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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...
We have cityless wires!
... and Pringles sales skyrocket!
I'd love to see a wide-open WiFi access system installed at my local park, but I'm concerned that the network might be abused for use in spamming, DOSing, or other hacking. What logical restrictions should be put on a public WiFi center so that the majority of good people can enjoy the system while the small number of people who would do the Internet harm are foiled?
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.
It would be nice to get something like that here in New Orleans. Wishful thinking on my part... I just had a 30 minute conversation with a coworker explaining this newfangled internet thing.
http://nomoneydownnews.com/
...The perfect day to go leech Gigs of pr0n in the park for free!
Come on! Smile! You know you want to...
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
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.
What does that stand for?
"Free Registration Required, Yo Yo Yo"?
Walker in the Wireless City
WiFi is inherently peer-to-peer. When you have two or more devices within range of each other, you have a network. There wouldn't need to be anything that's not user provided unless they were providing a point that reaches the Internet.
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.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
NYCwireless looks like a great initiative, but I have to wonder how sustainable not-for-profit wireless networks like this are. Even if sponsorship covers the initial infrastructure (and I can see a "give 'em the network, sell 'em the network adapters" strategy perhaps working for Lucent, Cisco, et. al.), there must be a substantial ongoing operational cost. Does anyone know whether NYCwireless or any similar operations have announced their long-term strategies?
Please donate your spare CPU cycles to help fight cancer and other diseases
this is great news. the drug dealers in the park will be especially happy - they can create a web service infrastructure with their suppliers! .NET has its first customer!!
smd4985
I don't think you're going to attract too many wireless nerds with THAT approach.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
Now if they could set up wireless access on the beaches here in Florida, we would have something!
Free Wireless Internet in the Park, thats what its all about?
Well, at least it's not the Hokey Pokey. Thank god for small miracles.
They forgot to add free as the smell of dog-shit, annoying joggers, muggers, pick-pockets, mumbling homeless people, ranting homeless people, hari-krishnas, and I'm sure the occasional "hey, wanna buy a watch" guy.
Sorry, never been there, I'm sure its nice.
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.
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.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
The problem with enabling SSH and HTTPS is that you loose all tracking. Privacy is a good thing until you are running a free service without accountability (as others have noted.) Of course, you could always run SSH over 80 via a proxy...Sounds like they're in for some problems.
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
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
80 and 443 wouldn't be a problem (asuming the other end really is a web server:) but 22 is a can of worms. Once you create an ssh link, you can create a VPN and there goes all your blocking efforts.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
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
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!
Ahh, a peaceful day in the park. Trees waving in the wind, birds singing, and geeks typing furiously.
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.
'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.
ssh -p 80
22 is just a number.
Homeland security secretary Ridge today ordered thousands of law enforcement officers to scour the grounds of Central Park looking for a warez web server believed to be operating from a remote control car.
The number of people mugged for their laptops and PDAs in New York's Bryant Park has increased dramatically recently. NY Police are baffled.
-psy
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.
The eight-megabytes-per-second connection was as free...
Ok, am I the only one who caught this? I'm hoping (not really) that it's a terminology error, because a 64mbps connection sounds real, real nice, especially when it's free.
The project as a whole, though, sounds very cool. I think I would like to try that out when I go this summer.
01101001 01100001 01101101 01101110 01101111 01110100 01100001 01101100 01100001 01110111 01111001 01100101 01110010
A Jedi needs not registration.
Best Slashdot Co
Ya put yer high bit out
Ya put yer high bit in, and ya twiddle it about.
Best Slashdot Co
Personally, I'd love to see a public wireless access point in Tompkins. I spend a great deal of my time in the coffee shops next to the park (alt.coffee and pick me up) and would consider dragging my laptop out with me if the range was sufficient. I had been considering getting one of the Sprint PCS Vision plans, but a few public access points would make this less of a necessity. Also, depending on where they put the transmitter, my roof may be line of site (from E3rd between C and D). I could definitely be inspired to set up a pringles can and see how it goes.
On a related note -- I have a Linksys WAP11 in my apartment and recently stopped bothering with the encryption, figuring that if anyone else in my building wanted to use it, I don't really mind. However, I'd love to know if they were. Is there anyway you can check out who using the connection short of just sniffing the LAN for packets that are not your own?
What happens when someone starts using that free connection to hack people/companies?
Or are there lots of cameras in the parks with automatic facial recognition?
Get your own free personal location tracker
...because according to the Bryant Park People NYCWireless is run by a bunch of computer wizards!
Cue The Sun...
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.
Yep...you just need a listener on the "outside". Still traceable point to point, they just can't tell what you were doing.
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
From thier site:
That is a little better than just Bryant Park.
"They are your representitives don't you know?"
Not true at all. John Ashcroft isn't. He lost his election bid to a dead manand neither is this guy.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
no problem there.. because then you have to use YOUR resources to get what you want... I.E. a sshd running out there listening on port 80.
the other way of fixing that is running a transparent proxy on port 80.. thne your ssh connection wont go outside the network and fail when the transparent proxy pukes on your ssh connection to it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
New York City's busiest park
In what units does one measure "business"?
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Someone already ripped the part about censorship being legal and right, so I'll work over the next part.
"And it only applies to Americans anyway, not illegal immigrants."
Ever heard the saying, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you"? If you deny basic rights to guests in our country (be they here legally or otherwise) then you run the risk of your citizens being treated very poorly elsewhere around the world. If you truly believe in the value of freedom and democracy, then you'll have no problem overlooking where those practicing said freedom are from.
Selectively applied freedom is the definition of tyranny.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Btw, this one actualy makes sense, like the soviets would wire things up without purpose, etc...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Once they SSH out they're back in their own system, and acountable again. Unless they are connecting to a hacked box, but they wouldn't be able to hack their first one from the park anyway.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Glad to see the city thinks fiscal responsability is a good thing.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
What is the difference between what your suggesting and efforts by the RIAA and others to ban computers with DRM? Lets cripple technology so people can't do bad things.
In this case, it's even stupider. You're basically saying we should put restrictions on everyone because some people haven't bothered keep up with security patches. As far as spamming goes, well I might agree with an SMTP block, but that has more to do with the fact that SMTP is an obsolete protocol, and there's no real reason to be running a mail server from a park with (I'm assuming) a DHCP address.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Nice troll attempt. Like most other clue-challenged individuals who fall (or blisfully ignorant dive on purpose) into this trap, you are comparing the apples of communications in a private context with the oranges of government attempting to control speech, especially political speech. It is the latter which is protected by the first amendment.
Just because someone gives you internet access does not mean that they owe you a pedestal. In a private context (such as a workplace or even a public park) the provider of the services can do whatever the hell they want to do. If you don't like it, get off your fat duff and go somewhere else, or better yet, go start your own venture where you can attract all others of your ilk - you can call it "ClueLessNet".
Thanks for the "translation." It's worth even less than I paid for it.
Duh,
-Steve
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
Well, sorry to disappoint, but I wasn't trolling. On the other hand, calling me names, insulting me, etc simply shows that even you place little value in your argument. So let's take a look at the only identifiable argument in your comment, shall we?
"you are comparing the apples of communications in a private context with the oranges of government attempting to control speech, especially political speech. It is the latter which is protected by the first amendment."
No, I wasn't talking about evesdropping at all. In fact, I don't think I ever once mentioned anything about evesdropping in that comment. The reason? In a public place using a public service, you have little expectation of privacy; especially with something as inherently insecure as 802.11b. On the other hand, the government selectively making websites unavailable to users is censorship, and is a violation of the first amendment as interpreted many, many times by the Supreme Court. The right to be heard is just as important as the right to speak. As for someone giving me internet access, I have a reasonable expectation that they will comply with a privacy policy which is made available to me upon request.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
I live directly across from it on 7th street (East Village).
:)
I wonder if I'll be able to tap into the network for free.
The city has been trying to pimp this area for a while now, it was really bad years ago. I guess they'll do anything to get MORE people here (E. Village = one big ass bar and resturant)
You introduced the word "evesdropping."
On the other hand, the government selectively making websites unavailable to users is censorship, and is a violation of the first amendment as interpreted many, many times by the Supreme Court.
I don't suppose that you could cite any cases, either already seen by the Supreme Court, or pending before the Supreme Court, that address the very common situation of public libraries (i.e. government entities) making websites unavailable.
The right to be heard is just as important as the right to speak.
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but there is no right to be heard.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
...using your laptop out there in anything approaching direct sunlight...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Well it IS right across the street from the old New York Telephone headquarters ( now some sort of Verizon outpost ), but that would be a little obvious
I thought the idea of having a park or 'greenbelt' was to be able to get AWAY from being wired, E-mailed, phoned, etc.?
This idea came to mind because, just last week, my wife and I got subjected to at least two morons in the movie theater who didn't turn their phones off. Damn things rang right in the middle of a couple of good scenes in 'Harry Potter.'
I will grant that any wireless device can be a useful tool, but let's not forget where the "Off" switch is, OK? There's enough stress in the world already.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
First, if you're going to make an ass of yourself, have some spine and don't do it as an AC.
this is precisely the problem. people are usually of one of two mindsets in this regard. either they want to limit inherent functionality of the network to preclude undesired use, or they understand that undesired use is inevitable and you simply have to protect yourself as necessary.
Actually, if you had bothered to really consider my comment, you'd have grasped that I am of the mind that *both* mindsets are worthwhile.
If you offer network/internet connectivity, you have a responsibility to try to make it as tight as possible. You don't set up an open mail relay, blah, blah, blah.
Now, as per my previous statement, you need to assume that the network you're connected to (that is, the internet) is insecure and that you *will* face such things as spam or DOS attacks and whatnot coming from outside your boundry router. For that reason, the position that you advocate is indeed also worthwhile.
Protect your network, sure, but the most you can do is stop it when it gets to your network. That's still load on your connection to the outside network or a load on your mail servers...etc.
Actually, NYC's density is both a godsend and a burden. Yes, there is some node overlap, but there are plenty of dead zones too. And although the theoretical range of 802.11b is measured in hundreds of feet, the heavy radio saturation in Manhattan (cordless phones, microwaves, etc) and older buildings (thick walls) can drop the effective range of these boxes to less than 100 ft. I know b/c I have three nodes on nycwirelss - one in Manhattan and two in Brooklyn. The one in Manhattan is within 500 feet of two universities and a major broadcaster. I had to install a high gain antenna on the midtown router to get coverage similar to the range i get on my two nodes in Bklyn.
can you here me now? can you here me now?
heh... i'm so mean...
good job technology!
Runnin' On Empty
What you do with your own network is your business, if you're afraid of legal trouble, its your choice. But calling other people idiots for not doing pulling the same restrictions is asinine. Who is going to press charges on the NYC parks dep. for some hack-job? You seem to be saying any anonymous use of the Internet is dangerous, and shouldn't be allowed. Not that offering it opens you up to liability.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Where does it say in the constitution that the government is only allowed to supply essential services?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
But someone at the NYT might wonder what this 'goatse.cx' thing is their logs...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
manhattan has the highest population density of anywhere in the world. It works out to just one 6x6 meter square per person.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Yay, now New Yorkers can step outside and Kazaa themselves to oblivion without fear of busting their cable provider's monthly download allowance.
I need to move out of Canada, like, now.
-Billco, Fnarg.com