Slashdot Mirror
Open Spectrum Does Not Mean Free Internet
CowboyRobot writes "FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski recently proposed making RF spectrum publicly available, and many in the media (including the Washington Post) have been mistakenly conflating open access to WiFi signal with free Internet access; anyone can put up a wireless access point but that doesn't give them access to the Internet. The proposal will probably mean more attempts at providing free Internet access to specific neighborhoods or municipalities, but as Larry Seltzer at NetworkComputing points out, these programs also usually forget that access to signal is not the same as access to the Internet. After getting the funding to wire a city, these isn't money left to pay for the actual bandwidth usage."
What if we created some kind of side-by-side internet meaning we use a completely separate top level domain in order to access those network resources without overlapping with the internet?
slashdot.darknet for example could on my network open slashdot, but without using any "internet access" at all, since all I need is a network of computers, of course, we'd have to work to make sure we don't collide with any real internet resources, but I think that the system was created in order to let this stuff work right?
so why not do that?
obviously it means we have problems with slashdot.org and slashdot.darknet having potentially different content, but what if I dont shadow a real internet website, but create a search engine which only indexes darknet content?
(I think I'm abusing the term darknet, but well, whatever, you guys know what I mean...)
If someone puts up a secure wireless access point in my neighborhood, I would be delighted to foot my share of the bill for bandwidth usage (given that it is cost competitive to my current provider)
I suppose we nerds need to step up and take some of the blame:
We've been so industrious about our networking duties that when the noobs see an ethernet jack or an SSID they just go and assume that it will lead them to the bounteous lolcats and porn of the internet...
All jokes(but not all jokers, alas) aside, WTF is wrong with these 'journalists'? Reporting 'FCC proposes additional wifi spectrum' as 'FCC proposes free internets for the masses!' is about as conceptually confused as reporting 'Staples offers 2-for-the-price-of-1 sale on copier paper' as 'Staples, Amazon, New York Times take sides over plan to slash print media prices by half!'.
Seriously, I'm not expecting these guys to not fuck up something actually tricky, just to make the basic conceptual distinction between the price and availability of a transmission channel and the price and availability of what is transmitted over the channel...
Used to live in a city with "free wifi". It was horrendously slow because everybody used it and most still paid a normal provider.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It's only a proposal for the spectrum to be open. Much more likely (nearly certain) is that the spectrum will be deemed far to valuable to simply open. It will be reallocated to a new license class for wireless broadband operators, like AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, who will be the only ones with pockets deep enough to afford it. The "new" spectrum will be auctioned off for millions of dollars and the public WILL PAY!
I really can't believe that people thought, for even a second, that there was going to be a free nationwide WiFi system. Do these idiots have any idea how expensive it is to run a Wireless ISP? Upstream bandwidth, towers, equipment, maintenance and more. It costs a lot of money, who do they think was going to do all the work for free?
It's sad that no one seems to know the difference. Wifi operates on a subset of frequencies within the RF spectrum, knowing that, how can anyone confuse Open RF with Free Internet? That would be like saying "Were opening part of the energy spectrum" and then telling people "That means we now get free TV", it's not true.
If you make a public resource, you have what economists call a "free rider" problem: most people aren't obligated to pay in to it, so they simply take advantage of it without paying in.
This causes the quality of service to decline. It is related to the "Tragedy of the Commons" where overconsumption of a public resource results in its depletion.
A better option to "free" internet might be aiming to lower costs and improve performance, and then allow local residents to use additional bandwidth to provide free local hotspots.
Futurist Traditionalism
If the goal is to connect together people then access to "the Internet" is not necessary. Communities could roll their own network, their own servers and address space. All you need is a DNS server to bind it all together (or a P2P system). There would be many benefits to this. However it would not be the same as accessing the Internet.
OTOH a few communities could peer up, then a few more, etc etc. until everyone was connected. The problem would be interconnects. It would be slow without dedicated fibre and switches to route traffic from eg Atlanta to LA. So you end up needing the same infrastructure we have today. May as well just nationalize it all at that point (would amount to the same thing).
A hybrid approach could work. Community MLANs for local stuff, local caches of a ton of content and individual access plans to get out of the MLAN. ISPs go away but the big pipes are still private utilities. Content cartels would still be in power but would only control access to their content rather than everything. People and businesses could host their own content/services or collocate at the local cacheing data center. The cacheing (a la Akamai) would allow the self hosting to work (make it fast even if the origin is a desktop PC) and would be peered, so synced with other community caches. This all would require a lot of work. Could take a decade to reach critical mass (or could only take a few years if adoption was coordinated and fully budgeted).
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
So why couldn't an ISP set up a tower with a GigE connection and tell customers they have to set up a directional antenna pointed to my tower, but my prices are a fraction of what a wired or totally managed (cellular provider) ISP would have to charge. After all, we keep hearing that the reason we don't have a massive buildout of fiber to the home is because the last mile is extremely expensive. If the customer is paying for the equipment to connect, along with open white space spectrum (or whatever is being proposed), someone could actually break the duopoly. It actually follows the retail model instead of the utility model, where a business has you come to their retail outlet, instead of delivering to your driveway.
If they see success the ISP would have to build more towers, but it's much easier to expand and grow incrementally than it is to have to build out all the infrastructure at once, which is what happens with low power/low range wifi. Ideally, spectrum users would have to be licensed (and possibly tested, similar to a drivers test to legally use pubic roads), to monitor congestion and allow for more transmitter power.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
How's Laura? You haven't mentioned her in ages
We want free, unfettered, networking ability. The internets dieing a slow death of a thousand DMCA request paper cuts. Give me a free alternative any day. If my local municipality setup their own local network, I'd hook up. We've all got this idea that "The Internet" is the only network to connect to, but I think an alternative is the only solution to the corporate nonsense that's been going on over the past 10 years. Maybe this time we can build it smarter, knowing ahead of time what these jerks are going to try and do.
These isn't enough money left over for proper grammar either! :-(
What does "Bandwidth" actually cost? Hasn't it become some random number that the plant owners come up with together?
Power consumption / gear / and maintenance... I think the dollars on the physical plant are the only true costs.... I mean really how much does a gig of traffic "cost" vs. what is charged?
Fleeced again
IF local businesses used it to advertise and sell directly to consurmers through it. This would basically allow the traditional (city net) we used to see in matrix style hacking videos / books in the eighties and early nineties. If there is a critical mass of businesses offering services over a local wireless mesh network then the 'internet' will want to access that market. Make a peering deal and you could enable internet access to / between these citywide wireless nodes. The main issue at this point is making sure everyone has access to personal ipv6 addresses. It is possible, but not likely, as the general public has no knowledge of the benefits of having a free access local mesh network.
So you'd have a bunch over local wifi networks, interconnected to make one large network? Someone in one city could access something in another city by these "inter-network" links, right? That network of inter-network links could be called the "internetwork". Maybe shorten that to "internet". Seriously, you're proposing nothing more or less than rebuilding the internet over again. The only change you're really suggesting is to use wifi rather than fiber to connect between cities. There's actually a reason we use fiber, not wifi, to connect between cities, and between campae. Fiber is a lot better for that purpose than wifi is. Wifi is designed for, and good at, letting you walk around your house with a tablet. It's not designed for, and not good at, links more than 30-100 feet.
The internet is a tool for moving information around. Keeping the internet functional means that all information riding around on it has to be treated the same way; that is the nature of a packet-switched protocol. The protocol has to be pretty much blind to the constraints imposed on the information. The net neutrality problem is that information with a value (for what ever definition of value that you want to use) riding on the internet means content providers have to armor their information to keep that value from leaking away as it transits the internet -- that armor invalidates the idea of the neutral nature of the information, and therefore compromises the usefulness of the internet for the content providers. I'm pretty sure that having open spectrum that content providers can grab up and use as their distribution channel will fix this problem. A distribution channel that they own and control means that they can armor their information in whatever way they want to, and to brick any device on the network (including the end-points) while only minimally compromising their ability to deliver content, which is what their business is supposed to profit by. They cannot control the internet in this way, and that's why I see them grabbing up the spectrum and setting up their own networks. NB: This is not a bad thing for people who value the free flow of information that the internet makes possible.
Open Spectrum is required for the dream of unencumbered global networking. The Internet (in the US) doesn't work this way & is primarily a monopoly or oligopoly with all players wanting great controls, user access limits, etc. Mesh networking would overstep the costs & regulations required in laying fiber that currently ensure this monopoly. Spectrum that can travel for miles reduces latency. And everyone would want involvement: If you want mesh network access, you'd need to buy a repeater-type device (or no one would peer with you). Even if a high-powered repeater could increase your electric bill by $50 a month, it's a better deal than the Internet monopoly.
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