Free Wireless Network Access

I think you are to be commended for doing this public service!! However the "pay" part, even though you call it a "donation", could get you in big trouble with the IRS if you don't report the income as such and also with whomever is supplying your broadband access (DSL, Cable, whatever) as there probably is a resale clause in the contract you agreed to when you signed up.. And probably since you are being paid (donated to) you also feel an obligation to help the folks with their access once in a while, which is also commendable. But that help seals your doom if you get crossways with the IRS or the Provider as it "proves" you are providing a service for pay.

I don't want to tell you what to do one way or another, but if I were you I would knock off on the monthly "donation" bit and maybe let them give you a Xmas present or something then act as if they were just "free loading" on your system so any help would be minor at best. Don

Maybe you're right. Before i would just let people used the wireless internet for free. I just wanted to see if people would be willing to help out and pay. I always tell people if they want to promote the used of the internet and do a public service don't security their wireless networks.

When a person is at home at night they don't close the blinds because they think that a person on the side is benenfiting from the light coming out of their window. The same goes for wireless networks. I hope people share their wireless connects.

Cheers,

Bira Rai

Well, here is how I look at it.

I think that it is good for you to be accepting "donations" off your internet service/network. It is probably against the contract between you and your ISP in doing so, but you know what???? The hell with them! The more somebody can screw these companies out of a few bucks and maybe you make a little profit, the better it is. When the companies are screwing you out of your money, it is all fine and dandy...........but the moment you do it to them, it is a national disaster and you should be nailed to the cross for it.

Same idea applies to these Record Label companies. Before the day of high speed internet, MP3's, CD Burners and the like, when I wanted to have some music I enjoyed, they ripped us off for the price of cassettes and CD's.....they just sat back and laughed at us while some dumbass got rich. Now with all the file sharing programs (limewire, kazaa, morpheus, etc.) my purchasing of music has significantly decreased.........so now the RIAA says we are ripping them off and launch all kids of lawsuits.

So, I guess my bottom line to it all is........good for you and say to your ISP "How do you like those apples?"

No but someone viewing kiddieporn pics in a magazine using the light from my window isn't going to be an issue for me. On the other hand, all the network traffic terminating at my connection could be.

Similarly, someone putting tons of junk mail in the nearby postbox isn't my problem, spamming through my connection is.

I wonder, do you secure *all* your traffic somehow? If not, it's open to sniffing.

David.

Don't have to have the product if the price is not what you want to pay.

I've never been forced to buy CD's either! :)

David.

Is anyone doing doing the same thing?

Bira Rai

Is anyone doing the same thing?

Bira Rai

Commendable! Well done. I hope more people become as public-spirited as you.

I would however check your legal rights regarding what happens if one of your "customers" decides to download paedo websites or gets caught downloading anything copywritten. Would you, as their ISP, be in trouble? Perhaps you should cover yourself with some sort of contract?

I hope you have a legal agreement in force with your neighbors and good logs in case the FBI comes knocking on your door for copyright infringements.

What do you mean by copyright infringements? There is alot of material on the internet that is is copyrights. Is downloading copy written content against the law?

Bira Rai

birarai

Yes, if you breach copyright. Copywritten source that is allowed to be distributed under an appropriate licence is ok. Many items are freely distributable but the author still holds copyright.

Now try downloading stuff for free that you're *supposed* to pay for that isn't freely distributable...

David.

Look here for a secure method of sharing your WIFI connection:

All you need is an old PC with a CD-rom and 2 network cards along with another wifi access point or router.

Easy peasy - run one here in the UK. Just boot off the disk image .. voila.

Regards.

Doz

Out of curiosity, I didn't see any mention on the site about encryption, does it provide that or just authentication?

Thanks Doz,

I had it working in 20 minutes. That's for the help.

Bira Rai

birarai

Actually, in response to your musings whether anyone else is being as public spirited, I know of one other place.

The village in Spain where my father lives is very rural, very small, no phone lines available (all of them are used up and Telefónica will not put down new lines for so few applicants), and mobile phone reception is nigh non-existant.

All Town Halls in Spain in remote areas can set up a Satellite dish to provide a room for free Internet access for the Village. Which they have done.

However, they have also set up a Wifi hotspot, and people in the Village can all connect to this service (very much depends on weather, or if you're unlucky enough to have a large building in front of you, but by putting the antenna in the church steeple, the signal reaches most of the village.

This is very public spirited. One that's quite common in small rural communities in Spain.

Mesh Networks on the near future will over take wi-fi spots. In a mesh network all the nodes using the network help in transporting data packets. Microsoft is working on software technology which aid in the creation of mesh networks. Nortel Networks is creating hardware to support mesh networks. In the future only long haul network access points will exist.

birarai

Really? I consider mesh networks to be an abomination. They solve exactly one problem, the cost of the backhaul. In it's place, they add numerous problems. The store and forward nature of the beast reduces thruput in half for each hop. They drastically decrease the available airtime as only one transmitter may be on the air at a time in a given airspace. Mesh networks do not scale well into large systems. There are serious problems with geographic routeing such as in mountainous areas. Ad-hoc (random) mesh topologies tend to create bottlenecks in the wireless nodes nearest the wired backhaul radios. The alarming tendency of the leading mesh network vendors (i.e. Tropos) to deploy maximum power transmitters at their mesh nodes make them little better than jammers.

Interference from home networks is a serious problem in metropolitan areas. How well would your home network run if the city installed a municipal wireless network node outside your window?

Sectored antenna systems, multi-channel nodes, and exotic routeing algorithms are a big help, but most deployments are only interested in saving money on the backhauls and don't use these.

Attempts to impliment self configuring and self-healing networks have not been particularly impressive. Most mesh networks that I've seen deployed or recently proposed limit the number of mesh nodes fed by a wired backhaul to 3 to 5 nodes, and limit the number of hops to the client radio to about 3 hops. That's not a mesh, but a lightly scaled hub and spoke topology. (Examples on request as I'm too lazy to dig them out).

There is also a distinction between mesh networks that use the client radio for store and forward traffic, from a mesh network that uses poletop owned by a municipality or ISP. In the client radio repeater case, the entire network operates at the whim of the users. In one university experiment, the network would work acceptably during daylight hours, when everyone had their computer turned on, but totally die at night, when the computers were turned off. Obviously, the network topology and therefore the route for such a network changed continuously and is therefore not particularly reliable.

In my never humble opinion, mesh networks are not going to disappear or meltdown on deployment. They will be patched together until they look like a traditional hub and spoke WISP system, thus eliminating the cost savings in the elimination of the backhaul. I know of at least one mesh network deployment that simply ran DSL telco lines to their nodes and just gave up trying to constantly deal with the problems.

I suspect if you operated an ISP as a business, your opinion might be a bit different. Have you ever operated a small business?

Really? I only know inside details on 3 small ISP's. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has had the plug pulled on them for playing small time ISP or trying to spread the cost of their broadband connection. Most ISP's don't like it, but it's not really a huge loss of revenue and therefore not a major problem. If anything, it tends to make the customer dependent on keeping his shared connection up, and will therefore tend to be more responsible on paying the monthly bill. There have been terminations of service due to other issues, but not solely because of sharing.

Your Bell Sympatico TOS and AUS is at: :

Got any examples of the "national disaster" style of termination for sharing a connection?

Yep. Things that are easy to steal should obviously be acceptable simply because it's so difficult to get caught and everyone is doing it. Great logic. Got any other laws you want to break simply because it easy and difficult to get caught?

Incidentally, have you ever created or written anything that was ripped off by someone else? I have and it's not pleasant.

Sympatico's support phone number is 310-7873 in Ontario and Quebec.

Hi Jeff,

sounds like you're a really expert on networking. I'm a software developer the arena of computer networking is not my greatest strength. What furture direction do you think computer networking will take next?

Bira Rai

birarai

Not really. I just write a bit on technology topics. I've been wrong in the past and will probably be wrong in the future. Make your own decision on the viability of a technology based on how it works, not what others declare to be the next big thing. For example, in the early 1980's, every pundit and expert declared that the OSI model networking products would inevitably replace the obviously inadequate and flawed TCP/IP networking products. According to the experts, we all should now be using X.400 email addresses and X.500 directory services. That didn't happen. Beware of listening to experts.

That's easy. Consortiums, conglomerations, collaborations, and conglomerations.

Computer networks will assume combinations and permutations of existing technologies. That will be driven by SDR (software defined radio) also known as cognitive radio technology. A CPU inside everything will be able to communicate with just about anything else by simply emulating its protocols and technology. Your PDA will be able to talk to your kitchen stove via your kitchen refrigerator, each using its own proprietary protocol. Your TV remote control can send a token to your media center, which will translate the token into whatever protocol is necessary to talk to your garage door opener.

The road to this Nirvana will have some pot holes in it. For example, all the PDA phone and smart phone vendors are building 802.11b/g into their instruments, while cellular vendors are turning *OFF* features in order to enhance their existing overpriced services. Why should the consumer be allowed to use Bluetooth to transfer their photos from the cell phone to their desktop when the vendors overpriced BREW based service can do the same thing. Why should the consumer be allowed to use VoIP over free 802.11 when they can be billed by the minute for airtime over cellular. Why should the consumer be allowed to access the internal GPS directly, when they can pay for location based services. There will need to be a shakeout and it won't be pleasant for the technology vendors.

For home and office networking, single digit improvements just won't sell. With cheap gigabit LAN's, we have all the bandwidth we need for about the next 10 years. Going to the new 10Gigabit ethernet will be useful for the data centers and backhauls, but not for commodity networking. UWB (ultra wide band) for distributing local wireless live video will be a big hit, primarily because there's no alternative way to do the same thing. Mesh networks will be a big thud because there are lots of ways to do it better and because it doesn't offer a large enough benefit over the other ways. I don't have a clue on WiMax but suspect that any technology that has only 50MHz in 3.6GHz, can only be deployed in limited non-metro areas, and competes directly with heavily entrenched telcos, will have a limited uptake.

I can go on and on but I find it boring. I suggest you read about the technology and first determine if it will function as expected. It is not necessary for it to be the superior technology as adequate mediocrity is a big seller in consumer electronics. It just needs to be functional. Next, determine if it will scale well into a mass market. Failure to scale will prevent mass deployments. Last, figure out if the GUM (great unwashed masses) is willing to part with their money for the product on a mass scale. Never mind the early adopters. Is there a mass market? It doesn't have to be economical or cheap. That can come later. If it passes these tests, you have a winner. If it fails at any point, it will not be the next big thing.

If you're not up on wireless politics and technology, I suggest you read through the opinions of Andrew Seybold at: