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Dan Rutter Suggests Tossing Some Wi-Fi At the Neighbors
A few days ago, Dan Rutter (the Dan in "Dan's Data") published an interesting idea for extending the sort of philanthropic technical pranksterism that spawned throwies by applying the same approach to Wi-Fi. That means, looking what he hopes is not too far down the road, creating Wi-Fi repeaters that are cheap enough to deploy on the sly and frugal enough with power to run on solar power or cheaply replaceable batteries. But as he says, "If you've got a lot of spare money, a ladder and no respect for private property, though, you could already be stealthily deploying Open-Mesh or other such gadgets all over your neighbourhood." In some cities at least, you'd be hard pressed to ever avoid at least one available wireless access point, but that's not the experience for most people, most places -- which bears correction.
It's an interesting idea... but here's the thing I can't see the ISPs letting something like this happening.
Also, what's to prevent somebody from stealing one of the boxes, and causing an outage... or modifying the firmware on one of these boxes to sniff for passwords?
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
Make sure to include a nondescript box and some blinking lights in the setup, we wouldn't want anybody to mistake it for any sort of improvised device.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I really like the idea that this guy has, but I hate to think about the crazy ISPs would release on us if people started doing this. They're as bad as the media companies for wanting control over networks. I can just see it now, every repeater that you install is considered a lost sale with potentially thousands of users using it. Cease and desist or we will sue you for one brazillion dollars. Yet another argument for treating the internet like a public utility, just one that you can opt out of if you so choose.
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
I still wonder if it would be workable for an ISP to supply a router which gives the owner priority over the bandwidth but allows any subscriber to connect (only) to the internet.
For the consumer it's a mutual benefit, I make my bandwidth open to fellow customers and they do the same for me. The ISP wins from having a better service to attract customers, and also from wifi-only subscribers. The latter may also make for cost/price competitiveness, since you have more subscribers per physical connection.
I know the slashdot crowd is a big fan of free things, aren't we all, but when you sign on for internet you agree it's for your household, apartment, or whatever, not for you to provide publicly (even though many people inadvertently do with unsecured wireless networks).
Just like you can't steal cable or run a cable over to your neighbor's, you can't steal internet service either.
Likewise, when someone pirates something using your network, the person getting sued will probably be the person that pays the bill--you. And just think what would happen if someone downloads child pornography on your connection...!
Using wi-fi hardware to make a wi-fi network is hacking now?
My UK ISP already provide for 'municipal' wi-fi via an affiliation with FON. By opening up part of my spectrum, I get to piggyback my mobile devices on some other member's wi-fi when I need to.
The only additional item here seems to be not getting ISP permission to do what they are happy to give permission for anyway. Rebellion this isn't.
Bleat all you like about "helping the community" or philanthropy or whatever you like. This is a naive attitude - similar to leaving your garage door open and then claiming "it's not mine" when stolen goods are found inside.
Anyway, if these devices are so cheap that you can afford to leave them out in the open (until they die, suddenly the firt time it rains), then your neighbours can afford to by one themselves.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
We, in Paris, have been experimenting with just such a network, based on a dynamic mesh routing protocol (Babel) and an autoconfiguration protocol similar to DHCP (AHCP).
The results are mixed. On the one hand, a lot of geeky types turn out to be willing to volunteer their (paid-for) ADSL line and even to buy a router with their own pennies. On the other hand, normal users are not willing to install software they don't understand -- they just want to use a normal AP, and don't understand why they need to install extra software just to use the Internet.
Yes, that's exactly what we are doing. Unfortunately, setting up tunnels (VPNs) is complicated and error-prone, and existing VPN software are designed with static routing in mind. We're actually thinking of designing our own VPN implementation that is convenient to use with dynamic routing protocols.
I use Speakeasy for my service and they actually have a program that allows and encourages you to share your net connection over a wi-fi setup.
They also encourage you to charge for it, but there's no reason why it can't be done for free if you'd like.
http://www.speakeasy.net/netshare/
"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than have to have a frontal lobotomy."
An unpopular solution would be for ISPs to charge for actual internet usage. Heavy users pay the same amount as people who only check their email every couple days.
If ISPs charged per GB up and down, they'd quickly lose interest in people who shared with a neighbor. It would also discourage use of Sandvine to disrupt file sharing (Linux distros only, of course) because throttling bandwidth would throttle their profits. The marginal cost of bandwidth (for a subscriber) is Zero, so consumption is unrestrained.
People would have to be more careful securing their wireless, but they would also recognize that bandwidth is a commodity that costs money to provide. If you want to be a philanthropist under those conditions, go ahead! As it is, sharing a connection forces the ISP to be the philanthropist. (I'm not saying that's bad, mind you.)
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
That's a very good point.
I don't think that using solar-powered devices is economically feasible; you really need access to external power.
In cities, there's power in every streetlamp, and we need to find ways to get the municipal authorities to give us access to that, and in every café or restaurant, and we need to explain to café owners that it's just a few watts. In the countryside, there's church towers (at least in Europe), so be nice to your local priest.
I am not sure that "basic principle" holds up in Australia.
I am pretty sure the legal thing to do in this circumstance is to return it to your neighbour
Of course, in the USA I guess standard legal practice is to moan and whinge, go on TV about it, then take your neighbour to court for their tree dropping an apple that was just a tad over-ripe, contributing to your dental decay.
Jaso
so you can just claim Plausible deniability because someone was using your service without your permission.
What everybody fails to grasp is this: if you're ever been merely accused of something the powers-that-be don't like (child pornography, "terrorist" materials, whatever) they're not going to listen to your plaintive cries of "but it's an open access point." They don't care as long as they can be publicly seen to be doing their jobs. Odds are the grunts arresting you won't know an access point from Adam, and they'll haul your ass off to jail as a matter of principle. Then, if you have a very good lawyer and are lucky enough to come before a tech-savvy judge (and don't count on that) you might have some form of viable defense. Then again, you might not, and could end up serving ten years to life. Either way, you've been seriously boned up the ass and for what? Giving your cheap-ass neighbor his jollies?
So, don't assume the cops or the Justice System will be reasonable about any of this, or even grasp the fundamental technical aspects of modern communications. They will take the simplest approach, which is it was your I.P. that was active when the offensive/illegal materials were downloaded, and even if it was someone else who did it it was still your equipment that was used. That wouldn't remotely constitute proof to an engineer, but so far lawyers have had a field day with it.
Bottom line, secure your access point as tightly as you can, and if you're going to download anything "questionable" do it through an encrypted anonymous service like Tor, and hope that that is sufficient to protect you. God help you if it's not, because nobody else will.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
an amp is useless unless you have one at both ends. If you transmit at 10W or 100W, plenty of people will be able to hear you that you won't be able to hear unless they also are transmitting at 10W or 100W. (and if you can hear them, then you didn't need the full power for them to hear you.)
Now you *could* use a very fancy antenna system, and combine a high-power dipole with an array (or virtual array using DSP) of highly directional antennas with overlapping coverage over the same area as your dipole.
But that gets expensive rather quicly.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Besides, there hasn't been a single case yet in which something like that has happened.
I'm not sure what country you live in, but it must be someplace whose legal system hasn't been pwned by a bloodsucking media conglomerate. That would not be the United States, by the way. The Recording Industry Association of America has been suing/threatening thousands of Internet users on just the kind of "evidence" I was talking about. And so far as governmental organizations are concerned, the FBI has taken the position that merely clicking on a hyperlink constitutes access to verboten materials, even if said link is non-descriptive. Furthermore, Congress is currently in the process of criminalizing copyright infringement and establishing a Federal copyright enforcement wing of the Justice Department.
Consequently, I maintain that one opens one's WAP at one's own risk.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.