free internet = good internet

I came across this article on CNN's website http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/11/21/y...fis/index.html

I just wish that they could do something like this in america. Free internet is good stuff, just creates a big security hole I would think

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Thousands of tech enthusiasts across Europe are setting up wireless communities to get free Internet access.

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Doesn anyone know if this is happening in the states anywhere?



Edit: I got negged on this for posting an article, I just wanted to make it clear that I wasn't trying to get the point I was sending an article but wanted to know if there was somewhere in the states and how big a risk it would create it was happening which Tampa answered so thanks man

If it hasn't happened in the US yet, I'm sure it's coming. The United States has always been a hot-spot for activists of thousands of causes. I wouldn't be surprised if this was something that the Electronic Frontier Foundation would support and try to organize. It may be extremely difficult to form a continuous 'elektrosmog' over the continental United States, but pockets of WiFi WANs in certain cities I'm sure are in the works.

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Free internet is good stuff, just creates a big security hole I would think

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And it does, most of them wireless internet Access Points (AP's) have huge security holes.

Just rescently there was a thread here about D-Link, linksys and some other AP's with a nasty bug that allowed users to anonimously download the ADMIN password for the AP box..

How fast is the connection speed and is it reliable.They said that cordless phones ovens and
street lights interfere which would make it extremely hard to set it up in the US.It might even be a problem with hospitals which always make you turn off your phones.I think for now I would rather pay a little bit instead of not having a reliable connection.

WiFi works on 2.4 Ghz wich interfears only with MicroWave ovens..
And ofcourse water. Just like a MW it loses potential when interacting with water (heating up).

It works with just a couple of milliwats as opposed to a MicroWave oven working with hundreds of watts..

Becouse a MicroWave oven does not have a fixed frequency it works on it WON'T interfer with wifi.

Wifi can work at 11 mbps and with some modification at 22 mbps.

you can get as far as 2 km's as long as you keep a line of sight with a unmodified system.
but as far as 9 km with a bit of creativity in firmware and hardware..

check out www.Beverwijk-Wireless.com (dutch) for some more wifi fun !!

I think it's a great idea.
Here's a list of Wireless Communities <link>
http://www.personaltelco.net/index.c...essCommunities</link>

Aside from the security concerns, which you could control for yourself, this is not totally free. Someone is paying for a connection and share it. Those connecting may be getting it for free. One thing the article fails to mention is that Warchalking usually refers to locating someone or some business by Wardriving, Warwalking etc. and then noting where the connection can be made. This means you may be connecting through someone's network who has not authorized it. This is taking advantage of their lack of security, is illegal, immoral, and opposed to the purpose of this site.

However, I could easily see a number of people sharing their high speed connection with a group of friends or all of them sharing the cost. A small group of houses could share this process. Let us look at the ramifications of this. From a users standpoint this is great, if you have 5 people sharing a $50 high speed connection each will get significantly better service than a $15-$20 dial up and if shared evenly the service will cost $10 each. From the suppliers point of view this is stealing. The service is sold to a household or even to a user if you read most EULA's. When I signed up for my DSL I got approval to put in a DSL router to service "my household" only. Therefore the people above would be viewed as stealing $200 a month of service from the provider.

So for this to be all legal and above board the service would have to allow for this type of sharing, the person paying for the service would have to agree as well and be willing to possibly reduce his own connection throughput to accomodate others, and the security would have to be handled by the individuals connecting. With all of these factors in place I am all for it. The only setup I know that allows for this type of sharing (in America) is a guaranteed bandwidth such as a point to point T-1 and few people are willing to pay the price for this and then share the service freely.

If anyone is interested there is a good artical on wireless networks in this months Linux Magazine (in the UK at least). It goes into good detail about the frequency ranges etc.

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Originally posted here by SodaMoca5
The only setup I know that allows for this type of sharing (in America) is a guaranteed bandwidth such as a point to point T-1 and few people are willing to pay the price for this and then share the service freely.

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Not so true. In many areas the cable and phone companies offer cable and adsl/dsl conections for commercial use. You can even get the same connections in home as well as ISDN ( altough ISDN is not so good for sharing more than a home or small business network ). As some of you know. At one point I had a commercial cable connection that was better than T-1. I had dedicated 1.5m bits up and 1.5 down. Which is adequate for smaller wans. The local telco and cable companies here offer dedicated guaranteed bandwidth. If you want to pay. Thats the crux of it is price.

I checked out the link. I like the idea . Unfortuanatly not in my area but maybe one day.
Anyways, question. What happens if a "Evil Hacker" lives in a neighborhood where this is provided and causes mad havoc on the net. Would it be traceable to that person or just the neighborhood, or not even the neighborhood?

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Originally posted here by Euclid
I checked out the link. I like the idea . Unfortuanatly not in my area but maybe one day.
Anyways, question. What happens if a "Evil Hacker" lives in a neighborhood where this is provided and causes mad havoc on the net. Would it be traceable to that person or just the neighborhood, or not even the neighborhood?

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Short answer would be: It would be traceable to a (forgable) MAC address. A few high-profile incidences of abuse, and how long before this type of bandwidth sharing is made illegal?? That'd be really unfortunate...

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Originally posted here by Euclid
What happens if a "Evil Hacker" lives in a neighborhood where this is provided and causes mad havoc on the net. Would it be traceable to that person or just the neighborhood, or not even the neighborhood?

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You are as safe on the WiFi connection as you are on the internet.
Secure your box and if you use them AP's.

Most people I know use a (stupid) security thrue obscurity way to keep their gear "safe"..

I have firewalls on all sides when I use WiFi connections, and most of the traffic I produce consists of SSH/SSL based tunnels anyway ;)

Apocalypse: You are right for businesses, however since this was a discussion of non-business users I did not include that aspect. As I pointed out all of the Cable/dsl/adsl connections I am familiar with have restrictions on them for non-commercial use. Lastly a T-1 connection is a guaranteed 1.544 Mbps up and down (this is total bandwidth, the data width is slightly less since T-1 uses one bit from each data packet as a sync bit). You could also offer the service with much greater bandwidth at greater cost as well (who doesn't dream of a T-3 or even OC-3 connection to their home, why? Why not).

I feel that free internet would NOT = good internet for a few reasons.

Of course, as pointed out by other members here, the security issues is fairly large.
The point I have to share is that, if the government allows this to occur nationally you should know that your privacy online will be greatly reduced. One thing for paying for personal internet use to a privately owned company, is that there is a level of privacy kept between you and this company. A level of trust is there that as a paying customer they will not release all your information.

That being said, connecting through a free and national ISP (most likely government operated if it ever does happen) will hamper the privacy you have online. We all know that some agencies do monitor public chats (such as IRC) for certina content, just wait until they have direct access to everything you do online.


Cheers,
Notica