More On WiFi
posted on july 3, 2003, tag: tech
I need to clarify a few things [in this entry] because I posted hastily. First of all, I am not whining. I don't know why this keeps coming up. People keep making some random assumption that I'm crying about how things I want aren't free. That's not it at all. I'm more upset that I don't have any way to make something like this happen (since I don't have broadband at home yet!), and that others who do don't match my mindset on the matter. Second, let me answer some questions I've received about this whole thing:
Who is paying for it? I am. You are. Anyone who participates is. The idea is not that everything will be free. That couldn't work. The idea is that I help contribute to the free WiFi, and you do too. That way, when I'm in my apartment or on my street, I have a WiFi connection. At this point, I'm paying for it. When you come to my house or my street you can use my connection. Then, when I go to your house or your street or your neighborhood, you're paying for it and I can use your connection. Now imagine many other people in-between our streets each sharing their WiFi and you have a connection all over. I'm willing to pay for/share my connection if it means I will be able to use my PowerBook all over the place.
Can it be non-metered and sustainable as a business? I'm not quite sure what this means, but I think I'm being asked if free WiFi could provide its own self-sustaining value. In that case, no, absolutely not. But that's not the point at all. This is a community powered—more so individually powered—idea that does not have anything to do with creating/maintaining/running a company. The idea here is not to incorporate or create a formal group of individuals, but rather the opposite. To get a group of people together who are all willing to donate something to creating a free WiFi network. Whether it's bandwidth, money, time, etcetera—that's what this is about. Of course it's not sustainable as a business. If you had 20 people keeping up this network and 10 of them left, it would probably fall apart. I'm not interested in creating a business, though.
As far as making your connection public being a violation of your cable/dsl company's Terms of Service—this is true. And an issue. Although I think this was brought up less for a point of "illegality" than it was for a point of "someone's paying for it," meaning that by violating your cable TOS, you are, in essence, making your cable company pay for the free WiFi you're creating. I don't really think this is true, however. While you would be violating the TOS in a very technical way, you wouldn't be creating a significant amount of overage in your daily use. For instance—having an Airport Extreme Base Station at home allows me to broadcast my Internet bandwidth to up to 50 computers in my house. This is already not how ISPs had intended their services to be used, but they have ratified their TOS over the years to allow for homes to use wireless connections for multiple computers.
I think that I could create just as much use by myself with three machines on my home network (by downloading big files constantly, or something like that) than I could if I just didn't set a password on my APE base station and let people in the area connect to it. The point of this whole thing is not to create a network for extreme usage (this is not all an idea for MP3 downloading and porn searching), but a network that allows for normal Internet connectivity in lots of places.
I keep hammering at this topic because I think it's a good idea. I don't think I'm out of line here, and I don't think what I'm saying is impossible to do or anything of the sort. I feel like I need to find some people who actually agree with me and would be willing to try starting something like this. I dunno, maybe I'm also just crazy. It seems like most people who comment just don't want to hear about it and wish I would stop talking. That's fine—I don't think you're the right audience then, for this kind of conversation. I'll keep this to myself in the future.
Comments
There are 3 comments, comments are closed
Ryan Powers on 07/03/2003:
er, i think its a fantastic idea.
and why is everyone so worried about the ISPs anyway?
pete on 07/04/2003:
Shawn made some valid points and, in my opinion you've answered them well.
to extend you point on TOS though i think if enough people made their networks available then the ISP's would be forced to amend their TOS in the same manner of your airport example. if 50%+ of an ISP's customers are doing this then are they going to lose half of their business? i don't think so. more likely it'll be "ok, you can do this but..." and add some limitations or something.
i think the open source software community is a good example of people doing something without necessarily(sp?) expecting to be rewarded monetarily, although an awful lot of people seem to misunderstand the GPL but thats an issue for another day.
you'll see people spending time (and sometimes money) producing software either for the interest or love of doing it, or for the recognition or some other factor. it seems to work here. why not for the WiFi community?
and garrett, as to your last paragraph. write what you feel like. it's your site. if a post doesn't interest me i don't read it.
Linus on 07/06/2003:
I really feel like this is the way things will, or at least should, be done in the future. Personally, right now if I'm out somewhere and I need to get on the net, I go to a cyber cafe. The number of them seems to increase all the time. However this isn't very efficient (usually I'd have to pay for an hour or a half-hour, even if I just needed access for 5 minutes) or convenient (I still have to find one and get there somehow). The idea of just being able to whip out a notebook or PDA anywhere in the city and check on something is fantastic. So I completely support you. Although there's nothing much I can do. :)
Also, I agree with Pete. Write whatever you want on your site. People who aren't the right audience (who don't care and wish you'd stop bitching) should just save themselves some time and not bother reading. However, I don't think even Shawn is one of these people — disagreement is fine, as long as it's constructive.