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.

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...

FRRYYY?

[Aexia]

What does that stand for?

"Free Registration Required, Yo Yo Yo"?

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?

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!!

Sunshine and green grass?

[Quaoar]

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

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.

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

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!

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.

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.