Dvorak: The Killing of Wi-fi

[tuvor]

(We don't seem to have a Technology forum, so here you go, GD.)

Cut to my favorite commercial. Two jokers are on a park bench with their laptops. One has a slow cell-network card, and the other has a faster network card from Sprint. One guy uploads a file and says good-bye to his hapless friend, who is left to become an ornament for pigeons. Why did the one guy leave his pal? What are these two jerks doing outside with laptops downloading and uploading files? If they are that busy, then shouldn't they still be in the office finishing up on a high-speed network?

It's all too mysterious for me. In fact, the sudden emergence of the whole cell network as your Internet connection is to show the public that there is plenty of wireless connectivity already and, golly, stop the idea of doing free Wi-Fi in municipalities.

It's not about the technology. It's about the threat of Wi-Fi overall. And I mean free Wi-Fi in particular. If you take a city the size of San Francisco and give the entire population free high-speed Wi-Fi, think of the applications that will fall into place. That includes VoIP calls galore. Move over, cell phone; hello, Wi-Fi phone.

It's no coincidence that these commercials for EV-DO and others for plug-in cell phone network cards cropped up just at the same time the market got hit with a slew of Wi-Fi phones and Wi-Fi/cell combo phones. Wi-Fi needs to die! These phone companies are going to do everything they can to trash 802.11, especially 802.11n, which may eventually be as fast as 600 megabits per second.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2098484,00.asp

[poverlay]

1. Good to know. I'll pay more attention to this. Thanks. nt

[blogslut]

2. I'll kick it

and recommend it too!

[WiseButAngrySara]

3. I've been curious about this. Could you better explain

Wi-Fi? Isn't it just wireless internet?

[crispini]

4. There are essentially two kinds of "wireless" internet.

WiFi is fairly short range (at least the protocol you find in coffee shops and routers for your home). It's very common; most laptops come with Wi-Fi. A WiFi connection still requires SOME way to get the signal back to the network; I have a WiFi hub in my house that then connects back to the internet with ADSL (wires).

The other kind of wireless internet is the kind that travels on a cell phone signal. This is called EVDO or NextG. You need a special high-powered wireless card in your laptop, but once you have that, you don't need any kind of additional connection.

There, all you ever wanted to know about wireless internet. :D

[WiseButAngrySara]

5. Nicely explained, even for a computer illiterate like me!

And short and sweet. Thanks!

:hi:

[Recursion]

11. Crispini's explanation was excellent but let me add another point

The most expensive part, far and away, for any ISP is what's called the "last mile", that is, the mile or so leading up to the customer's computer. Because this last mile is so expensive and so regulation-burdened, new ISPs are almost an impossibility -- only existing telco and cable players who have access and right-of-way over poles and lines can do it.

With Wi-fi, the last mile is for all practical purposes free. Anyone who has an upstream trunk (a T1 or ISDN or really even cable or DSL) can set up a wireless network for those around them. I personally resell my T1 connection (and believe me that was an absolute b**ch to get installed in an apartment) through a wireless LAN to a lot of people on my block and make a modest profit doing it. Frankly, it's capitalism at its best: I offer a better product than the big guys (since they can actually rely on me to show up and fix problems when I say I will) so I get the business.

Large corporations, we must remember, are very anti-free-market. They want control and predictability, which is precisely the one thing an actual free market offers nobody. So, they want to keep me from reselling the T1 (I had to hunt for a carrier that allows reselling; I eventually found Speakeasy which is very good about it). But they aren't nearly as frightened of me as they are of the fact that many DC neighborhoods give free Wifi to their residents. (Incidentally, I have to compete with neighborhood wifi but I still attract business because I have better bandwidth and faster service -- again, free market at work, and I welcome the neighborhood wifi both because it spurs a better quality product from me and because it expands the market greatly; once people have free wifi I can sell them on how much better mine is, whereas when they had nothing it was a harder sell).

Once upon a time, utilities (by which I mean all common carriers) were treated as utilities; as routes and commodities managed by semi-public firms in the public interest. Sometime back in the early '80s (think AT&T) it got into a bunch of conservatives' heads that a profit motive would make for better service. I think we've disproven that. Public Wifi is a great development and I hope more places adopt it (like I said, what it means for me is more potential customers). But it plays into the whole net neutrality/Internet grab that's going on right now.

[crispini]

12. What kind of a Wi-Fi router do you have that's so strong?

I don't think I could get my signal much beyond my immediate neighbors. Do you have a repeater or something?

Shit, I might do that. I'd love to have a T1 and that could make it practical. How much did your T1 cost?

[Recursion]

15. Just 4 WRT54G's with repeaters

They have a pretty good range (though I'm sure the boosters are giving me a tumor as we speak...) I have one WRT54G in each corner of my apartment, and they provide excellent coverage for about 1 block in each direction, including the 7-story apartment building across the street. I also use different channels to avoid some contention -- I have no idea why every single home-use WLAN I've ever seen is on channel 6 and channel 6 only.

The T-1 is $400 per month, give or take (usage makes it vary somewhat), and I get about $600 per month from my clients. Not a bad deal really, but probably only practical with a pretty dense area like I live in.

[NashVegas]

17. Congrats! You're the New Version of the Neighborhood Plummer

I don't get wireless, but I use a small, independent ISP for my DSL. A re-seller. If there's a real problem, he'll come over and we'll have a glass of wine or two while he takes care of it.

[WiseButAngrySara]

18. Thanks for this. I still don't understand all of it, but it sounds as if you will

be able to answer a question that I've had recently. I moved from an apartment complex that had free wireless internet connections, and installed a card for it on my computer (which I think already had a card...there was another one installed when I set the computer up for the one that the apartment complex had sold). The house I moved to had no cable or internet comnnections so I had them install cable inet connections. I don't think I'm even using the cable at this point as I'm still on the wireless, albeit at a very low signal strength (Wireless network connection (2Wired62)w/speed of 11 Mbps and 'low' signal strength is what the icon tells me) I have another icon which says WLAN Utility, but I have not understood what this icon was for as I didn't need it in the apartment complex. Since I've moved I think I'm just picking up 'free wireless' ..Is this possible? Maybe I don't need the cable internet connection at all. I've been at this new physical address for about a week and haven't had time to check into it because I've had a zillion things to do.

What is a T1?

[Recursion]

19. You're probably using your neighbor's wireless

Something like 80% or so of home wireless users don't take even basic measures to secure their network, with the consequence that people can maliciously or accidentally (in your case) use their network and their connection.

So, in a practical sense, you don't need cable or DSL since you're getting a connection through your neighbors. In a moral sense you probably "need" it in the sense that most of us don't want to use things that someone else is paying for without their permission.

A T1 is a type of internet connection that allows an order of magnitude more data per second than cable or DSL.

[WiseButAngrySara]

20. Oh thanks again! If it is a neighbors, I'll use the cable once

I figure out how to set up the computer for it. Too bad it's not the 'free' internet you talked about.

You've really helped a lot.

[Recursion]

21. Covet not thy neighbor's wifi

Sorry; couldn't resist.

[WiseButAngrySara]

22. ROFL!!! ....n/t

[wicket]

6. K & R

:kick:

[TommyO]

7. It was Verizon that killed the possibility of public Wi-Fi

here in PA. They pushed legislation that prohibited publicly (aka local government) funded Wi-Fi without the local carrier's permission. ARGH!!!

[tuvor]

8. Supposedly, it's a tool favoured by terrorists...

Wi-Fi terror menaces Vancouver

City cops braced for laptop jihad

By Lewis Page
Published Thursday 22nd February 2007 11:06 GMT

International terrorists with a grudge against the winter sports community are believed to be clearing their diaries in preparation for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games, to be held in Vancouver.

It is feared that the miscreants may be plotting nefarious uses for the city's mooted free/low-cost wireless network.

The Vancouver Sun reports that much of the municipal infrastructure is to make use of the proposed net, including "gas meters, bus services...and traffic signals", hinting at a possible Italian Job-style gridlock caper.

The Vancouver police are worried, too. Computer crime investigator Detective Mark Fenton is quoted as saying: "Putting those vital links on the same network, you are opening yourself up to terrorist attack...it's not just conceivable, it has happened." Fenton works for the computer investigative support unit of the city's financial crimes section.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/22/wifi_terror_vancouver/

[lectrobyte]

10. Give me a break. I think every thing out there can be used by terrorists,

including Wal*Mart. Isn't that the boxcutter store of record for the 911 hijackings?

[sutz12]

14. They used to say the same crap about cell phones...

"The drug sellers are using cell phones to arrange and consummate drug deals."

Generally when they are pushing some new expensive "security" system they want the taxpayers to foot the bill for.

It's using the Luddite argument to keep the public ill-informed and scared.

[formercia]

9. Verizon has been playing games in Maine too

We have ADSL via Verizon but the additional phone charges have driven us to the point of going wireless. This would fit in with their driving the market to their brand of wireless internet since they have put their land lines up for sale (sale pending) and they will focus their business model on wireless technology.

[sutz12]

13. Aren't other countries like Korea and Japan about a brazillian miles ahead of us on this?

I seem to recall a recent Bill Moyers special that said that "free" (that is govt provided) WiFi was the norm all over Korea and Japan. It showed also how some small American towns were trying to implement it and were getting huge problems from the big providers.

That "final mile" mentioned above is a revenue stream that the providers don't want bypassed. The truth is that in many, if not most, rural and small town areas, WiFi would be much more efficient than trying to string wires in for high speed access. All you need is a tower or two, with some router support and voila! eveybody is set. All they need to buy is their own personal link to hook up their own computer. The same is true of urban areas, too, where the cost of stringing high performance wire or cable is much higher than that of essentially hooking up cell sites and wireless systems.

Follow the money. We're probably a decade behind countries like Japan and Korea, and falling farther behind by the year.

[B3Nut]

16. We're also behind Eastern Bloc countries like Romania

where you'll find even tiny flats with 10-megabit Internet connectivity. It's frankly embarrasing, but we don't invest in technological infrastructure or decent education. The "ruling classes" (for want of a better term) want dumb burger-flippers and cannon fodder, ideally held in the thrall of complete superstition. They don't want the common folk to truly get ahold of truly free information and Enlightenment thinking...you can't rule a man who thinks for himself. Europe for the most part, even Eastern Europe, is mostly secular and highly technologically advanced. Over here, we're stumbling into a New Dark Age. America's too busy dealing death and corporate greed to contribute anything valuable to humanity, it often seems. We could be so much better than this, but alas...

Todd in Cheesecurdistan