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Municipal Wi-Fi Networks in London, Alexandria
![[picture]](http://img69.echo.cx/my.php?image=accesspoint0hn.jpg){kind=link}
xfletch continues: "British press are reporting some objections raised by comercial Wi-Fi vendors, but conclude that in contrast to the U.S., where bills have been proposed in a dozen states that would forbid cities to offer Wi-Fi services to citizens on the grounds that government should not compete with private enterprise, we are unlikely to see such fireworks in the UK. Apologies for the camera-phone quality photos -- I will take better ones next time I have my digital camera with me."
Not quite as large, but closer to home for many readers, brokencomputer writes "According to a Washington Post article, 'This week, Alexandria began providing free wireless Internet access in its historic center, the first local government to offer alfresco Web surfing at no charge. The system, which relies on broadcasting equipment atop City Hall, the Torpedo Factory and a couple of utility poles, is aimed at outdoor cafe patrons or people who prefer parks to workstations, city officials said.' Interestingly enough, the article states that Verizon, which is the dominant high speed internet provider in the area, is not objecting to the city's plan."
Streenet networks are a bit evil - round each lamppost they have 3 APs: one to transmit back to the previous lamppost, one to receive from the next lamppost, and one to actually provide the wireless at that point. This means that the wireless channels near to a streetnet network are pretty much totally swamped, and you tend to get a lot of interference.
They're also a bit evil because Streetnet appears to be an offshoot of a project that was initially helped by Mobile Bristol (http://www.mobilebristol.co.uk/ who funded and encouraged them, but they've never publicly acknowledged their help.
Municipal wifi is no bad thing, of course, but sometimes it's much better when done by independent volunteers such as http://www.eastonwireless.net/ rather than private companies who woo the local technically-naive council...
- Oliver
The right to bear arms is only slightly less stupid than the right to arm bears...
It is internet only, so email needs to be via a web-based provider."
Since when is internet==port 80 www? I understand that they only provide web access, and that's fine... But "internet-only" doesn't really mean anything!
Funny, I've always been under the impression that email is part of the internet...maybe I'm wrong
I'm sure this will be redundant as soon as I post it, but the HTTP is what enables web page browsing. The Internet is the entire network, hardware, software, and protocals.
I do security
It's an 'internet only' service, but you have to access your email through a www interface...
Sounds how much that PR guy knows about it.. pretty much the problem in general
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
What else can you tell us about this "Internet," oh wise one?
A government subsidized network means no longer walking around the streets untill you find an unsecured network, just because you can't be arsed to spend the 5 minutes it takes to get through WEP.
So I get's it's some advancement.
If municipal WiFi is possible, does any municipal council provide free internet access by wire within its perimeters? I do understand free hotspots by coffee shops (and the like); the reason seemingly promotional. If there is a nice and balanced way for citizens to get their net access this way as a basic service, instead of through a commercial network service provider it might be a great thing for the 'developing' nations. Do people see something nice out of it or is it just "socialism"?
No Greater Friend, No Greater Enemy! (Lucius Cornelius Sulla)
"...and the whole area is covered by free wireless internet"
Free? so the council isn't paying for it?
Oh - you mean the council *is* paying for it. So that means it's being paid for by tax.
So...let's get the right; the council has said "we're going to charge you money and provide WiFi and if you don't like what we offer, well that's just too bad - you can pay a second time for a commerical provider (if one dares to come along, given they know that to use their service you'll be paying twice)."
Oh...and it's a State run service. So it's not going to be particularly resistant to things like, say, intelligence service requests for private user information, because it's the State which provides most of the money which the council runs on. Such things aren't likely I'd say to be *overtly* used to influence behaviour in such cases, but you know as well as I do it has a significant influence and is most certainly a conflict of interest - where the people who might ask for information just happen to also be rather closely involved with the people who give you funding.
No - all in all, if it's all the same to you, I'd prefer other people (a council in this case) did *not*, on my behalf, take my money and decide what they want to spend it on. I'd like them to do that as little as possible, because, frankly, I think they don't do a very good job - people are never as diligent or efficient as spending *other* people's money as they are at spending their own.
--
Toby
No. You mean that it has a crappy, overrestrictive firewall that allows access only to the few ports required for HTTP access to web sites. Internet-only would simply suggest that it doesn't allow access to other networks, such as LAN's. Don't get the two mixed up.
I really wish people would stop putting in neutered, free "Internet" access. I use the BPL, and their system allows full access to anything on their LAN, but allows only ports 80 (HTTP), 443 (HTTPS), and 53 (SMB!) to the outside world. I asked, and they said the reason they restricted it was that a lot of people liked to come in and screw around with it. The answer to that would seem to be restricting access to the *local* network, and allowing full Internet access, not the other way around! It's a pain in the ass to be able to browse the web but not use IMAP, SSH, or anything other than what the dumb 90% of the population thinks is "teh intarweb".
Tired of free iPod sigs? Subscribe to my blacklist
"An" famous London Street?
This is what editors are for.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
Revoked.
Quack, quack.
Someone may have mentioned this already, but what is the council there doing to monitor what websites people see and what they do (such as filesharing, p0rn etc)? Britain doesn't have the best record on privacy.
"It is internet only, so email needs to be via a web-based provider."
Well, if it's really "Internet only", then there's nothing to worry about. I can use POP on port 110, or IMAP on port 143, to check my email. Then I can send it using SMTP to port 25 on my mail server.
Or I could just SSH to port 22 of my server and read my mail on the command line, if I have a shell account. (Which I personally do, along with, I'm sure, many others here.) Ports 22, 25, 110, 143, and their related protocols are all well-established parts of the Internet; heck, at least two of them predate that newfangled port-80 contraption.
Or did you perhaps mean that it's Web only? Slashdot is the last place I thought I'd ever have to point out: the Web != the Internet.
Kai MacTane: Web developer for hire in San Francisco
I was raised on free municipal internet. http://www.tfn.net/ It was not seen as a problem because it was actully a seperate orgnization that just got grants from the city and county.
Upper Street is a very nice place and it's packed with an unfeasibly large number bars and restaurants, much of which are spilling out onto the pavement (sidewalk for Americans) at this time of year.
I can think of no better place than to have wifi access for free. It makes Upper street quite an attractive weekend haunt for me now as well as being a damn near perfect location for informal business meetings. Hooray!
I think this is a genuinely good thing for the area and it's heartening to see a council give something back for our ever-soaring rates. Of course I do wonder if some of the businesses wont start getting a little annoyed by the wifi camper syndrome - Eg someone who takes up a table and chair and sits on a coffee for 2 hours.
I guess the bars and restaurants will have to find ways of dealing with that too.
Looking at a map of Upper Street I notice that my mates' flat is on a street that's about 700m from Angel tube station, so hopefully in the zone. k00l, I can top their fancy central-London 2Mb DSL at last! (I live out in the sticks & miles from the CO so 512K is the best I can get unless/until WiMax takes off.)
Well, there was "Consume". http://www.consume.net/ but their DNS is FUBAR'd so I'm not sure they still exist.
l
http://www.wlan.org.uk/operational_wlan_sites.htm
IIRC It's all still hampered quite badly by the 100mW EIRP limitations for 2.4GHz within the EU.
Deleted
Perhaps "internet only; no e-mail" means all they do is IP routing; you get an IP address, but you don't get a name and password for an account on a mail server.
Oh, editors. I have been reading slashdot too long... thought you meant EMACS or VI... didn't remember that there was another kind.
I have freaks! I did something right...
It is internet only, so email needs to be via a web-based provider. I think you mean web only.
I pretend to know more than I really do by mooching off google and wikipedia.
I live in the UK, in Bristol (a largish city south of London) - and we too have these street mounted wi-fi boxes. Judging from the picture, they look like they're the same model too.
However, there's one important difference - ours are for use solely by the council, primarily traffic wardens, and are completely closed. I have a sneaking feeling they're also something to do with the multitude of street CCTV cameras that went up at the same time, but maybe not. Don't know whether they'd ever consider opening them up, but it's by no means unique.
Not so sure about London, but this would definitely come up in Alexandria. I can just hear the professionally outraged journalists on News at Eleven now...
Please, for the love of God, no more car analogies.
I wonder how the residents feel about the council microwaving them. Ok, I know it's bollocks but I'd bet they don't know what those little pods are for.
Deleted
Bear in mind that governments do not produce anything. They can only take from some people and give to others (Usually through taxation). NOTHING a goverment produces is "free"!
Mine is Good
So who's got a automatic log in script so I can stay on filesharing 24/7 ?
What good is this if I can't share my porn to everyone on the network?
In this part of the world, cameras with telephoto lenses are used to send you parking tickets by mail if you slow below 2MPH! (If you go faster, you get a speeding ticket).
The cameras are supposed to deter crime, but unfortunately, according to mayor Ken Livingstone, owning or using a car is a crime. (Owing or using and SUV is a capital offence.)
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Might anyone know how many different phone companies a particular zone (of a WiMax-covered area) could sustain, technically (as opposed to socioeconomically) speaking? For more info. on WiMax, here are some sites: WiMax.com WiMaxxed.com Intel.com (Rosedale chip) Nokia.com (just teamed up with Intel yesterday)
Might anyone here perhaps know how many different phone companies could likely compete within a particular zone of a WiMax-covered area? This question is technically (as opposed to socioeconomically) oriented. Major phone companies are trying to hog up the spectrum all for themselves, in various places worldwide. They say that letting in too many players would cause interference and ruin it for everybody. Verizon's probably the biggest culprit in the USA, from what I've been told. For more info. on WiMax, here are some sites: WiMax.com WiMaxxed.com Intel.com (Rosedale chip) Nokia.com (just teamed up with Intel yesterday)
I have an ssh server on my home machine set up to answer on port 80, and accessible via a dyndns.org hostname. I have no need of a locally-hosted web server, so I don't miss using up 80 for something else. From there, I have a variety of options including opening up tunnels to a squid proxy.
All works like a charm, and it's set up for exactly reasons like this one. Can even be tunnelled over http to cope with proxies or packet-aware firewalls.
Cheers,
Ian
their is nuthin rong wiv hour schpelling mi frend
yu kan allwayz goe elsewere
-- CmdrTaco
Judging by the pictures, I think these AP's might be from BelAir.
Oh, it's just that you lot tend to be a bit technologically backward. Here in the UK we've been routing our emails through wormholes for years. Granted, it's a bit of a bitch when your resignation email arrives in your manager's inbox before you've actually decided to quit your job. And a 'Dear Jane' email arriving mid-coitus can dampen the mood somewhat. But on the plus side, I do enjoy the spam I get from green, triple-breasted Martian women.
its never very good and theres usually a way round it, quick googling throws up this
n tor-instructions.html
http://peacefire.org/circumventor/simple-circumve
cant remember the names but im sure ive ran across various other software that does similar things
"The local council has set up this municipal Wi-Fi which they call the Technology Mile using cool-looking lampost-mounted access points [picture] at 200 metre intervals along the street, and the whole area is covered by free wireless internet, allowing users to sit in any of the area's numerous cafes or parks and access the internet."
WiMax has a range measured in kilometers, and they're setting up WiFi at 200 meter interval. Standard short-sighted, taxpayer money wasting solution that I have come to expect from govts.
Vote for Pedro
Louisville, Kentucky has a few free hotspots in public areas, (Waterfront Park and Fourth Street Live!) however, they are sponsered by a local restaurant company so the city gov't pays little, if any for it.
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
lots of cities are trying to implement large "hotspots" using current hardware (802.11g) with 802.11n not too far off the savings would have to be enormous if they were to wait just a short amount of time for the new hardware... it could cut their repeater requirements in a big way...
Get your torrents...
This week, Alexandria began providing free wireless Internet access
We've always had free wireless Internet access at Aleksandria, you insensitive clod!
[Disclaimer: only students & staff need apply]
One of the replies to the original article wants to know specific details about the machinery etc. One of the questions is "How do they get the power supply for the access points?". I mean, more amazingly, how do they get the power to the little bulb at the top of the pole? The streetnet box near me is FUBAR'd for the last 3 months. It won't hand out an IP address. I phoned up streenet and they replied saying "That area isn't covered by wifi". Erm, yes it is. You've got a vandal target antenna on top. And it worked 3 months ago. "Oh yes, we must have then. We'll send the technicians out." Two weeks later, still FUBAR'd.
I will be traveling to Egypt later this year and I look forward to trying out the Wi-Fi when I am in Alexandria. Will they be doing this in Cairo too?
That's why you get the chance to vote every now and again, and decide how much or how little they tax and spend.
Maybe in some areas an increase in taxation would be beneficial, perhaps to fund education? Your spelling could certainly benefit from it.
Sucks that it requires the users to login.
Without login it would be great anonymity.
I fear the Technology mile is a victim of its own success, and the connection is painfully slow. I am back to the original Streetnet infrastructure here (which is working fine at about 85kbs).
An famous London Street is now coverered by a free municipal wireless hotspot. Upper street in Islington is now one long Hotspot.
"An famous"? Seems someone made an editorial change from "infamous" to "famous".
everything costs money. or nearly etc. however, using tax money for providing public services is a good thing. it needs a lot of thinking, balancing, discussing about what is good - but a good government (municipial, state, country) does a good job, not when keeping taxes low but when spreading the collected money in a good way, and with as smalla bureaucratic overhead as possible (always too much, but ...).
that is one of the reasons why european cities generally look and feel much more comfortable than u.s. ones, where public spending = a bad thing.
How about those people who even don't use computers and internet? think about the older generaion? They're simply paying (tax) for what they'll never use.
totally nonsense... the nature of the internet access won't allow any party to turn (or intend to) it into some sort of public goods.
Only old koreans send real-time email...
Hmmm witty sig or funny sig? Maybe elitest techy sig!