5 Cool Wireless Reseach Projects

Bob B writes "Including an effort by MIT researchers to exploit dense urban networks of existing Wi-Fi access points to create municipal wireless networks rather than relying on EarthLink and cities to fund and build such wireless projects. Secure tunneling is the secret sauce for making it work and not making wireless AP owners liable for miscreants who might use the bandwidth, the researchers say."

Comments

ISP EULAs

[nurb432]

This might ( most likely does ) violate most any ISP's eula. That also has to be dealt with as they want their cut too.

Municipal Wireless using existing (private) APs

[compumike]

The first project they discuss is using everyone's existing access points to effectively form a municipal wifi network. The paper linked from the article talks a lot about the security concerns, etc. It's an interesting concept, and I've thought about trying to use the fairly dense wifi network access outdoors in an effort to move data (GPS, etc) between my vehicle and my home.

However, based on my experience with wifi, there seem to be one major problem here: interference effects. I already have problems that I can see about 6 different access points from my desk... on four different networks and SSIDs. The 802.11 spec only allows for three non-overlapping channels (in the US frequency bands, anyway). This problem gets worse as the capacity utilization factor approaches 100%, as it's more and more likely that two packets will happen to collide. This might be a huge problem for this kind of large-scale wifi, as 802.11b/g isn't really designed to operate well when you can see so many APs at once.

In any case, I wonder if they're also overestimating the infrastructure deployment costs. One of the most amazing things to me was how, within a decade, everyone suddenly had wireless in their home and workplace. In fact, in urban areas, it wouldn't surprise me if there were 1 private access point for every 10 or 20 people. People aren't afraid to pay to get cool technology -- although it's a bit different when the government does it.

--
Educational microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

Re:Municipal Wireless using existing (private) APs

[UltraMathMan]

Seconded, I volunteer at a small elementary school with a one to one laptop program just a couple blocks from a major university, and interference effects are becoming more and more of a problem. Last I counted I could see something like 15-20 APs in one of the classrooms, and while sitting on the school's wireless network in that room you are guaranteed to lose all signal at least once an hour. This is obviously a problem, but moreover a dropped connection when using one of the network based programs (such as FASTT Math) results in the user being knocked out of that program, right now I don't see this technology being employed easily in a wifi dense setting until this problem of interference is dealt with.

Re:Municipal Wireless using existing (private) APs

[RGRistroph]

I don't think that carrying out a full-coverage municipal wi-fi project requires adding access points where there are already access points. That was kind of the point of the article. New access points would be added were there are currently none, possibly. Existing access points would be used where they are available, and traffic tunneled over them in an encrypted form, for social and legal reasons.

I think that this structure should help, not hurt, the access point clashing that goes on in highly dense urban areas. In certain office buildings in particular, there are just too many separate businesses that each want to run their own encryption-protected access point within the physical radius. With this scheme, some of those access points might go away, replaced by using the one local muni-wifi point, with the business willing to do it because they are confident in it's encryption.

Another solution, would be to open up more bandwidth to the 802.11x protocols. That seems unlikely to happen from a political point of view. Maybe if some sort of software radio module became widely available, people could just take some unused spectrum. Encryption and tunneling to share what is already there seems more likely.

Re:Municipal Wireless using existing (private) APs

[mpeg4codec]

It's an interesting concept, and I've thought about trying to use the fairly dense wifi network access outdoors in an effort to move data (GPS, etc) between my vehicle and my home.

You may be interested in this gentleman's setup. It's somewhat light on details, but it proves that it definitely can be done.

Re:The summary text...

[fyngyrz]

If a story looks like a dup to me, I just don't read it. On the other hand, slashdot's completely broken moderation forces me to read everything, unless I want to miss some really good posts. So if they were going to fix anything, I'd say moderation is where to put the effort, priority #1.

As for the story, someone has to provide access to the net. Distributing it so that people get it from wifi puts the load - and the bill - on the people with the connections. As long as the Internet pipes are a commercial traffic system, unlike the highways, which are taxpayer funded (via the gas taxes, to some degree) traffic systems, "free" access always devolves upon one set of private individuals, for the benefit of others. That's fine if you feel like donating, but as we know from the history of downloading music, the ratio of freeloaders to voluntary payers is horrific and the payers take the majority of the load.

I'm of the mind that like the highways, data "highways" have turned out to be essential to commerce, education and communications - and because of this, the government should manage them with an equally-shared tax among the citizens; and since unlike the highways, the intertubes don't wear out proportional to traffic, bandwidth should not be a significant factor. Our (meaning, the US) network structure should be rebuilt to carry about a million times what it carries now anyway, and removing it from the private sector seems like a good time to get that done. Probably cost a few days of "Iraq war equivalent funding." (that's hand waving, but surely, we could afford it.)

Reseach projects...

[jalet]

Are they related to spelling checkers ?

Re:Downside?

[antifoidulus]

Dude, if you are checking your email with bittorrent, you are doing it wrong.

"Secure Tunnelling?"

[LM741N]

Isn't that how the gophers communicated so efficiently in Caddyshack?

FON wireless

[subitophoto]

Sharing wireless look what these guys have done. http://www.fon.com/en/

Re:FON wireless

[sciurus0]

For a noncommercial version, try coova. They release firmware based on OpenWRT that's makes running a hotspot relatively easy. More importantly, they run a service called AAA, which I think is basically a public RADIUS server. Set any wifi router that supports WPA/WPA2 Enterprise to use it and anyone with a coova.org account can log in. It even supports OpenID!

First Responders - Data sharing in Emergencies

[Furmy]

The paper describes outfitting such devices as the handheld computers used by first responders with elements dubbed a "device root key" and a "storage root hash" to enable temporary access to information.

I think this idea needs to be pursued. Having immediate but temporary access to need-to-know info such as medical history, contact phone numbers, and even a programmable access card for building (apt or condo) access to respond to 911 calls would be excellent.

The temporary, secure design would reduce the risk (or just the fear) of having first responders abuse the info (i.e. using a 'universal' key card to access a building during a non-emergency. As a first responder I know time would be saved if I could enter a building during a call without needing to enter buzz codes, etc, but I don't want to have the responsibility of universal access.

Expanding the system to share location/status of first responders/patients/threats/etc, along with live-updated info from the control centre would be very valuable.