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Wi-Fi Redirect Gateway Patent for Hotspots
Glenn Fleishman writes "Over at WiFiNetNews.com, we just broke the story that Nomadix was issued a patent covering hotspot gateway page redirection. Nomadix makes hardware and software for the hotspot industry, and this patent would cover redirection used by community networking portals (like NoCat), sponsored free networks (like NewburyOpen.Net), and fee networks (like Wayport, T-Mobile HotSpot, and Cometa). It's unclear what terms Nomadix wants for a license, but this patent seems to take a standard way of doing business and put it under fee -- although Nomadix may have been the first firm to employ this method for proxy URL redirection."
Most schools have a similar setup for incoming students on wired networks... and this company is claiming their patent is not specific to wireless.
The trick is simple to explain... it's a conditional DHCP server. If the MAC address is recognized, the user is supplied valid DHCP information and is allowed to go about their way to the open Internet. If the MAC address is not on the guest list, then the user is supplied an IP address that's in a firewall-restricted range so they can't get out, and DNS server that will map any domain name to the same place, the internal "Please pay..." server. No matter what the user's homepage is, all requests on port 80 will lead to the "Please pay..." page, and all other requests will get dropped on the floor. The internal DHCP settings are set to renew very frequently, so once the user pays they just have to wait a few seconds for their current DHCP settings to expire, an the next lease comes with the proper info.
Still, that setup could be complex to be patented...
According to this article on the NoCatNet mailing list.
Sure URL redirection is neat, but is this that big a deal?
As a standard prior art question, has anyone seen anything like this for wired networks or similar applications?
Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
I hate (all) patents, but after working in technology companies awhile, I realized that many companies get patents because they half to - to keep someone else from getting one and screwing them over, and to get into cross-licensing agreements with other large companies - to keep them from being screwed over even more (with patent liability crap).
Sadly, once a patent is gotten, it tends to take a life of it's own because of investor pressures. Patents do not help the honest littel inventor in the back yard (99% of the time) - I wish we could just get rid of them.
The US Patent Office is just busy ensuring the future of America. When the rest of the world wakes up they'll face a bright new day of technological serfdom. Patents are the new chains of the third world.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
They applied for a very specific patent:
The basic claim (which is what
matters, not the invention descriptions) has seven steps, ALL of which much
happen for the patent to cover your activities:
1. A method for redirecting an original destination address access request
to a redirected destination address, the method comprising the steps of:
receiving, at a gateway device, all original destination address access
requests originating from a computer;
determining, at the gateway device, which of the original destination
address requests require redirection;
storing the original destination address if redirection is required;
modifying, at the gateway device, the original destination address access
request and communicating the modified request to a redirection server if
redirection is required;
responding, at the redirection server, to the modified request with a
browser redirect message that reassigns the modified request to an
administrator-specified, redirected destination address;
intercepting, at the gateway device, the browser redirect message and
modifying it with the stored original destination address; and
sending the modified browser redirect message to the computer, which
automatically redirects the computer to the redirected destination address.
Just because you disagree doesn't make it offtopic or flamebait.
The obvious workaround is to simply not redirect. Install a transparent proxy and serve up your desired page on the first request. This defeats
"modifying, at the gateway device, the original destination address access request and communicating the modified request to a redirection server if redirection is required;"
Better yet, claim 1 is fatally flawed. It includes the words "storing the original destination address if redirection is required". Claim 6 is likewise flawed: "stores the original destination address request if redirection is required". So the really obvious and easiest solution is to do exactly what you've been doing, except that you don't store where the user was trying to go, and they have to type the URL or back up and hit the link again.
While this was a valiant attempt by Nomadix to patent a process that was in common usage (my university used something with this effect, though not necessarially this process when I first hooked up on its dorm network the second half of my sophomore year, in '98), it ultimately falls short of the goal, and Nomadix should fire whatever patent attourney they had file this one.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
At least, that appears to be the issue here. I don't know enough about the technology here to say whether the implementation was actually novel or not. But the distinction is worth making regardless...
The link the the USPTO did not work for me, so I cannot see the dates on the patent. But, there were companies doing this exact same thing in hotel networks well before WiFi came around.
I mean, cmon, what's the point anymore? This is such a large planet with such a vast collection of knowledge and information and so many people in so many different locales working on so many different projects that it is so very easily plausible that two or more people are going to invent the same idea (maybe slightly different) at the same time that patenting stuff is just pointless. It stems innovation so quickly at such a low level in it's development that there could have been a thousand other people individually working on it that could have been a thousand times better. But now they have to give up and move on. Patenting stuff has become survival of the first instead of survival of the fittest. This is just riduculous(sp?).
I think patents should be replaced with a more "innocent until proven guilty" idea where, if two similar inventions appear at similar times where one starts to eat into the original's profits, then it is investigated, and then patents are enforced if it is proven that one copied off the other. Otherwise, deal with the frickin competition. Competition breeds healthy results, it keeps the competitors on their toes.
Public Domain and Open Source work so well, it's just scary. Patent abuse is so uncontrolled and unscaleable, it's just as scary. Look at SCO, look at Microsoft. We waste so much time bickering amongst ourselves and arguing on who did what first that we are spending one fifth the time doing and four fifths making sure no one else does. This is why the news is four fifths "election" and not even one fifth "hey we're doin shit on a planet 36 frickin million miles away"
And all we're doin there is playin around in the dirt with a remote control car. Just think where we could be now if we'd made an "open" space program. Maybe that's why we don't have floating cars and colonies on mars yet.
-P
A company I worked for did this for wired networks, mostly hotels. Instead of DHCP, we actually had an arp spoofer, so we would pretend to be whatever gateway you wanted (if you had a static ip setup), or wed serve you dhcp, or whatever you asked for.
No matter what webpage you requested, you got the sign up page to buy access. Pretty basic, and most hotel type places employ a system similar to this.
this comment is probably not relevant.
Patent this, patent that, stupid patents, obvious patents, blah, blah, blah.
Geez, what do you expect? Do you really think that you are going to find an Einstein in the patent office?
No, wait.
Patent laws in the United States are the way they are to create a fair and balanced capitalistic society.
Yeah, raise your hand if you still believe that one...
The idea of the patent is enshrined in our consititution and it was intended to promote innovation, but that's not all. The patent was also intended to allow the sharing of ideas so that all of society could benefit. However, a lot of patent law has been changed in the last decade-or-so in order to tilt the balance in the direction of the large corporations.
Used to be you couldn't patent software or algorithms, for example.
No, the way the patent system is setup now is sort of like the fox guarding the henhouse. The patent office relies on the submitter to determine prior art and the patent office tends to lean in the direction of granting patents and letting the lawyers sort it out later. It's a full employment program for lawyers and the little guy doesn't have the cash to survive a court battle, only the corporations can afford that.
Here's an easy way to tell if OSS came up with it first: when was the OSS project started, before or after December 8, 1999?
The Ezine Directory
A company I used to work for(CAIS Internet/Ardent Communications) had a gateway system that did this over five years ago for wired networks. Here are some links to old press releases refering to the gatway system, the IPORT. http://www.kiosks.org/newsbits/2000/021500d.htm http://news.com.com/2100-1033-207372.html?legacy=c net
Ardent sold the system to Cisco in 2001:
http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/prod_022001.html
A short description of the software can be found here:
http://www.isp-planet.com/equipment/iport.html
See Nocat and Austin's Less Networks.
Freelance tech journalist for the Economist, MIT Technology Review, Macworld, and others
Well, for the last four years I've had a squid proxy set up that required the users to authenticate before they were allowed access to the internet... and it did it long before I ever needed it.
From the article this looks to be what they patented.
The only difference is how the authentication tokens get into the database... and any system architect worth a damn could solve that problem if faced with it.
I'd say that there is prior art... and, that anyone versed in the art could come up with the solution...
Either of these facts alone is supposed to be enough to reject a patent.
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
This is news, but only in the sense that Nomadix was the first to patent this idea that will possibly become quite important in the future.
Patents also theoretically require their subject to count as non-obvious (the single criterion the USPTO seems to conveniently overlook most often, IMO)... Nomadix may have done it first, and even filed for a patent first, but that doesn't make this any more "right". If truly an act of creation, then doing it first and filing first matters; In this case, they just beat the rush of literally hundreds of people who "discovered" the exact same solution to a particular problem, all within a very small timeframe. That strongly suggests this as an "obvious" solution, thus invalidating it for a patent.
That doesn't mean the USPTO sees it that way, however. The same USPTO that doesn't consider "store a cookie with customer data in it" as obvious. The same USPTO that, although overturned just today, actually ISSUED a patent that Lemelson deliberately stalled in the pipeline for half-a-freakin'-century to pop up recently and start extorting with.
So will this stand? It wouldn't surprise me. But to actually call it "fair" or in any way "non-obvious"? No way in hell. Using a butterknife to tighten a screw may sound like an admirable way to deal with the lack of a screwdriver, but any moron with a knife, a screw, and no screwdriver, will come up with the same solution, even in isolation.
I am so sick of this crap. Why is it that when an obvious solution to an obvious problem presents itself, some ass munch somewhere thinks they own it? WTF is wrong with the world? If you need to hit something hard and you see a rock, does that mean that from then on you own all hammers, clubs and any other heavy blunt objects that might be used to hit something with?
I am grinding my teeth right now.
Well, just within a few minutes, I found dynacc, which offered similar functionality in July 1999.
But more importantly, the patent should be invalid simply because it's an obvious engineering solution. I'm sure we can find previous commercial or free implementations that go back to the early 1990's.
As for why it took four years to get the patent--who knows. Maybe it was poorly written or maybe it was iffy to begin with. I also don't see what difference it would make even if this were a proper patent.
And play right into the hands of the IP attorneys that are helping file for these frivolous patents in the first place, enriching them further.
No, the solution is to reform the USPTO itself. Patent applications need peer review. Or software patents need to be abolished.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
It is in the Patent Office's best interest to accept everything and let lawyers battle it out.
So, why would someone smart enough to do a great job at an understaffed office work for government pay and crappy workload when they can work in the private sector for more $$$ and recognition?
Why would the Patent Office examine patents thoroughly when they don't have to? When it is in their best interest to be a cash cow for the government? When the private sector does all the work, research, and 'enforcement'?
How can we change the Patent office so that it's useful again? Here is a rather extensive history of the Patent Office. (When it was useful)
Answer these questions that are clouded by money, and we could have patents that actually encourage innovation and invention rather than controlling the use of obvious technology for which prior art is bigger than life.
This patent would appear to be a perfect example.
That moron better have a good lawyer, because if the butterknife is in any way ornamental, he's in big trouble.
Seriously though, whatever did happen to the "non-obvious" thing with regard to patents?
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Just a petty gripe, go ahead and mod off-topic, but is there really a hotspot "industry?" A few days ago in an article featured here a guy selling virtual MUD objects was claiming to be the world leader in the "game enhancement industry." Give me a freakin break. A niche business isn't an industry.
/takes deep breath, drinks more caffeine.
There. I feel better now.
For startups, it's always nice to show an impressive patent list to investors. Usually easier to get more funding.
Large companies encourage engineers to file patents (they sometimes get a small bonus, etc.) and again almost never try to make any money of them.
These are the reasons we see many less-than-amazing patents filed these days. It *looks* good.
There are some obvious counter-examples but these are usually more sophisticated patents.
iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-ports $WEBSERVER_AUTH_PORT
if (user_authenticated)
iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-ports $SQUID_PORT
We've gotta do something about these "common sense" patents...
I dont know about you, but I saw this in dozens of places across the country in summer 2000, with AND without wireless... Homestead Suites did it in their seattle place, and somehow I suspect the company that developed it did so previous to that.
Heck, I had done this on my OWN PERSONAL LAN for shits and giggles before that. I think that this one will suffer a pretty quick demise, but if not, I'll go dig up an old hard driver or two.
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