[MLB-WIRELESS] Fw: [2600-AU] FW: NYTimes.com Article: Good (or Unwitting) Neighbors Make for Good Internet Access (fwd)

[sanbar]

Hmm, high-density housing *does* have its benefits.
- Barry

----- Original Message -----
From: "black-hand" <black at wiretapped.net>
To: <2600-list at wiretapped.net>
Sent: Friday, March 08, 2002 2:12 AM
Subject: [2600-AU] FW: NYTimes.com Article: Good (or Unwitting) Neighbors
Make for Good Internet Access (fwd)


>
>
> Good (or Unwitting) Neighbors Make for Good Internet Access
>
> March 4, 2002
>
> By AMY HARMON
>
>
>
>
> When David Sarno moved to a new apartment on the Upper West Side of
> Manhattan recently, he learned he would have to wait several weeks for
> the phone company to install a fast Internet connection. But after
> opening his laptop, he discovered with a surge of delight that he was
> already able to check his e-mail and call up Web sites at lightning-fast
> speeds.
>
> Someone nearby had Wi-Fi, the technology behind the short-range,
> inexpensive and often unsecured wireless networks that are rapidly
> sprinkling the nation with sweet spots of airborne high-speed Internet
> access.
>
> "Thank God for my neighbor, whoever he may be," said Mr.
> Sarno, 29, who has taken advantage of similar serendipitous connections
> from a hotel room in Cambridge, Mass., and a street corner in downtown
> Manhattan.
>
> For Internet enthusiasts, Wi-Fi is manna from heaven. The technology -
> known in engineering parlance as 802.11 - has been around a few years.
> But with a recent proliferation of wireless data networks in homes,
> businesses and public spaces, growing numbers of people who have
> properly equipped laptops now find themselves able to tie into the
> Internet on the run, courtesy - knowingly or unknowingly - of someone
> else.
>
> >From business travelers to a new breed of bandwidth
> hackers, people are surfing the Web and collecting e-mail
> at airport lounges, coffee shops, park benches and bed.
>
> "Wi-Fi sort of came out of nowhere," said Tim Bajarin, president of
> Creative Strategies, a technology industry consultant. "But it's growing
> like wildfire."
>
> Wi-Fi, short for wireless fidelity, works a lot like a
> cordless phone. The D.S.L. or cable Internet line, instead
> of connecting directly to a computer, is plugged into a
> small radio transmitter. Any computer with a receiver in a radius of
> about 300 feet can potentially pick up the signal.
>
> Many of the free rides these days are the result of
> bandwidth bleeding from private networks that are intended
> to let their owners connect to the Internet without being tethered to a
> fixed spot in a home or office.
>
> Because the great majority of these wireless networks have
> not been secured, it is easy for neighbors and passers-by
> to use them undetected - although if enough freeloaders download large
> enough files, legitimate users will notice their own connections are
> been degraded.
>
> The popularity of 802.11 has also begun to inspire the construction of
> networks that are intended to be shared, either free or for a fee.
>
> "It's a fantastic thing," said Simon Skelly, who recently hooked up a
> Wi- Fi network to the high-speed Internet line in his apartment in the
> West Village in Manhattan so he - and anyone else - can work from the
> two cafes down the street. "It would be great if we could get the
> majority of Manhattan covered."
>
> Mr. Skelly is one of several hundred wireless enthusiasts across the
> country who have listed the locations of their Wi-Fi networks on a Web
> site called freenetworks.org.
>
> One of the site's supporters, a nonprofit group called nycwireless.org,
> recently persuaded the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation to jettison a
> plan to provide Internet cables in a small area of the park, in Midtown
> Manhattan. Instead, the restoration group will finance the installation
> of an 802.11 network designed to bathe the entire park in bandwidth this
> summer.
>
> "We thought it would make people want to stay in the park," said Daniel
> A. Biederman, executive director of the restoration group, a private
> organization that oversees the park.
>
> It may well do that. At the University of Akron, Internet
> use spiked to three times its previous level when the
> school installed Wi-Fi transmitters throughout the campus
> over the last year.
>
> In San Francisco, community- minded entrepreneurs have set
> up a wireless "cloud" over parts of the Presidio, which residents and
> visitors can use free. And Tallahassee, Fla., has perched 50 Wi-Fi
> transmitters on street lights and traffic signals in a five-block area
> around the State Capitol complex. For now, legislators and others in the
> area have free access, but the city plans to charge for the service
> eventually.
>
> The wireless buzz is being driven largely by the plummeting price of
> 802.11 equipment. Wireless network cards that slip into laptops now cost
> less than $90, and many new computers come with the technology built in.
> Wi-Fi transmitters cost less than $150, half the price Apple Computer
> (news/quote) initially charged for its AirPort model - one of the first
> to market - in late 1999. Antennas that can extend a network's average
> range by several miles can be bought for as little as $40.
>
> Moreover, because 802.11 networks send data over an
> unlicensed slice of the radio spectrum, there are no
> additional fees for the transmissions once the equipment
> and wired Internet connection have been paid for. That has
> led to some of the more ambitious plans to create extended access areas.
>
>
> The unwelcome competition is one reason the
> telecommunications industry, which has paid billions of
> dollars for spectrum licenses to provide various wireless services to
> consumers, has concerns about the popularity of Wi-Fi.
>
> Several of the major cable and phone companies that provide
> high- speed wired connections to the Internet say customers
> are violating their service agreements - and perhaps
> breaking the law - by letting others outside a given
> household piggyback using 802.11.
>
> "Anyone who is using it that way would basically be
> stealing," a spokesman for Time Warner Cable said of those
> who patch into its Road Runner cable modem service. "It's
> the same thing as cable theft."
>
> Those who use cable theft as an analogy point to federal
> law, which prohibits anyone from receiving communications offered over a
> cable system unless authorized by the cable operator.
>
> But how the law will apply to the new technology has not
> yet been tested. Some legal experts say using stray Wi-Fi signals is
> like trespassing. Others say the burden of securing the network may lie
> with its owner, as it does with satellite broadcasters. It is not a
> crime to tune in to unscrambled satellite programs, but it is illegal to
> crack the encryption of scrambled broadcasts.
>
> For the practitioners of a new sport called "war driving"
> or "net stumbling," the finer legal points may be better
> left unexamined. With free software called NetStumbler and
> a small electronic global positioning device, war drivers
> seek to detect wireless networks and map their coordinates
> by walking or driving past them.
>
> Engineers at National Semiconductor (news/quote) used such
> a setup recently and found 800 Wi-Fi networks in a 14- mile stretch of
> Silicon Valley in California. More than 70 percent of them were
> unsecured, a number that matches those reported by less-professional
> surveyors in urban areas from San Diego to Salt Lake City.
>
> The nationwide map at Netstumbler.com lists more than
> 10,000 unsecured Wi-Fi networks, all supplied by the
> growing corps of security experts and "researchers" who use
> the software.
>
> "Whoa!" wrote one New York stumbler on the site's message boards.
> "Anyone see the network in the concourse in Rockefeller Center right
> near the food public sit-down area?" (Yes, it works.)
>
> One student at the New Jersey Institute of Technology who declined to
> give his full name, said he regularly found oases of access while
> waiting for trains in Newark. Not at Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan,
> however: "The nearest connection is nearly four blocks away," he said.
>
> But for all the Wi-Fi networks that are plundered without permission,
> there is growing evidence that people are willing to pay for wireless
> Internet access.
>
> Marie Forleo, an executive coach who lives in the West
> Village, has memorized the hours and locations of all the Starbucks
> (news/quote) coffee shops in the neighborhood since she discovered last
> month that they provide Wi- Fi access. She has used up her 30- minute
> free trial and pays Starbucks $2.95 for 15 minutes when she needs to
> check her e-mail.
>
> "It's less than a grande Frappuccino," Ms. Forleo said.
>
>
> Wayport, a wireless provider that has connections in 450
> hotels and several airports, including San Jose, Calif.,
> and Dallas-Fort Worth, saw a 230 percent growth in use from
> the third quarter to the fourth last year. In recent
> months, several corporate customers have bought accounts
> for $19.95 a month for each user to provide employees with
> a way to be productive while logging longer airport hours.
>
> Sky Dayton, the founder of EarthLink (news/quote), one of
> the nation's largest Internet service providers, decided
> that there would be enough demand for Wi-Fi to start a new company
> called Boingo Wireless, which last month began selling a service that
> makes it easy for consumers to find wireless hot spots and connect to
> them.
>
> According to IDC, a technology market research firm, the
> market for Wi-Fi cards and equipment grew to $1.1 billion
> last year from $600 million in 1999. About 7 million
> wireless cards were sold last year, a number IDC expects to grow to 25
> million by 2005.
>
> Mr. Sarno, for one, plans to set up his own unsecured Wi-Fi network as
> soon as he gets his Internet connection.
>
> "You share your Internet access, and I share mine," he
> said. "That's the whole idea."
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/04/technology/04WIRE.html?ex=1016516407&e
> i=1&en=c74a29b5b73fa568
>
>
>
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