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Nation's First City-Wide WiFi Network Completed
According to a reader rockwellpa, Grand Haven, Michigan has recently completed the United States' first truly city-wide WiFi nework. According to the press release, "Other cities have announced intent to build similar networks or have announced partial deployments; in contrast, the Grand Haven implementation, by Ottawa Wireless Inc., is the first full and complete city-wide WiFi deployment in the country. 'As the first WiFi city in America, Grand Haven has truly lived up to its name in the Internet era, as we now allow anyone anywhere to connect to the Internet and roam the city and waterways in a completely secure computing environment'"
Does anyone know the logistics of where they placed the access points? Were they connected to telephone polls or traffic lights? How about weather? Michigan does get snow and if the access points are outside, what type of protection do they have.
Finally, if one access point crashes do the rest break as well?
GroupShares Inc. - A Free and Interactive Stock Market Community
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artlu.net
Grand Haven also has the highest ratio of brain cancer anywhere.
- brandannnnnn
I think the idea of city wide WIFI is nice, but how is it paid for? Do people still have cable modem at home? (or that silly phone line thing)
With whole city wifi.. will people even use land lines for home telephone?
This town will soon become a favorite stop for people looking to anonymously release viruses into the wild.
"completely secure computing environment". Hahhahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahaha... *whipes tears*
Could a hacker crash the system and therefore put the city in chaos? Or could terrorists connect bombs that operate based on the network? Either way, we're only about 3 years from the invention of PET (cookies if you get this).
... slow. If you go to http://www.ottawawireless.net/services/pricing.htm l, you see that they offer 256kbps for regular users. That's only about 5 times dialup. With modern websites, that really doesnt cut it.
always-on broadband Internet starts at $19.99 for 256 kbps, and unlimited mobile VoIP calling is $29.99
In countries where there is only one telo, this kind of deployment might be one way to get around the telephone grid and compete in the once-me-only market.
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
how is it secure? is ipsec required to join and use the wireless network?
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
616-842-2763 and 847-549-1677
VoIP for $30 a month? you'd better hope that's unlimitted.
As more cities follow suit, and wireless bandwidth and security are improved, we are going to be living in a connected world beyond yours or my dreams. Mark my words.
This post is not interesting, although it may inspire an interesting response.
To reiterate - do not moderate up some factless karma whore drivel just because the unanswered questions would be interesting if answered. Wait for the followup you eager little beavers.
Aspen Colorado had the first city-wide WiFi Network running in 1997. It was a private network built by Sun Microsystems. It was running 802.11 (not a/b/g) at 2Mbps.
What standard are they using?
Isn't it inherently insecure since the public can access it? What are they going to do... register MAC addresses of adapters? What are they going to do when those are spoofed? I think that wide ranging public access to the internet via 802.11 anything is a bad idea. Is anyone else with me on this? What's the motivation for doing this to an entire town?
Great. Those ruffians to the North in Muskegon are going to infest Grand Haven now.
"There are no cool guys in musicals." -- Coach McGuirk
In other news, Grand Haven, Michigan has been experiencing an unusually large growth rate in specialty computer stores, comic book stores and other geeky novelty stores. Asked about this unusual growth, mayor Gaven Hrand replied, "We don't understand it either, but we have noticed that most of the operators of these stores know each other and lug around quite a bit of equipment when they aren't watching their shops."
On an unrelated but also interesting note, the FBI recently decided to place a district office in Grand Haven, citing the nice weather.
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
Anyone know how many access points they used to do this? At a guess one hell of a lot. Also I wonder if they use wireless or wired (or both) to link them all together.
So how many computers will be cached up in my network neighborhood under "Workgroup" or "MSHome"?
I for one am unimpressed. The press release is simply too ambiguous.
New developers... Well actually I guess there is an exception, and from that I can infer that you're browsing for a whole lotta porn!
I live in Chaska Minnesota and we have had city run wifi internet access for a few months now. It's run by the City and it costs $15.99 a month. If you'd like more information, check out http://www.chaska.net/
Imagine a volunteer adhoc city/country/world-wide wifi network with spare net bandwidth donated by thousends of people from homes to universities to city authorities and decent wifi bandwidth, signal and security. Now imagine everyone with really cheap massproduced wifi-PDAs or just wifi-enabled phones and laptops that could handle VOIP and web/email. And finally imagine the icing on the cake - the pissed off mobile phone carriers' faces :) oh that would be so good:) one day it will surely be a reality?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
i live about 40 minutes away, so i will have to take my wifi scanner and see how that goes...yes, there is alot of snow here, so who knows whats gonna happen comes winter, could everything freeze? who knows, we will just have to wait. the rest of the country will most likely use this as testing
Do they also provide free Electricyt, Phone, Water, and Garbage Removal up there? I don't understand why people think that having FREE wirless internet access is something that is a required thing of the future. It wouldn't surprise me of seeing wirless companies picking up the trend and offering wirless internet service (either through the same band as the voice service, or a different one), and people would pay a monthly subscrcription. That sounds more plausible than FREE.
who | grep -i blond | date cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep
Mount signal jammers in the vehicles and drive around stickin to the ISP when you get tired of their crap.
The problem is not wifi or the internet, it's Windoze.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Can anybody send your wireless device an unsolicited ping or not?
Is that different for traffic from the outside world vs. other wireless nodes?
If your computer's not secure, then either your wireless network isn't "secure", or else your wireless network is actively blocking traffic from the outside world using a firewall and also blocking user-to-user traffic that doesn't go through the firewall.
MS-DOS was perfectly secure, because its security model was that there was only one User in the universe, who's allowed to do whatever she wants, but other security models may be a bit more interesting or useful.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Half Moon Bay, in California was had this at least a year ago, and there was even a story on the Science Channel about it!
Gee, a bunch of stories seem to have disappeared.
Champaign-Urbana also has a community wireless project http://www.cuwireless.net/. We're thinking hard about some of the issues brought up in other posts, e.g. security and other ISPs. Providing access to our community is important to us, but we're not oblivious to the risk of abuse. We're currently discussing some possible approaches to addressing this, though I don't think that there will be any silver bullets.
How was it paid for? Tax payers money? Who exactly owns and controls the service? The city? And thus: the State? Sounds subversive to me.
It identifies the user and makes sure they pay! In the future, that identity and network control will be used to stop music sharing, broadcast flag violating, free software terrorists and force them to join the Napster paying slaves on Windoze only intranets with great big flashing Adverts taking up 1/2 of your bandwith and no mute or off buttons. Ah, the future, it's so much like the broadcasting present and past. 24/7, buy more soap!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Fredericton (capital of Canadian province of New Brunswick) has WiFi acces throughout the city and best of all it's free! http://www.muniwireless.com/archives/000169.html
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
Connections up to 1 Mbps and per-day pricing options are also available."
RTFA
I like microcars
this is pretty interesting, i'd like to see this kind of thing happen in more and more cities across the continent.
there seems to be a preconception among some of the posters that this system runs on some ad-hoc of residential equipment, essentially turning the place into a big lan, but were they really that naive?
i would think that this would have been set up in similar fashion to high speed cable internet access, where publically routed ip's are handed out via dhcp and safeguards are placed to prevent people from browsing each other in Network Neighborhood and My Network Places.
at least i hope so.
i see that WiMAX is involved (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wimax) so that makes it seem a little less like a 1000 d-link Ap's plunked out on the street.
it would be nice to see a little more information about how the network was constructed... since it seems more or less "by the people for the people"... maybe other cities will be better equpped to follow suit.
scott king
Imagine a volunteer adhoc city/country/world-wide wifi network with spare net bandwidth donated by thousends of people from homes [...]
Imagine the bills to and/or disconnects of the home "donors" for violations of their Terms of Service agreements.
If you wanna do this you need to do your interconnect by peering with a backbone provider - which means paying a fee for their long-haul if you don't have long-haul facilities of your own (like among three or more well-separated major cities) to contribute to the backbone.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Now both residents of Grand Haven, Michigan have wireless access!
Old people fall. Young people spring. Rich people summer and winter.
They're also planning city wide WiFi in Wilton Manors, FL (http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/broward/sf l-cwireless01feb01,0,3650838.story). There are already several hot spots in the city, which is only 2.5 mile square.
Free wifi is already available. Just connect to your neighbors wifi and surf the Internet over his cable connection. Works great and it is free.
At least until they catch on and setup encryption, but then that can be broken given a little time.
I was skeptical for their "first evar!" claim but they seem to have responded with a special page that debunks many of the other "first" cities and point out that Grand Haven is the first to truly cover every block of the city with coverage.
- First.htm
Read for yourself, http://www.walkersands.com/Was-Grand-Haven-Really
so are they really the first?
Maybe to web developers like me (and you?) a website means an bunch of text based markup and stylesheets with the occasional image, but for the average user, it doesn't matter wether the site is flash based or not, wether it uses a ridiculous amount of images that it shouldn't or that it contains high bandwidth video, they just want to see the website quickly. 256 kbps really isn't fast anymore.
It's being attempted in Seattle.
Or maybe this color scheme is a /. joke that I don't get.
Locustworld Mesh is all i have to say. They have the best 802.11b/g MEsh AP technology Period. If you want to build a wireless network I suggest trying Locustworld Its pretty damm secure, cheap as fuck, and highly scalable and manages bandwidth very very nice. Latency on my wireless network is 3-5ms per hop using senao 200mw cards!!
Lots of small cities/town have done this.
Hermiston, Oregon (popultion about 13,000, a litte larger than Grand Haven,) has had this for over a year. Newsweek even proclaimed that town the most Unwired back in June.
Oh, I see. Because it's not done by the city of Hermiston, but rather covers the entire 600 square-mile county, it's just the first county, not the first city. After all, Grand Haven only covers *SIX* square miles, not six hundred.
The second phase is just finishing, which will add another 200 square miles, and another seven cities. So maybe being the first 'seven city area' doesn't qualify each of the seven to be the 'first city', as Grand Haven is claminig.
Psh. Just some grandstanding. Being the first to claim you're first does not mean you are first.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Apparently, SBC prohibits their members from sharing bandwidth, but their access points are so loud that this might happen anyhow.
The entire time I read the post all I could think is how easy it'd be to cover a small city with WiFi. Then I read the article:
"...the system uses several hundred WiFi (802.11a, b, g) radios strategically located upon the city infrastructure to blanket its six square miles..."
SIX SQUARE MILES?!? That's not a city, that's a oversized postage stamp. I'm not impressed, how many of is, or for that matter own computers?
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Isn't that system using mesh AP from Tropos Networks?
Replace "it" with "games" (or as someone else pointed out "shit") and it will go back to a sane color scheme. Works with any story, apparently.
Digital/Data Radio, ie if you want more reliable
/
;-)
mobile Internet connections & point-to-point
data connections
Oh, you'll have to get a Ham Radio license
to use one legally... (easy, these days...)
Digital Voice (4.8 kb/s) / Data (128 kb/s)
Analog Voice (for backward compatibility..?)
Look up ICOM's D*Star for system details, &
look in the ID-1 radio's manual for spec's.
(My guess is that ID-1 stands for Integrated
Digital radio... it's a small, mobile or base
mountable box - about the size of Uniden's
UBC 780XLT mobile trunking-capable scanner,
with a USB port, an RJ-45 network connector,
& an N-type antenna connector for your 1.2 GHz
antenna. Compare 10 Watts transmit power with
any other [legal] WiFi box around...
D-STAR system with some of its components are
here:
http://www.icomamerica.com/amateur/dstar/
This is not a troll, but man...what's up with all the bitching about "256kbps is not fast enough" posts? ANYTHING is faster when there is no other alternative in the area they serve. Try to lug your dsl or cable to your boat...oh wait, you can't! But you have your cellphone right? Oops, barely 56Kbps (and that's with the 3G technology)
http://www.photodump.com/direct/aranyx/Doom3.jpg
OWNED
I see the post referencing my deployments in LA & TX - thanks Entity1633. Actually - not to toot my own horn, there are several towns in this region of the US that have city-wide WiFi. In addition to the TWO citywide Fastline http://www.fastlineinternet.com/ networks that have been running for over a year now(Vivian, LA & Linden, TX) another group NETWI http://www.netwi.org/ has deployed city-wide WiFi across Queen City & Atlanta, Texas. NETWI are working on other cities in East Texas. In addition, there are at least three other WISP's in this region actively deploying citywide WiFi. All of us use LocustWorld software & off-the-shelf hardware. Still, I applaud these guys. What they have done is to be commended.
This WISP http://www.sirisonline.com/ has been serving 4 counties countywide for the last ~3 years.
You can surf while you combine corn! Don't laugh, it probably happens.
I had it for a few years and it was good service, although a little pricey.
When it came to town it was the only broadband available here. It is not blindingly fast but a big step up from dialup.
So I bet your wishing you hadn't moved to the wrong side of the state now! You could have been updating /. from the deck at Snug Harbor while enjoying a beverage and watching the wild life! Too bad the big headlines in your town are all about the one lane parking lot running the length of i-94.
so its no different to have a bunch of unknown people on wired ISP's as unwired.
Why does everyone say 'o, wireless, this will be insecure'.
who cares? protect the machine you connect with.
having someone anonymously joining a wireless network really is no different than them being on some link of some isp somewhere else.
I would like to do the same to my small town (1600 pop.); however, I suppose putting up a nice big antenna in the center and saying "Have Fun!" wouldn't qualify, eh?
-----
Make Love not [Browser] War!
I bet this was already done... in japan.
:).
Wow this does work
I live in Grand Haven and work in IT. This service is nice, but not all it is cracked up to be. First, it is relatively slow, second, there are big holes in the coverage, at least for now. I've spent some time snooping around with my Powerbook, and there are many locations inside the city boundaries where there is no signal.
I use the service because it lets me go down to my favorite coffee shop and use my Powerbook, and because it is a great idea. I hope it gets better (faster, better coverage) as it matures.
BTW, Grand Haven, MI has one of the best beaches in the Midwest.
7 024.CRW_3145copy.jpg/
I found this in Grand Haven, last summer....hmmmm, strawberries.
http://mishami.image.pbase.com/u13/az/upload/1999
Uh... I believe the purpose of public education was to make sure everyone had access to education, not because it wasn't profitable. There are plenty of private schools that do/could make a fortune if they wanted to. (Especially in areas where the public schools aren't so great) It's also the same idea that's behind universal health care - it's a basic need that everyone should have access to regardless of income, and there are plenty of private hospitals that are making a ton of money.
WTF is "Windoze"??
Assuming WTF stands for "What the fuck" I'll answer the foul mouthed crap flooder. I may be talking to a robot, but I enjoy the definition. This stuff is just too easy.
Windoze 1. (noun) an insecure collection of software used by indolent market droids, often cracked and used by spammers, scammers, script kiddies and porn site operators. Little changed since the 8 bit version was acquired in the early 80s but extensively added to by further acquisitions, it is now more of a distribution than an operating system 2. (verb) the futile effort of using 1 to get actual work done. A little click, a little nothing, a little click, a little crash. It generally ends like this.
Chances are, the AC fits both definitions.
Linux, a kernel that does what it should well, is nothing like Windoze.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Which nation?
I happened to be in west michigan a few days ago and happened to know someone who subscribes to the service. I was appalled by how inheritently insecure their network is. They appear to have no concern for the security of their customers whatsoever.
Deploying 802.11b was a stupid idea. It appears they utilize the majority of the 802.11b channels on the allocated 2.4ghz spectrum. What if i'm a customer, and the neighbor kid who has his shiny new 802.11b (or g) access point and is transferring files like mad? CSMA/CD tells us that there is huge potential for latency and connection issues, not to mention the interference from 2.4ghz phones and microwaves. Additionally, IEEE 802.11b channels 1-6 fall totally within the 2.4 GHz HAM band. Piss off an FCC licensed amateur radio user and watch the FCC come down on these guys. Not to mention the fact that one doesn't even have to connect to the network to intercept what their neighbors are downloading (802.11 monitor mode).
They also appear to have no countermeasures against ARP poisoning, and from all the traffic I analyzed, it appears that all the subscribers (and non-subscribers for that matter, just with no Internet) are behind NAT.
When a (non)subscriber connects to the network and attempts to access a site, a login page to authenticate appears. No SSL for the login form, nor any SSL for IMAP/POP3 authentication.
In addition, being anyone can connect and get a DHCP lease, it seems to be possible to connect from one internal IP address to another on the network -- citywide LAN parties/file sharing for free, or a gateway on to the internet by bridging someone's broadband link. I wouldn't use this service even if they gave it to me for free.
The day after the City-wide Wlan was completed, it was shut down under a court injunction in response to a complaint the RIAA filed stating "Some part of this network may possible one day maybe used to for illegal sharing of copyrighted filed." When asked for proof, an RIAA official was cited as saying "I found a file called Mike_Jackson.doc on a wireless users 'My Shared Documents' folder, and most likely it is a cleverly renamed mp3 file of a Michael Jackson track."
When we asked a judge why the court responded to the complaint so quickly without due process, all we got was a "no comment" as he climbed into a new Mercedes Benz vehicle with license plate that read "luvriaa".
I can't afford a sig!
-except that Rio Rancho beat them by over a month by launching June 26...
Albuquerque PC
Is it me or are there at least a few other cities that already run WIFI. I happen to live in Leiden, Netherlands and we have a wifi network for a few years now. Btw, WIFI and secure in the same sentence is not a smart thing :)
2 13 6222&tid=193&tid=215&tid=95
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/09/
Maby original title should be: first city in the US with WIFI. Start looking across your borders my friends.
Message from god, Please logoff, rebooting the Universe
Thats what the new protocol would be for - some kind of system that would allow people to use their home connections without the pigs sorry ISPs finding out. It would be kinda like NAT, the ISP is just gonna see a request for xx/yy they wont know that those packets are actually gonna be transmitted somewhere else afterwards. The system would need to unsure security aswell - if you're VOIPing someone across town and dont want it being listened too, and a way to fairly distribute and manage the bandwidth. Its not that far out.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
How do these guys handle roaming? What happens when I move out of one access point and into another? Anyone here has an idea what happens (or lives in Grand Haven and can give us all a report from first hand experience?)
:-)
I want to start an underground movement in my country where people all grant access to their accesspoints to the public, but then without roaming it's kinda silly.
Thanks!
Skaag
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... time... to... die...
Subject sayes it all really, and then I'll go mumbling as to why people write national stories for international press.
penis envy?
-ashot
In an indirect way, the existing infrastructure players are paying for their competition - cable companies pay franchise fees and phone companies pay universal access fees. What taxes are being collected by this WI-FI company? Is there a way for the local government to recover their investment? Will the ISP become a department of the local GVT? If the old comm companies upgrade their lines to compete, will the ISP go back to the government and ask for more funding to compete?
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Wait - those guys that used to sing on Carmen Sandiego post to Slashdot now?
Plus, they have a damn fine beach. Or it was a fine beach, until everybody started bringing their laptops there...
I grew up in Muskegon, next town over from Grand Haven, Its nice seeing them on slashdot. Savannah, will be probably completed withing a year or so. Pics of some of the equipment are available at www.simontek.net/pics/G8
SimonTek
Half Moon Bay is NOT fully covered by a citywide WiFi network. Next.
Chaska is NOT covered by a city-wide WiFi network.
The ENTIRE city of Fredericton is NOT covered by WiFi. There are significant gaps in coverage.
Hermiston isn't fully covered. Remember, the city has to be covered from border to border (to border, to border) with NO gaps in coverage. Hermiston cannot say that.
There's no claim that Grand Haven was the first in the world with citywide WiFi coverage, so your post has no relevance.
The entire cities weren't covered. Grand Haven is covered from top to bottom, end to end, and a little beyond.