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Introducing The Wi-Fi-Mobile
tech writer writes "A Twin Cities tech entrepreneur has retrofitted an old TV-station truck to serve as a roving hot spot for Internet access. His technology firm has blanketed the metropolitan area with WiMax transmitters atop local skyscrapers, so all he needs to do is grab bandwidth using the truck's telescoping mast and convert it to Wi-Fi for use in the vehicle's immediate surroundings. The dude happens to be in a band, so his wireless arrangement has been great for streaming outdoor Savage Aural Hotbed performances!"
So he's driving around in a big van designed to use other peoples bandwidth. Sorry, not legal and not nice. I know that people have a hard time with wireless security, but thats no reason to go around acting anti social about it. Just as it would be wrong to take a 20$ bill sticking out of a drunk & passed out buys pocket its wrong to take the bandwidth people pay for without permission.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
...high speed WiFi at every single f-ing location. Besides, is this really news? People have been doing this for the past two years, with solar powered carts, eccentric Euro electric vehicles, bicycles, and just about everything in-between.
A blog like any other.
In my current abode, I only have a single WiFi access point which is the wireless router. It seems to work fine, but for times when I'd like to use my laptop downstairs (approx. 2 storeys away) the signal strength is always poor with signal dropping out every now and then. With the least amount of cash outlay, I'd like to get more signal into other parts of the igloo.
Obviously, this DeVaan guy is a networking whiz. I'd like to replicate this same 'rebroadcasting' of WiFi coverage inside my home. The article does not mention the type of machinery he uses beyond the media van that it's all stored in. Do any of the networking engineers here at Slashdot know of a way to boost the signal strength of my home wireless network?
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Except instead of "Beware of children" it's "Beware of festering nerds with wifi laptops"
The first things that pop in mind is ruarl schools can have an "Internet Day" when the truck pulls up in front of the school, or possible military operations, extending internet out into the desert or jungle, or high steppe, or wherever they want to go next.
There are two kinds of fool. One says, This is old, and therefore good. And one says, This is new, and therefore better.
Precisely.
Basically what this guy is doing is pulling bandwidth from his own company's WiMax (802.16) system, and pumping it out for the peeps 802.11b (Or b-g? or a-b-g? The article didn't say.) stylee with his truck.
Nothing illegal is going on here. This is a dynamite piece of guerilla marketing, though. I wish this guy all the best.
I seem to recall some sort of inane law (in the United States anyway, where most of them are inane), where you can't build your own Wi-Fi router/transmitter/re-transmitter, but if you manage to make it without building it, you can sell it.
I'm from the Twin Cities area, and I have not heard anything about this, I wonder if I would be in range of it :D
OK, so who's got links to some places online where a guy could actually buy some of this mystical Wi-max gear? A single, strategicly placed, Wi-max base in my town could easily cover ALL OF IT. Yea, pretty small town. What with the lack of DSL coverage, something like this would make a real invenstment opp for some eager geek (me?!).
I find one place "Wi-lan.com" via google - but not only are they not in my country (type accepted???), they've got some marketing channels outside of what I'd prefer to use.
Come on slashdoters - share the 'insight'!
Senior NCO in the fight against entropy. I've seen things, man. Things no one should have to see.....
there are chipsets but I've not seen any retail products yet. Don't be confused by the "generic" name - wimax is really just a standard that pools together lots of previously proprietary and competing products within the 2-11ghz band. If you have the money to go to one of these guys you can do it today - I know someone in LA who has supposedly been using a 5GHz system to provide nlos coverage on the west side of town. It's cost effective there because you can get enough subscribers to pay the costs of the base equipment but not exactly something most home users would go for.
Given the hefty prices these folks charge for their antennas and base units, I think it's obvious why many would drag their feet on adopting a "standard" that would, ultimately, drop the price of competing equipment to commodity levels.
Did that myself two years ago with a bus and a satellite dish.
... as the people running behind the truck with their laptops can only get healthier!
Eric
How to masquerade your browser (Hint: Firefox makes it easy)
I've been doing this for a while with my cellphone and laptop. I was half of a traveling crew some time back, and the job took us to all sorts of towns that were just big enough to have a Wal-mart but not big enough to have wifi at the motel, nor a local dialin to any big ISPs.
I have the all-you-can-eat data plan on my Nextel, so sharing that connection over wifi meant we could both get online without having to share a laptop or toss the phone back and forth. Nextel's great firewall is horrid (NAT up the wazoo, no UDP, mangles JPEGs on the way in), and the latency makes SSH excruciating, but it's better than nothing.
The amusing bit was watching people associate. I set the SSID to something like "MySlowPhoneBeNice" and figured anyone who finds it deserves it. It's funny being the only WISP in hickville and finding the only wardriver.
As far as I can remember, Nextel's AUP only prohibits reselling service, so I was even in the clear for sharing it with a coworker. (The resulting throughput is its own penalty, I guess.)
I wish like anything that Ricochet was still up, I'd love to have a serious upstream for these antics. I guess WiMax will come someday, but without a unified back-end it'll still be a comedy of overlapping signals and non-roaming. Ugh.
It is, in effect the new frontier for innovation by companies such as Alvarion. Intel is pushing hard in this areas as they see this domain as an untapped area where they can gain traction.
This article is informational: http://www.dmeurope.com/default.asp%3FArticleID%3D 3753
Of course, WiMax, is being promised as that solution to the perennial problem, the Last Mile , which is kind of what this guy is trying to illustrate.
Unfortunately though, the cost of driving a truck around, far outweighs the benefit of providing bandwidth for 'free' - One is reminded of the old calculation for the bandwidth of a truck, somewhat updated here, "Never underestimate the bandwidth of an Interstellar Truck"
What's interesting about this is that WiMAX is available only in licensed spectrum sets for now. It's not yet available for unlicensed frequencies that typical WISPs usually use, i.e. 2.4GHz and 5GHz. There are several manufacturers producting WiMAX gear, however, they're basically not yet usable by the general public unless someone has a license for the freqs they run in.
:-)
It'll be huge, however, once its available to the rest of us.
Regards,
Kory
did it first.
okay... today is November 1st.
As of this date, no manufacturers have Wimax forum certified products available for release to sell to the public.
The compliance testing lab has not been completed and until the test profiles are run... the product is not WiMAX until the forum says its WiMAX.
It is possible that this guy has pre-release hardware, as some vendors have some sorta WiMax-ish stuff... beware the new label on 802.11 stuff.
BTW, we use the same type of truck for pre-sale site surveys, customers usually sign up once we prove the shot can be made.
I checked in on implex.net. They offer a WiMax internet connection starting at $99/month for about 500k. Not too bad, but I never found out what the initial startup cost was.
It appears the truck is using some D-Link equipment on the Wi-Fi end, running at 22Mbps as time if net stumbler capture
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