Make a not for your diary and click on the Meetup logo on the right.
It's the WiFi Meetup. Marquis of Granby, 2 Rathbone Street, London, on Wednesday, January 8 @ 7:00PM [from: JB Wifi]

Can we try and get away from this word "stealing". There's been quite a lively debate on alt.wireless about this. I've been trying to argue that if an AP has WEP off, provides DHCP which provides an IP, gateway and DNS, then as a guest I'm both morally and legally justified in assuming bandwidth is being offered. As a good citizen, and out of self interest I shouldn't abuse it, but I can't see anything wrong with using it. Others are arguing that I ought to get more formal authorization first and make some effort to find out who and what is providing the bandwidth. And that just because I can use it, doesn't mean I should.

The problem I have with all this is the practicalities. Windows and particularly Windows XP will just go ahead without me doing anything. We know that there are lots of open hotspots out there that are not deliberate but there are also lots that are. We've got no convention for SSIDs that imply free sharing. And the most difficult problem is that it could be very hard to find the owner. The example I gave is Bryant Park. If I'm in the park, and I see WiFi with an SSID of NYCWireless I can guess what it is. If I'm in London and see "ReadyToSurf" what do I do? How about the SSIDs I'm seeing round London "UK-LON" with no WEP, DHCP and DNS? I have no idea who's running them or what they are. And I can't think of any way of finding out.

My concern is not really for us insiders. It's for the average laptop user who doesn't know an SSID from their nose. If they open the laptop, Win XP gets a connection and they read their email, who's at fault?

We should also recognise that the whole debate is happening because the industry isn't providing the tools or guidance to allow AP owners to make a deliberate choice over whether to share or not. Aberdeen is predicting that the home- residential market will get the lion's share of shipments this year. An awful lot of those WLANs will be setup using factory defaults on the AP and be connected to ADSL or Cable thus inadvertently sharing their bandwidth. This is *NOT* a problem until somebody abuses it and gets them thrown off their ISP for violating the ISP's AUP. The failure was that we didn't give them the tools to make a deliberate decision. The result will be a load of Government-Media noise about how free internet access will bring down western capitalism! And that doesn't actually help anyone.
[from: JB Wifi]

For all you conspiracy buffs, revel in the AlterNet: Top Ten Conspiracy Theories of 2002 For the rest of you, it's pure entertainment that should be taken with large pinches of salt. I mean none of this could possibly be true, could it?

One piece seems to be missing from this list. That's the one that says that Senator Graham said that one or more foreign governments were involved in the 911 attacks. There seems to be a collective blindness from the world's media on this issue. [from: JB Ecademy]

Three URLs for your amusement.

Stigmergy and the World-Wide Web is a fascinating article about all the internetworking happening in the blog world and how it's building loose but enormously complex social links between large numbers of independent Blog websites.

Blog Tribe Social Network Mapping is a short project to map the social networks of 1,108 blog nodes taken from the blogrolls of Ryze blog tribe members.

Hep Message Server is an attempt to build a relay server that will move messages between almost any messaging system. It plans to include:- RSS Feeds, Pop3 mailbox, weblog entries, email, jabber and maybe others. Read news in your email, post to your weblog from jabber etc etc.
[from: JB Ecademy]

Testing the Wireless Waters With WiFi (TechNews.com) : The typical domains of wireless networks are college campuses, major airports, high-end hotels, trendy coffee shops and tech-heavy neighborhoods. But Forrest C. "Woody" Wheat sees a new horizon for this increasingly popular technology: the near-shore waters of the American coast.

Nice. They plan to provide wifi internet access over the coastal waters of the whole USA to a range of 20-30 miles. It's currently definitely targeted at commercial cruise ships with charges around $500 pm. I would think there's plenty of potential here to also sell a private service aimed at pleasure boats. Particularly on the eastern seaboard from Boston to the keys, there are a large number of high net worth individuals who spend holidays and weekends on their private boats and I'm sure they'd pay for internet access.

I wonder if there's a market here for the UK? We've got an awful lot of shipping within 25 miles of our coasts but most of it is commercial. The equivalent private use is in-shore canals and marinas, but we've got plenty of those and plenty of people with boats in them. After all one of the national past times is "messing around in boats". I did have this cunning plan to WiFi enable the canals. Since they tend to be built in straight lines, you could build a mesh from lock house to lock house with some simple directional antennas and this would also provide coverage for the 20-30 yards across the canal. [from: JB Wifi]

Intersil Provides WPA for PRISM :
This article is actually about Iintersil making WPA available to Prism chipsets. But the interesting bit is this.

(Home and residential Wi-Fi networks will beat out enterprise and hotspot deployments as the dominant area for WLAN growth in 2003, according to Aberdeen Group's 2003 Information Technology Outlook.)

So it looks like it will remain the people selling shovels who will make the money in this gold rush for some time to come. Now how do we turn all those home and residential networks into hotspots? Unfortunately there are a whole series of roadblocks here from ISPs who outlaw sharing bandwidth, to the governments seeing it as a security risk, to the absence of software to share and control the hotspot. [from: JB Wifi]

It's still got rumour status but this AOL said ready to boost blogging suggests that AOL will have blogs and blog software with an announcement in February. Assuming it happens, it'll be interesting to see what current blog functionality they include, eg RSS, trackbacks, comments, blogger API, etc etc. [from: JB Ecademy]

Danny O'Brien has a piece today about Lee Felsenstein and his project to bring WiFi based internet access to Laos villages. It's a condensed chatty version of the pieces in New York Times and Irish Times. The first 5 village network needs $25,000 and the international grant looks like being late, so Lee is looking for donations. Danny has asked for people to spread the meme, or as he says:- 

Mr Blogger, meet Mr Felsenstein. [from: JB Ecademy]

A short end of term report on WiFi.

Hardware. Christmas 2002 will be seen as a turning point in WiFi technology as 802.11g (more or less) hardware came on stream at the same price as 802.11b This will kill the market for "b" hardware in a matter of months. Meanwhile the competition in the hardware market is leading the manufacturers to play fast and loose with the standards by each introducing their own incompatible enhancements. As long as they still interoperate within the standard this doesn't actually matter. What does matter is that the rush to market is leading to buggy, hard to use firmware and driver support. We really shouldn't have to put up with still buggy internet downloaded upgrades immediately after loading the CD that came in the box, but maybe that's what it takes. And we ought to have pre-configured, pre-installed defaults on the gateways that don't just leave everything wide open.

Software. Um. What software? Where's the home WiFi gateway software that works like NoCat but runs on Windows? Where's the universal use of SSL for email? Where's the WiFi router-firewall configuration that does what's actually needed to safely share your bandwidth? Where's the open source mesh networking software? Damn, there's still a lot of code to write.

Hotspots and WISPs. All the BigCos have now leapt on the bandwagon. And they're all repeating the same mistakes they made with cellphones; Excessive pricing targetted at the notional business customer; No roaming agreements; Flaky marketing; Flaky websites; No clear business model; But a press release aimed at keeping their shareholders quiet that declares an intent to become the market leader by covering the nation (pick a nation, any nation) with very large numbers of access points. Meanwhile, small outlets are discovering that they can install WiFi for their own use and offer it to their customers for free as a marketing loss leader. I actually think both will survive for a time with the BigCos being able to exploit the captive audience that finds itself stuck in a Radisson or Airport lounge. But that the free model will win out as groups like Hotel chains start offering free access because they have to in order to compete.

One things for sure. We can expect even more noise about WiFi in 2003 than we had in 2002. [from: JB Wifi]

Another data point in the continuing debate about whether it's morally OK to use WiFi internet access that you happen across. Stanford Law: Using wireless networks "moral and legal" A Palo Alto Online article about wireless networks includes this tidbit: Jennifer Granick, director of Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society, sees the unauthorized use of open wireless connections as moral and legal. A practicing lawyer and lecturer at the Stanford Law School, Granick said considering unauthorized wireless use a terrorist act amounts to idiocy. [thanks, Warchalking]

More from alt.wireless:
David Taylor  wrote:
>> OK. So I'll turn it around. If I was deliberately sharing bandwidth for
>> whatever reason, what should I do to make it clear to potential users
>> that they can use it?
>
>I agree but I guess the answer is "advertise".  Same way any other
>transmitting station makes itself available.
>
>You could ask the same questions about the cell phone providers and just
>about any radio transmitters.

I'm hardly going to take out national advertising and sponsor Ferrari to advertise
that WLAN internet access is available for 300m round my house. Now if I'm running
a pub in St Albans that offers free WiFi, I'll put up signs inn the pub and
scatter leaflets around explaining what's happening and how to use it. But I
probably won't do the same in the cafe across the road. As a user in the cafe I
can see the signal. Should I use it?

Damn. This is turning into some sort of academic exercise in Ethics. I'm much more
interested in the practicalities. I *want* to see a world where I turn on my
laptop and if it finds internet access, to be able to use it without feeling
guilty. And I *want* a world where the AP owner makes a deliberate and conscious
decision about whether to allow guests and how much access to give them. What I
don't want is the current situation where the guest has to make some sort of moral
decision because the AP hardware defaults to wide open and the majority of private
individuals installing them don't know what they're doing.
[from: JB Wifi]

Typically acerbic comment from Dan Gillmor: What's ahead? Take the annual quiz [from: JB Ecademy]

UK gets 802.11g. Buffalo and DLink expect to ship 802.11g products during January. You should note that the 802.11g standard has not been completely finalised and these products are based on the draft. However both companies (and others that are following them) are saying the right things that once the standard is complete they will either issue firmware updates or replacement hardware to bring it in line. If you don't know, 802.11g is a 54Mbps standard in the 2.4Ghz band that is compatible and will interoperate with existing 802.11b kit. What's especially interesting is the RRP. Buffalo are quoting £104.99 for a Router, AP, 4 port ethernet combo and £44.99 for the PCMCIA card. Cheep, cheep!

The products look like no-brainers that will kill the existing market for 802.11b kit stone dead. So it's not surprising that the manufacturers are in a hurry to ship them. [from: JB Wifi]

Clay Shirky ran an experiment in computer augmented brainstorming. O'Reilly Network: In-Room Chat as a Social Tool : The setup was quite simple. We were working in a large open loft, seated around a ring of tables, and we connected a WiFi hub to the room's cable modem. Most of the participants had WiFi-capable laptops, and ARSC works in a browser, so there were no client issues. We put a large plasma screen at one end of the room. We created a chat room for the event, and asked the participants using the chat to log in using their first name. In addition, we created a special username, Display, which we logged into a machine connected to the plasma screen. The Display interface had no text-entry field, suppressed control messages, and had its font set very large. This maximized screen real estate for user-entered messages, and made them readable even by participants sitting 10 meters away (though it minimized the amount of scroll-back visible on the plasma screen.)

I've got some experience of doing something like this using a more structured anonymous tool combined with wireless and WinCE devices. One key factor is that this sort of approach enables even the quietest, shyest member to participate. Clay notes that "Indeed, one of our most active participants contributed a considerable amount of high-quality observation and annotation while saying almost nothing out loud for two days."

If you get the opportunity to try something like this in a business setting I'd strongly encourage having a go. [from: JB Ecademy]

A new site has appeared on the horizon with some familiar names involved. The Wireless Commons Manifesto | The Wireless Commons : We have formed the Wireless Commons because a global wireless network is within our grasp. We will work to define and achieve a wireless commons built using shared spectrum, and able to connect people everywhere. We believe there is value to an independent and global network which is open to the public. We will break down commercial, technical, social and political barriers to the commons. The wireless commons bridges one of the few remaining gaps in universal communication without interference from middlemen and meddlers. [from: JB Wifi]

Cool. The book, Smart Mobs - The Next Social Revolution by Howard Rheingold now has a weblog [from: JB Ecademy]

BW Online | December 30, 2002 | Some Home Truths about Wi-Fi This article is from a relatively clueless journalist who has a DSL line, a home computer and a work laptop. He's tried to install a Linksys WiFi router so he can work on the deck at the back of the house and use the DSL line from the laptop without laying loads of cable. This has to be the classic home use or a typical average person. After a lot of hassle, he's finally got it working except that the signal doesn't reach all over the house and particularly not the deck. He's also not using any security because it's too hard to understand.

We've (ie the manufacturers and software developers) got to make this stuff easier. I've been following alt.wireless for the last few weeks and it's full of similar stories, problems and misconceptions. [from: JB Wifi]

the internet continues to amaze. Here's a blog from Iraq brining you a little taste of current Iraqi life. Where is Raed ?

When the Afghani episode was happening, some of us made a conscious effort to seek out local news sources to get some perspective from central Asia that didn't come via CNN. It looks like it's time to do the same thing for Iraq. [from: JB Ecademy]

There's a discussion happening on alt.wireless about the morality and legality of wardriving. Here's some of my input.

>One partial solution may be for genuine users seeking public access points to only use recognised SSIDs;
Sorry to pick just one piece from your post. This suggests some conventions beyond just NYCWireless saying "Use nycwireless for your SSID".

My position is something like this. I want Wifi and Internet access to be ubiquitous. We're just not there yet. Microsoft seem to agree with me because they ship consumer grade software that just uses what it finds.

To enable ubiquitous internet access I want to see people make a *conscious* decision to play out one of various scenarios.
1) Home secured bandwidth
2) Home with shared bandwidth
3) Commercial but free shared bandwidth (eg a cafe)
4) Commercial charged bandwidth (eg Boingo, Wayport etc)
5) Commercial secured network

Now given that all these exist, I should be able to open my laptop in a Starbucks in Oxford St London (say), see what's available, and if I get a connection, DHCP IP, gateway IP and DNS just use it. It seems a reasonable assumption that I'm in a public area and I seem to be able to see public access so the access is deliberate. It may be from T-Mobile and they just haven't started charging yet, or it may be the cafe across the street who choose to try and kill T-Mobile's business model. And unless the SSID is "GoAway" or something else obvious I don't see any way that I can verify the situation.

But now take another scenario. I'm sitting at home and I spot another network that again is wide open. I'd probably be doing nothing legally wrong to use it, but it's likely that it's someone who simply doesn't have a clue. At least for now. But if it became common for people to set up there network in scenario 2) It would again be reasonable to assume that I'm being invited to use it but to play fair and not get them into trouble or use their whole pipe.

So now we get back to "wardriving", whatever that is. Despite the explosive growth in shipments of wifi hardware, this is still early days. My feeling is that the majority of wardriving is done by interested parties who are mapping wifi space for academic or commercial reasons. There are only a very few crackers who are doing it to see what they can steal or break although they undoubtedly exist. So I'd rather we separated the two activities and condemned the crackers without lumping the academic Wardrivers in with them. [from: JB Wifi]

Great post by the Doc. One more reason to be your own ISP   In the ultimate world of ends (which the end-to-end Net continues fundamentally to be), ISPs become nothing more than storage and pipes. Stupid things, as David Isenberg correctly says.  Because if they're not stupid, they get all smart like Verio and start shutting down whole sites and communities.

I'd go a little further and say that ISPs should be nothing more than pipes. I'll find my storage, email services, web hosting, news services and so on somewhere else thank you very much. And I'd like an AUP that says I can do what I like with my connection as long as I obey the laws of the land, take reasonable care with my setup and play nicely. Where reasonable care means not running an open smtp relay or allowing my web server to be infected with a worm. And where  play nicely means not cracking my fellow users with port scans and MS network neighbourhood connections.

I don't have a problem with ISPs offering value added services if they think they can make a business of it. I do have a problem with ISPs that restrict access in order to prop up these value added services. I also have a problem with ISPs that restrict access to prop up uncompetitive business units elsewhere in their organization.

So let's make a plea for Stupid ISPs, where stupid means no frills.

As an aside, I have a personal example of this. NTL use transparent web proxies to keep their upstream bandwidth costs down. Which is not a problem in itself except that they seem to be unable to keep their Inktomi proxy servers configured and working reliably. The end result is that I have to mess around with explicitly set Proxy server addresses to keep my web access running. All too often web access disappears or only cached pages are displayed until I switch to one of their other proxies. I foolishly thought I would get transparent port 80 access for my money but unfortunately not. [from: JB Ecademy]

An article from the author of Kismet. A WiFi sniffing utility for Linux. Linux 802.11b and Wireless (in)security [from: JB Wifi]