Dayton, Ohio: Free City-Wide WiFi

_Bunny writes "The City of Dayton, Ohio announced a plan to make all of downtown a WiFi hotspot - and as of last week, the network is live. This makes Dayton the first Ohio city to offer free WiFi access. Approximately one square mile of downtown is now live, including Fifth Third Field, the Oregon District, Webster Station and RiverScape. The WiFi project is a public/private partnership not funded by taxpayers, and comes at no charge to the end user." (According to the linked story at WHIO-TV, the city is actually paying about $5,000 per year, with advertisers picking up the rest of the tab.)

Comments

City Wide?

[Nasa Rosebuds]

I don't know what you mean by city-wide, but Dayton is a big place and I doubt "within a 1-mile radius of downtown" really covers it all. Still, this is cool.

Re:City Wide?

[FortKnox]

Cincinnati is planning the same thing, and having a neighbor that already has it running will probably push this city into finishing up. Wish they had it today, cause its beautiful outside!

Re:City Wide?

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA this is the initial part, and later more of the city will go live.

Re:City Wide?

[EngrBohn]

Hmm... I could scrap my cable modem and set up a Yagi pointing toward downtown Dayton. You think 20 or so elements would get me enough gain from Xenia?

Re:City Wide?

[Nos.]

Its interesting that they went with WiFi - and thus end up with a pretty limited area. Of course WiMax equipment is quite ready for the masses, though it is being rolled out in some areas.

Re:City Wide?

[INetUser]

I don't see why it's cool. I see it as the city assuming greater expense with minimal or no added value. I don't see the value, if someone could tell me what the great value for such a thing is.

In these tight economic times, why would a city consider it a wise move to spend tax payer monies on project like this just escapes me. How is this system going to pay for itself? What sort of economic advantages to the city and the population are going to be generated by this? Isn't this just like the all the tech stock over evaluations that lead to the great tech bomb?

Re:City Wide?

[KUHurdler]

By "city wide", I think they mean:
The whole city is footing the bill.

Re:City Wide?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you'd ever been to Dayton you'd know that this is a big enough part of the city. Basically, they could set up an area this big in three point and call it "city-wide".

1. Where they're at.
2. By the courthouse (to get Sinclair in there)
3. At 5th and Main (Anybody remember the fifth and main gang in the 90's? They could make a comeback stealing laptops)

I suppose this WiFi project is to get the laid-off auto workers something to do during the day.

Re:City Wide?

[mr. mulder]

Although this may be a step in the right direction, Dayton is Nowhereville, USA. We need a big city to jump on board, then others will begin to do the same. At this time, Dayton is not going to make a big impact. Think of it: pretend you run a big city. Free WiFi keeps rearing it's head and you beign to wonder if it's a good thing. Your next step isn't going to think of Dayton, OH...boy, Dayton is doing free WiFi, we should.

Re:City Wide?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what you mean by "1-mile radius" (3.14 square miles), it says 1 square mile.
Smaller but still cool.

Living in France I can add that here, it's quite different : It's not big cities but small cities in the country that are sharing their access to their unhabitants (satellite access shared via wifi or Wimax mainly). They do it because the private sector ISPs don't want to pay the hardware for providing DSL-broadband access to low density area and because the ex-state-owned ISP is charging outrageous prices for it.

Re:City Wide?

[jargoone]

In these tight economic times, why would a city consider it a wise move to spend tax payer monies on project like this just escapes me. How is this system going to pay for itself?

For fuck's sake, at least read the summary...

The WiFi project is a public/private partnership not funded by taxpayers, and comes at no charge to the end user.

Re:City Wide?

[INetUser]

OK fine. Sorry I miss-read it. But still. What are the economic advantages of such a thing? Sure, you can walk around and be connected all the time. Is that an advantage? I think it's just a gimmick.

Re:City Wide?

[er_head66]

No, actually you are wrong. This is a great idea. For an extremely minimal fee ($5000), they are providing a useful service to the city centre: free connection for office workers, people in transit and local businesses. This is exactly the direction I think wireless internet should be taking, the idea of blanketing regions with free internet and then seeing if a 'killer app' sprouts up that can take advantage of it. When more cities implement systems like this, hardware developers will feel more comfortable included wifi in PDAs and gadgets, sercure with the knowledge that there is actual network that users can take advantage of. Think GPS with Wifi that will give you a local map. Think VOIP cell phones. Think about the whole city toting OQOs and being mobile.

In this case, I think it is very smart on behalf of the city to be providing this service and more cities should think about implementing similar plans.

Re:City Wide?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously you don't understand the buisness world to well. Lets say I own a company and I want to move the HQ, were would I put it, why I could put it where I no longer had to pay for the net, saving me a ton of money. All dayton gets is more jobs/taxable income but who wants that.

Re:City Wide?

[jocknerd]

What are the economic advantages for providing water fountains in parks? Cities would make more money by selling bottled water instead.

Maybe they did it thinking that more people would come downtown. It would be good for business. Property values would increase.

Re:City Wide?

[erlenic]

You should move over here to Northern Kentucky.

Re:City Wide?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be more worried about your rampant inbreeding problem there in Xenia. I've seen Gummo.

Re:City Wide?

[gurps_npc]

You got stuff backwards there.

The cost is minimal not great, and the added value is HUGE.

The cost is like 5,000/year - which seems like a lot only to the people that have no idea what a city spends. 5,000/year is nothing to a city. Far less than how much it pays people to clean up a park's statues.

This however is a HUGE quality of life issue - it makes the city very attractive to a lot of people, grants internet access to some people that could not afford it. Many people can afford $500 one time payment for a crappy computer +$100 more for a wifi card, but not afford the $1,200 + a year reasonable internet access can cost.

Re:City Wide?

[INetUser]

blanketing regions with free internet and then seeing if a 'killer app' sprouts up that can take advantage of it

OK, so it's still on the 'build it they will come' notion / gamble then. I still don't see the great need for being connected like that all the time. I see wide open, anonymous access for hackers, virus authors and identity thieves. Of course nearly any WiFi access point qualifies for that.

I also see a viable network for distributed RFID readers to access their database back ends to make for greater ease in people tracking. I see web cameras, rather than the more costly dedicated units, all over the place, and the US becoming like the UK. I see the back end capability for the advertisement boards like in the Minority Report movie.

All of these things are intrusive and to my mind not good. And I'm by no means a luddite. I can just see no good coming from this. Granted other than reasonable free Internet connectivity.

Re:City Wide?

[Digz]

I just did.

Re:City Wide?

[Peyna]

Actually the city limits for Dayton are not all that large. For whatever reason, Dayton hasn't been able to, or hasn't tried to annex every block in their reach. Just a few blocks south of Downtown and you're in the town of Oakwood. 1-2 miles east of downtown and you're in Riverside (near WPAFB).

I would imagine this is really just intended to cover downtown Dayton anyway. Most of the actual city of Dayton is low income enough that they probably don't have much of a use for WiFi anyway.

Re:City Wide?

[erlenic]

Welcome! How do you like it so far?

Re:City Wide?

[BigolFatty]

Don't be so down on Dayton. Sure this won't revitalize downtown or anything, but its a step. I'll bet the city will make more than 5k/month in sales taxes by people connecting at a coffee shop in the Oregon District or watching the Dragons at 5/3rd buying $5.50 beers. Dayton needs wi-fi users downtown to balance out the thugs. http://www.whiotv.com/news/4202035/detail.html

Re:City Wide?

[vvaduva]

Hey now...Xenia is not too bad. High taxes, sucky local government, crappy roads. What more could I ask for?

Re:City Wide?

[GreyPoopon]

In these tight economic times, why would a city consider it a wise move to spend tax payer monies on project like this just escapes me.

1. High-speed internet for poorer people who can barely even afford a PC. It's a pretty cheap way to offer self-improvement benefits and otherwise "look good" among some of the poorer voters.
2. Bringing "customers" into the WiFi hot zone to patronize the local business just because they have connectivity there.

Is it really THAT expensive to install and operate a city-wide wireless network? The $5000 per year that Dayton is paying is pure PEANUTS compared to some of the other things that money gets wasted on. They've probably wasted more than that on "entertainment" expenses run up by a single employee in the last two months.

Re:City Wide?

[Rick.C]

What more could I ask for?

Fewer tornados?

Yagi antennae attract tornados, you know.

Re:City Wide?

[Momoru]

Unfortunately because Google maps still has no scale bar, your link means absolutely nothing to me. Is Dayton 5,000 square feet or 5,000 square miles? MapQuest should still be linked to when showing scale...

Re:City Wide?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Dayton 5,000 square feet or 5,000 square miles?

I agree it is stupid to have a map without a scale bar; you also should be smart enough to know how big a city block is and get a sensible scale from that.

Re:City Wide?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just swell knowing my tax dollars are working where it counts!

It's good to know Cincinnati has such informed citizens. From TFA:

"HarborLink will basically offer some advertising to the end user to offset the cost that would normally have been passed on to the user. This allows the service to be offered at no cost.

I'll be in line to shut this fucker down.
Unless of course professional wresting is on the tee vee.

Re:City Wide?

[vvaduva]

Hehe, but we haven't had one in what 2 or 3 years! We are doing pretty well! And my antenna is hiding in the attic...protected by a solid 3/8 inch of american-made plywood!

Re:City Wide?

[192939495969798999]

I was just in Dayton last weekend, and it is TINY. If the entire downtown area (i.e. the tall buildings, tall being quite relative in this case) was bigger than 1 square mile, it'd be news to me. The actual Dayton city limits are pretty big because there are no mountains in the way, like in other places. Dayton is a city, but it's still pretty much "the sticks"... now if Cincinnati, Cleveland, or Columbus (Ohio) got city-wide wifi, that would be a much bigger deal.

Re:City Wide?

[bound008]

nope... cerritos, ca was:
planned:12/1/2003
http://www.aiirmesh.com/press/2003.12.01_1.html
deployed:3/22/2004
http://www.aiirmesh.com/press/2004.03.22_1.html
8.6 sq mile area

Re:City Wide?

[akad0nric0]

This is a great idea.

I couldn't agree more. Many midwestern cities like Dayton and Cincinnati are experiencing a major problem getting people into their downtown entertainment districts outside of the 8-5, M-F work-week due to explosions in the suburbs. Offering something like this is a great way to improve publicity of the struggling city-centres and attract more revenue downtown. Even if it isn't heavily-used, its mere presence will be a boon to the downtown merchants.

Re:City Wide?

[lovswr]

Ok I grew up in the Gem City (as we like to call our selves & furthermore we got robbed in the NCCA regionals in 1985 but that is another story) & that area is approx 1 mile square. But the population density is nothing. There are approx 1M people in Montgomery County, but Dayton the city proper is gotta be bordering on barely above 100,000. now. Dayton is a heavy gm town. It used to be that just about every Fischer body, as well as every brake assm. that was on any GM vehicle as well as all DELCO (Dayton Electronics & yes Dayton Tires of gangster "Daytons" came from there to) but now there is only the S-10 plant where they make Trailblazers & Colorados left. The main population centers are in South Montgomery County, the Greene County/Montgomery County line & North West Montgomery County (Trotwood, Englewood, Vandallia etc) & they are all several miles from downtown. As amatter of fact, this area in the article is comprised of moslty what is known as East Dayton. In the best of times, they were not exectly the target demograpic group & nowadays... fugedaboutit. The Oregon distctict (literally about 800ft of the REBUILT cobblestone streets) is where the Wright Brothers had their bicycle shop & basically you only go that way as a short cut from say, 4th st on your way to Kettering {Patterson BLVD, Welcome Stadium, Stewart Street etc)

Re:City Wide?

[kin_korn_karn]

and pay 3x the taxes?

I grew up in Kentucky near Ashland and OH is a much cheaper place to live, if for no other reason than the cost of keeping a car legal. Kentucky's personal property tax is outrageous.

Re:City Wide?

[lovswr]

Damn Rick yo ubeat me too it. :) I remember that big one, was that '74? I could see it from my porch on Smith Street (Just about a mile for St E just south of the Litte Miami River) scared the beejessus out of me!

Re:City Wide?

[lovswr]

Ok I am down on Dayton. I grew up there & bacically it is a crappy little place. However it is the crappy little place where I come from so it holds fond memeories....of crap

Re:City Wide?

[lovswr]

ummm my Pops would disagree with you mightly. Dayton had been trying to annex Madison Township since about 81' or so. Trotwood beat them to it.

Re:City Wide?

[craters]

Plans are for a 1 mile radius 'test' area for a few months, then if that goes well, expanded to cover a 55 mile radius. I read it in the local paper, couldn't find an online link to article though. I'll be interested as well how they stand up to local broadband providers. Verizon Wireless has already been promoting their new offering in this region.

Re:City Wide?

[kwerle]

I still don't see the great need for being connected like that all the time.

There isn't. But it is fantastic to have it available anytime and anywhere you want it.

I see wide open, anonymous access for hackers, virus authors and identity thieves. Of course nearly any WiFi access point qualifies for that.

For that you can just go to your local library. Nothing new here - just easier access.

I also see a viable network for distributed RFID readers to access their database back ends to make for greater ease in people tracking. I see web cameras, rather than the more costly dedicated units, all over the place, and the US becoming like the UK.

Do you also see aliens? Seriously, you're just FUDing here.

I see the back end capability for the advertisement boards like in the Minority Report movie.

Specifically: when he walked into a store, he was greeted by name and asked whether or not he like the last thing he purchased. ie: he entered someone's personal property (the store), and the security/customer system identified him. Which is no different than having a guard/service rep at the entrance asking for your id and greeting you, except that it is automated. You don't like it, don't go in the store. It is private property.

All of these things are intrusive and to my mind not good. And I'm by no means a luddite.

All of those things are ONLY in your mind. All that is being offered here is city-wide WIFI. If that make you nervous, GET OUT NOW. There is already city-wide cellphone access. There is nearly Nationwide cellphone access. There is no difference between cellphone access and wifi access in terms of what they can do (allow you to connect to a network and send/receive data).

Get over your luddite self.

I can just see no good coming from this. Granted other than reasonable free Internet connectivity.

And there you've just explained it. The only thing coming from this is reasonable free Internet connectivity. So you have nothing to worry about.

Re:City Wide?

[Anonymous Coward]

You could ask to be in Kent!

Re:City Wide?

[brickballs]

anythings worth a shot, right?

Re:City Wide?

[Anonymous Coward]

AC writes

"Wonderful! I've lived in Cincinnati 26 years, and we can't seem to fund Cincinnati Public Schools and we have an out of control police department. It's just swell knowing my tax dollars are working where it counts! I'll be in line to shut this fucker down."

erlenic writes in response

"You should move over here to Northern Kentucky."

What's the difference between Cincinatti and Kentucky? That's why Cincinatti, Ohio is usually known as "Cincitucky, Ohio."
*me ducks*

Re:City Wide?

[stinerman]

expanded to cover a 55 mile radius

You must be joking. A 55 mile radius would put wifi access all the way into Indiana and Kentucky, and probably into parts of Columbus.

A 5 mile radius I could see ...

Re:City Wide?

[Peyna]

Like I said "hasn't been able to" or "hasn't tried." I wasn't sure which it was.

Re:City Wide?

[N3Bruce]

Nah, what you really want is a dish. At 2.4 Ghz, a surplus Directv or similar dish with a patch antenna at the feed would be the real deal. Check out the K5OE Website for some ideas.

Re:City Wide?

[danila]

And I'm by no means a luddite.

In recent year it became increasingly common among Slashdot trolls to post some wildly anti-technology comment and finish it with "I am not a luddite" to give their complaints a hint of legitimacy.

Well, that doesn't fucking work (except that moderators continue modding up such morons).

Lud-dite, noun - somebody who opposes technological or industrial innovation; one who opposes technical or technological change.

Guess what, INetUser, you qualify. You are a luddite and if you are so fucking opposed to technology, particularly to providing Internet access to people, why don't you cancel your Internet subscription and change your nick to CarrierPigeonUser, uh?

Re:City Wide?

[Bingo Foo]

Well, at least the city is paying and not the taxpayers. That wouldn't be right.

Re:City Wide?

[Aerion]

Cincinnati is planning the same thing, and having a neighbor that already has it running will probably push this city into finishing up

It's just too bad nobody goes downtown. Even with the $1 all day parking at Fountain Square, downtown isn't a very popular destination. Covering Mt. Adams and Newport on the Levee would be pretty nice, though. Free wireless at the airport would be amazing, as I'm sure millions of Delta travellers would agree.

I suppose it's completely impractical to get coverage out to the suburbs, especially the Sycamore area. And Indian Hill? Forget about it. (Actually, you can just leech off Cincinnati Country Day's network if you're in the area. Just don't tell them I told you that.)

Wish they had it today, cause its beautiful outside!

Knowing Cincinnati weather, that'll change in a few minutes.

Re:City Wide?

[Manchot]

I don't know what you mean by city-wide, but St. Louis is an even bigger place, and has had free Wi-Fi encompassing downtown since 2003.

Re:City Wide?

[INetUser]

No. You claim is without basis. I am no luddite. I'm a technophile.

I love gadgets, all things that networks allow me to do, information that I can access with the Internet. Telepresence, telemedicin, hell, tele gaming, and virtual communities are way cool. All that stuff is great.

However, I don't want a digital big brother leash following me and everywhere I go, recording everything I buy, everyone that I meet, and everyone that I speak to on a phone. Guess what, VoIP phones are free from the judicial oversight burdens when it comes to wire tapping. These powers represent the dark side of the information revolution, and these powers are so great that they are sure to be abused. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

In recent years we have allowed big brother government to take more and more rights and civil protections away from us without any protest. Why? 'Cause the media is chasing rating rather than what they are supposed to do: keep the public informed of significant issues.

And for the record: I do no oppose giving people Internet access. I think that everyone should have an opportunity to have Internet access if they want it. I know that I want it, and I use it every day, and I'll continue to want it as long as it is free from unwarranted intrusion, interception, and observance by the government and law enforcement.

I say unwarranted for a good reason. Currently there is a procedure for law enforcement to perform wire taps on land line phones in the search for evidence. This procedure has a judicial branch oversight (a judge), and it is correct and proper to do so. I don't see where the technological implementation of the private conversation has anything to do with relaxing or exempting anyone from the expectation of privacy of the private conversation. The Supreme Court has already ruled on this and have come to the same conclusion.

Again, I say that I am no luddite. But I don't want all of this intrusion in my life as I've described before. To me, at least, all of this mobile networking based intrusion into my life will be spam that I'll have to have filters and blocking software for. If spam email is any indication, they'll not be effective enough.

What's the very next step after this? "Oh it'll be just so much better if you just let us implant this chip under your skin. In fact, it's a requirement for employment, or food stamps, or social security benefits".

Wake up people! This networking stuff is really powerful, enabling very power applications, but like any powerful tools, there is a very dark side to them that we need to be aware of, and manage, so that we don't just wake up one day in the future, and find out that we have to freedom, or self determination, or responsibility left.

So I'm no luddite, and you claim that I am is without basis.

Re:City Wide?

[Momoru]

haha are you on google's payroll or something? All i'm saying is that people continually link to and masturbate about Google's products all the time, seemingly only because they are from Google, and use some neat implementation of JavaScript, despite the fact that if they took a step back they would see the product is either inferior to existing solutions (Such as Google Groups, and even Google News) or sometimes plain does not work (Google Maps). A scale is the most basic element you can have on a map (Thanks Cartography 101!). The original poster made a comment about Dayton being a "large place" and linked to Google Maps to "prove" this. Google Maps, while neat for some things, is absolutely useless to show scale or size, which is all I was saying.

Re:City Wide?

[catprog]

What is probley happening here is INetUser thigns of Luddite diffrently as danila.

Re:City Wide?

[INetUser]

I don't think so.

A luddite is a technically adverse person. Amish comes to mind.

I am not a luddite. A libertarian, perhaps. An independent, certainly. Suspicious of government, most definitely. Suspicious of power in general, an absolute certainty.

Re:City Wide?

[kinohead]

As if the Government is hanging their infrastructure on Dayton's ability to host a wireless network. Absurd.
Suddenly, the downtown area of Dayton will sprout crackers and virus writers will burst spontaneous out of the mud because of this service? Do you maintain that web access in itself is inherently evil?

Did your Internet connection cause you to compulsively start wreaking havoc on everyone around you, or is the fact that you're somehow immune from your fears for downtown denizens somehow rooted in the notion that your purchasing the service makes you immune from this danger?

How can you imagine that any Government infrastructure need for monitoring our citizens is hinging upon this service?

Why would anyone, in this day of insane run-away spending by the President and Congress, think they simply wouldn't put it their budget and further mortgage our future for their short-sighted political gains?

Every system has potential for abuse, but that didn't stop you from establishing an Internet account; I'll bet you probably drive a car that could potentially speed or could run a red light. You might own a gun that could be used in a crime, have a sharp knife that could be used to vandalize park benches, etc. ad nausem.

When you're as keen to deny yourself access and services as it seems you are to others, then you might be justified in your opinions.

Re:City Wide?

[Kesh]

You too, huh? Aren't those refinery fires on the horizon just lovely at night? :P

Re:City Wide?

[danila]

You see, that's precisely the logic of the Ludd guy - "I like technology, I like factory automation, but it takes away jobs from people and so I oppose it". That you like some technology doesn't change the fact that you are a luddite. This is not about membership in a luddite party, it's about attitude to change. Amish are not luddites, they simply don't want to use the technology themselves, but they do not oppose it. Luddites can use some technology, but they oppose some other technology.

Check the definition again. You oppose some technological innovations, this makes you a luddite.

And paranoid ramblings are not rational reasons to oppose city-wide municipal WiFi. You are being extremely one-sided, but you don't realise it. It's part of being a luddite.

If you want to stop being a luddite, you must realise several things. The first one is easy - there are significant good sides to new developments. For example, with WiFi you can use PGPPhone that can't be wiretapped, unlike fixed telephone lines or cell phones. Another example is that fast mobile Internet access can bring significant benefits by itself. The second step is harder - you must realise that a lot of the problems are exaggerated and you only think they are significant because you are afraid of change. You may not believe that it's so, but it is (sadly, noone probably has enough time and motivation to persuade you, so you are on your own here). Finally, you need to realise that society will adapt to this new technology, just like it did with all others in the past and the net effect will be positive, despite certain new problems.

Re:City Wide?

[ABCC]

The killer app will be surfing for pr0n at work safely, since you wont be using your work internet connection. hooray for progress! ABCC

Re:City Wide?

[Bu11et]

Dayton's pilot is one square mile of their downtown. The other articles say that once the pilot is finished, they wish to make this available in all outdoor public places within Dayton (55+ square miles). The system is live in most of downtown right now, but the Commission Meeting broadcast said it was undergoing some load testing and they were backfilling in areas where the coverage was not robust.

Re:City Wide?

[kin_korn_karn]

I was closer to South Shore, so I had the stench of the Portsmouth coke plant instead.

Re:City Wide?

[EvilSporkMan]

There is no difference between cellphone access and wifi access in terms of what they can do (allow you to connect to a network and send/receive data).

You know, a cellphone (yours, anyway) is much more trackable than WiFi, as the company you're paying for service knows who made the call and roughly where it was made from. A WiFi provider can only know roughly where it was made from.

History in the making

[Anita Coney]

This is a BIG event in history. Quite possibly the largest event ever. For the first time in history, there is actually a good reason to live in Ohio!

Re:History in the making

[nvrrobx]

Yes, but it's still Dayton. ewww. :) Atleast do it in Columbus so you have somewhere to party.

Re:History in the making

[kc8apf]

You mean the ice, snow, sleet, hail, rapid and large temperature changes, and lack of things to do weren't enough good reasons to live in Ohio?

Unless you want to do RF research, go to one of a few quite good engineering schools, or just really enjoy using snow chains, you probably want to avoid Ohio even if it has free, public WiFi.

Re:History in the making

[iamwahoo2]

You are not allowed to use snow chains in Ohio.

Re:History in the making

[ShaniaTwain]

Well, that and the free porn on TV

Re:History in the making

[Anonymous Coward]

or just really enjoy using snow chains

Ironically, even though it's snowed in fucking June here before, they made snow chains illegal!

Re:History in the making

[AJYeary]

Ah, it's so easy to tell who actually lives in Ohio.

Been here all my life... and I agree with ya!

~aj~

Re:History in the making

[LWATCDR]

Well there is the Air Force Museum and Wright Patterson AFB where they keep the UFO that crashed in New Mexico.
Actually I have had to go to Ohio a few times and it was not that bad.

Re:History in the making

[bob670]

But if the job market keeps retracting like it has I won't be here much longer, can't afford to stay. And Cleveland is such a mess now and there seems to be no hope of it turning around yet a third time. Last one out of town shut out the lights...

Re:History in the making

[AJYeary]

People mainly screw and drink in Ohio. Unless you're a jesus freak

You're not from around Ohio, are you? Here, even if you're a Jesus freak, you still screw and drink. :-p

~aj~

Re:History in the making

[Anonymous Coward]

I personnally spend at least 2-3 days out of the year in Ohio. http://www.cedarpoint.com/

Re:History in the making

[AJYeary]

Ah. I'm still in college, so I haven't really had to deal with the job market yet. That being said, I'll probably be getting the hell out of here as soon as I can. Can't think of too much to do with a BSEE in Ohio... :-/

~aj~

Re:History in the making

[javaxman]

I just had to look up some basic demographics on the place. While the average income is about a third of what I'm currently making the average value of a house is maybe a ninth of what it is around here ( hint: it's stupid the prices here ), so... no! NO! I don't want to live in Ohio! Please, god, why?!?

Re:History in the making

[AJYeary]

Actually, come to think of it, I think the Jesus freaks drink and screw more than us non-Jesus freaks. :-/

Re:History in the making

[Dirk Pitt]

Never been to UD? Huge party school; where else could you get drunk and throw up on the Wright brothers graves? I think Playboy voted them #1 party school some time ago.

Re:History in the making

[josh3736]

I think he was talking about snow chains in the sense of the people you call in the morning when a snow day is called, not the kind that go around your tires. At least that's the first thing that came to my mind.

It snowed here yesterday with an inch of accumulation. Today it is 60. Never move to this state.

Re:History in the making

[josh3736]

Well, that and the free porn on TV

FTA: "So fire up the TiVo, kids -- technical glitches have been corrected, and porn is back on the air in Akron."

Sweeeeet... *fires up VCR*

Anyone want a torrent?

Re:History in the making

[pilgrim23]

I lived in Dayton 20 some years ago. While being an improvement; nope, this just ain't good enough. I am NEVER going back!

Re:History in the making

[0kComputer]

the median national income is around 40,000, the figure you linked to is about 34,000. If you make 100,000 where you are now you could probably make a simillar wage in DAyton, plus the cost of living would be lower. Not sure what you're complaining about.

Re:History in the making

[Digz]

Reminds me of a story a friend of mine told me of drunken ROTC people rappelling down the sides of the dorms during the wee hours at UD (or mighta been Wright State, forget by now).

Re:History in the making

[lawpoop]

Yeah, well I have to live here and it *is* that bad.

Re:History in the making

[bob670]

What the hell, does Gov. Taft post on /.? Who else would defend Ohio by labeling my post as flamebaite, not anyone who lives here and isn't milking the state government gravy train, that is for certain. Learn to moderate or don't use the points idiots. Ohio is in bad shape from one end to the other, there is no denying this.

Re:History in the making

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to thank whoever modded this Informative. Were it not for this post I might have ended up driving through Ohio, been caught in a freak April snowstorm and attempted to affix chains to my car. And then I might have gotten a ticket.

iamwahoo2, I owe you more than words can ever say.

Re:History in the making

[n8ur]

I was there when that happened (at least, one of the times it happened) in the late '70s. The ROTC people were very scary.

Re:History in the making

[OrangeTide]

I have this theory that Jesus freaks go to church and either drink or screw, but not both. It stems from my theory that everyone needs at least two vices to thrive, but an excess of vices leads to serious problems in being accepted in society. Veganism counts as two vices in this theory.

I'm originally from Michigan. Right or wrong, we often mock people from Ohio. But at least Ohio isn't Indiana.

Re:History in the making

[Anonymous Coward]

the available culture ? plus consider that the more you make, the more you can invest, thus making you more money!

Re:History in the making

[madmancarman]

Were it not for this post I might have ended up driving through Ohio, been caught in a freak April snowstorm and attempted to affix chains to my car. And then I might have gotten a ticket.

If you're joking about freak April snowstorms, then you've obviously never lived in Ohio. I live near Cincinnati, and we've had snow anywhere from October to April, and t-shirt & shorts weather at any time of the year. It is certainly a nice day outside today - much nicer than the lows in the 30s F we had over the weekend. I think it was last fall that we had a 40 F degree difference in highs from one day to the next.

The best part is how the rapid weather changes combined with the humidity (especially southwestern Ohio) can cause regular sinus infections! I finally got my first sinus infection in my mid-20s, and my doctor told me he was very surprised that I had lived in this area my entire life and never had one before.

Re:History in the making

[javaxman]

Not sure what you're complaining about.

The prospect of living in Ohio. Yes, I know there are a lot of positives. There's also the weather, and the 50.2% of folks who voted for G.W...

Re:History in the making

[Jonny_eh]

What about Cedar Point? It's by far the coolest roller coaster park in North America (or even the world).

But... I guess you don't have to LIVE in Ohio to visit the park, so nevermind!

Re:History in the making

[araemo]

Being a recent grad w/ no savings.. I'm getting out of here as soon as I have some savings, and this job for a year+ for my resume. ;P

Yeah, the job market sucks here.

Though w/ a BSEE, you might find good work at lockheed if you're in the akron/canton area.

If I had more UNIX experience(I have plenty of training, and some linux experience.. in my house, rather than in enterprise production systems.. but that doesn't get you an 80k/year job at a defense contractor! :P) I'd be trying hard to get in there.

Re:History in the making

[Anonymous Coward]

You just hit on the best reason to live in Ohio... it's CHEAP. Columbus is as cool of a city as any other not on the coasts, plenty to do, and I can have a three-bedroom townhouse for a mortgage of $340/month... my $40K a year goes a looong way here...

Re:History in the making

[Professor_UNIX]

Ohio is in bad shape from one end to the other, there is no denying this.

The problem is it doesn't sound like you're willing to accept doing menial IT work for a bank, law firm, or insurance company for the rest of your life. Those are the kinds of jobs computer people will be able to find in Ohio. All the fun, exciting research and development is done somewhere else in a far away fantasy land. :-/

Re:History in the making

[bladesjester]

It only hit 60 where you are? It was 77 according to the banks I passed when I went into Chillicothe today. That's a heck of a change from the snow and sleet this weekend.

I swear this place is insane. Freaky weather and ultra conservative people (Chillicothe, not the state in general, though a lot of it tends to be...)

Re:History in the making

[AJYeary]

Hmmm. I've got a little (read: VERY little) Unix experience (Linux... close 'nuff :-p). Hmmm, possibly a potential place to look at?

Re:History in the making

[MicroBerto]

You've obviously never been to an Ohio State football game.

Re:History in the making

[fuzznutz]

I'm originally from Michigan. Right or wrong, we often mock people from Ohio. But at least Ohio isn't Indiana.

And here in Ohio we give out directions to Ann Arbor: North till you smell it, then west till you step in it.

Re:History in the making

[Anonymous Coward]

Are the homeless going to start asking for ipaq's instead of change now, or what?

Hopefully...

[jessecurry]

...this will become a model for other cities. I know how valuable my WiFi connection on campus and in my neighborhood has become. I would love to be able to sit downtown and know that I have internet access available.

Re:Hopefully...

[Cruithne]

I would too, in fact, I can definitely see making moving decisions in the future based on whether or not wifi is freely available in the municipality.

I just hope this isnt something we look back on and say, "I really wish that ended up working."

Re:Hopefully...

[funk_doc]

I'm surprised that anyone here at /. would want municipal WiFi, other than the ever eluding Free Lunch. Lets take a look at some of the problems that will arise:

Static IP and Port Forwarding. I'm sure that many of you forward ports through your router/firewall for certain applications (http, ftp...). I can guarantee that the municipality will not support this feature, and it would be impossible to get a static ip. Once the municipality monopolizes the market, there will be no competition from the private sector. You can't compete with free. While private companies in other areas offer new features, lower price and more bandwidth (they have to compete, remember) you will be stuck paying high prices (taxes) for a slow connection. While the idea of other people who don't use the internet paying for your BitTorrent downloads seems like a great idea, it will cost you more in the long run.

Censorship. Once this municipality has the power to decide what you can and can't view on the internet, do you really think that it would never be abused. Some religious group will donate large amounts of money to a campaign, and the politician will have to repay that group with censorship legislation.

Internet access may seem high right now, and it is. Competition is real, prices have and will continue to go down as features are being added. My Comcast connection used to cost $59/mo, now I have more bandwidth and it's only $20/mo. Government is never as efficient as the private sector, it will cost everyone much more to let the government supply WiFi rather than a private company. Also, when was the last time you heard of a government program living up to it's promise? Do you think that this would be any different?

Re:Hopefully...

[djdavetrouble]

I always wondered about the realities of these networks. They _have_ to employ traffic shaping of some sort, i figure. Whats to stop you from sitting in the park and downloading torrents all day. of linux isos of course. or what is to stop little jimmy from running iroffer or an fserve on his laptop ?

Re:Hopefully...

[baudilus]

While your arguments have merit, you would do well to take a look at who is using the internet these days. The majority of users do not care about port forwarding, static IPs, and censorship. They just want to be able to read the news and do a little browsing. This will appeal GREATLY to the casual internet user, who browses very little, but doesn't want to pay for such little usage.

And by the way...

...many of you forward ports through your router/firewall for certain applications (http, ftp...). I can guarantee that the municipality will not support this feature...

Understand what port forwarding is, it wouldn't require any explicit "support" from a vendor, outside of having at least one incoming port open. And even if they did close ALL incoming ports, anyone that cares this can just pay for their access.

And contrary to what you allude to in your first sentence, there are a lot of slashdot readers that wouldn't care. Heck, some of them are just casual browsers...

Re:Hopefully...

[YrWrstNtmr]

The problem is, there may not BE a pay service around. Are there enough users who would pay for the extra services (static IP, etc) to sustain an alternate company?

How can they compete with free?

Re:Hopefully...

[Anonymous Coward]

Any kind of public wireless connection is unlikely to replace typical residential broadband services. For power users who need these features, the broadband connections will be here to stay. Wireless is for mobility, quick access to web content (but nothing too sensitive), and checking e-mail. Broadband is for setting up static IP servers, and big-pipe content.

What I need now is a thin-client laptop, designed with minimal or no local storage (maybe some battery-backed RAM, much less than 1G), wireless (duh), and a decent screen. If I need computing resources, I can connect to them over the Internet. I don't need to be lugging around a full-power computer anymore, as long as I have wireless connectivity.

Re:Hopefully...

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this censonship red herring? Can you run that by me once again how it is going to be possible to, and I'm using your term here, "censor" the Internet more effectively if the bandwidth is provided by the government than if it is provided by a private company? Can you give us a few more details on that?
But before you do, let me tell you where I'm writing from. I'm in China. I'm an American but it just so happens that for various reasons I am, in fact, living in China and using a DSL line from a government owned telecom. At this very moment, I'm downloading tons of movies and porn and games on my DSL connection here. I'm browsing whatever sites I like wherever I like. True, I'm using Tor to make that possible, but it is definitely doable.
So, what's the problem here again. Can you give some real specific details on how this opression is going to work and how it will only happen if government financing is involved?
Or are you just paranoid?

Re:Hopefully...

[bfields]

Censorship. Once this municipality has the power to decide what you can and can't view on the internet, do you really think that it would never be abused. Some religious group will donate large amounts of money to a campaign, and the politician will have to repay that group with censorship legislation.

So why couldn't they pass legislation that made ISP's liable for "offensive" content distributed on their networks? I'm no first amendment expert but, if anything, I'd've thought that it would be *easier* for the goverment to censor in that way than by directly censoring their own networks.

As for the static ip/port blocking issue--currently the major commercial providers (local cable and phone companies) seem mostly to be doing a pretty dismal job of providing raw IP service--you may be able to buy "business-class" service at double or triple the price of regular residential service, but the basic residential service has draconian terms of use. As far as I can tell, the only reason I'm currently able to get competitively priced service from a more reasonable ISP is because of government regulations forcing the phone companies to provide access to competitors.

So I'm a little skeptical as to the private sector's ability to solve the problems you're worried about. But of course, my real concern is with solving those particular problems--I'm very concerned about them too!--so I welcome real evidence (as opposed to libertarian dogma...) that supports any particular solution.

--Bruce Fields

Re:Hopefully...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can guarantee that the municipality will not support this feature, and it would be impossible to get a static ip. Once the municipality monopolizes the market, there will be no competition from the private sector. You can't compete with free.

Uh? Talk about being blind for seeing contradictions in your OWN arguments?!?!? If the free alternative does not offer a feature (say, static IP; which usually is never used with wi-fi in the first place... but whatever), then there is by definition a chance for someone else to offer that thing, for fee. Duh!

However, more than likely, wi-fi service could just be the lowest level of infrastructure, allowing wireless virtual LAN, on top of which actual money-added services (from ISP up) could run. Who cares if there's no competition at the non-service level -- I don't need 3 competing highways between 3 places, nor more than one underlying network. And by the same token, why would they even bother with censorship; that's something for ISPs, not for the network infra entities.

Re:Hopefully...

[jessecurry]

I never wanted to supplant my current internet service, I am just very excited to see that municipalities are considering internet access to be within the scope of what they provide the public.
It's very similar to a public swimming pool, it's nice to go to and sometimes convenient, but it will never replace the pool at home.
I definitely am very active in the administration of my home network and enjoy the ability to add services as I see fit. I would never dream of trying to run my home automation services on a network that I did not have control over, being able to choose exactly which ports I'd like automation requests to route through allows me to create an elegant solution to my needs.
I do not mind paying for internet service and will continue to do so even if public WiFi comes to my area, but I will whole heartedly welcome the idea that when I'm out at lunch or at the gym that I'll be able to check my e-mail or /. a little.

Re:Hopefully...

[Anonymous Coward]

You work for a telco, don't you.... :-) Nice try at the FUD-O-Matic:

- Static IP: How many cable providers let you have one? Or dial-up? This is what dynamic DNS was invented for. Not a real problem, unless you need to use a really lame VPN. Next.

- Port Forwarding: They're delivering an IP packet to your wireless interface. Whatever port forwarding you do from there is up to you. The vendor on the other end of your pipe can't affect what you do with it on your end once it's delivered - got it?

- Censorship: Unless you meant Port-BLOCKING... Oh, a private ISP would *never* think of doing that! (Just ask the nice folks at Vonage...). And people really *want* those walled-gardens the cellco carriers put up. No need to get out onto that nasty 'ole Internet...

Ya'll come back and play again :-)

Re:Hopefully...

[Excelsior]

You can't compete with free.

What about WiMax and 3g wireless networks that will provide wide-are high-speed Internet connectivity? Between WiMax and 3g wireless, there will be plenty of networks that blanket much of the U.S. and the world. The city of Dayton Ohio can only cover the metro city limits. People will pay for WiMax and 3g connectivity which will offer them seamless connectivity from their homes in the suburbs to their offices in the city and the drive betwen, from the Dayton airport to the San Francisco airport, from Dayton to Cleveland and the highways in between, and across the state, the Bi-State, the Tri-State, and the Quad Cities.

This isn't the death of private wireless networks you seem to fear. The city of Dayton cannot compete with these networks.

Re:Hopefully...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't compete with free.

If this were true, the television broadcasters would have killed off cable and satellite providers a long time ago.

Re:Hopefully...

[Anonymous Coward]

Competition would still be real among cities vying for tech related businesses to roll into town. I might agree with you if this was a single government run network that would control everything, but it isn't. These are various autonomous networks that must be kept in top shape or else the city will lose tax dollars due to business relocation. That's a pretty effective incentive for efficiency, there's nothing magical about free markets and corporations aside from the competition/invisible hand thing.

Re:Hopefully...

[colmore]

I don't see how this program is going to prevent anyone from getting commercial broadband. Also having a cable connection at home doesn't let you check your email when you're out at lunch.

And your experience with commercial broadband seems to be the opposite of mine. When the first cable internet provider started here it was $25 / month and it wasn't uncommon to see 1 Mb - 3 Mb / second transfers, and uploads were capped at something absurd like 500 Kb / sec. Now we've got 2 cable and 2 DSL providers in the area, the cheapest one is $35, both cable providers are terrible, and DSL is unreasonably expensive if you don't have land line phone service already set up (really, who needs it?)

It seems like they set their service standards high to get a quick early adopter crowd to recoup their investment, then as dumber and dumber consumers switched over, all they had to do was keep things marginally better than dialup and they wouldn't lose customers. Since broadband is typically purchased as a package with TV or phone, most customers are getting it as an extra service, not as something they're actively comparing for quality. I'm sure most of them think the slow access and frequent service outages are problems with their computers.

I really want to like free markets, but other consumers keep making them a royal pain in my ass. With government services, at least I have a vote, and at the municipal level (where more services SHOULD be handled), I can show up to council meetings and actually be heard by people who care. The telcos can burn in hell.

Re:Hopefully...

[M.C. Hampster]

Take a look at how the internet is handled in public libraries. They've already started putting filters on library access to prevent certain material from being brought up. I believe that the issue is currently in court, but depending on the outcome, the original poster has a very valid point.

Nice, but...

[jargoone]

It's cool that they're doing this, but the problem is, there's not really much reason to go downtown in Dayton. They just built the new ballpark, but other than that, it's really a pretty crappy place.

Re:Nice, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah i'll be damned if i'm going to take an expensive piece of equipment into downtown dayton. it has an unusually high crime rate for a city its size. sort of like flint, michigan.

Re:Nice, but...

[jessecurry]

maybe this is a step in the right direction. If they manage to attract professionals to this area for lunch or other free times they might be able to clean up their crappy image. I've never been to downtown Dayton, but if it's as bad as you say they need to do something.

Re:Nice, but...

[jargoone]

That's for sure. There are a few big businesses downtorn, but that's about all that's good. The rest is pretty ghetto. Luckily, nice suburbs aren't far away (if you like that sort of thing).

Re:Nice, but...

[Aneurysm9]

Damn straight, I won't even get off the bus at 3d and Main with my Rio in plain sight. You never know, might start another riot.

Re:Nice, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

No. It's worse. The only thing in the area of the ballpark is Mendelsons. If you're not into old electronics and closeout stuff, then there's nothing for quite a few blocks.

Re:Nice, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

If your riding the bus then I doubt you have anything worth stealing.

Re:Nice, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

was there on training with company and I did get off the bus on third and main with my digital camera in sight. And ... I still have it. Downtown is boring, but there is the Air Force Museum to compensate.

Re:Nice, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the Oregon District is a great neighborhood to visit, and the Neon Movies and Canal Street Tavern are terrific places to see a movie or concert, respectively.

Dayton is not New York or San Francisco, but it has some really decent things in it. And the only thing that prevents it from becoming better are the lame suburbanites who encircle the city with their chain restaurants and stores. The amount of negativity from the extremely boring people of Tipp City, Centerville, Beavercreek, and the like is depressing. That's what made me leave Dayton, not the crappy downtown.

Parking Lot LAN party!

[Cruithne]

Lets all do a parking lot lan party!

Pay 4 bucks to park 24 hours, sit in your comfortable car with a laptop, and game it up on a free network... if only wireless didnt completely and totally suck for gaming :D

Re:Parking Lot LAN party!

[antifoidulus]

Yeah, but you can do this without free wi-fi, just make a well....LAN(LOCAL area network). You can easily make a laptop a router or just buy a router with a decent broadcast range. Going through the internet seems a bit wasteful to communicate with someone who is 4 feet from you...

Re:Parking Lot LAN party!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I'll have to pass. My mom won't let me borrow her car. I guess I'll have to play from the basement.

Re:Parking Lot LAN party!

[greed]

You can do it free WITH wi-fi too, just set up an ad-hoc network, instead of one run through a access point (base station in Applespeak). You wind up with a LAN on wi-fi; no need for the 'net.

I'm pretty sure it will still suck for gaming, though; though maybe 802.11g won't.

(And if you're doing that sort of thing, don't turn on encryption--especially if you've got a card that has all the encryption done in software.)

Re:Parking Lot LAN party!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're kidding right? Park your car in downtown DAYTON (!) and whip out your notebook to use for hours on end? Really? What the security forces alone will cost you could easily pay for several T3 lines into your home and a line of dancing girls to keep you entertained.

Re:Parking Lot LAN party!

[Peldor]

I'm sure your parents would let you use the basement if you'd collect 3 bucks a head.

Re:Parking Lot LAN party!

[Lord Ender]

I don't know about Dayton, but it's pretty rare to have to pay to park in OH.

Advertisers?

[crow]

How do advertisers push their ads to the WiFi users?

Re:Advertisers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Usually when you hit a public "Hot spot" they require you to authenticate. When you do that they can push a pop-up window to you with advertising content (pop-up blockers may stop this); or redirect you to any site they want to. Thus the advertiser gets a little something out of the deal.

Re:Advertisers?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is correct. After you accept the terms, you get redirected.

Re:Advertisers?

[mosb1000]

I think that by advertisers, they might have been referring to businesses that will benefit from having more traffic down town.

too bad..

[Anonymous Coward]

unfortunately, nobody actually lives in Dayton, Ohio.

Legal Issues...

[timtwobuck]

So what happens in any legal suit where there is unmonitored, illegal activity taking place over this network? Is the city liable?

Is the city monitoring the traffic to prevent kids under the age of 18 from viewing illicit material?

Will the RIAA come after them if someone uses this hardware to download illegal songs?

Re:Legal Issues...

[timeOday]

Is the city liable when drug dealers do business in a park?

Re:Legal Issues...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a common carrier. Why should it have to be routinely monitored for illegal or unethical activity?

Re:Legal Issues...

[Sc00ter]

"Users will connect to the Internet after acknowledging a disclaimer page that automatically appears from HarborLink."

Also, you can have free access, but still require a login for tracking of usage.

There are a number of wireless hotspots that offer free, or free for some ammount of time access, that still require a login.

Re:Legal Issues...

[Qzukk]

Is the city monitoring the traffic to prevent kids under the age of 18 from viewing illicit material?

Given that its not the city providing the wifi, I'd say no. Probably "no" to all of your other questions. I'd also say that its not "unmonitored", or at the least not "uncontrolled". It probably strictly consists of a http proxy which adds whatever ads the advertising money that is paying for this service wants you to see.

Re:Legal Issues...

[timtwobuck]

The city is providing a service, something that doesn't exist freely.

In your analogy to the park, if the town didn't provide the park, then they would go into the street, or if the street wasn't there then they would go into the woods. So them providing "space" is not something they can avoid.

Now if the city was providing a large dome, under which there was no surveillance, no police, and nobody checking who goes in and out, and crimes are committed there, then yes, I would say they are liable for being negligent.

Re:Legal Issues...

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, for one second, only for one second I actually believed it might have been a good idea that might eventually work out for good. But reading your post brought me back to reality. :/

Re:Legal Issues...

[stubear]

But the city is spending $5000 a year for the wi-fi services, so yes, the city is in fact funding the project. Jesus, you'd think you could have atleast read the summary before commenting, but for your viewing here's the relevant parts:

"The city will pay about $5,000 a year for it, but most of the cost is paid for by the advertisers."

Re:Legal Issues...

[Oblio]

meh. I think the metaphore is very apt. Parks aren't "free" by any stretch of the imagination, even if you discount the opportunity cost of the land usage.

Don't get me wrong, I have NO idea about what responsibilities the cities bear for use of their wire, any more than I know about their liabilities regarding public places (I know that they exist, but they certainly can be limited- even by the city itself)...

Re:Legal Issues...

[squiggleslash]

I think your analogy isn't strictly correct either, as there's no suggestion surveillance is being made impossible, and even if there was, unless they prohibit access to the police (which there's no sign of in this case, either with the "dome" or the WLAN), I don't see it as being a problem.

A better analogy would be a cake. What you have is an icing (the end users and 802.11g technology), over a large sponge (the local government's provision of a WLAN network), a creamy filling (the connection to the Internet, again at the local government's expense), and the bottom layer, again a big sponge (the Internet, in this analogy.) Now, say you're the cops, you can use a knife to cut a segment of the cake and then you see all the layers at once. Or you can just cut a bit off the top. Now, a small child might want to take some of the icing, which they can take off with their finger. Is the local government responsible in either case? Remember: the local government is only the middle two parts of the cake (the upper sponge and creamy filling) and not the top or the bottom, the cops clearly have access to all areas, just as they would if the cake belonged to Verizon, or Earthlink, or NetZero, but a kid has swiped a large bit of icing from the top.

How is that the local government's fault? It isn't, not even close.

Re:Legal Issues...

[hackstraw]

That and the why factor.

It never ceases to amaze me that computers (at least at the hardware level) are very logical things, but people seem to have their IQ reduced by about 1/2 in front of them and think very illogically.

I'm not complaining about free wireless access, but aside from roads and parks, what other freebies do city governments provide? How long do you think this will really last? What about the security/privacy issues?

I guess I can applaud the thought, but this makes no sense that I have to pay for water and sewage, yet I get free wireless internet access.

Re:Legal Issues...

[BaudKarma]

Roads and parks aren't free.... you pay for them with sales tax and property tax and all the other taxes the city piles on you.

The thing is, roads and parks and police and fire departments benefit pretty much everyone. I'm not sure what percentage of the population benefits from wi-fi access. I don't see too many homeless people out there with laptops.

Re:Legal Issues...

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

The whole thing was baked with flour made from GMO wheat, and the icing was "sweetened" with Splenda(tm).

It wouldn't sail with the You're-a-peein's, I don't know whay we try to float that boat on these shores.

Re:Legal Issues...

[Lord Kano]

Is the city liable when drug dealers do business in a park?

If they knew (or should have known) and did nothing to stop it. They just might be.

LK

Re:Legal Issues...

[nahdude812]

Hmm, maybe what will come of this is a local Internet tax. That's how roads and the like are paid for.

I presume that free city-provided wi-fi still requires a login, just so they know who to throw in jail for all that p2p stuff.

Re:Legal Issues...

[Metapsyborg]

So what happens in any legal suit where there is unmonitored, illegal activity taking place over this network? Is the city liable?

Is the city monitoring the traffic to prevent kids under the age of 18 from viewing illicit material?

Will the RIAA come after them if someone uses this hardware to download illegal songs?

For some reason I fail to see this hidden legal problem people are mentioning. Does your current internet provider monitor your activity? Do they block certain ports? Are they liable for you downloading illegal files?

If you answer "yes" to either of the first two questions, then you should get a new service provider (ie. stop using AOL); the answer to the third question is "no".

It's not that difficult to understand, don't make it more complicated than it is. I fail to see how this is any different than a pay service, just without paying.

But then, it probably is just a matter of time before some mentally handicapped parent tries to sue the city government 'cause little Johnny blew his hand off trying to make a bomb from the online Anarchists Cookbook. I feel confident that the civil suit would lose though.

Re:Legal Issues...

[Anonymous Coward]

oh dear moderators , trolling ? is this not a joke ...
Ficat--

Re:Legal Issues...

[yotto]

Is the city monitoring the traffic to prevent kids under the age of 18 from viewing illicit material?

You misread the article, they said Ohio, not Utah.

Re:Legal Issues...

[DustyShadow]

This may or may not be relevant but cops actually are not required to protect you. Since the cops are employed by the city, that can sort of mean that the city is not required to protect you. IANAL though, so I could be wrong.

Re:Legal Issues...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, I read it and got
"WiFi project is a public/private partnership not funded by taxpayers"

Still, the rest of it holds true with respect to the advertisements.

A little skimpy on the details.

[XxtraLarGe]

For $5000, it sounds like a real bargain. The question is, how do advertisers make money on this to pick up the rest of the cost? I'll bet its not too long before the advertisers bail, and the city ends up picking up the tab. Any bets?

Re:A little skimpy on the details.

[Anonymous Coward]

For $5000, it sounds like a real bargain

Yeah, I would like to bargain a deal like that to be the vendor selling them the wrt54g and a 7db antenna at that price.

Re:A little skimpy on the details.

[Anonymous Coward]

The question is, how do advertisers make money on this to pick up the rest of the cost?

"HarborLink will basically offer some advertising to the end user to offset the cost that would normally have been passed on to the user. This allows the service to be offered at no cost."

Run it through a proxy and stick their ads between every page you access? Maybe those annoying as hell floating ads that don't go away and blare through your speakers. Those are always fun.

Re:A little skimpy on the details.

[Brown Eggs]

I think that it would be interesting to see how much the whole project costs (and what percentage is being picked up by advertisers). Even if the total costs are 10,000 or even 20,000 (I am guessing they are much higher), I think it is still a ridiculously small part of the city's (or state's) budget. And it is something that could potentiall draw a lot more people into the city (and consequently more revenue).

Re:A little skimpy on the details.

[serutan]

There are people who scream Socialism whenever something like this is proposed. But if a city can use private contractors to provide thousands of people with WiFi for $5000/year, it seems like a sterling example of something that should be a public service. It would be a bargain at 10 times that price.

COOL!

[Chanc_Gorkon]

This is cool as Next Month is the Dayton Hamvention. I bet there will be alot of MOBILE Echolinkers! :D

Re:COOL!

[ejort79]

Unfortunatly I think Hara's a bit too far out of downtown to take advantage of this.

Re:COOL!

[LVSlushdat]

Cool... IF they don't block the echoLink ports (5198-5199 and 5200).. I've tried echolink at a couple of hotspots I frequent, and no joy...

Re:COOL!

[Anonymous Coward]

Aye. It is. Now, if it were Trotwood...

Oh, wait, Hara's kinda in the middle. Damn.

Re:COOL!

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Hmm...I'll have to check at the local coffee shop. Only place I have had trouble with it has been at work because they block all sorts of assinine ports. Also, the main Echolink page has a piece of new software where you can use a machine as sort of a proxy for your echolink traffic. Basically, you have to know about ONE machine that has those ports open and you run this software on it. There are also several open proxies as well.

Mobile Echolink is always something I wanted to do (albiet, not with me doing the driving! :D). I TRIED to do it with my T-Mobile GPRS card....technically, it should work because there are some that even use dial up with Echolink.

Re:COOL!

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad that Hara arena is over 35 miles AWAY from the wifi hotspot.

you do know that right?

or have you not only never been there, but never been to the dayton hamfest either?

BTW, hamfests are getting lame. Lots of people wanting gold-prices for their low grade crap or used stuff. The last 3 hamfests I went to I looked at 30 different radios and bought none. Got the SAMe radio I wanted for the lowest price at the hamfest for a used one online for a NEW ONE that was the next model up with free shipping.

Hey people your $199.00 Icom mobile is NOT worth $179.00 5 years later. it's worth FIFTY BUCKS and that is it.

these old farts or other dipwads that think their 2-5 year old gear is worth close to what they paid for it are stupid morons.

and THAT is why I do not go to hamfests anymore. better deals are to be had on ebay for used, and damn good new pricing on froogle that beat's any hamfest vendor's price on a used item for a new one.

Re:COOL!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hara is way outside of the coverage zone, but adding wireless to hara would actually be pretty easy. As part of computerfest we got road runner to add a neighborhood trunk to the facility. So with a few western ohio cable modems and access points covering the whole facility in wireless would be trivial.

Re:COOL!

[BearJ]

Heh I wish...though as someone else already noted, I don't think Hara will be covered. Would be sweet though...walk around the flea market with a wifi PDA and check online prices while browsing.

Anyone interested in setting up a /. meet-n-greet at the Hamvention?

Government spaces

[Shivetya]

most likely they get to advertise through other means, like stuffing fliers into mailings or hanging their company name on official web pages related to the project. Of course you have lots of little antenna around and the support crews can be branded as well.

Plus being government there are probably some under the table considerations like zoning issues, fees, and similar. Remember a government providing an incentive or discount is not spending any taxpayer money. That is similar to what Washington does by labeling as a program spending cut the simple fact of not increasing the allocation of funds to it.

Re:Government spaces

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus being government there are probably some under the table considerations like zoning issues, fees, and similar. Remember a government providing an incentive or discount is not spending any taxpayer money.

Keep in mind, though, that governments need to play by the law (which does restrict deals to a degree), and that they do need to disclose such deals. As such, suggesting that something shady is happening is probably pre-mature (yeah yeah, forgot my tin foil hat at home today).

Oh, and also; any company that would accept a non-official deal "just do that wi-fi thing and we'll take care of your zoning problems" would be extremely foolish from multiple POVs: on one hand, there's nothing preventing officials from dishonoring such "deals", and on the other hand, if they should get such special treatment, they would stand a good chance of getting nailed in the court, when their competitors sued (since they had used corruption as the means -- in this case, instead of money, giving away services to get illegal kickbacks).

1 mile radius == entire city

[0kComputer]

I don't know if you've ever been to dayton (i went to UD), but I'm not sure I'd use the word "city" to describe it. I went to school there, and if I remember the Oregon district was tough to find because if you blinked at the wrong time you may miss it. Don't get me wrong, this is definately cool, but just keep in mind that Dayton isn't exactly a thriving metropolis.

Re:1 mile radius == entire city

[Anonymous Coward]

when were you in dayton last? 10 years ago. A lot has changed.

Re:1 mile radius == entire city

[Aneurysm9]

Yeah, but you can still miss the Oregon District by blinking. You've got Newcoms, The Trolly Stop, Sloopy's, then, that's it.

Re:1 mile radius == entire city

[Anonymous Coward]

I kind of like all the bars to be spread out. I don't have to drunk drive through downtown to go pick up some sluts.

Re:1 mile radius == entire city

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot The Dublin Pub you insensitive clod!

Re:1 mile radius == entire city

[Chambers81]

I totally know what you mean. i graduated in 2003, and I think i was in downtown dayton 4 or 5 times in my 4 years.

Advertising

[The Amazing Fish Boy]

I don't use hotspots, really, but anyone know how the advertising works? Is it like the old free-dialup schemes where you would always have an ad on screen? You would have to install a program to get access. If so, this probably wouldn't be compatible with Mac or Linux?

Can't find this in TFA, all I can get is:

"HarborLink will basically offer some advertising to the end user to offset the cost that would normally have been passed on to the user. This allows the service to be offered at no cost.

Re:Advertising

[NardofDoom]

Make it really really free. Pay taxes and get free WiFi if you live or work downtown.

"Waaa!!! I don't have a laptop and I live downtown!!! I disagree with the use of tax dollars!!!"

Well, I didn't agree with the war in Iraq and I haven't seen benefits. Guess we should just disband the Army.

Re:Advertising

[miyako]

Just a guess, but I would imagine that access goes through a proxy, and the advertisers pay for ads on the proxy. Either they replace banner ads (not sure if this is even legal or not), or they just have it so that whenever you go to a site, you get a page with an ad that then redirects you to your site.
This might not even be that bad of a thing if the majority of the ads came from stores in the area, people would get (semi) relevant ads for stores in their immediate location, and could even help the economy in the area.

Re:Advertising

[CptnSbaitso]

I suppose they could require special software to browse, but that would introduce a number of issues. Granted I am not familiar with these setups, but if it were me, I would add a banner ad (or what have you) at the top of any HTML file which passes through the connection. Granted, this would not advertise to every service you might use the connection for, but it would be platform-independent.

Re:Advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

But you will... It's a long-term thing:
* Probably a slowdown in the rising of the global petrol price, now that the Yanks are running the show again. Equates to global atmospheric destruction at an even faster rate - enjoy!
* Lower ongoing costs to society (eg. pensions, healthcare, etc.), attributable to all the army guys getting shot and killed before they could become expensive geriatrics. ...etc...

Mirrored links

[winkydink]

_Bunny writes "The City of Dayton, Ohio announced a plan to make all of downtown a WiFi hotspot - and as of last week, the network is live. This makes Dayton the first Ohio city to offer free WiFi access. Approximately one square mile of downtown is now live, including Firth Third Field, the Oregon District, Webster Station and RiverScape. The WiFi project is a public/private partnership not funded by taxpayers, and comes at no charge to the end user." (According to the linked story at WHIO-TV, the city is actually paying about $5,000 per year, with advertisers picking up the rest of the tab.)

OH NO!

[Anonymous Coward]

But this goes against the libertarian precepts! Internet-offering businesses in Dayton, Ohio will no longer be able to make a profit!

Dayton, Ohio will soon be razed to the ground by the invisible hand of the market, as It will surely be displeased!

Countdown in 3, 2, 1...

[Rude Turnip]

For the randroids that will start bitching about this new network and how it prevents private companies from creating viable, competing WiFi networks in Dayton.

Re:Countdown in 3, 2, 1...

[funk_doc]

You are exactly correct. This will prevent private companies from competing because you can't compete with free. While I'm sure you like the idea of forcing me to pay for your internet, I may not like it because I don't use the service.

Re:Countdown in 3, 2, 1...

[jocknerd]

There's some flaw in your logic. Apparently, there weren't any private companies competing. Thats why the city implemented it.

Re:Countdown in 3, 2, 1...

[Anonymous Coward]

"You cannot compete with free". Just tell that to Apple who is demolishing the Linux desktop market, despite the fact that it is "free". If you make a product that is easier to use, faster, more secure and just plain better, people will drop anything that is simply "free" and flock to it. Even with the supposed benefits of "open source" and "free as in speech", OS X has proven that it is private, commercial enterprise that ALWAYS wins the day, not hippies with long beards and "free love" stickers.

Re:Countdown in 3, 2, 1...

[spj524]

Unless the private company can offer something better (wider coverage area) for free or charge for higher access speeds I don't think you have an argument and I'm about as capitalistic as they come. With the current security issues of wireless access I really don't see the private sector investing too much into free access anytime soon. Opens up way too many legal issues (as mentioned above).

Are the telecoms asleep??

[the_rajah]

I'd think they be all over this like a duck on a Junebug as they in some of the other cities where the municipality tried to provide this service and got stomped all over. Perhaps Dayton is more on the ball and managed to present a fait accompli. Good for them!

"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain

Re:Are the telecoms asleep??

[Deliveranc3]

Let the advertisers fight it out with isps.

Man government is awsome!

That's nice, but the plans are just Pipe Dreams

[Anonymous Coward]

To get attention. There's no way the broadband industry will permit this. Check the massive campaign they've done (via Republican legislators) in Philadelphia and Houston to prevent municipal WiFi there.

Re:That's nice, but the plans are just Pipe Dreams

[General Alcazar]

If people vote to force themselves to give money to corporations, rather than become more efficient and save money for the community, then they are more stupid than can be believed.

Re:That's nice, but the plans are just Pipe Dreams

[Cryofan]

maybe if we hang a few telco executives, they will stop trying to take away our broadband by bribing our politicians (of course, we should only hang them after indictment, trial by a jury of their peers, conviction, and sentencing, of course.... )

Re:That's nice, but the plans are just Pipe Dreams

[justin12345]

No offense, but I really get annoyed with people who expunge this sort of reductionist view of the democratic process.

It would be one thing to make the statement you made if there was a referendum on the issue; but in reality the decision is being made be the legislature. A legislature who is being heavily lobbied by the telecommunications (mostly Verizon) companies to block public WiFi. "People" don't really have a say except perhaps to not reelect their representative, something I seriously doubt their representative is sweating over considering not a large enough segment of the population even knows what WiFi is.

Lets say you are on the state legislature of Pennsylvania. On one hand there is a non-profit group trying to WiFi Phily. On the other is Verizon with enough money and power to do whatever they want with your career for good or ill, and they don't like the idea. You are serving on the state legislature, not a position that affords you much power, job security, or prestige.

Having public WiFi in Phily might be good for you, the project might get enough attention that everyone involved comes out looking so good that Verizon isn't a problem. But thats a big "might". Are you going to take that risk?

Phily is not a wealthy city. Most of it is sprawling ghetto. Many of the residents do not own computers and have never even heard of WiFi. The ones that have heard of it can mostly afford to pay for it. You aren't going to get too many votes for supporting the Non-profit from the city itself.

The only way this is going to turn into a substantial amount of votes for you is if the project becomes a media circus. For that to happen it has to be sold as a bill that will make Philadelphia a "city of the future" or it has to be sold as you going toe to toe with big bad Verizon. The city of the future thing is good but the Verizon thing is better, but carries significant risk to you.

It comes down to whether "you" in the Pennsylvania legislature think its a good idea to take on Verizon. You might, but even if you do its going to take some balls.

Last I heard the PA legislature does have a set, kinda. From what I read the Phily WiFi project is going to be allowed to move forward, though similar efforts elsewhere in the state are going to be banned. Its not exactly a great precedent for public WiFi, and similar debates are being held all over the country. Ultimately most of the decisions are going to be made by the politicians involved and the will of the people will not be their primary concern.

Re:That's nice, but the plans are just Pipe Dreams

[General Alcazar]

Yeah, you're right - I was being lazy.

But is it even legal to pass a law that says a city cannot provide a service if it wants to? It seems like it violates the Sherman Act, which makes illegal, "every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations."

Someone less lazy than me may have a different opinion...

Re:That's nice, but the plans are just Pipe Dreams

[chazbet]

IANAL, but there's something called a state action doctrine which allows governments to make regulations which would otherwise be considered to violate antitrust law. See, for example, http://repositories.cdlib.org/blewp/art140/

Corpus Christi TX just did this

[alispguru]

See "a herf="http://www.downtowncorpuschristi.com/wiki/DM D/WiFiCity">here. It's free for now and covers the whole downtown area.

Re:Corpus Christi TX just did this

[KC7GR]

alispguru wrote...

"See "a herf="http://www.downtowncorpuschristi.com/wiki/DM D/WiFiCity">..."

Ya know, I've looked all over the place for a HERF device so I can do something about those pesky thump-mobiles. Haven't found one that I like just yet...

Re:Corpus Christi TX just did this

[TandCC]

The Corpus Christi wireless cloud covers twenty square miles. The city uses it to report meter readings wirelessly. The money saved on meter reader's salaries pays for the wi-fi. It's publicly accessible to all. Interestingly, the ISP's are providing politcal funding to persuade the legislature to make public wi-fi illegal in Texas. If they are successful, the cities huge investment will be lost.

Hangar 18

[Anonymous Coward]

It is part of a secret experiment involving alien technology in Hangar 18 (which is also in Dayton: coincidence? I think not!). By using the wifi, the user is actually allowing alien mind scans to take place through their mobile device. Since it isnt being beamed from the sky, a tinfoil hat wont help!

Not the smartest idea this...

[suitepotato]

...letting the government provide your electronic information access is like letting the tax authorities be your bank and accountant. What was that phrase I was looking for..? Oh yes, It's the fox guarding the henhouse.

AFAIC, it's for nothing unless you use secure tunnels and proxies to keep them from snooping on you. No, this isn't tinfoil hate time. This is plain old reality. I love my country, but I fear my government as I should. I can't see the same dingbats who can't get water fountains in the parks fixed within five years as being trustworthy with a cordless phone never mind my Internet access. No thanks.

Re:Not the smartest idea this...

[imsabbel]

Yeah, right.
Just like it is so stupid to let the government defend you, make laws, build streets, educate children...
its the FUCKING job of a government to provide basic sevices to the people. And now internet access is one of those

Re:Not the smartest idea this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Make your mind up, are they so incompetent they can't run a park or are they smart enough to snoop your net access?

Still, I agree you should encrypt everything whenever possible on principle.

Re:Not the smartest idea this...

[Deliveranc3]

What Americans have never understood is that corperations are given a charter by the government to do a task for them.

So when you are able to buy a new TV that comes from the government. But it cuts both ways. The government you elected is responsible for child labour the rising price of oil and allowing you to be ripped off at best buy.

Re:Not the smartest idea this...

[YrWrstNtmr]

its the FUCKING job of a government to provide basic sevices to the people. And now internet access is one of those

Forgive me if I'm being obtuse, but virtually everyone already has an internet pipe coming into their house. The phone line. Everyone.. And that tiny percentage that doesn't NEEDS the phone line first.

Tell me the compelling need for tax-funded wireless broadband.

Or, replace 'internet access' in your statement with 'phone service'. I don't see many cities lining up to supply everyone with taxpayer funded, but "free to the user", telephone service. Or electricity.

Re:Not the smartest idea this...

[Professor_UNIX]

I love my country, but I fear my government as I should. >

You shouldn't fear your government, you should respect it. If you don't then you need to work harder to make your government into something you can respect. Don't just sit idly by and expect someone else to fix it. If people had that attitude women wouldn't be allowed to vote and blacks would still be sitting in the back of the bus.

Re:Not the smartest idea this...

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously haven't spent much time learning American history or else you would see how horribly wrong you are. It is the American governments job to protect its citizen's rights as outlined in the Constitution and put up a strong front for the United States as far as international politics are concerns. Only in the last 50 years has "welfare" become a matter of federal responsibility. Our founding father's intentions was for the government to ensure that each citizen was given the same inalienable rights as another, not provide services. This "something for nothing" from the government mentality is drowning our country in lax work ethics and a false sense of long term security.

And why is internet now a "basic service?" It ISN'T. Neither is TV, phone usage, paved roads or any of the other cushy, albeit very convenient, "fluff" our steadily degrading society depends on.

Re:Not the smartest idea this...

[suitepotato]

Internet access is NOT a basic service in any way, shape, or form. It is a method for conveying information, a tool for research, a conduit of free speech and press, a way of entertaining yourself, and a hundred other things but it is NOT on par with organized society having laws, public education, and so on. It's in another category altogether.

Anyone here for trusting the government with running the television broadcast facilities? I don't mean regulating the airwaves so we don't trample each other using a common finite resource. I mean they operate the television facilities and the only thing ending up on tv is what they allow you to put on. Anyone for Los Angeles running the cable operations? Anyone for the federal government running DirecTV and Dish Network?

Anyone for putting the FCC in charge of running radio stations and graciously letting people use the facilities until such time as they decide they don't feel like it?

Anyone for returning to the USPS having a total monopoly on printed message transport? Anyone remember the hair-brained ideas some years back to put the USPS in charge of all electronic mail?

Yeah, let's let the government run the conduit and trust them that they won't change their mind or take advantage of their control of the conduit to snoop and hold it against you. I can't even say the words "trust" and "government" in the same sentence without laughing.

I'll ask it. Who here is willing to let the IRS become their bank and accountant? Who here is willing to let the FCC actually RUN the broadcast facilities? Why then would you trust the government (insert pause in typing for laughing here) to convey your speech when it is precisely the government which ends up having a multi-branch fight over the government itself committing censorship, and then only if enough noise is made over it? If they were trustworthy with your speech, would there ever be any censorship on their part in the first place?

Re:Not the smartest idea this...

[sagenumen]

• Defense - yes, but it is not exactly a service the citizens use directly.
• Laws - Funny how a lot of the laws they've been passing lately take away some freedoms because some corporate lobbyist says to.
• Transportation - So when they start using your EZ-Pass/Sunpass/Whatever to issue you a speeding ticket based on the times you pass through two tolls, you're not going to care?
• Educate children - As they should.

None of your examples make a point. It may be (according to you) the government's job to provide the services, but at what cost to the citizens? Fine, if you don't mind being snooped on, use their free service, but what if they REQUIRE you to use their service so they can monitor your activities? They should provide these services with some basic rights to privacy being honored. If not, I don't mind paying for a service that I know I can control to some extent. And with their track record, I'm sure they're going to abuse their snooping powers.

Re:Not the smartest idea this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hah! They cant even get the fountains in the river working...

Re:Not the smartest idea this...

[spj524]

I think you're confusing the 'idea' of the internet with the 'hardware' it runs on.

The hardware costs money - and therefore can be regulated by the owner.

If the owner doesn't like your information (which when graphically rendered looks like a womans bare breast. gasp!) they have every right to not allow that information cross over their hardware.

And since the government is the owner (of the hardware) it all boils down to what you want your government to offer you. Free (as in cost) internet may not be free (as in information).

Re:Not the smartest idea this...

[Doomdark]

AFAIC, it's for nothing unless you use secure tunnels and proxies to keep them from snooping on you.

Like with any other hot spot provider? Same applies to your friendly big corporation ISPs, or anyone who other than yourself that is providing the infrastructure. What exactly makes this worse than the alternatives? Or is this just one more libertarian rant against big bad governments, raised at slightest hint of society doing things instead of for-profit corporations?

Yes, but

[wowbagger]

Yes, but is Hara Arena included? If not, will it be included by May 20th?

Re:Yes, but

[Anonymous Coward]

Memo to you: Hara Arena is really nowhere near downtown Dayton.
http://www.haracomplex.com/direct.htm

Re:Yes, but

[kareejb]

Hara is about 10mi north west of dayton in a suburb called Trotwood. If you are worried about internet access during the Hamvention someone there is usually someone kind enough to have takent the time to setup a point-to-point wireless link they share with everyone. Whether or not it will cover all of Hara Arena is another story.

Do the Right Thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

It will gratify some people and astound the rest. - Mark Twain

so easy

[rootedgimp]

Yay! Yet another unsecure wifi point to pwn people from... Too bad I dont live in Ohio. Err wtf am I saying?

Anyway. I dont see what the big deal about this is, talk about simple shit to set up. Installed a dlink dwl7200 at a golf course the other day that will reach a lil over 5 football fields long that was only like 820$... Hrm yeah I was right:
802.11a/g (Full Power with 5dBi gain diversity dualband dipole antenna)
Indoors:
98ft (30m) @ 54Mbps
112ft (34m) @ 48Mbps
128ft (39m) @ 36Mbps
154ft (47m) @ 24Mbps
184ft (56m) @ 18Mbps
217ft (66m) @ 12Mbps
259ft (79m) @ 9Mbps
325ft (99m) @ 6Mbps
Outdoors:
367ft (112m) @ 54Mbps
820ft (250m) @ 18Mbps
1640ft (500m) @ 6Mbps


I must say though, this is an awful idea. Wireless internet has to be the best ticket out of jail for criminals since lawyers.

Troy, Ohio came way before Dayton even started

[illumina us]

Too bad they forgot to mention the efforts by Intense Custom Computing and OceanLAN - Wireless Innovations in Troy, Ohio (just north of Dayton).

Re:Troy, Ohio came way before Dayton even started

[sjaskow]

http://www.iccomputing.com/ has to be the most annoying flash-ridden page in the history of the web. I wouldn't buy stuff from them just because of that.

Re:Troy, Ohio came way before Dayton even started

[lovswr]

Troy (seen any Hobart professional cookware lately?) is not JUST north.

Booyaka! Home, sweet home

[AJYeary]

Woot! It's not every day that my hometown is on the front page of Slashdot.

Although I wish my submission would've been the one that was accepted. Oh well, I can hope for the dupe :-p

~aj~

Re:Booyaka! Home, sweet home

[mscdex]

Amen to that. Too bad there's all these people putting Dayton down. Come on, they don't need to rub it in. I think though saying all of Ohio is like Dayton is an extremely incorrect statement.

Re:Booyaka! Home, sweet home

[lovswr]

What part? I grew up in Rotwood.

Re:Booyaka! Home, sweet home

[AJYeary]

Trotwood here. Actually, outskirts of Trotwood... Closer to New Lebanon. Close enough.

Re:Booyaka! Home, sweet home

[lovswr]

hmmmm..20 years out of High School & you are the first person I have ever met from the same place as me. Small World! :)

Re:Booyaka! Home, sweet home

[AJYeary]

Hehe, yea, Slashdot isn't exactly well-known at Trotwood. Do you remember the band teacher, Mr. Zerkle? (Ward Zerkle) He was my private instructor for trombone... he passed away recently. Don't know if you knew him though.

Hehehe, you were in the class of 1985? That makes me feel really young. I was born in 1986 :-p

So, where are you now?

And the answer is...

[fm6]

That's a good question. Answering it should help one or two lawyers put their kids through college.

Similar Idea

[ziploclogic]

I'm working with local business in Downtown Parkersburg, WV to do the same thing. However, a few local business are already doing this for-fee. Anyone have any input regarding our stepping on the toes of these companies?

http://www.ezwv.com/
http://www.wirefire.com/
http://www.sequelle.net/

I've never done anything like this so I'm curious if anyone has an opinion what precautions I should take to protect myself. We're trying to roll this out as quickly as possible as a movie begins filming in out humble town this month. We think we'll be able to draw a lot of attention to "ground-zero" for our network which just happens to be our Cultural Arts Center and the location for a film festival going on at the end of the month.

TIA

The big unanswered question...

[fm6]

How many users can a free public WiFi network handle before it's saturated and becomes unusable?

Re:The big unanswered question...

[rootedgimp]

It only takes one....



me :)

Re:The big unanswered question...

[fatboy]

How many users can a free public WiFi network handle before it's saturated and becomes unusable?


I guess we will find out May 20,21, & 22

Re:The big unanswered question...

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly half the number of Microsoft engineers as it takes to change a light-bulb...

Re:The big unanswered question...

[N3Bruce]

If I hadn't already posted on this thread, I would have moderated you up. Then again, perhaps they can set up a mesh network of some type at the fest to handle the 30,000 geeks in attendance. Hope the weather is better than it was for Timmonium.

Uhm.. ok

[geoffeg]

Have you ever been to downtown Dayton? It's not exactly a hot bed of internet users. There's very little residential and most of the businesses are most likely not of the internet-based variety. I think a different city would have benefited more.

Although there *is* Mendelsons. Where old stuff from the Wright Patt air force base goes to die.. a huge warehouse..

Re:Uhm.. ok

[Anonymous Coward]

Mendelsons rocks!! If you are ever cursed by the holy devil and forced to visit the state of Ohio and cross through Dayton, it is imperative that one stops at Mendelsons. The place is a 5 story warehouse full of geek 'junk.' Definately an awesome place.

Re:Uhm.. ok

[YrWrstNtmr]

I think a different city would have benefited more.

And Dayton should have funded this for some other city?

Re:Uhm.. ok

[BaudKarma]

Maybe they're trying to turn it into a hotbed of Internet users. There's not much point in putting up free wi-fi access in some area that's already got a bunch of free access points.

Too bad Dayton's dead

[tf23]

The city's been shrinking over the past umpteen years because of loss of jobs.

If you've been to Downtown Dayton, there's really not much left. One square mile is covered so far? There's not much more then that :(

Re:Too bad Dayton's dead

[Atrophis]

What do you expect to happen when you let liberals run the cities.

Re:Too bad Dayton's dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Many cities have this problem, with folks moving out to the suburbs. Maybe this is one thing that cities can offer to offset the advantages of the 'burbs.

Re:Too bad Dayton's dead

[Anonymous Coward]

You haven't been downtown lately it would seem. Afte r the completion of Fifth Third Field,the new Performing Arts Center, and Riverside downtown Dayton has definetly been on an upswing the last couple of years. Back in 1999 when I first started going to school there it was trashy and sketchy, but by the time I graduated it was a pleasure to go down there. It's easy to take a shot at an old midwestern city of industry, but your lack of recent experience and stereotyping is disgusting.

Re:Too bad Dayton's dead

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL

Last time I checked, Mike Turner is a Republican, and the place went to crap just as much under his tenure...

they are just making ebay taxation easier...

[jim_redwagon]

...one city at a time. Now the city/state will own the logs of all eBay access. ;-)

Seriously, that is great, i hope the ball on free wifi gets too big for the PACs/lobbyists/weasels to stop. I know Buffalo is ramping up free wifi as well. Just waiting for them to hit my neighborhood.

Koombayah, my lords, koombayah..

[OmgTEHMATRICKS]

I, for one, welcome our new Dayton, Ohio WI-FI overlords and hope that they infect the planet. No, really, I do.

been there, done that

[Anonymous Coward]

even though in most categories, louisiana is behind, baton rouge has had wireless downtown and at LSU for at least a couple years. these 2 wireless networks combined cover 2 or 3 square miles...and yes, access is free to both. many municipalities are covering areas with large amounts of wifi.

what we need to watch out for is bills in many states that are aimed at barring municipalities from becoming isp's.

PITTSBURGH?!@

[drewzhrodague]

I live in Pittsburgh, and there has only been one (way botched) group to do this kind of thing here. In the meantime, we deal with unshielded and untwisted wired. I have had a hard time finding those interested in doing a city-wide wireless network. There are a total of 4 interested people, and nobody has any cash to do this sort of thing!

I heard a statistic a while ago, that it costs less money to install a wireless network, than it does to supply the city with trashbags for the whole year.

Re:PITTSBURGH?!@

[Feztaa]

Then why not simply stop buying garbage bags? Soon you could save up for that wifi network you've always wanted.

Re:PITTSBURGH?!@

[jessecurry]

although you are joking, this may not be a bad idea. If we were all to stop using trash bags and simply use multiple trash cans that were not prone to leaking we could significantly reduce waste and save money in the process. The initial investment would be a little more than the price of a box of trash bags, but the economic and environmental savings would be enormous...now if we could only get everyone to stop being so wasteful.

Re:PITTSBURGH?!@

[drewzhrodague]

There was a story a while ago (can't find it) that talked about $800 trash cans the City of Pittsburgh was deploying. There was an uproar, it died down, the people paid. reduce, reuse, recycle

that clinches it

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been trying to decide between going to school in dayton or toledo--this makes a good push in Dayton's direction.

How free is it?

[wlvdc]

"... The WiFi project is a public/private partnership not funded by taxpayers, and comes at no charge to the end user."

How can something be publicly funded without tax payers money? And than the cost of the decision making process of the council, admin, p.r. etc.

"(According to the linked story at WHIO-TV, the city is actually paying about $5,000 per year, with advertisers picking up the rest of the tab.)"

How do advertisers make money? Do users have to accept ads to enjoy a 'free' service? How free is it? Can I use VOIP? Can I do anything I like?

In the statement of the city of Dayton it reads: "We also believe offering this type of exciting, pioneering service will go a long way toward helping Dayton attract that 'creative class' of people who will help fuel our community's future success."

Not sure if WiFi can provide sufficient bandwidth for such ambitions...

Re:How free is it?

[Al Dimond]

Actually I kind of wonder how it's "not funded by taxpayers" and at the same time "the city is actually paying $5000/year". Seems to be a mismatch. I don't think there's anything wrong with taxpayers paying for something like this, though, even as someone that doesn't own a laptop. I think it's a lot like a standardized set of city roads: a service that's valuable to lots of people that no company would offer (why would a company put up a WiFi hotspot covering all of downtown? Would they charge people for use? People would find other ways of getting online, just as they would try to find ways to avoid the most pricey private roads).

Most Downtown cities will have this anyway.

[qualico]

Here in Edmonton, the major metropolitan areas have WiFi access by nature of business density.

Thanks to comments on /. , I bought a Palm T3 with WiFi Card and loaded on NetChaser.
The unit goes off, (beeps and vibrates to show an access point), every step I take in any major business area.
More so in places like the University of Alberta.

I'm thinking this would be the case anywhere in the world.
Although, some places like coffee shops do this on purpose, I don't think other open access points are as intentional.

Now all I need is that VOIP WiFi to replace my cell phone.

I'll chip in...

[pojo]

This is really cool, but, "The WiFi project is a public/private partnership not funded by taxpayers." Although it's great to save money, I really wouldn't mind paying taxes if it went for good stuff like this. It would also let informed citizens have some say in the operation, which (given the traditional trainwreck that happens when government meets technology) would probably be a good idea. You give up your rights of influence if you shirk on contributing.

Dayton

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure you heard of the air plane, yeah those guys are from dayton, and the inventor of the pop top lid, yeah from dayton too. And back in the cold war Dayton was one of the top 10 targets for the ruskies (WPAFB). So the next time you crack open your diet soda just think of dayton.

socalfreenet + book

[misterL5]

For those who wish to setup their own community's wireless network, I would recommend the book which grew out of http://socalfreenet.org/.

Re:Dayton

[Anonymous Coward]

And back in the cold war Dayton was one of the top 10 targets for the ruskies (WPAFB).

And today, my sources tell me, Verizon actually owns about 70% of the former Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal. So, I guess, it still is a top ten target.

No problems with Hotspots

[pavon]

The telcoms have no problems with WiFi hotspots because the city pays for the connection that is feeding the WAP. As far as they are concerned, the city is just another customer. Where they have a problem is when the city tries to compete with them by providing the broadband connections themselves.

Dayton

[UDGags]

I went to UD (University of Dayton) and now currently work at UDRI. This is cool but as people has mentioned Dayton is not that big of a place but if you go away from the places listed you can hit up Starbucks, Panera and then UD all have wireless access. So a good portion of business area is covered.

mandatory cheesy update

[mikers]

The City of Dayton, Ohio announced a plan to make all of downtown a WiFi hotspot - and as of last week, the network is live. This makes Dayton the first Ohio city to offer free WiFi access. Approximately one square mile of downtown is now live, including Fifth Third Field, the Oregon District, Webster Station and RiverScape. The WiFi project is a public/private partnership not funded by taxpayers, and comes at no charge to the end user." (According to the linked story at WHIO-TV, the city is actually paying about $5,000 per year, with advertisers picking up the rest of the tab.) UPDATE: 04/04 17:26 GMT by T: Nope, its already been crushed by the overweight telephone companies lobbying hard to protect their turf, and the RIAA claiming that it could possibly be used for piracy of music from various over-hyped "superstars"

Welcome to the USAA, land of the lawyer and lobbist. Freedom comes somewhere later on, maybe.

Don't fear the "scare-quotes".

bars

[Anonymous Coward]

There are 3 bars and a restaurants with-in a block of 5th3rd field.

Dayton and the Universe

[thomasa]

Edgar Cayce once said that Dayton, Ohio was the center of the universe. Maybe it was at one time. It was the home of 5 fortune 500 companies, it was the home of the (generally accepted) inventors of the first powered flight machine called the aeroplane. It was important to the computer industry - NCR is still here and U.S. Navy Bombe used in code breaking was built here. But the automobile which was very connected to Dayton Ohio through General Motors and its divisions helped depopulate the city. The surrounding county is doing fairly well however. Montgomery county which contains Dayton, Ohio has a population of 550,000. Dayton, Ohio has a population of 166,000. Dayton proper used to have a population over 200,000.

That's all well and good.....

[DrCreep]

But as several Datonians have noted, there isn't really any attraction to downtown.

I think this could have been better implemented.

Current scenario: City installs wi-fi. Great. No place to use it. Sure, I can take the laptop to the ballpark and use it. But why else would I want to go downtown for the purpose of using this?

What could've been: Given that there isn't anything to do downtown, and downtown really isn't a place to hang out at night to surf the net, why not encourage private business to implement this? Instead of using city resources to install the wireless, bring the coffee houses back to downtown. Front Street, EFX, The Grind, all great places to hang out, good reasons to go downtown, would have thrived because of this, even if there was a nominal fee to access the network. And it doesn't have to be limited to coffee houses. Restaurants, bars, lounges, offices, anyone could have got in on this. There's plenty of unused retail space in Dayton, the city could make deals with proprietors via tax breaks, grants, etc to encourage new business to come downtown, thus reviving the downtown experience. Yes, it would still be an expense to the city to do it this way, but it would be much more of an investment. Create something that downtown has that people want, and they will come. Businesses will thrive, downtown would get cleaned up, and maybe a few bigger companies would come to/stay in Dayton.

Just my thoughts... If nothing else, Now I can take my PPC when the wife drags me to a boring show at the theatre. :)

Aside from that, it's nice to see Dayton make the news for something remotely positive. Really, as much of a bad stigma the city has, it really is a great town. It's one of the best kept secrets in the midwest. Something like wi-fi could really be a catalyst for rejuvination of downtown, but a lot more else needs to be done too.

-Doc

Dunedin, FL going citywide Wi-Fi

[sonofagunn]

... and it will be cheap! http://www.sptimes.com/2005/04/04/Tampabay/Dunedin _explores_worl.shtml

You pwn...

[Anonymous Coward]

Setting up a single AP that covers less than 1/3 the are mentioned in the article on the flat, clear cut ground of a golf course.

I mean, how much harder could it be to cover an area 3x that size which is covered in signal refracting concrete and steel with weather/tamper/theft-proof equipment?

I know, I know..."So easy, d00d."

Re:You pwn...

[rootedgimp]

I never said I was leet because I could hook up 2 cables, nor would anyone claim to be (so I hope). My point is this, any city could make a huge wifi radius for under 10k, and that being said, it's such a bad bad idea because I'm sure more and more towns will be doing it soon. Wireless gives people too much privacy IMO - not saying that is a bad thing, and neither are you I bet, until your network is broken into and lots of sensitive data is stolen and the best thing you can trace the originating MAC is somewhere in a 1x1 mile square.

Btw, offtopic, but AC, I bet I know like 30 or so of you in real life. You got nothing to prove though man :) Just chill.

more information

[Live_in_Dayton]

The CIO of the City of Dayton will give a presentation about this project on April 13. http://www.daytonitalliance.org/inc/eventdetail.as p?eventID=368

RTFA, man, RTFA. Re:Countdown in 3, 2, 1...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dayton also becomes the first city nationally to offer a public-private partnership WiFi model that is not funded by taxpayers and comes at no charge to the end user.

Also: if you can't compete on price, compete on quality.

Re:RTFA, man, RTFA. Re:Countdown in 3, 2, 1...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re-read the fucking article. The city is paying for $5k/year (initially) of the cost which is funded by the taxpayers. Also, there is no guarantee that the taxpayers will be given the burden of paying for it in the future. Beware of politicians baring gifts.

Aren't republicans for smaller government, lower taxes, and abolishing tax-funded government programs that assist the less fortunate? How did this even get approved??

woohoo

[Anonymous Coward]

At last a reason to go to Ohio.

Totally off-topic

[Digz]

It's nice. I lived in Ft. Mitchell before for a couple years, but ended up moving back across the river.

Insurance rates suck though. My car insurance doubled.

But it's nice to be 10 minutes from downtown Cincy and still have a good neighborhood.

Not True!

[moultano]

Cincinnati's got Graeter's, which is the best icecream in the world flat out.

Cincinnati's also got a excellent art museum, one of the best zoos in the country, great public libraries, and that wonderful heartwarming Skyline Chili.

Dayton on the other hand . . . hmm.

Re:Not True!

[craters]

Just FYI, Dayton has two Graeter's now, in Centerville and Oakwood, and plans are in the works for more in the coming year. Of course we also have Skyline. You seem not to know much about Dayton....

Re:Not True!

[fuzznutz]

Skyline is good, but Gold Star is better!

Going to Wright State

[kacymartin]

Awesome im going to Wright State (in Dayton) in the fall so im gonna be leeching off that like crazy

Re:Going to Wright State

[Anonymous Coward]

Wright state is way outside of the coverage area, but WSU has their campus pretty well covered. Only downside is that you have to authenticate with their firewall before it will let you outside of their network.

Re:Going to Wright State

[$1uck]

Sorry WSU isn't in Dayton its in Fairborn (closer to wpafb). I highly doubt you could use the wifi access and would wonder why you would want to when the University's net access is going to be a lot better (in all likelyhood).

Re:Going to Wright State

[kacymartin]

cept i will be living in dayton with friends who go to UD

Socialism is celebrated on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't you noticed?

Re:Socialism is celebrated on Slashdot

[zymano]

free broadband = nazism ?

not sure

[jafac]

I'm all for making wi-fi highly and widely available, but what happens when someone comes along and uses this as a way to censor content, or worse, gather private information? What happens when some Free Market Fundamentalist gets elected in Dayton, and hands over the whole shebang, built at public expense, to a private operator?

Build it, sure, but when you add-in controls to prevent these kinds of abuses, it's going to make the whole operation look less efficient (thus validating the claims of the Free Market Fundamentalists).

Try Athens GA

[olcrazypete]

Athens Ga has one of the best downtowns I've ever experienced, wireless or not, drunk or not. About a year or two ago, the University of Georgia expanded its wireless cloud over the downtown area of the city. Sitting outside of a coffee shop with a powerbook getting schoolwork done rocks bigtime. No, the city of athens didn't pay for it, but its there and is worth a good look.

http://www.nmi.uga.edu/mmc/inside.php?s=environmen t&p=3/

If you build it ...

[AppHack]

... they will come.

Re:If you build it ...

[cavehobbit]

Yah, while you are come-ing, the vice sqaud is watching your click rate and laughing thier asses off while they add you to the 'perv' database!
Or worse, noting you strange affinity to slashdot and marking you as a hacker worthy of in/vestig||timid/ation .

or worse, noting your affintiy to that known commie cover, the green party, and marking you as a traitor worthy of in/vestig||timid/ation .

or worse, noting you affinity to the libetarian party, and marking you as a disaffect loner gun nut that likes ganja, and marking you as a potential tower shooter worthy of in/vestig||timid/ation .

The gov. does not need a warrant to monitor it's own network.

T-shirts

[wazzzup]

Sweet. Now the downtown masses will be able to easily order these nice Dayton, OH t-shirts with the free WI-FI.

Re:T-shirts

[wazzzup]

Sorry for the bad link.

http://www.cafepress.com/daytonohio

You don't wanna go Downtown

[CaseyABretti]

Downtown Dayton is having a huge problem with crime. In Mid-February, there was a huge (50+ people) fight with people injured and thrown in jail. Right in the center of Downtown is a bus hub, where there is a huge gathering of somewhat questionable folk.. that's how the fight got started. Drug deals go on down there frequently. We're talking a four or five block range... it's not a huge area, yet it's saturated with problems. I don't know about you, but I have no desire to leave my suburbian apartment and take my $2k laptop downtown and run the risk of getting mugged, raped, whatever. I've lived in/around Dayton all my life, and grew up in one of the rougher neighborhoods (Trotwood)... When I say it's bad down there... it's bad.

For all the gripers

[hanshotfirst]

Let this be a reply to multiple "why is the gov't involved?" threads.

You are free to disagree with me, of course.

Municipal Wi-Fi is no different (in my mind) than any other municipal service:
Street Lights. ("I never drive on 3rd avenue, why should I have to pay to light it?")
Police and Fire Service ("I've never been mugged, why pay for police?")
"Gov't should stay out of utilities!" Then stop taking showers, flushing your toilet, and take your garbage to the dump in your tiny little hybrid.

Now, some city services are paid for out of general taxe revenue (Police, Fire, Gargbage, in my area). Other services are paid based on usage (Water & Sewer in my area). Either way money goes to the local gov't for the service, and the city or county pays the utility provider.

Municipal Wi-Fi would work no differently. Which payment model it should use is certainly open for debate, but as a concept, why shouldn't my city provide connectivity for the masses?

Security - yeah, there will be problems and challenges. But these can be dealt with. Do you just squat down on any old public toilet in the park without checking the seat first? No different here. Alternatively, I can drink city water out of the tap, with a certain amount of particulate and distate, or I can install a water softener and Brita filter if I want cleaner water than the city provides.

Re:For all the gripers

[Anonymous Coward]

"why shouldn't my city provide connectivity for the masses?"

A little thing called "liberty" which nobody seems to understand or care about anymore. Ah, but heck, what's a principle like freedom compared to the convenience of wireless broadband access?

"You are free to disagree with me, of course."

Yeah as long as I pay my taxes.

Re:For all the gripers

[/dev/trash]

This is all foreign to me, as I live in the country and the only gov't thing I am provided is a road with potholes. Everything else is done by the private sector.

Re:For all the gripers

[Bu11et]

Nice reply. I wish more would look at things this way, rather than constant pessimism.

Re: religious nuts...

[Anonymous Coward]

Some religious group will donate large amounts of money to a campaign, and the politician will have to repay that group with censorship legislation.

...

Government is never as efficient as the private sector, it will cost everyone much more to let the government supply WiFi rather than a private company.

Wow. To me it looks like you are one of them religious nuts: lots of strongly worder claims you label as truths. I do NOT take it as granted that "government is never as efficient"; let alone that SERVICES provided by not-for-profit parties (like govts) could not be more efficient for large groups than those from private companies. The reason is surprisigly simple: govts do not need to turn profit and companies do. If you can not figure out from that that for many infrastructure things (roads, electricity grid, sewage systems, and yes, network connectivity) govts (etc) ARE indeed more efficient, you are just a delusion laissez-faire market fanboy.

I mean, you strongly BELIEVE that private corps are always better, without having to prove it, nor accepting the possibility that you might be wrong.

Re:Dayton

[lovswr]

Actually it was not WPAB (which was SAC Command) but the Monsanto Mound works. Of the few companies in the US that made detonators for our nuclear arsenal that was one of them. I can't rembmer the street name but it was near the Fischer body plant & the closed DP&L Hutchinson power station. They had some model airplane parks right across the street that my Dad took me to back in the early 70's.

Athens, GA had a downtown Wi-Fi cloud first

[bgarland]

This story is blatant bullshit. Athens, Ga has had free Wi-Fi that covers the entire downtown area as well as nearly the entire campus of the University of Georgia (adjacent to downtown) for NEARLY THREE YEARS.

The Cloud at Athens

Plus, Athens has a great nightlife... local and touring bands play almost every night of the week ... tons of bars ... and lots of hot chicks everywhere. You should see the coffee shops around here: full of cute nerdy girls on Powerbooks who dig nerdy guys!

Somehow, I really don't think Dayton, Ohio compares at all.

P2P

[nurb432]

Well that will realy piss off the *AA's

Winston-Salem, NC's downtown had this 4 years too.

[keithcstone]

http://www.cityofws.org/Wi-Fi/Wi-Fi-info/wi-fi-inf o.html

Amateur Radio

[Anonymous Coward]

Dayton is also home to the largest http://www.hamvention.org/Amateur Radio convention (hamfest) in the world. I would imagine that this fact has at least a little bit to do with the new WiFi setup. Dayton is certainly a technology haven at least once a year.

Re:Amateur Radio

[rapidweather]

I used to be K5HLW. So, I would suggest that during the hamfest, free labor is available for setting up the network.

Re:Amateur Radio

[Bu11et]

Nice to see someone willing to help make things happen rather than condeming them before they have a chance to really make it work! Congratulations to you.
Bu11et

Re:Hayward, CA did this

[horsie]

Downtown Hayward, CA has had this for at LEAST about a year now.

City of Hayward

how is this legal?

[iamhassi]

excuse my stupidity, but if i pay for broadband then share it with my neighbors isn't that stealing broadband? How is this any different? You're letting hundreds of people that are not paying for a service use the service under one person's name.

If I ran a cable or phone line from my house to my neighbor's, isn't that stealing cable or phone service too? Or is somehow wifi exempt from these laws?

Re:how is this legal?

[Live_in_Dayton]

The ISP, DoNet, has agreed to participate.

Re:how is this legal?

[homebrewmike]

> if i pay for broadband then share it
> with my neighbors isn't that stealing
> broadband?
Most likely, but, (and I doubt there's a to the consumer ISP that does it this way) it depends on your terms and conditions. Most ISPs say that you can't share service with your neighbors. But, if this were true for EVERY ISP, then the internet would be pretty dull.

The Broadband providers are simply buying a chunk of service from one the major carriers and poviding a portion of it to you. There's no reason why a large city couldn't offer that (although it has got to tick off the broadband providers, to some extent.)

Now, (as was said in a previous post,) won't that mess with competition? Well, duh, it will. And there will be a bunch of people who will loose money because of it. On the other hand, in my state, we don't have toll roads, and it's a hell of a lot better place to live. We also have bridges over our rivers, rather than some flunky with a raft and a pole.

Providing municipal IP makes a lot of sense, much like providing free roads and highways: it just makes commerce work.

Now, as some shill asked ealier - what about clowns abusing it with P2P, Streaming Audio, and other such bandwidth hogs. No problem, really, that's where the broadband people will be able provide service. If you want uptime and "secure" network access, np - score it up from a provider. If you just want to read /. from the park, use the municple net + some VPN software.

Here's The Correct Population Figure

[reallocate]

The population of the City Dayton is 190,000, down considerably from ten years ago.

The Oregon District is a few blocks of gentrified old homes and yuppified restaurants in what was once a pretty sleazy part of town, per the fashion a while back.

Like every other midwestern industrial city, Dayton's downtown needs help. If this free wifi gambit brings in a few more businesses or keeps someone from moving out, it will have served a purpose.

sweet!

[brickballs]

i work in dayton and our office wifi is broken. now i dont have to fix it!

Re:sweet!

[omahajim]

Four out of five people think the fifth is an idiot. 5 out of every 4 Americans have trouble with fractions.

...and it seems that some of those live in Dayton, given that you have a stadium named "Fifth Third"

(which is named after a bank, I know)

Re:sweet!

[brickballs]

lol

Adverts

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I'd rather pay a tax than have to put up with advertisements

Dayton, OH - We love cybercrime!

[Electric Eye]

That should be their new slogan. Or maybe "Dayton - The Caipital of Cyber Crime!"
The feds are having a difficult enough time tracking criminals down because of residential WiFi piggybacking. What the hell are they supposed to do when anyone can jump on anywhere in an entire city?? WTF are they thinking?

Re:Dayton, OH - We love cybercrime!

[kinohead]

Maybe the "Feds" don't need anymore encouragement to interfere in our lives; name ONE instance of your supposed WiFi piggybacking that directly impacted your life.

I thought not...

Chicken little-type shit -- go dig a hole and let the Feds live your life for you, you freakin' consumer.

Just a bunch of alarmist crap in the service of the telcos and other naysayers...

More on WPAFB, Mound Lab

[reallocate]

Wright-Patt's SAC sqaudron (B-52's) was dispersed to Minot AFB and elsewhere well before the Cold War concluded (although doubt that had much of an impact on the Soviet's targetting plans). The SAC squadron was always a relatively small part of the base's function. You could work there for years and the only B-52 you might see would be flying overhead. It was, and is, a large logistics and research management facility. The Materiel (or is Logistics these days?) Command is headquarted there, as well as Systems Command. The front offices of many USAF weapons and research systems are also located there. (I.e., a lot of the stuff that flies at Edwards is managed at WPAFB.)

Monsanto's Mound Lab was located south of Dayton along the Miami River in Miamisburg on Mound Avenue (the "Mound" is an ancient Moundbuilder burial cite). I know the plutonium cells that powered some satellites and space probes were constructed there.

Re:History in the making [winhat]

[winhat4]

If anything, the next step would be called butt wiper. The bandicoot is a big event in history. Unavenged apparitions of the leg, and is the largest event ever. A day that will live in ohio!

Damn Those Pesky Urban Mountains!

[reallocate]

...because there are no mountains in the way, like in other places...

Ummm, yeah, those pesky mountains make it hard navigating around places like Boston, New York, DC, Miami, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc.

Maybe you're thinking of Phoenix, where they've taken to calling hills and big rocks "mountains". :-)

awww!

[endlessvoid94]

awwwww man! i live in canton, ohio
too bad it doesnt reach here!!!!
but yeah thats cool for dayton, i just want it here so i can stop paying for my fricking internet!

Re:1 mile radius entire city

[reallocate]

You must have spent too much time studying. :-)

Dayton isn't huge, but it is considerable bigger than a place with a one mile radius.

Actually, like almost every other older urban area, the City of Dayton has lost population while the surrounding cities and counties have grown significantly. Otherwise known as sprawl. The metro Dayton area is just under one million. Growth south from Dayton and north from Cincinnati is rapidly merging the two metro areas into one large sprawl.

Don't a lot of town do this?

[RevAaron]

Do other cities do this? I mean, is it worth having a /. story about each one that does? I can't find any good news release, but even here in piddly lil Duluth, MN (d-town reprasent!), last outpost on the northern frontier, they've an initiative to get free wifi across all of downtown and through Canal Park, a big tourist district in our fair town. In addition to the wifi, they also have free kiosks for use by folks without computers. It's only downtown/Canal Park, so it's not like you pick it up everywhere in our really long and skinny city... But still, it's pretty cool.

Aren't a lot of towns doing this?

Tallahassee (maybe?)

[spj524]

I was sitting in the TLH airport the other day when I noticed a sign saying they had free wireless access in the airport and downtown.

I hopped online while I was waiting for my flight but I haven't had a chance to check the downtown access.

Anyone else know?

Oakland WiFi

[elsrod]

There's also free WiFi provided by the city in downtown Oakland, in range of Frank Ogawa Plaza.

Downtown Dayton: Free-Kill Crack Zone!

[Anonymous Coward]

yea, i'm really stoked! now all those crack monkeys get free Internet access while boosting your shit from your car and putting a cap in yo' ass!

Network is Down....

[mm276995]

Decided to try this on the way home from work. Unfortunately, the results weren't good...

From in front of General Surplus got a weak signal for about 1 minute. No signal from next to Dragons field. No signal from 3rd & Main.

This was about 4:30pm EST.

Hope the network was just down due to too much publicity. Otherwise this is likely hype.

I recently graduated from WSU

[Ogive17]

The campus already has WiFi (at least the 3 buildings I frequently had class in), I use to sit in class with my PDA and surf the web all the time.

Not a good enough reason to go to downtown Dayton

[ZildjianKX]

Dayton is still dirty and crime ridden... free wifi or not.

Tempe, AZ (ASU)

[Zendar]

Downtown Tempe, AZ has had free Wi-Fi access (in partnership with ASU) for almost a year now. http://www.asu.edu/it/tempe_asu/

We like to pretend Ohio is boring

[Ogive17]

It keeps the snobs from the NE and the hippies from the far west away :) If you like your weather to have variety, Ohio is a great place to live.

Everything may not be available

[Gleepy]

As we say, TANSTAAFL...

If it's like Buffalo Wi-Fi which covers some portions of downtown and other locations in the city of Buffalo, content such as porn, MP3s, securities trading sites or sites containing large downloadable files are not accessible.

I figure, it's only fair, as they have limited bandwidth, and they own the pipe, so they can control what goes through it. I remember trying to download a small tarball through SourceForge Download Service, and I could get there, but Ibiblio was blocked because of "bandwidth issues."

This may be the compromise solution everyone is looking for to make free municipal Wi-Fi accessible as a minimal way to get folks on the net.

Do these plans ever actually happen?

[Spikeman56]

Theres been countless /. stories on how so and so is going to provide free WiFi across a certain land area...

...but has anyone actually been successful in doing this?

OK, this is cool...

[Penguin Follower]

... *grabs laptop and dashes out the door* I only live 20 minutes from Dayton so this is definitely a Good Thing. I will be trying this out next time I'm in Dayton (probably tomorrow).

Goin' to Visit Grandpa!

[Aetrix]

Maybe I will go visit my grandfather in Dayton now...

One way to look at it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Governments are always doing stupid things with money: Failing programs, overpaid/lazy employees, pointless studies, etc.

At least this time, they are blowing their (our) money on public WIFI. I'm all for repsonsible spending and such, but if you are going to spend money, might as well spend it on something that people might enjoy.

I will never ever ever smoke marijuana again,

[Anonymous Coward]

because my brother once smoked marijuana and now he lives in Dayton, Ohio.

--Winning entry for the National Lampoon's contest to state why you will give up drugs in 25 words or less.

Anyone gone WARDRIVING?

[drewzhrodague]

Anyone gone wardriving in this area? I'm biased, but I'd say to upload it to a public wardriving repository, and see the data plotted against street-level maps.

You are not allowed to use snow chains in Ohio...

[Anonymous Coward]

...During certain months.

You post without hitting the "Preview" button...

[alispguru]

... just once, and people make fun of you when you screw up. I'm surprised it got modded up, despite that.

The CC city wifi works fine at ground level. Unfortunately, we were staying at my aunt's place on the 17th floor. Fortunately, I was able to access a wireless network named "linksys" from up there...

Doesn't seem like new news...

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Spokane, WA, and we've had free Wi-Fi in the downtown area for, I think, over 6 months. I don't live downtown, so I don't use it much, but it is useful at times. They specifically limit the bandwidth to about 1.0Mb/s, and it seems to work reasonably well. Last time I used it (2 months ago) there weren't any advertisements, fees, limitations on protocols, etc... Could have changed by now.

Just an FYI.

zanexiv

Re:Parking Lot LAN party! File Sharing!!! P2P

[Anonymous Coward]

P2P, share those large files!

Extend the range, put up some repeaters!

[Anonymous Coward]

People can take those "BBQ grill" antennas and point them towards downtown and then re-transmit the packets near them.

Other people farther out can do the same and you create a sort of mesh network!

It's easy, you can use the linksys router with "rodents" WRT54GS software to put a WRT54GS into "client mode" and just attach the big antenna to that, then just plug in a regular cheap router to the linksys and that will re-broadcast the packets locally! You could put a omni 8dbi antenna on the other router to give it a bit more range, but put it up high!

See:
http://www.seattlewireless.net/index.cgi/LinksysWr t54g
http://openwrt.org/

Cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

More cities need to do this. They also need to stuff it to verizon, etc...!
Here's a link to Orlando's project in case anyone is gonna be down in Mickey Town soon and needs a hookup.
http://cityaccess.pureconnection.net/index.htm

Big Deal

[Godboy_g]

We've had free city wide wifi where I live for over a year now.

Fredericton New Brunswick Canada in case anyone is interested :-)

Re:You post without hitting the "Preview" button..

[KC7GR]

Please forgive me. I couldn't resist. The pun potential was just too high. ;-)