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Taipei to Cloak City in World's Largest Wi-Fi Grid
gollum123 writes "Reuters reports Taipei city planners are building what they say will be the world's biggest Wi-Fi network, making cheap, wireless Internet access available almost everywhere in the Taiwan capital. The project will build on the network available in Hsinyi, an up-and-coming shopping and financial district that is home to the world's tallest building, the 508-meter (1,667-foot) Taipei 101, and the city government headquarters. The city-wide network will be built by Q-Ware Corp., a unit of the Uni-President group, which also holds the 7-Eleven franchise in Taiwan. Q-Ware will deploy at least 20,000 access points throughout Taipei at a cost of US$70 million. Q-ware is aiming for a basic monthly fee of T$150-T$400 (US$4.5-US$12), far less than the T$800-T$1,000 (US$24-US$30) that fixed-line broadband providers demand in Taiwan. The network will cover 90 percent of the city by the end of 2005."
They're just saying that the APs will be physically attached to the lights, not that the traffic lights will be controlled by them. It's just like what Richochet did years ago; it's a lot cheaper than finding where to put all-new towers, overcoming resistance to them and then building them.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
I doubt it will use security like WEP or WPA, but they are much more likley to use authetication like T-Mobil at starbucks
I believe the access points will be physically attached to traffic and street lights, not tied into those networks.
ich muß mehr Kuhglocke haben
the technology will be outdated.
i am all for this but the technologies go out of date so fast, did they make it easily upgradable is the real question
No city that large has a cloaking device!
Thanks, now time to return to my fortress of dorkitude.
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
Is this the beginning of the end? Can ADSL/Cable companies compete with this stuff?
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
... major ISPs and email service providers are already updating their spam filters and reinforcing their network firewalls in anticipation of the upcoming WiFi deployment.
I'm not sure I'd want it to be my primary net connection. Still seems somehow up in the air (no pun intended. Really!) with security standards, new 802.11x's, device incompatibility, poor Windows functionality, and weak Linux support for many chipsets. That said, this is really how it ought to work... ubiquitous, cheap access can only be achieved with wireless because of the infrastructure savings. This is a good start. Now let's nail down the standards.
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
Finally, a tinfoil hat to cover an entire city, maybe we can finally start freeing our selves from these cumbersome cloaking devices.
1) There are more 7/11's than men in taipei
2) There are more women than men in taipei
3) I was using my neighbors wi fi for free and the department store next door's wi fi for free. If Taipei already doesnt have wi fi available in some shape or form somewhere then something's amiss.
What will be the human cost factor? How many war drivers will be put out of business?
I know of several cities that are supposed to be putting in free WiFi for their citizens. This will put more and more ISPs into the economic trashheap. This can't be allowed to continue! Soon the economic impact will upset the whole applecart!
Join us now, before it's too late!
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HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
Have you ever driven there? I doubt the drivers could get much worse.
Correct me if I'm wrong - isn't the bandwidth over wireless shared by the users connected to a particular access point?
Say, if AP1 (100 Mb/s connection) has 10 users, each one gets 10 Mb/s. But if 20 users were to connect, won't each one get 5 Mb/s?
-- rxMx --
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The People's Republic of China has placed an order for 20,000 cans of Pringles.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Not that I'll ever go there, but it's nice to know that should need arise, I can fill my double-gupl with diet coke (or something) in Taipei.
Mind you, probably not in south-central PA, but definitely Taipei.
It's a(n) __acronym___!
All this talk about large scale wireless reminds me of Tesla and some of his crazy ideas http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_todre.html.
Although Tesla can be creepy sometimes. When he was trying to do something similar with his tower he said, "In this system that I have invented," Tesla explained, "it is necessary for the machine to get a grip of the earth, otherwise it cannot shake the earth. It has to have a grip... so that the whole of this globe can quiver."
I hope they're planning on making sure those access points are gripping the Earth hard enough.
Like Teddy with an elephant gun.
Only if everyon'e using maximum bandwidth continuously (highly unlikey). And even then, you can have multiple networks on multiple channels in the same geographic area.
That Taipei 101 buidling is really really really big, man have you seen pictures of it... Ok so all they need to do is put one extremly large access point on top of that building and everyone can get coverage. But then put repeaters up where there is a loss of signal. But the most important thing here is that they have that big building and they are gonna have the world's largest wifi grid. Move over New York cause here com Taipei....
I would expect it to be cheaper than wired lines, since it will be much slower and congested once all those people get on the shared 2-54mb (depending on your area) wireless network
Just what I always wanted, more electromagnetic radiation flying around.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Thats always make me wonder if big WiFI manufacturers like Linksys (Cisco), D-Link, 3com, NetGear, SMC, etc.. Will ever use the D2D technology. (1500 feet Wifi)
:)
I see this company has his products out for a long time now, but i never heard anyone mention it.
D2D Technology
In theory, if you use 1 antenna every 1500 feets, vs 300 feets, its supposed to cost less for the city
Anyone use that ? Whats your thought about it.
I'm sure I'm not the only geek curious to know whether the city will use standard consumer Wifi APs from Linksys, DLink or the like, or go for either custom or industrial-level (Cisco) hardware?
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
will that be bigger then the http://djurslands.net/ network? it's rural.. but big.. and growing.. is tapei that big or is it size measured in amount of accespoints/users ?
... fighting SARS. Winter is approaching in the Northern Hemisphere.
Here are a couple of links from their site.
Wireless Mesh Networks
Taipei Mesh
Ok that's it, i'm off to TaiPei to open a tinfoil hats shop.
I'm going to be RICH!
Anything you do can get you slashdotted, including nothing.
Yeah, like some of you said, it might be kind of slow and congested, but at least it's a start. I mean, when the Internet first came around, the connection was still slower than what these people will prolly be getting. But nobody ever said that early Internet was useless (it wasn't very useful but it wasn't useless, either). So, I say, it's a step, a small one, but an important one.
"Software is like sex, it's better when it's free." Linus Torvalds
2001 report of bankruptcyfiling Followed by closing doors.
At one time there were Metricom trucks all over Atlanta putting their stuff on utility poles.
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
Its interesting to hear their plan - that it will cost $70m to cover 105 miles of Taipei and they will charge for user access. Here in Philadelphia a plan was announced to cover our 135 square miles for $10m in up-front costs and $1m per year in on-going costs w/ no access fees. I've decried the plan here (in Philadelphia) as ridiculous since the day it was announced. If I had to guess, I would say the private industry in Taipei that is setting up this network is being much more realistic than our soundbite-seeking John Street led government here.
The city-wide network will be built by Q-Ware Corp., a unit of the Uni-President group, which also holds the 7-Eleven franchise in Taiwan.
What on earth does 7-Eleven ownership have to do with wireless networks? Why was this tasty tidbit featured so prominently in the synopsis?
The cure for cancer is coming: Reovirus
With all these WiFi networks springing up, don't they interfere with each other? Esp when people are planning to have city-wide WiFi networks.
What happens when WiFi networks interfere with each other? commercial vs noncommercial? public vs private?
but i suppose some of this issues will be solved with that buget. and i hope the outcomings of this work will be released as OSS.
Only morons moderate based on a sig.
Taiwan also have nationalized healthcare. Medical care is very cheap there.
I hope you see that many nations are organized to better the quality of life of the CITIZEN, and not organized to maximize the profit of the investor.
Other nations are organized like livestock ranches built for the benefit of the investor.
Guess how America is organized....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Is it just me or does this remind anyone else of Cryptonomicon in a small way.
/. it made me think of Cryptonomicon.
If I remember correctly in Cryptonomicon when Waterhouse first goes to the Pacific rim they are talking about providing messaging back to mainland asia from small terminals in stores very much like 7-11s using a broadband connection laid under the ocean. So 7-11 was bringing connectivity to part of Asia
Now in this story 7-11 (well, the holders of 7-11 in Taipei) are buildiing a wi-fi grid all over Taipei bringing connectivity to part of Asia.
Sure, the connection is thin but as soon as I read the story blurb here on
I know where I'm NOT going with my laptop. With that much WiFi and a plethora of idiot users coupled with an insecure transport medium, peoples' private information is gonne be made public in no time flat.
What is your penile percentile?
Taipeh was given the nickname of "World's largest Microwave-Oven".
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
But seriously... Whatever else Taiwan may be, it's certainly no longer "third world".
In the late 1990s, several cities in the US bought into "citywide wireless computing" only to get stuck with equipment that's incompatible with things people use today.
Municipal wireless is great and all, but I hope the bean-counters are factoring in the costs of continuous upgrades and obsolescence.
My personal opinion?
1) it shouldn't be free of charge: It should be billed at no more than cost-recovery though. Even $1/day or $1/gigabyte whichever comes first will keep people from "pigging out" on it.
2) it should be built first in those areas that are BOTH a) likely to be used AND b) not likely to be served by private enterprise. Examples include some public parks, most libraries and public squares, high-traffic public places, government-owned buildings, public housing projects (provided there is enough computer density), and the like. Every place else gets second priority.
3) If you charge less than Starbucks and other local commercial hotspots, you should cap bandwidth at less than the commercial vendors offer. You don't want to drive the commercial places out of business. Or do you????
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
If the system works the PRC will be getting a great WiFi network when they take over the ROC.
My Alma Mater is looking at access points from Meru Networks.
The stuff looks impressive. The access points don't have much intelligence. The central controller authenticates users, controls AP power output to prevent AP overlap, or to compensate for a failed AP.
It looks like the right way to do wireless access.
-ted
I saw an interview with those responsible for implementing Seattle's WiFi system, and they were showing off large banks of antennae that were even larger than cell sites. They even commented on how they had to specially design much of the system, since there were no acceptable off-the-shelf solutions.
Someone's not telling the full truth.
we drive fine you americans drive wierd. u guys never look at whats in front of you. i bet if someone does an emergency brake in america, the car following it with hit it. in taiwan, the car following will pay attention and actuallly stop.
One is just a comparison of retail access points, and the other is a tutorial on how to set up your own broadband connection for free WiFi access to the general public. Neither mention anything about a city-wide, institutionalized network installation.
Here is my review. $70,000,000.00 / 20,000 AP = $3,500.00 per truck roll. $3,500.00 sounds like a good number on the surface for an enterprise AP feeding a pico cell MESH connecting 200 MESH nodes. Now we need more money for; 1) fiber backhaul or WiMAX backhaul to feed the network, 2) Staff (field techs, NOC techs, planning engineers, tech support, installers, middle management, execs, 3) Internet HUGE PIPE (OC-12, based on 20,000 AP with 30 users per AP = 600,000 clients with room to have an 8 to 1 resell ratio) ballpark price per month for OC-12 $125,000 per month times 2 for redunant $250,000 total for PIPE, 4) NOC buildout $20,000.000.00. 5) Money to pay all bills while adotion rate is and learning takes place. Many other items will be added by others. I see every coffee shop, city, state attempting to out do every other PR put out. I look forward to the PR when someone is building out WiFi on Mars in 2080 ---- I reserve the rights to that planet.
Taipei is about 27Kha (2.7megares?) in area, with about 2.7M people - that's about 100 people per hectare. Over 20,000 access points will mean about 1 per hectare. Since 802.11 covers about 200m radius max (about 100m radius at full bandwidth), that could put every AP within the range of 4 or 8 others, or even 24 others. That means a mesh with very high redundancy for routing, bandwidth and high-availability. And even 802.11g (to say nothing of WiMax) offers up to 110Mbps - which is about 1Mbps per person in the hectare. Very dense areas could have extra APs, to the max of about 1.7Gbps, with every 802.11 channel filled, for over 16Mbps for each user. Combined with lots of wired AP interconnects to the Internet, those 50+% broadband users in Taipei are going to get a lot more mobile, in just the next year. Sounds like a great market for Slashdotter app development.
--
make install -not war
Note that it will cover 90% of the city by the end of 2005. That's just a year away.
Here in America, we make plans like "Scientists will launch a robotic mission to Mars... by 2009." or "We will return to the Moon... by 2010." We never say "Such-and-such big technological plan will be in effect... by the end of next year."
We move so slowly, like the lumbering elephant we, as a nation, are.
Eventually, the more nimble nations will simply overtake us if we don't stop miring every project we undertake in red tape...
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
M. D. Anderson announced today that it will be building a major brain cancer treatment center 5 miles outside of Taipei city limits...
I'm reporting to you live from an apartment about one hundred yards from the Shi Da University campus in lovely downtown Taipei and I'm pleased to tell you that, although I'm on a landline DSL connection, Taiwan's Internet connectivity is quite GNU/Linux friendly and has been for many years so there is no reason to believe the wireless will be any different.
In fact, early on, the local ISPs were quick to provide free IP sharing routers with DSL connections. Many of those devices were really just embedded Linux systems. This was back in the days when ISPs in the US were still arguing whether you could have a home network on a brodband line. Here, quite to the contrary, the idea of sharing a connection between multiple PCs was being pushed by the ISPs. So making the best use of connectivity in the manner that the user sees fit has never been a real issue here since the advent of broadband. Intriguingly, in the modem days not so many years ago things were terrible. Once DSL came out though. everything changed for the better to put it mildly. That's is truly putting it mildly, the connectivity here is awesome. It's fast, cheap and hassle free and apparently just getting more so as time goes by.
But in terms of GNU/Linux in Taiwan, I might as well mention that I'm currently writing to you on an IBM Thinkpad notebook running BVA1L Knoppix which is a custom version of the Knoppix LiveCD with a pre-configured Chinese environment including a version of the Chinese character input system called XCin. I am led to believe this customized version of Knoppix is maintained by a local boy at Tai Da which is another university that coincidentally is also just down the street from where I'm camping out this evening. So far, it's mostly only the younger people who have caught on to the fact that there is finally a totally convenient way to use Chinese with a Linux desktop, but it's spreading fast because people in Taiwan hate to feel like they're getting left out of a trend.
As a matter of fact, the maintainer of this distro made a rather smart move by placing pictures of various cities from around Taipei as the default desktop so, as opposed to the generic Microsoft desktop experience, this system immediately creates a sense of recognition, pride and even ownership among the users. Just in the last month or so several Taiwanese people I've shown this to have dumped XP or 2K and stuck with a hard drive install of this distro. The key point is the character input that works with Open Office and Firefox but the little touches like the localized wallpaper also has a powerful psychological impact that makes people more willing to put up with having to mount devices and learn how to cut and paste the right way and these other trivialities. If people are not interested in a new system these minor issues are insurmountable, but if you create subtle motivation by massaging the edges and making things cozy and targeted precisely for a very specific audiance it is surprising how eager people can be to learn.
Hard to believe how fast things change, but people's tastes are fickle and the older alternatives have a great disadvantage in that once you were trendy in the past you've got a hell of a battle being trendy in the future.
So, if you're afraid GNU/Linux is being squeezed out of the action in Taiwan, you may relax because it is hardly the case.
it's much more fun driving in taiwan.
Deepening the ability to not think about disturbing trends and to accept irrational behavior is largely the point of fuzzing people's minds with electronic goo. It works and it's real and everybody, particularly in this forum, ought to know better by now, and yet. .
The funny thing about direct changes made to the brain are that they are very hard to notice exactly because the organ you use to notice things is that which is being affected. --Gary Busey, who suffered minor brain damage as a result of a motorcycle crash, (without a helmet), explained that he didn't grasp how hurt he was until he realized that he couldn't figure out whether to put his shoes or socks on first, and simply couldn't cognize his way out of the puzzle. Up until then, he just thought he had regular wounds. The world, besides the physical pain, seemed normal.
The effects of EM radiation within the spectrum and power levels used by Cell and wireless technology has been demonstrated to impede brain function, to make subjects more docile and confused.
But the spread of this technology is rampant. --The region I live in has cut a deal with the Telcos to install a lot of Cell towers. The tactics used to lock this deal were corrupt; the representative from the Telco was the daughter of a sitting house member, copies of a significant petition were intercepted and prevented from entering the debate on less than legal grounds, and in general, the politicians were arrogant gits with Cell phones. I was there in local parliament to see it all go down.
Very simply, with the amount of crap Bush and the Military Industrial Complex is pulling today, it is important that the population be as stupid and placid as possible. How much television do you watch per day? Have you gotten your mercury-containing flu shot yet?
I do notice, however, that the reality of this world is slowly beginning to sink in. The deflating economy, the stupidity of the war, (which some of us knew in advance was going to be another Vietnam), the accelerating melt-down of the bio-sphere, the increasing fascism in the U.S. . . It's all growing more obvious, more impossible to ignore. People are far more often growing thoughtful rather than laughing tin-foil hat jokes.
Which is good. We're not here to ignore this.
-FL
I wonder if we'll replace cellular phones with Wi-Fi IP phones in citiies? I mean, what's the point of cellular phones in city limits if you can get a WiFi IP anywhere? That'd mean your phone, and your PeeCee can use the same account... And for $20 a month at Vonage you can get a much better plan than any cell phone out there...
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
but they will become entangled in all the red tape. And the giant mother spider will come out and feast on their quivering nimble bodies.....
Personally, i'm with the bloke who noted that he never really feels any sense of achievement from these games. My problems with subscription-based gameplay aside, i've just never felt any particular pull towards most online games.
Puzzles and all are great, but for me, it's the underlying story that grabs me. If there's no story, but the gameplay is great, I just give it up. It's reasons like this that even amongst FPS games, I prefer those with some kind of driving *reason*, ala System Shock 2 or Half-Life.
For myself, and hopefully others, the benefit of these games should be the active updates and evolution of the game itself. Instead, i've found that it usually turns into chatting and clustering together to fight monsters and gain experience. Until there's some kind of ever-evolving, adaptive storyline and game world, I guess I just don't get the appeal. I mean, why shell out cash each month to talk to people and fight mindless, repetitive battles? It'd be like Final Fantasy with an endless number of random encounters and no actual storyline or character depth.
So, i'm curious... anyone know of any half-decent online games that suit what i'm looking for without killing my bank account?
This is perhaps the most prolific piece of mis-leading info promoted by the Telcos. The interesting part about it is that it is true.
It is true that there is not enough power in an EM signal to damage a cell through energetic heating. This is a fact. It takes a lot of power before cells will 'cook'.
However, this is not the issue. It has been discovered that low power signals can interact with the actual electrochemical processes of the brain itself on a functional level, not just a destructive level. This is where concerns rise.
One of the various mechanisms through which low power energy fields can affect the brain is called, Cyclotronic Resonance. --In short, in conjunction with the Earth's magnetic field, 60Htz electricity from the power grid causes naturally present Lithium ions in the blood stream to excite and move on a vector, increasing the absorption rate through the Blood-Brain Barrier. Lithium is known for its sedative effects and is used in numerous anti-depressant and mood altering medicines.
This is just one element of a very large issue, and it is one that is on certain levels of the population control system, quite deliberate.
-FL
I find XCin difficult to use. It doesn't have "intelligent input" (i.e., adaptive learning of common phrases), and it's often crashy. SCIM (Simple Chinese Input Method) is a much better choice -- probably the best Linux Chinese input system, and probably better than Microsoft's IME. It's not fully open-source, but it's still a great input system.
Especially on FreeBSD. It recognized my Orinoco card right away, I configured the interface for DHCP just like it were any other NIC, and it worked right off the bat. My experience with booting some live Linux CDs (L.A.S., Knoppix) was just as smooth. They recognized and auto-configured without any intervention.
It's free and no sign up.
Too lazy to create a sig...
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trash from the street? wtf you dont know how bad american cities smell you fool. at least taipei has daily garbage pick up. you american fools pick it up like once a week and your metropolitan areas end up smelling like shit. The pollution is not bad. Life in taipei is good.A small amount of smog shields from harmful radiation. the Health care is fucking good. no taiwan want to be american canadian idiots. We get free health care, excellent service, free MRIs and shit. you are a dumb ass. taipei is a great place to live.
the quality of medical care is probably better than american medical care to my experience. American doctors are really shitty. Taiwan provides the top medical service in the world.
why the hell is the parent modded down. it is very insightful
eh. US is third world like everything in the US feels like taiwan in the 70's and 80's. US needs to catch up bad.
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eh no, surgery is a lot better in taiwan than the US. its true
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
personal experience. it may be anecdotal, but looking at self experience and expereince of friends family, etc, taiwan medical healthcare is consistently of better quality( and by a lot) than american medical care