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

yup

[dolo666]

... and Pringles sales skyrocket!

Unacountable bits?

[LostCluster]

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?

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.

Re:Unacountable bits?

[draziw]

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

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...

[NDPTAL85]

Power companies, health care, and telephone service are private interprises. What makes the internet so special that it should be any different?

A Nice Sunny Day...

[CrazyDuke]

...The perfect day to go leech Gigs of pr0n in the park for free!

Come on! Smile! You know you want to...

Re:A Nice Sunny Day...

[_ph1ux_]

Lady walking her dog in the park.

Man runs up to her wearing a trenchcoat. Man opens trench coat - flashing lady with moving images from www.hot-sex.com on LCD screens hiden inside his jacket.

Lady screams.

Man runs away into the bushes.

FRRYYY?

[Aexia]

What does that stand for?

"Free Registration Required, Yo Yo Yo"?

Re:FRRYYY?

[Anonymous Coward]

In that case it should be "YYYFRR", as in "Yo Yo Yo, free registration required, bee-atch!"

Re:FRRYYY?

[Em Emalb]

the scary thing is I thought the exact same thing...then, a moment later, Oh, free reg required, yada yada yada.

Good God, Slashdot, what have you done to me?

I'm in acronym hell, and you are Satan with a pineapple!

Not registered? No problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Walker in the Wireless City

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.

Sustainability?

[Mannerism]

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?

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:Sustainability?

[NickV]

In most areas of the US, I would say you have a valid point, but it's pretty easy to make a non-profit sustainable wireless zone over Manhattan because of the sheer density of the island.

The key is having enough wireless routers out there to provide a signal for a bunch of radii of coverage so that there are no "dead zones." In a place like LA, you'd need 100s and 100s of routers spread over relatively sparse sprawl. The nice thing about Manhattan is you can have one or two people put up a router and that router will theoretically cover hundreds to thousands of people.

This is exactly why (if you look at the map found at the wireless map) you'll see that Manhattan is ridiculously well covered, but the other boroughs (which are sparser) are not.

Will this work in all of America? Keep in mind that after Manhattan -- The Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens are the three densest counties in America (with SF as #5.) And it's not really working in any borough outside of Manhattan...

weed (web) services?

[smd4985]

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!!

Re:weed (web) services?

[_ph1ux_]

When your "customer" is on the hunt for a fix.
And you can check the status on the big bust down at the docks - thereby inflating the cost of crack on the spot, thats one degree of separation.

Sunshine and green grass?

[Quaoar]

I don't think you're going to attract too many wireless nerds with THAT approach.

So that's what it's all about?

[coene]

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.

heh

[Ooblek]

The eight-megabytes-per-second connection was as free as the sunshine and the green grass.

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.

Re:heh

[dr00g911]

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.

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...

[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: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.

Private vs Public

[KarmaBitch]

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

Already Done In Pittsburgh

[hotsauce]

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.

Wireless Park In Portland

[dailywireless]

Portland, Oregon, is planning a re-designed Waterfront Park. Yesterday I sent them A Wireless Park Vision. They liked it!

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:

• Talking maniquins
• Interactive Sculpture
• Triggered light/sound sequencers
• City Clouds
• 360 Live Video at public events
• Wi-Fi in Stadiums
• Traffic Maps
• Visitor Information and Narrated Neighborhood Tours
• Videoconference to linked Kiosks around the state or in nearby hotels.
• Real-time Location Information for event managers with devices like Vocera's communicator badge
• Jogging kiosks with comparitive times, personal history and bio monitor
• E-mail/picture kiosks
• RF-ID wrist bands for kids ($2.99) or "find friends" (free)
• Weather, news and park info
• Recreation Bulletin Board
• Live bird cams
• Events triggered by cell calls
• Jam sessions
• Card tournaments
• Yahoo games

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!

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:Wireless Park In Portland

[_ph1ux_]

RF-ID wrist bands for kids ($2.99) or "find friends" (free)

This is a really interesting IDea. It would be a useful thing in theme parks and anywhere there are large crowds. What would be neat is kiosks with screens on them. and when you walked up and stood in the little circle in front of the screen it would show you as a dot on a map - and if the tags could be given a group ID - you could see all the other people in your group as dots (they are here) on the map.

It would be neat to also be able to touch the map and set a waypoint for all the people in your group to meet up at.

To add people to your group - you touch add ID - then the person you want to add puts his wrist up to a reader that has a very small proximity reader (so it doesnt add the people walking by mistakenly)

Each band would just have a unique ID.

(although it would be funny to watch the map update the location of your friends while they are riding around on roller coasters.)

Peace and Quiet

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh, a peaceful day in the park. Trees waving in the wind, birds singing, and geeks typing furiously.

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.

In related news

[stinky wizzleteats]

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.

In other news...

[psyconaut]

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

We've run into some problems with this

[Slashdotess]

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.

Eight Megabyte

[Rosonowski]

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.

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.

Get out the wands and pointy hats...

[BSDevil]

...because according to the Bryant Park People NYCWireless is run by a bunch of computer wizards!

Re:hopefully they did it right..

[Lumpy]

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.

NYC is broke

[N8F8]

Glad to see the city thinks fiscal responsability is a good thing.