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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...
Block everything but port 80. unless you log in via an authentication system. I can see it becoming a giant liability as soon as one joker spams or sends his joke "threats" to whitehouse and senate officials.
It's great to offer free, I do... but I require that you prove who you are to me and give me a way of nailing your balls to the wall when you get out of line. for full access.... it's worked great, and I've only had one instance where I gladly gave the police the information about one user...(Yes, I'll rat on your arse in a second too..) and found out it was a joke by a friend of his.. but it kept my butt out of trouble.
Authenticate, and require proof of who they are before you give anything other than port 80 outgoing only.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I would love to get some Cisco Aironet hardware and setup 802.11b coverage for my entire home communtiy. Of course if I was administrator for this network, I would probably limit traffic to port 80. That would cut down on spamming, plus I would log MAC address to block abusers.