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Underground > Laboratory >

The Island of the Wireless Guerrillas

18:06 / 14.03.02

article here

Not only does the article have one of the coolest names around, it does bring up some interesting points.

Basics of the article is how a free wireless network (using 802.11b technology) now covers a good chunk of the big island in Hawaii. It also mentions how similiar networks are set up in about 40 states in the US.

13:03 / 15.03.02

quote:It's a decidedly homegrown affair. The pole jutting from the bed of Wiecking's pickup grabs wireless Internet signals beamed from the dozen base stations he has set up across the island. The base stations are wherever he can put them: on the roof of his house, at the homes of friends, at schools, even on top of a roving psychedelic bus. Wiecking's technological secret is a wireless standard called 802.11b, more felicitously known as Wi-Fi (for "wireless fidelity"). Conventional 802.11 networks have a range of no more than 300 feet, but by using a hodgepodge of cheap amplifiers, antennas, and other gear, Wiecking has been able to stoke up the range of some of his base stations to more than 26 miles. Now people all over the island are tapping into Wiecking's wireless links, surfing the Web at speeds as much as 100 times greater than standard modems permit.

cool!

14:07 / 15.03.02

This is great because it makes the world wide web an actual web and not a bunch of separate networks dependant on a few backbones. In other words, the internet will be much faster if it is wireless. And it'll be free because bandwidth will be free as well.

15:37 / 15.03.02

quote:Originally posted by Lionheart:
This is great because it makes the world wide web an actual web and not a bunch of separate networks dependant on a few backbones. In other words, the internet will be much faster if it is wireless. And it'll be free because bandwidth will be free as well.

Not really.

One, you still have individual networks that are connected to the backbone. The 802.11 standard is based on the 802.3 standard, which is the ethernet standard that most LANs run off of.

The access points don't communicate directly with themselves, they communicate with a hardwired network which passes information between them.

Two, there are already several pay networks up and running. The one to watch being the company that was recently formed by the guy who created Earthlink. The new company (can't remember the name) is using the same buisness models as earthlink did (buy up a bunch of small, local providers, instead of creating your own infrastructure from scratch). And everyone is expecting him to be the one to show the viability of 802.11 as a provider technology.

There will be free networks scattered around the country. But, it'll likely be a situation of having to know the right people to get access. Esspecially since the networks are likely to be scattered.

The major problem to the "free access" paradigm is who pays for the backbone access. Someone has to.

Face it, the internet is likely to never be free again.

15:50 / 15.03.02

it never was, there were just other people paying the freight

14:04 / 18.03.02

quote:Originally posted by MJ-12:
it never was, there were just other people paying the freight

I was refering to the paradigm shift in how the net was percieved. From the "no one can make money off of this" to the "I can make a fortune."

In other news, here's an article at msnbc that talks about another free network being built in Seattle. NOTE: just the first section is on 802.11, but the rest is kind of interesting.

15:03 / 18.03.02

quote:Originally posted by tSuibhne:
I was refering to the paradigm shift in how the net was percieved. From the "no one can make money off of this" to the "I can make a fortune."

Back from the "anyone can make a fortune" from 2 years ago. Makes your head spin, it does.

16:52 / 18.03.02

But then again:

FCC delays deadline for monitoring wireless traffic

Quote:

"The U.S. Federal Communications Commission reported on 19 September that it had extended from 30 September to 19 November the deadline for wireless and wireline telephone carriers to make their networks capable of monitoring packet-mode communications. The FCC rules required the phone companies to provide the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation with detailed information collected from calls as well as the location of wireless base stations and data related to their transmissions. But a Federal court struck down the rules related to providing phone call data, saying the FCC failed to consider the costs of implementing the changes necessary to make the data available, nor the privacy concerns raised by heightened government surveillance. The agency, which was ordered to rewrite the rules, issued a release saying it, "intends to establish a new compliance date for all capabilities that will allow carriers to be compliant no later than 30 June 2002."

Presumably, this would have an effect on the wireless (and wired) internet as well, given all the overlap? (Anyone know for sure?)
Though I do like the idea of literal "Islands in the Net", how long before the feds catch on to such communication guerillas and start the inevitable crackdown in the name of "National Security"?

18:34 / 18.03.02

Acctually, that doesn't have a huge effect on the wired or wireless internet.

The drive for that project was for 911 call centers to be able to locate mobile phones, much like they are able to locate land phones now. So, if you call 911 and don't know where you are, the operator can get that information with out you.
Sept came and went and no one had done anything. Nov. came and went and there was one, may be two, phones that had incorporated GPS for tracking. But, most people seem to be ignoring it. With the slump in cell phone sales, it's just not a big priority for the companies involved.

But, all current plans I've heard about, are leveraging GPS to make this work. GPS is completly seperate from the net.