Slashdot Mirror
A Solution For Making WiFi Cost Effective
rkohutek writes "This whitepaper came out of my employer's desire to deploy high speed wireless internet to an underserved, mostly rural area. Although very easy to do on the ground level, I found it to not be a cake walk when it came to actually making it a viable network case -- in a "normally" deployed wireless network it is very easy to spoof an IP or MAC address and hop on the network and get free bandwidth. This is not acceptable and the acronym WARTA, Wireless Authentication, Routing, Traffic control, Accounting was thought up to cover the things that we needed to do. Read on for how we managed to make it work using Free Software: HTML or PDF." Update: 06/07 20:42 GMT by T : He sends along word of this mirror as well.
As an article poster, I saw that it was gonna get hit pretty hard, so here's a mirror:
http://129.19.75.194/~jakalowiw/warta/
Cheers,
Randal
Free software being used to keep people from getting free bandwidth. How ironic.
How do I make WiFi Cost Effective?
Simple, I use someone else's network.
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
Just like with 802.11b you might as well assume the wireless part is insecure and use something like an SSL pipe to actually connect the user to the net.
Everyone that disagrees with me is a paid shill
That's a non-solution. Did you read the article? It requires that you send authentication tokens via the open airwaves. That is NOT the way to run a secure system. Anybody with two braincells or more can see that any yokel can just fire up airsnort and grab the information out of the air. What a worthless proposal. Wireless will never be secure.
"Read on for how we managed to make it work using Free Software: HTML or PDF." I didn't realize that one could route wireless signals with nothing but HTML and PDF standards.
Looks like someone finally found a use for PPPoE! I've wanted that damned protocol to die for quite a while, but I can see it being useful in this situation. DSL, on the other hand, is where it deserves to die a painful death, along with whatever suits decided that "emulating the dial-up experience" is better than an always-on connection.
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
Take a long time to look things over and ask: is the piracy worth the risk? If a few individuals use the service illegally, but you have a solid base of paying users, isn't that better than not entering the market at all and missing out on an opportunity or implementing a costly security feature that could mitigate any profit?
The Political Programmer
I thought we were supposed to make WiFi affordable by using empty Pringles cans and Floppy disks as the antennas rather than shelling out big bucks for custom made ones?
Why slashdot? Why not?
in a "normally" deployed wireless network it is very easy to spoof an IP or MAC address and hop on the network and get free bandwidth.
At my school anyone with a wifi card can get onto the network, but it just takes you to a web page where you have to put in a userid and password to access anything else on the network and the internet. They never ask for any information about your computer such as MAC address.
You find the difference between "free speech" and "free beer" ironic?
Am I missing something, or couldn't someone just sniff a valid PPPoE username/password to gain access to the system? Are the login credentials sent in clear text or are they encrypted?
Making the antenna out of an old floppy drive and paper clips? [Slashdot story]
"Much work is lost, for the lack of a little more." -Edward H. Harriman
And then become a huge contributor?
_________________________________
The Spiders are coming
(In fact two)
:
1)What is the cost of providing the communication service, and
2)what is the cost of
mettering, securing, financing, billing, authenticating, supporting, marketting, *ing of the communication service?
Once everybody understands that, community owned telcos can become a reality. (One can always dream).
This Article on Radius has a section on vulnerabilities.
And it does seem pretty weak against snooping during the authentication phase.
Somebody mentioned tunneling via SSL. Right on dude.
--
jpa
It may not be better for you, but it's certainly better for your ISP if you connect using PPPoE. IP space is getting pretty limited, and if they can service 10 customers with 4 IP addresses, all the better for them.
You don't honestly think they took your convenience into consideration when making the decision to use PPPoE, do you?
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Fine for you. The rest of us are setting up mesh nodes so we don't need to pay a monthly fee to anyone. Good luck, but don't cry when people get around you with their own equipment.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
1) Live in a big city in an apartment block with people who drive BMWs, Mercs etc
2) Buy a WiFi card
3) Use the internet connection of other people in the bulding...
I know of one person who made issues configuring there WiFi card... then realised it was because they were browsing someone elses network.
Is it wrong to take advantaeg of Stupid people ? George Bush does it, Bill Gates does it... why shouldn't we ?
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Another way would be radius for authentication, which appears to be the articles focus. That's very popular for authication, including growing interest from the wireless operator space. See Free Radius for one such implementation.
1. When I first got the traffic control tunnels working, I noticed that my throughput was 1/2 of what it was supposed to be. A very hostile guy named "AxLaptop" in #freebsd on EFNet was not only a huge jerk, but also just pissed enough to through me the bone that you need to have "out" and "in" on your ipfw pipes. If you do not put those words in, you will get half bandwidth as it is going through each ipfw pipe twice -- one packet takes up twice the bandwidth = half bandwidth.
I don't get it. Doesn't the firewall process the traffic after it's been picked up off the network. Even if it did process it twice, it shouldn't make traffic twice as slow because the thruput on the motherboard bus on the computer is probably 100 times faster than on the network card anyhow.
Why not replace pppoe w/ pptp? That would give basically the same infrastructure but with encryption of your customers' data.
The only downside would be lack of a free client for os9.
I tried to post the short article, but the lameness filter barfed with too many junk characters. It can't tell the difference between config files and junk!
/. article poster, murdering the bandwidth of students since 1998!
Proud to be a
But the filter let me post this!
If they replace pppoe w/ pptp they have encryption of data with basically the same infrastructure. The client has shipped w/ every Windows version since '95 and there are free clients for every OS I can think of 'cept os9.
That wasn't really HTML. It wasn't labelled as having been produced by anything in particular but since "ariel" was the specified font and since every line had a
to delimit it we should probably deduce it was something tied to the Evil Empire.
Umm Starbucks seems to be able to lock down its Wifi, and McDonalds seems to be able to lock down their wireless connection (get a free two hour connection with a Happy Meal, or something like that) ...
... that's what you do to keep folks from freeloading on your network.
... if they both do the same thing it means that two different sets of consultants at $225 an hour were able to convince two massive corporations to go with it.
Here is a thought, stop at Starbucks, buy a hideously overpriced ice-coffee or something, let the caffeine stimulate your brain, and buy an hour or day or however they sell it worth of their 'net access. Whatever they do to keep you from freeloading
Simple. Don't reinvent the wheel, leverage the gazillion dollars Starbucks and McDonalds paid consultants, particularly if they use the same method
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
My guess is that v.92 was released as a true standard but was very possibly half-baked.. or worse ignored as a standard in favour of hopeful vapourware "would-be" world-class standards like 3G, WiFi, and arguably bluetooth.
By "world-class standard" I mean a standard which can be relied upon without the need for gateway products and/or services: if I want to call anyone in the world from my POTS, I can. Conversely, if I want to use a 3G phone anywhere outside of say North America, Japan, Europe, etc., chances are I will not be able to due to compatibility limitations we are perpetually frustrated by. POTS is far...far more reliable, and the very mention of v.92 (and its attempted implementation) is evidence to that fact.
All this to say that analog telecomm needs a standard on-ramp that dial-up users and ISPs can depend on that compares to the general stability enjoyed by voice telecommunications users. MODEMs are that standard, and v.92 is the logical progression therein.
So are we destined to dialing ATDT*70W? ..or hoping some upcoming wireless "standard" doesn't go toe-to-toe with some other industry like, say, radio? ...Is that "it" for POTS in general? Are all our COs to be replaced with wireless stations with uplinks to geostationary satellites or something? WTF? Erm.. someone? Where's the something-for-everyone philosophy here? I mean I can live with the upgrade-or-die philosophy, but it that really necessary? Why not just standardise v.92 (the same way we did it with v.90) and get on with our lives?
Another great illustration of the tremendous effort people are willing to invest to make sure the right number of beans are in the right piles.
I am really looking forward to when the Internet becomes a public utility and Internet access is more like like freeway access (not toll roads, not GPS-scanned roads, just freeways). A global communication system, like a highway system, benefits you all the time, not just while you are personally using it.
The "obvious" answer would have been to use FreeS/WAN or similar to set up an IPSEC tunnel to your wired network and be done with it. Windows supports IPSEC as well, and it seems like it would solve most of your problems. Am I missing something?
How about making totally free?
I am not convinced of the security of this method.. Maybe it could be possible to use ppp and plink.exe to set up a secure tunnel? It could work, if you can get a ppp negotiation happen over a ssh tunnel on windows..
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
nice setup man, I bookmarked your html page. I like the cheap aspect of it. You also seemed to have gotten a deal on that T-1. Questions? what kind of range are you getting off that 90 foot tower, and is the tower itself on a hill much higher than your customers? Are the hills (and tress I guess)affecting coverage? Last, how many are you serving or do you think you can serve?
Rural broadband needs to be done, and waiting for some mythical perfect solution is that..waiting.And waiting. And waiting. It is teh suxors. Satellite internet is teh big bucks suxors.
It's a gimme none of the big guys are going to do it any time soon, so small mom and pops or co-ops wil have to be it, and I've been accumulating various web references and whatnot to see what's working. Yours is a nice simple *(relatively) description and write up, good job! I hope this gives some geeks some ideas on self employment, plus helping small communities, rather than sending out dozens of resumes for months and months to these big corporations. Work is work, and the rural areas are much cheaper to live in usually most places, much less crime, and other sorts of goodness, and MOST of them have zero broadband for sale.
If their goal is deploying wifi in a 'rural' area, is unpaid access really that big a problem? I mean it's not like there's a subdivision in between points. Are they worrying about the one or two farmers in between piggybacking?
Those mesh network things are a good idea too, I like them, the concept, however, you need people in reasonable proximity all the way to the fat pipes internet someplace. A lot of rural places you will wind up with areas that no one can reach the net with any sort of big bandwith. You'll be stuck running your whole network through some dialup modem, or someone eats the T-1. Around here they are close to one grand per month,last I looked anyway. I don't know many folks who would want to spend 100$ to 200$ to 300$ a month to have broadband. Or be happy with just a big local wan of 12 houses max or something spread out over many square miles. In suburbia around some big metro area, all across an area like that, swell, oodles of access points and enough people in it so it's a miniature full internet all by itself. Ya got your multi thousands of points in a mesh in some extended metro area, or 12 or 4 or something potential points. Example, my neighborhood, less than 10 houses all around for any distance, and several big hills/baby mountains seperating them. Maybe 1/3 of those people might be interested enough for broadband access, WAG on my part. So either way, still not happening, I just like seeing the solutions that ARE working someplace, because eventually someone is going to pull it off, or maybe uncle sugar will free up some spectrum or let more powerful transmitters be used OR SOMETHING. No one is in any hurry to run cable, fiber or anything else. MY idea was some sort of aimed point to point thingee relay that bolted to the existing telephone poles, then you only need them on the turns in the road. I haven't seen anything like that yet, some small doodad that bolts on and is wireless and real cheap and can be made easily self powered with a small solar panel perhaps. Fantasy device so far.
Coverage might suck too, whatever you use with radio waves, some folks on hilltops, some in the valleys, and the valleys won't even get new cell phones working right now, if you are driving and need to make a call you learn fast to STOP and pull over at the top of a hill, so I'm not sure any of the mesh stuff would work all that great, or even this other technique. I know my FRS radios are dismal if there's a hill in the way between the partys using them, and those have more wattage i believe than the other devices are allowed. heck, even non modded CBs suck. 2 meters work ok at high(er) wattages, that's about it. THAT'S the big problem, the low power that is allowed *by de law* and rough terrain. Unless every part of your mesh can afford a huge tower. If you can do that, go satellite, it's the same thousand dollars or more, and probably faster and you don't have to dork with it much. Let alone this lightning deal that exists.
aaaakkk
All those so called public utilities aren't free. You don't pay tolls for driving on the freeway - why? because you've already paid, in gas tax and car tax.
TANSTAAFL
I could be missing something here, but isn't this situation what 802.1x is designed for?
It plays nicely with RADIUS, allows for secure authentication and encryption based on certificates, and works at layer 2 rather than layer 3.
PPPoE by contrast won't stop a determined hacker for longer than it takes to google "airsnort". There's no encryption in the setup described (as far as I can tell) and adding it would stop most PPPoE clients from working.
If you've got Windows there are quite a few options for 802.1x clients, but open1x seems to work fine on linux with freeradius.