[azipa] "Unchaining the Net" (fwd)
der.hans
PLUGd@LuftHans.com
Sat, 2 Dec 2000 12:26:51 -0700 (MST)
moin, moin,
pretty cool. We'd need hundreds of antennas to cover Phoenix, though...
cioa,
der.hans
--
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# "... the social skills of a cow on acid." - der.hans
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 2 Dec 2000 10:49:02 -0700
From: Ed Nusbaum <ed@azipa.org>
To: AZIPA Discussion List <azipa@egroups.com>
Subject: [azipa] "Unchaining the Net"
Anyone up for climbing on some rooftops? ;-)
http://salon.com/tech/feature/2000/12/01/wireless_ethernet/print.html
Unchaining the Net
Call it the "free-network movement": Grass-roots hardware hackers are
creating a wireless wonderland with megabits of connectivity for all.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Damien Cave
Dec. 1, 2000 | Matt Westervelt and three of his friends had tinkering on
their minds when they started building their own high-speed wireless
network in June. Climbing on the roofs of their Seattle homes, building
antennas and trying to make them work with Ethernet protocols sounded like
fun. Plus, if the whole shebang actually worked, they figured they'd be
able to access their home computer files from the local cafe, play
Net-based games while sitting on each other's couches and stream video onto
their personal data assistants -- all at speeds of up to 11 megabits per
second, far faster than what cellphone operators or other wireless
providers offered.
"To be honest, we just thought it was pretty cool," says Westervelt, a
28-year-old systems administrator at RealNetworks who spearheaded the
effort.
Westervelt's crew isn't the only group of geeks who have caught the
wireless Ethernet infrastructure bug, who are, as the Wall Street Journal
put it, "taking indoor wireless technology outside." Community-based
wireless efforts like Guerrilla.net of Cambridge, Mass., Consume.net of
London and SFLan in San Francisco are steadily gathering grass-roots power.
In Seattle, Westervelt's one-time summer hobby now has a name (Seattle
Wireless), a Web site and over 30 participants.
"It's taken on a momentum of its own," says James Stevens, founder of
Consume.net. "There has been quite a rush toward what we're doing."
Call it "the free-network movement" -- a bubbled-up-from-the-underground
effort to spread high-bandwidth wireless connectivity everywhere. In their
attempt to create a user-generated alternative to a top-down industry -- in
this case, telecom -- initiatives like Seattle Wireless and Guerrilla.net
look a lot like the original Napster, the Web itself or the world of free
software. The free-software movement, in fact, is a working model for many
wireless Ethernet pioneers. Many people involved -- including über-geek
Brewster Kahle, founder of SFLan -- view it as free software's newfound
twin: open-source development of operational antennas rather than operating
systems.
But building what Kahle calls "a citywide wireless LAN that grows from
anarchistic cooperation" isn't as simple as contributing code to Linux.
Participants must have not just time and patience, but also the soldering
skills of an electrician, not to mention the ability to work on rooftops
without falling. Ultimately, "it's all a bit dangerous," Stevens admits.
It's also expensive. Although these networks send signals along the free
public radio spectrum, Westervelt says that new users must have two
computers to get started -- and then they still usually have to cough up
about $800 to buy all the components needed to get hooked up. Even the fact
that they use 802.11b protocols -- the wireless version of Ethernet, a
standard used in most computers and almost all local-area networks or LANs
-- hasn't managed to make the system all that cheap.
And buying into the network is no guarantee of stellar service. The signals
flow in the range of 2.4 gigahertz, a frequency that microwaves and other
devices like X10 wireless webcams also use -- thus "dirtying" the spectrum
and slowing down connection speeds. Rain and walls also clog the pipes. If
you're not in the antennas' line of sight, you may not get service at all
since the signals can't pass through concrete.
But if the free-network movement is anything like the free-software
movement, maybe these early obstacles are just bugs in the system that will
be fixed by an ever-burgeoning community of wireless Ethernet enthusiasts.
Wireless by the people, for the people.
Guerrilla.net has been around since 1996 -- but the growth in interest in
creating community-based telecom has, by all accounts, exploded over the
past year and a half. Not surprisingly, the spark for all this activity
lies with advances in the realm of bits and bytes. People are building
wireless Ethernet networks because they finally can, says Bob Metcalfe, the
creator of Ethernet and a founder of 3Com. "Until recently, wireless
Ethernets have been technologically undoable," he says. This is no longer
the case because Moore's Law -- the idea that processing speeds will double
every 18 months -- has struck again, seeping beyond microchips and into
networks.
Specifically, Ethernet's rise set the stage for the present rooftop dramas.
When Ethernet gained enough of a critical mass about two years ago to
become the de facto standard for all local area networks, the prospects for
the wireless world changed drastically. Businesses and colleges started to
consider campus-wide wireless networks at the same time as wireless modems
began appearing on the market. Then, in the summer of 1999, Apple started
bundling an AirPort wireless antenna into a handful of its laptops and the
G4 desktop. This decision to bundle, hackers say, changed everything. It
legitimized wireless connectivity and made mainstream consumers aware for
the first time that their laptops need not necessarily be tethered.
It also gave hackers easy access to an otherwise hard-to-find piece of
technology that they needed: the antenna connector. To date, the antenna
connector remains the key ingredient to any successful wireless network,
says Bob Keyes, a security consultant in Cambridge, Mass., who was one of
the four founders who launched Guerrilla.net. It is the link between a home
computer and the cable that runs to a roof antenna -- the glue that holds
the network together. The 2.4 gigahertz antennas -- tree-and-branch wonders
that resemble TV antennas but are small enough to fit in a backpack --
don't come with these little doohickeys, which meant that wireless-obsessed
geeks had to dig them up at ham radio boutiques or commercial wireless
providers.
Now they just have to dig them out of an Apple computer. This is a
significant change. Whereas the old connectors were expensive, hard to find
and difficult to make work with a computer as opposed to, say, a
television, the new Apple connectors require far less hassle. "We usually
just get the computers from friends, open them up and just pull out the
antenna and the connector," Keyes says. Tape it to a cable, solder that to
a rooftop antenna (through a more generic connector called an SMA) and the
network is up and running. Simply tweak the network configurations on a
Palm VII or another Web-enabled device like a laptop with a wireless modem
and your home-based files are accessible -- via air, which as Keyes notes
"is very cool."
The total cost: about $800, a third of what it would have run a few years ago.
The Net is also available through these networks, in conjunction with an
established ISP. Free-software model or not, wireless Ethernet enthusiasts
may be building their own alternative infrastructure, but they are not
aiming to completely reinvent the Net. Westervelt, for example, says that
Seattle Wireless wants to "coexist with ISPs." He envisions being able to
use the home-built network when he's in town, a hard-wired connection when
he's at home and a traditional cellular uplink when he's traveling. "We're
not trying to put ISPs out of business," he says. "We need them."
Still, Jupiter Research broadband analyst Dylan Brooks sees wireless
Ethernet activity as a wake-up call, a creative protest against today's
telecom status quo, and the more militant participants agree. They talk not
just of fun and AirPorts but also of present-day problems that they'd like
to see fixed -- like the nagging irritation that cellphones don't work in
some conference centers or the widespread dissatisfaction that it takes
some consumers months to get DSL installation.
Just give them the chance, they argue, and they could fix all these bugs by
applying their open-source development model. Everything that these groups
do is open to the public. It's a teach-and-be-taught ideal that mimics how
free software is created, but runs completely counter to the telecom
business model.
"The Internet grew because millions of companies added infrastructure to
the Net," Kahle says, yet "the telco model is that a single company adds
all the infrastructure." This is the reason that you can't get faster data
service on your cellphone or connect easily in an office building. It's not
that these tasks are technologically impossible; it's just that "the
monopoly system gets good enough and then the incumbent plays defense,"
Kahle says. In contrast, an open approach "allows hot spots to be improved
organically."
Choice is what matters most to these wireless gurus. The goal is to give
users power over their own forms of communication, says Keyes of
Guerrilla.net. "The free-software movement made it so you could control
your computer," he says. "This movement -- the free-network movement --
gives you control over infrastructure. It gives you a choice of how you
want to connect." And maybe someday, adds Westervelt, these networks will
even be used as the model "so that if you live in a developing country and
you want a network, you'll be able to build it yourself," he says. "All the
information will be there."
Of course, for now, these hopes are nothing but sci-fi fantasies. None of
these initiatives has more than 30 antennas up and running, not nearly
enough to cover their metropolitan areas.
But people like Westervelt remain upbeat. Wireless notebook-size Web-pads
using Ethernet connections will appear next year, and if the Federal
Communications Commission allocated a specific part of the spectrum for
nonprofit telecoms, the movement could take off. Plus, they argue, there
are other, more subtle benefits. Setting up the network isn't just "cool"
because of what it can offer in the virtual world, says Westervelt. Indeed,
a large part of the fun derives from the fact that it's a healthy
alternative to cyberspace's lack of a material reality. It's physical, a
hands-on, "MacGyver"-like attempt to create giant brains, and thus, it's a
lot of fun.
"We sit behind screens all day," he says. "Getting up on a roof and
sticking an antenna on is so great because it's a change. We're not just
tinkering anymore, we're meeting new friends and getting some air."
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer
Damien Cave is a staff writer for Salon Technology.
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