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Largest Citywide Wi-Fi Deployment
Grumpy writes "Yahoo! News is reporting that Aiirnet will begin installing, next month, the largest single Wi-Fi deployment in the nation in the city of Cerritos in Southern California. Ultimately, anyone with a laptop or wireless device will be able to surf the Web from virtually anywhere in the city's 8.6-square-mile area. Scores of wireless networking transmitters are being placed atop public buildings, traffic lights and other structures to blanket the city. The 51,000 residents of Cerritos have not had DSL broadband access to the Internet because the city is too far from the telephone company's central office and Cable Internet access has not been an option either."
Some city in Cali does what I would LOVE to do here in St. Louis.
:P
There's simply not enough tech-savvy people around here to make it worth the money.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
How does something like SeattleWireless stack up?
Is this news? I thought most every city has wi-fi already. I'm pretty sure Conterra communications in Columbia, SC covers about a circle over 10 miles in diameter. Not to mention th elocal Universities and war driving/open APs.
Expect Freedom.
Are there going to be any restrictions on access or anything? Or is it going to be free for all for hackers / pedos?
Not true. Actually it's already started, you can get wifi access in Cerritos (as well as a great deal on a new car at the Cerritos Auto Centre - thanks Super Dave) in some spots for free. When they've completed it it's going to cost $30 a month apparently to access, so this is not a free WiFi installation.
Cerritos becomes the spam capital of the world
I hear in LA, I hear open access points are as common as traffic jams
Finally, I know how that song goes!
On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of Cerritos, rising up throught the air
Now I know where to go on my next road trip!
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
With all of these municipal and large open wireless networks being discussed I begin to wonder what these organizations will do about network abuse.
If I were a spammer I might consider moving to this town or better yet a town nearby. How's a beat-cop going to know that it's me spewing spam all day - or even a few hours - from various points all over town? I'm sure you can send a lot of spam in a couple hours or so.
-joe
"The 51,000 residents of Cerritos have not had DSL broadband access to the Internet because the city is too far from the telephone company's central office and Cable Internet access has not been an option either."
Translation: You either do it, or we're going to do it without you.
So... Cerritos is paying Aiirnet to set up Wi-Fi transmitters all over the city and Aiirnet will keep all the profits. What's in it for Cerritos? Sure, if Aiirnet doesn't end up making money then it makes sense, but considering they will be the only broadband provider in town, they will definitely succeed and Cerritos will get nothing.
Always gives me a warm fuzzy feeling when someone has the opportunity to be exposed to online pr0n and Slashdot.
Just make sure Goatse man isn't driving the welcome wagon.
Kinda unfortunate that I didn't have a laptop before I graduated from USC...just a few months ago. They've installed an excellent WiFi network all over campus, and all my laptop-toting friends told me it was really hassle-free.
Just curious...how many other campuses have state-of-the-art networks? Stand up and be counted!
If we make our cities super unattractive for DSL/Cable companies to come in ... we can get WiFi in the city! Sweet! I think throwing garbage everywhere would help spur this new initiative... I think I'll go run for mayor under this platform.
Phase 1: Throw garbage everywhere
Phase 2: ???
Phase 3: WiFi and/or Profits!
"There is no spoon." - The Matrix
I'm sure it'll happen sooner or later. I seem to remember parents going over-the-top when a WiFi station was placed near a school.
Of course they were not aware that the household microwave is just as likely a "deadly weapon".
You've really got to worry about technophobiacs sometimes...
it's awesome... I just resently got me a wi-fi toy and tested it while traveling in Washington, DC.
It is really fun (and convinient) when you can pull out yahoo directions standing in the middle of the street...
But it's really anoying in the airport where the only connection awailable is from a pay-for-subscribtion privider (ripper-offer?...)
the more citywide initiative, the better....
and where is Ceritos anyway? is it Orange Co.?
Just because I don't care, it doesn't mean I don't understand. Homer J. Simpson
Is anyone else wondering why people complain loudly about spam ...
...
but they pretty much feed the problem via these wifi hotspots ?
I think it would be pretty cool if wifi routers came with port 25 disabled by default
Sunny Dubey
yeah, we slashdotted yahoo. bullshit.
Wouldn't it be cheaper in the long run to run their own fiber to each and every home, and some to the central office at the phone company. Then put up wireless base stations in public places like parks. Then when they broadband hunger public wants more speed they would not have to redo their entire infastructure.
m =2772750748
Check out my new ebay listing http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ite
Got Extra Money?
I am going to guess that the warflying numbers are not including these new ones. Perhaps a regular survey by Warflying is needed.
I am thinking quarterly would be often enough to be useful.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
City funds (your taxes) subsidising porn? Will the city be able to fend off a sizeable, vocal group that does not want their tax dollars used in delivering questionable material to other citizens?
Or will they roll over and block that "questionable" material? (Scale this up the the entire Internet and UN control)
What controls will be placed on log files? If the city 'owns' the logs on city-owned servers/routers, will the police or DA be required to get a warrant before searching the logs for whatever it is they are looking for?
What restrictions are placed on usage? Personal servers, etc.
City-wide, free, Net access is great, but there are a LOT of questions to be answered first.
Much of the downtown is already being covered. Next year even they're covering the major malls and other areas.
When asked, the local ISPs rightly said it probably won't cut into their revenues, because with the amount of people on the free network you'll never get high downstream / upstream speeds, but it'll be great for surfing the web or checking your email on the go from your PDA, nearly anywhere in the city.
http://www.unb.ca/bruns/0304/12/news/wireless.html
"Yo quiero Pacific Bell"
...
No wait
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Perhaps the traffic Jams are caused by it?
"Damn, Slashdot posted another article." Scrreeech
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Heh, as opposed to LA, which only got subways in the last 10 years?
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Well, have you felt at all uncomfortable at some point during the last 50 years or so? Bad news, my man: you have been irradiated with a wide variety of radio waves for your entire life. A little more or less shouldn't hurt, unless you have the transmitter strapped to your body day in and day out.
Woohoo!! Imagine the possibilities! You won't even have to drive around to wardrive! It'll have to be named something else - how about WarCerritosing? No... Warslouching? Hmm... Anyone? Anyone? Beuler? Beuler? ...Beuler?
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Well consider this the test bed I guess. Keep an eye on the cancer statistics!
I also have personal experience from parents complaining about WiFi networks on schools irradiating the children. My usualy response is that the microwave energy put out by the access points are typically 1/30th the power of your average cell phone, and that it's unlikely anyone will be holding the access point up to their head. Get some strange looks from tht one...
Of course, when I say I'm an engineer, I've had more than one parent (and teachers) ask me what trains have to do with it. (And I wish that was a joke)
=Smidge=
To say nothing of the laptop users who place a microwave transmitter right next to the old family jewels. I suppose that's Darwinian selection in action. :)
Government planning is just plain socialism and is really bad...
Unless it results in something really fsck'ing cool.
mod -1 flamebait
Okay, lemme get this straight. We have wireless access points installed on building rooftops with wireless transmission throughout the area. Sounds like SkyNet to me!
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
There are microwaves everywhere aldready. Consider AM/FM/HF radio, UHF/VHF signals, cordless phones (that operate at the same frequency that 802.11), wireless phones, satellite signals, WAN internet dishes, and all other equipments that emits such waves. The fact is that's it's there aldready and the debate about whether they may be harmful should have happenned long ago. A few extra mW of 802.11 added to aldready crowded air waves won't change much, CMIAMW.
Yeah, I'm sure that's how the Department of Planning or Bureau of Statistics (or whatever you Americans have) classifies 'city'.
No subway? No city for you!
Yet again, you yanks have some catching up to do.
War Spamming... lemme do some numbers.
Note to self: keep the pants ON.
-joe
The IEEE wouldn't have allowed WiFi to get off the ground if it was harmful to humans. This topic is one of my pet peeves. WIFI IS NOT HARMFUL IN ITS OUT OF THE BOX FORM!!
/. a few days ago.. Two WIFI antennas were used here to extend the range of WiFi from the original maximum of 300m to aprox 155,800m (519 times the original distance)
You can add antennas to AP's and NIC's to increase the strength of the signal and thus increase your range. I don't believe these WiFi "cannons" have ever been tested and there is the miniscule possibility that they harmful at a POINT BLANK RANGE. See this to get an idea of the possible range of a WiFi connection: this aired on
I have heard stories where high schools had removed their WiFi because parents were concerned that their teens would grow up with defects (tentacles?). In all honesty, you have tones of radio waves running through you at any given moment! AM Radio, FM Radio, Shortwave Radio, HAM Radio, IR, GPS Signals, UHF, VHF, HF, Cell Phones, THE LIST GOES ON FOREVER!
If you are one of thoughs people who want to rid yourself of the WiFi "threat", don't forget to exterminate all those other vital communication systems along with it! If you are not one of those people, then live a long happy healthy mobile life.
You are confusing me with someone who cares.
With no broadband, the thought of 51,000 people all sharing a 56k dialup connection sounds appealing.
EM radiation increases the risk of cancer for high power or high frequency, or both. It screws up the dircetion of cellular (that's biology, not telecom) components causing errors in the way it replicates the DNA. When that error is significant enegough to produce a mutation, and the mutation survives and grows, it could be a cancer.
It is unclear if the power of a cellphone (note the antenna right next to your brain) is definitely enough to cause cancer in a certain number of people.
Note that main power transmission lines are low frequency but extremely high power. This explains stories about cancer clusters near these high power lines.
WiFi is so low power that even at the relatively high frequency that I can assure all of you are QUITE SAFE from its health effects.
I am an engineer too, and no, I don't work for a WiFi company.
Can we please abandon the phrase "Surf the web" to Sunday supplement columnists and others of a related ilk? I guess it was an apt term years ago when people actually mindlessly followed links, but it just sounds so John Q Public anymore.
All those things are way too low power to cause cancer. See my reply to Smidge204.
Actually, your household microwave is much more dangereous than Wifi, which is like saying
\epsilon >> 0
While I don't like feeding the trolls, in this case the guy is right. I posted a message as an AC in response to a threat of electronic attack by another Slashdot user against a site I am affiliated with. In that AC message I noted that attacks against the site would be met with a criminal or civil legal response. Later that day I received a threatening email sent through a Kinkos IP address (and therefore very difficult to track) which was clearly sent in response to my posting. Only someone with access to Slashdot's web logs could have known it was me. I.e., someone employed by VA and hence bound by their privacy policy.
It's clear that AC postings only serve to protect your identity from other Slashdot users, but not much else. And it's clear that VA is not above abusing your privacy nor threatening users who post messages they do not like. I wouldn't be surprised if this posting also initiated a followup email from them...
Just put on your tin-foil hat and everything will be ok. Oh, and I wouldn't worry about the brain cancer as much as I would the mind control that is transmitted by the WiFi signals. The trick is to make sure that you think happy thoughts -- especially when it concerns the government. They know what you're thinking and they know where you live, work, and even pay your taxes. They know you've been living two lives...
It's not true that the city is without broadband.
My parents live in Cerritos and I set them up with DSL before I moved out.
It's very very tempting to have a bunch of friends drive around with portable microwaves and cellphones as a new means of DDoSing the city. Anyone know off-hand where the access points are? I kid, I kid!
It's interesting and convenient, but also gets me a bit paranoid. Those who read the BOFH articles would remember the bit where they used 802.11 to do thinks from changing their calendars on the fly to tracking down where in the building the boss is. Wonder if you can triangulate signal strength, etc. to pinpoint where a particular MAC is at any given time.
I no longer live in Cerritos, but my family still does, and parts of the city *do* have DSL service, though much of it is a broadband deadzone. Sad thing is that our cable company is the same as our phone company (at least in much of town), Verizon. So you can guess why cable modem service hasn't been rolled out. This is all despite what should be a great infrastructure because Verizon/Americast rolled out some experiemental high-tech-wizzy video-on-demand services a few years back (that has since been abandoned, I suppose). I wonder why these companies find Cerritos so appealing when it comes to these services? (It's not a very populous city, the per-capita income is high but not the highest, and it's kinda stuck on the edge on la county and orange counties)
I can't believe there is a suburb in California that Comcast or their ilk has not gotten into.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
As a resident of Cerritos for 24 years, let me provide some background information on the town:
Cerritos is located in the southeast corner of Los Angeles county, just north of Long Beach. The 605(N/S) and 91(E/W) intersect in the northwest corner of town providing incredible freeway access to residents and visitors. Cerritos has borders with the Orange County cities of La Palma and Buena Park, and is 15 minutes from many beaches, so living there provides one an interesting mix of influences from different urban and suburban cultures. I called it a town, there are about 50k residents so I'm not sure what that makes it technically. Cerritos has ended up becoming, IMHO, an interesting oasis in Southeast LA since the decline of the surrounding areas of Compton, Paramount, Lynwood, and the East LA area.
Greater Los Angeles area residents will surely have heard of the huge Cerritos Auto Square, an early entry into the auto mall type setup (I've heard the first of its kind?). The city also has hosted a mall since early on, the town of only 50k now supports as many as 3 malls, 1 classic mall and 2 major "Town Centre" type establishments. They city subsidized the building of a Sheraton hotel and performance arts center, with the classic motive if you build it they will come. (They have, supporting the brand new commercial complex). The city routinely takes pro-business steps such as this network and the city is remarkably prosperous because of it. The city has a HUGE library of its own, which it just recently upgraded, its own sheriff's station, water utility, 2 high schools, pretty much no service is contracted out to another jurisdiction.
Now, specifically to this story:
SOME residents of Cerritos have been able to get DSL for years. I know, I had it. The DSL service is capped at 768/128 due to the type of network in place, not distance. This was a major fight I had with Verizon, I lost but was actually satisfied with their explanation, remarkably. The cable has remained analog, however. Verizon was also the cable provider.
If I understand the local news correctly, Verizon has lost the cable contract and this new company is coming it. They will be setting up the citywide network and running the cable system. Presumably, they will be securing it themselves since they will be charging for access, so all this security talk is really nonsense at this point. Of course, and home relays could be insecure, but this is nothing new. The city is benefiting since all government agencies (see above about no outsourcing) will now have access through this system. The people benefit from this anywhere in the city access, especially those for whom broadband has been unavailable.
This probably sounded like a big commercial, but I don't care. I do recommend it as a great place to raise a family. I just moved to Long Beach to be 2 blocks from the shore, but I would go back in a second if the LBC sunk into the ocean.
they probably don't have their Wikki frontpage deleted as often.
funny
Any we all know that access to the Internet while driving is just the distraction we need!
eric@sandpile.net
What about the me's in parallel universes? Are they living two lives, too?
L.A.'s just a big suburb.
Trying to run more cable to "each and every home" in a city (we're not talking about rural ditches) is an enormous public works project.
If Gov. Schwarzeneggar suspects that this is the proto-SkyNet, he will move to shut it down.
After all, that's what we elected him for: to steer us towards an alternate future!
Reading Slashdot is ruining my spelling and grammar.
This was the one that showed extended mobile phone usage could heat your brain fractionally? This being, in theory, a major issue for kids whose brains were still developing. I thought NewScientist released a study discounting this. Haven't got a link at the moment as my googling returned 404s on the likely leads.
judging by this story, I would say the largest citywide wi-fi deployment would be Los Angeles.
If I were Emporer of Cerritos, I would RIP OUT each and every public phone. I would install VOIP public pay phones using the wireless network.
I would then load all the payphones into the back of a truck, and send them to the local phone company, with a note telling them about how they could have had their business if they would have just built out their network.
Then I'd offer discounts to all residents to sign up for the VOIP service, and ditch their phone company land lines.
Then I'd install Anti-gravity devices under the city, and float it up into the air, and just dump all of the city garbage onto Huntington Beach, or Rolling Hills.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I'm really curious why Cable hasn't been available. I have relatives that live a few miles away, in Cypress, and they have no problem getting cable internet. Cerritos is one town over from the Orange County/LA County border, and is right at the junction of the 605 and 91 freeways. It's about twenty/thirty minutes from the beach down Katella Ave... nice place to live if it wasn't so close to Hawaiian Gardens, which is the carjacking capital of LA.
--
Vote for your hopes, not for your fears - Vote Third Party
1: All this on only 11 WiFi channels, with only 3 true separate channels? What about people who have private WiFi networks already in place? Do they shut down?
2: Also, the city has no DSL (can't the phone company just drop in a DSLAM?) or cable broadband. So what are all these WiFi access points connecting into?
3: What happens when people congregate in one spot. Do the police come along and say, "Move along now, you're clogging the local WiFi node."
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I live in warner robins, in houston county GA. There has been a lot of talk recently Macon Telegraph about Intel comming into the county and providing an 802.16 WiMax network that would cover the entire county of 110,000 people and 376 sq miles. Thats quite a bit bigger than 6.8 sq mi. Now granted that this is in the planning stage and that Intel is planning on using a different protocal than the standard 802.11a/b/g. We will have to wait and see if it works out.
That leave only M3 (Mod Parent Up/Down) posts.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
What are the rate plans going to be? How will they prevent packet capturing?
and if so, isn't this going to interefere with local wireless networks? It would be hard to make a home LAN work if a nearby transmitter is blasting a signal into your house.
Given that it's a city of just over 1 million people, this probably gives more people access. Formal standalone pricing hasn't been announced, access is currently free for members of the sponsoring companies.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
There have been other studies about the permeability of the blood-brain barrier which have raised concerns. One was published last year. Reference:
Leszczynski, D., et al. 2002. Effects of mobile phone radiation on gene and protein expression in vitro. Abstract 14-6. Bioelectromagnetics Society annual meeti ng. June 23-27. Quebec City. See
http://www.bioelectromagnetics.org/doc/bems2002-ab stracts.pdf
Of what? New York ?:)
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
No it's not Sir William's, the one I'm referring to seems to have been sometime in early 1999. His seems to be mid 2000 (I'm going on dates reported on the BBC news site). Can't get into the NewScientist archives as I'm not a subscriber.
:) )
The blood-brain barrier one is more worrying as far as I can tell, though IANABP (bio-physicist
On another note, could open, free-to-use networks such as this become targets of wardriving and such things? I know that here in Canada there are specific laws which make that illegal.
Hi there
It is not free. You are paying for this.
No he isn't. Someone else is being stuck for the bill. Do you think he'd check in whenever he had the slightest sniffle for a full look-over if it was on his dime?
And where will it end? Apparently stealing hard working people's money for his medical, liberal education, etc. isn't enough. Now he's got to rob his countrymen so he can have a broadband connection without paying (and for what? certainly there's nothing useful these types do).
Parasites. Every culture gets them, but it still doesn't mean we're better off without them.
How is the option for broadband more affordable than what is currently available if there isn't anything currently available?
Make something ID10T proof, you'll make a better ID10T.
The 34+ nodes cover a medium sized city (120.000 inhabitants). They have been build by volunteers and rely on donated hardware, locations and the odd bit of electricty donated.
You can fetch the code for a cost of a download (see WiKi: NodeFactory) - all is open source; FreeBSD, OSPF, DHCP, SNMP and SSH are the key bits of technology.
Good to see that commercial effords are trying to follow suit.
Dw
Tip: Lay in a big supply of junk food and t-shirts that say "all your base are belong to us".
Surf's up!
The Law of Falling Bodies
Free as in free roads, a free police force, free health care, and all of the other free government services you can think of.
Please do tell, what magical money machine do the Canadians possess so that they can provide all of these free services? Why are you evil Canadians keeping this machine for yourselves when it could be used to end poverty in the world?
1. Show one single scientific study on the safety of wifi. There are several key studies in the past few years which either raise questions, or prove that there's a problem with long exposure.
2. Have the slightest clue about what kind of exposure they are getting. Almost none of them understand that all wifi sets give off A LOT more radiation than what the typical microwave oven leaks, and a lot more radiation than what the federal standards are for ovens.
Less than cell-phones of course. But there are recent studies which raise questions about the safety of those.
You have to wonder about technical people who can't defend themselves with either scientific studies or reasoning, and who prefer to stick their heads in the sand rather than give up a toy which may be killing them.
Please educate yourself, and try to apply some basic reasoning. Doing otherwise puts you in the same category of the technically clueless.
Only inside the oven. Most people try to avoid going there.
Outside is a different story. Wifi cards can give you typically
about 1000 times more radiation than what an oven leaks.
And the base stations are much much worse than that.
So you are a lot better off next to a microwave oven than
being next to a wireless setup.
As featured in Wired over a year and a half ago, Hanover, NH and its Dartmouth College Campus has been Wi-Fi for quite a while. Sorry to rain on Cerritos's parade, they ain't the first.
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves
What smeg. Don't need studies specifically for wi-fi, alls you need are studies of exposure to non-ionizing radiation in general. What I find so curious is the absolute paranoiacal ignorance that luddites have about radiation and can't tell the difference between different types, or relative risk, either. You get far more radiation staring at your TV watching Greenpeace and Earth First propaganda videos than you ever do from WiFi.
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves
Oh, yeah, btw: you get far more radiation racing around the arctic in your Greenpeace zodiacs chasing whaling boats than you ever do from wi-fi. Other things that you get more radiation from than wi-fi: 1) climbing over electric fences surrounding nuclear power plants 2) building your 'earthship' home with concrete that includes coal plant fly ash 3) dancing the night away under black lights at rave parties and in juice bars 4) sipping a latte on the Left Bank with your bohemian bourgoisie buddies (in the most highly nuclear nation on earth, France) 5) waiting in line for three nights for Phish tickets with an electric blanket 6) installing tritium exit signs to 'save electricity' 7) wind surfing in the Columbia River Gorge, downstream from Hanford Nuclear Reservation 8) hitchhiking from hostel to hostel in New Zealand, under the ozone hole... 9) falling asleep with night vision goggles on waiting to launch a raid on a gengineered crop field 10) wearing that wireless headset they make you wear at your dead end job telemarketing donations to Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, or other luddite organiztion....
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves