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Mobile Wifi Backpack
ruzel writes "Julian Bleecker's web site TechKwonDo describes a project that is a wifi base station in a backpack. 'WiFi.Bedouin is a wearable, mobile 802.11b node disconnected from the global Internet. It forms a WiFi "island Internet" challenging conventional assumptions about WiFi and suggesting new architectures for digital networks that are based on physical proximity rather than solely connectivity.' The motivation is essentially subversive but what other uses are there for a device like this?"
"WiFi.Bedouin is a wearable, mobile 802.11b node disconnected from the global Internet. It forms a WiFi "island Internet" challenging conventional assumptions about WiFi and suggesting new architectures for digital networks that are based on physical proximity rather than solely connectivity."
What the hell does this mean? Sounds like a bunch of buzzwords thrown together about a project nobody wants that solves a problem that doesn't exist.
There are some military, missionary, and humanitarian groups who could use this set up work group networks in a remote location. True, you could do the same with ad-hoc networking, but this gives a one-click-connect option.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
Anytime...anywhere
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
Yes, it's cool, but this seems a little over the top:
"WiFi.Bedouin is designed to be functional as well as provocative, expanding the possible meaning and metaphors about access, proximity, wireless and WiFi. This access point is not the web without wires. Instead, it is its own web , an apparatus that forces one to reconsider and question notions of virtuality, materiality, displacement, proximity and community. " (Emphasis theirs.)
I can't imagine it will be long before this gets combined with WiMax, and then none of that "not web without wires" will apply anymore.
libertarianswag.com
What idiot marketing person came up with the term "island internet". The words are mutually exclusive.
It's a mobile WAN! This is a tech website, people, not cnn.com tech news!
Why don't you embrace your slashbotness instead of living in a dreamworld?
It seems to me you'd need a critical mass of people who are interested in joining a random floating network for it to be of any use at all.
.com websites and streaming music. Might be nice in a place where people are already motivated to get together, i.e. a convention.
Most people use their wireless to connect to the real internet, so what do they gain over the conventional internet. Some of the ideas listed on the website (which is getting thrashed at the moment) are redirecting conventional
Anyway, I wondered (and I have to continue wondering, since the article is /.ed): what's the point? Portable LAN party? One-man mobile tentacle-pr0n provider? Geek chic?
Seriously, without internet connectivity, what's it got? Or are we operating under the delusion that a clutch of wifi afficianados clustering around a self-contained hotspot will spontaneously generate useful, amusing, or at least non-trivial content?
I don't get it.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
I can see a mobile gaming. Imagine having you own little private gaming world. It follows you and people can log on when you are near. Play with people on the train, bus, in the mall.
Change the paradigm, find the game, not find access.
The possibilities for private networks amongst friends that synchronize data when they pass seems pretty high as well. Can you say organized crime?
It seems that the ultimate system would use at least two wifi cards with a search and load-balancer. One card would provide a connection while the other card searches other bands for the next connection. If both cards find an AP, the load balancer would provide twice thee bandwidth. When the first connection weakens, the system would do a hand-off to the second card. It may disrupt continuity of some internet services, that assume IP continuity, but it would let a user be ultra mobile -- skipping from wifi cell to wifi cell with little perceived break in connectivity.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Think back to around 1994/95... It wasn't unusual to have an unfirewalled computer with a static IP address sitting on the net. We used to ping-flood people we didn't like while playing Quake. Maybe even throw a WinNuke their way if they got nasty. Whatever, it was the Wild West, no laws, no morality, everything was free and fun. Looking back on that behavior, it was pretty immature and irresponsible, but we were just playing with the new technology.
Fast forward almost a decade to now, and computers sit behind hardware firewalls with dynamic IP addresses, are assigned rotating NAT internal addresses, run virus protection and spyware removal softwares, must be constantly patched to fix security holes, and people are innundated with corporate media and SPAM.
OK who could have predicted all this back then? Sure some had the ideas that it was coming, but not like this. We lost what was the Original Internet, a thing of innocence and freedom. Much of what bound it together was trust. That's gone.
So this brings up an interesting concept. Rather than having "an internet", we may have our own mini-internets. Companies do this to some extent with intRAnets. But this idea now takes it to the next level. A completely isolated network with strict content and connectivity controls to the outside world. I get the feeling that this is our future, the best way to deal with all the problems that an international connected web of distrust that is the Internat brings: Set up a local web of trust and establish relations with other webs of trust. This is the model adopted by nations in how they interact with each other (in terms of laws, immigration, trade, etc.). Neighborhoods and tribes operate like this as well. And the interesting part of it in this new domain, is that physical proximity and characteristics are even less relevant than before, opening up many more opportunities for multiple memberships and diversification.
Sorry this is a bit rambling (-1 Rambling), but just wanted to float the idea out there that this or something like it may solve a lot of our problems (as well as introducing its own, of course).
Actually, if you had enough traffic density, this could act as a supplement to wired WiFi access. Consider FidoNet - nothing but nodes that talked to other nodes when able (ie, during the middle of the night for a few minutes when long distance charges were the least). You could send non-time-critical (encrypted) mail via a local node, and hopefully, if it ever linked up to the main network, your mail would make it. You'd probably want to keep broadcasting this mail for delivery until it was accepted by a minimum number of unwired nodes, or until you got confirmation that it had been sent.
This would also be an interesting application for a freenet-like network. A mobile, distributed collection of nodes could contain a lot of information, possibly distributed backups, local caches of streaming media, etc. AND, you wouldn't necessarily have to tote around backpacks either - stick one of these in the trunk of your car, and you can have a mobile node in traffic.
Lastly, if you give these nodes the capability to smart-mesh traffic if there are enough of them nearby, you could introduce wired endpoints that would turn a collection of semi-isolated nodes into a full interconnected wired network.
What is possible using the existing protocol included in 802.11b devices (ad-hoc) is limited at best. There is no routing capability in these protocols and this prevents the networks from stringing out beyond the range of a single node. Considering a single node can only reach a little over a km given average xmit power and antenna gain, this is a problem for anything mobile and ad-hoc. Enter AODV, used by many "mesh" networks to extend the reach of a single wired gateway to much greater distances.
I see this as being of great interest to dissident groups. You disseminate information from the backpack cell. Members just need a laptop, and to be in the vicinity. They don't even have to really know each other, or who the guy with the backback is. The gov't would have to quickly pick up on the ap, and zero in on the signal.. And they wearer can be walking through the street market, as are the people with the laptops busily downloaded the censored information...
Drawing from today's headlines, say the Taiwanese gov't cracks down on the KMT; they could walk through the nightmarket and exchange info. bring the AP to an internet cafe, and not even use the cafe's network, but still have an online exchange.
There's all sorts of subversive uses.