Slashdot Mirror
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?"
So instead of war driving will there be war running?
I dunno... Looking stupid, maybe?
"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
"...a small backpack containing an adapted 802.11b access point, RF amplifier, custom power supply and a PowerBook G4..."
It seems kind of risky to carry all of that in a backpack. Not only if you drop it, water spill, but for some one to steal.
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?
Quick, someone build one and run out to their server... I think we need a mirror.
The internet used to be a bunch
of us connecting via slooow dialup modems.
The real internet is an idea. It's not
the privately controlled backbone that
the government can tap. The internet is
anyone who wants to set up a network and
connect.
YES!
google cache since its already slashdotted
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.
(waitaminute - did an April 1 story just get out of the barn a wee bit early?)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Would be quite cool to try and study swarm/group behaviour of things like soliders on the warfront. The team squadron leader could have this on his/her back, and we could see how they spread out.
:)
Reminds me of some of the experiments that get performed at the BORG Lab here at GTech.
Look at this guy's work on predicting user behaviour through GPS tracking and the like. Combine that with this kinda queen bee kinda behaviour, am sure we would get something really cool.
Is this some kind of new paradigm in networking?
Personally I think if you mounted these on a bunch of Vespas, you could make good use of a City grid network for a game of Pacman or some other monster around the corner game. You will only be able to interact with other people when your Wifi signals overlap.
I make my face look like this and concerned words come out.
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?
Error 404
The page you requested was not found on the server. Perhaps you should try taking several steps in the geographic direction of the server you are requesting the document from.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
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.
I guess you could also say the same thing about the Television or the Radio... there wasn't really a problem to be solved but someone designed a "machine" that would allow for the dissemination of information to a vast number of the populace. Granted TV/Radio hardly ever disseminates true information anymore...
Point being, just because there isn't a "problem to be solved" does not mean that the new technology will not be used by millions of people one day.
The person that is trying to get Internet gambling on US soil. You see this way, he calls him self an "Island", puts a Hawiian shirt, some shorts and Sandals with black socks pulled up to his knees and voilla..... Instant offshore-onshore Gambling!!
Bah. I hate exercise.
Seriously, though, I don't really see a great advantage of having a singular wifi-spot and no internet connectivity. If you had, say, a satellite uplink, you could then provide wifi to a group in an area, but it's not like I could post on slashdot if all I had was an intranet island, particularly one with minimal range.
I can see some interesting social environments that could crop up as a result of wireless in general, though I think it'd happen along the PDA or bluetooth front. Information trading, for instance - social groups could share info like MP3s without fear of reprisal from the big bad media companies. I hear text messaging is really huge in places like hong kong, where you can pick someone up in a bar using your cell phone. I imagine if you were in a wilderness or military setting, it could be pretty nice, but they already have things like GPS and secure satellite uplinks. But base station backpacking?
Here's an ideal situation. Have a LAN party in the middle of the Ozarks by linking your backpacks together in a chain. Sure, you can play Quake now until your laptop dies. This, of course, that defeats the WHOLE PURPOSE of being in the woods, which is to get away from technology.
Playing games with power gloves and VR glasses in a park would cause a bigger panic than the War of the Worlds broadcast!
Why don't you embrace your slashbotness instead of living in a dreamworld?
By and large, this is what we call a "Powerbook." Okay, it does some stuff like translating URLs to arbitrary local pages, but that is of limited use. At least for OS X users.
To understand what I mean, go to a Macworld Expo Keynote with your Airport card. You'll see dozens of different Airport networks pop up. Because everyone has Rendezvous, you can use iChat to chat with any of them, and you can use Rendezvous to share your locally available web pages automatically. They'll even show up in Safari's bookmarks. The best part is, you could see what pages you're going to, rather than being redirected at random.
When I go to the AdHoc Conference this year (used to be MacHack), I'm going to have my powerbook set up with a Wiki so that, if I collaborate on my Hack again, it'll be an easy way to share the information. Also, during the Hack contest, anyone who wanted to could open a copy of SubEthaEdit and record their notes from the show. It allowed a quick collaboration between several to dozens of people on covering the show.
So, in general, it just doesn't seem to do much for you, aside from pranks. I suppose it's good for people who don't have Rendezvous enabled throughout their operating system.
There is nothing so good that someone, somewhere, will not hate it.
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.
Isn't this just a bigger verion of bluetooth.
Really, it's backpack sized with more range and more bw, but in effect it is looking a lot like the dream of bluetooth to me. I could be wrong though.
Get a linux distro tuned just for this ad-hoc network... setup a nice cache server and ipv6 and let it accept everyone... all the users woul get in vacinity would supply their own address(ipv6, again) and would setup a wireless p2p ad-hoc network... the more users using a cache system the more % of the internet it holds...
How is this a win over, say, just running 802.11b in Adhoc mode? Whenever I want to do large file transfers between 2 computers, it is faster to switch both to Adhoc, do the transfer, and switch them back then to simply do the transfer through the Access Point... who is it that thinks having this backpack receive and retransmit every packet is a GOOD thing for round trip time?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
If I had one of these, I'd use some sort of uplink (cell, but faster would be nice). That way you could walk around and sniff the traffic of unsuspecting victims.
You see, WinXP joins the network with the best signal. If I'm sitting next to someone, they'll bump onto my open network and may not even know it, leaving me free to sniff away.
Whaddya think? Is there potential for this sort of trick?
***
if you can run faster than your opponent.
When I was a kid, the ice cream truck came by our house once a week. The bell could be heard ringing from a distance, and the kids ran out to stand ready to hail it to a stop.
Now, 20 years later - introducing... the WAREZ TRUCK - driving from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, wifi-serving the latest games from Razor, Fairlight and Deviance, the latest movies from groups as Centropy and Brutus, and the latest hi-quality porn from NovaVCD, Swe6rus and others (Parental advisory - reproductive organs in motions).
I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone plans to murder him.
Wouldn't it require that I actually leave the house? ;)
My first thought -- "pointless art-for-art's-sake" crap.
:)
I read the website for a while. My second thought -- "oh, go hijack people at Starbuck's onto your Internet. Cute, immature crap."
I download the docs and read them, and buried deep within, it starts talking about geographically-based ad-hoc networks. Finally, a point. And quite a good one, actually.
The Internet's great and all, and it's not like you can't talk to a guy that's 20 feet away from you with it -- provided you know his (absolute) IP or hostname or something.
What this guy's talking about is being able to address people/things based on a relative measure -- geographical proximity to each other and this backpack. There are community tools on it to facilitate the coalescence of "instant communities" that can exchange very ephemeral information (broadcast a message saying you have beer to everyone in your section of the office) or use local resources ("print on the nearest printer").
It's not nearly as cool and avant-garde as this guy wants to think it is. It's not even new. (Jini, anyone?) He's applied more of a people angle on it, creating "communities" instead of just ad-hoc networks, and focusing on ways to make people interact with each other on the network -- or at least with the hoodlum who set it up.
It is a cool idea, though, IMO. Sometimes you want to talk to Jane or everyone in #slashdot, wherever she is or they are. And sometimes you want to talk to whoever (or whatever -- see the printer example) is nearby and (maybe) meets some other criteria.
It won't be remotely practical until the whole darn thing sits in the iPaq frontend, however.
Post link to a wireless backpack Web server strapped to some dude's back on Slashdot:
/.ed backpack dude run around screaming and trying futilely to put himself out:
$FREE
Watch
$PRICELESS
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.