives are violated by swarthy assailants?"

We need to arrest all 'hackers' and those thinking about 'hacking'. We also need to force security software and anti-virus software on all users of the network regardless of whether it will cause problems for them or whether they want it or not.





Hmm.. wouldn't it be easier to shoot all the citizens instead of trying to mess with all this? That seems to be the Final Solution(tm) you're seeking here anyway.

Green.

[Trusty Penfold]

Personally, I go to the local park to get some fresh air, look at something other than Windows and get a modicum amount of exercise.

The last thing I want to do is check my email.

Re:hopefully they did it right..

[pVoid]

Aw come on... you are naive.

'With some clever engineering and hardware from Cisco Systems and Intel, the wireless park was born.

Do you not think they made a system that allows triangulation of where you are, and also sends your content through Echelon-Ex v4.2?

I'm sure if you were to hack into a gov system, they'd have you pinned to the ground before you could leave the park.

Re:Sustainability?

[LostCluster]

Most businesses have more bandwidth than they need at any given moment, so the bandwidth is practically free to them since they were going to pay for it anyway. That is, until ISPs get wise to this idea and start with TOSes that prevent this use without paying extra for it. For some businesses, like shopping malls, they might write off the cost of WiFi bandwidth as a promotion to try to get geeks to stay in the mall, and therefore not pulling their girlfriends away from their shopping.

Re:IN SOVIET RUSSIA

[gosand]

This is NOT FUNNY ANYMORE. It was funny two months ago on the shack.

I find it funny, in a sad way, when dorks get so immersed in "their" internet world that they don't realize:

a. not everyone may have heard a joke yet, and 2 months isn't very long.
b. not everyone knows about these ultra-cool websites that they visit
c. referring to a website by a slang term gives you no idea what they are talking about. (what is "the shack"?) But I guess that means that they are cool and I am not.
d. they think they are the coolest, because they perceive themselves to be on the cutting edge.
It is bad when nerds give nerds a bad name.

Re:Wireless Park In Portland

[don_carnage]

Parks have not caught up with the wireless society. Let's make it happen!

As good as that sounds, I'm sure there are plenty of people who would prefer to keep technology out of our parks. I would hate for the sounds of wind in the trees, children playing, and birds singing to be drowned out by a cell phone symphony. Think about it.

Re:Sustainability?

[Cyno]

That's like saying Linux isn't going to sustain itself. What's its long-term strategy to support its developement cost? The long-term strategy is to provide FREE wireless internet access. The long-term strategy is to provide FREE quality software. Only freaks and capitalists care about the long-term strategy you have in mind, ie. money. The rest of us just want it to work.