Where Good Wi-Fi Makes Good Neighbors
October 21, 2004
By IAN KELDOULIS
MOHIT SANTRAM, a student at New York University, happily
shares his high-speed Internet connection with whoever taps
the wireless signal available within about 300 feet of his
apartment in the East Village.
But Mr. SantRam offers more than just the opportunity to
piggyback anonymously on an Internet connection. People
picking up his signal are first directed to a bulletin
board where they can post and read neighborhood information
and gossip.
This arrangement comes courtesy of Neighbornode, a project
created by John Geraci that is part of a bare-bones
software package provided by NYCWireless, a volunteer
advocacy group instrumental in turning places like Bryant
Park into public hot spots. The group is encouraging people
to set up their own hot spots and electronic bulletin
boards to let communities of otherwise anonymous urbanites
find one another.
In Mr. SantRam's case, he discovered a neighbor who had the
same favorite band. A trip to a Boston to hear them
followed, and the neighbor made a small donation toward Mr.
SantRam's monthly Internet access bill. Other residents
have used his Neighbornode to complain about the block's
noise problems and formulate action.
"One guy wrote to me and thanked me," Mr. SantRam said
about a user who logged on from a nearby cafe while
visiting from San Francisco. "He sent money to pay for the
cost. It was nice."
Providing this level of interactivity on a small-scale
wireless node used to require a large-scale understanding
of Unix. But Mr. Geraci, a graduate student in N.Y.U.'s
interactive telecommunications program, said the goal in
creating Neighbornode was to make the process easier. "If
you can install Microsoft Word on your computer, you can
set up a community hot spot," he said.
Instructions, open-source firewall software called M0n0wall
and other files are at www.nycwireless.net/hotspot. While a
dedicated computer is required, just about any old machine
will do.
And the equipment needed is nothing like the clutter
formerly necessary to do the job. "Before I got this
working," Rob Kelley said of the newly configured node he
runs from his Chelsea apartment, "I used six appliances, a
bunch of routing and an antenna set. I ran two wireless
networks, an internal network and my own local server."
It was the type of mess only an I.T. project manager like
him could live with. Mr. Kelley currently runs his
Neighbornode hot spot on a Soekris 4511, a small
single-chip computer without a hard drive that sells for
about $200. "Now all I have is two small boxes and
relatively decent-looking antenna," he said. "My wife is
really happy."
Free community access appeals to more than people who
consider themselves guerrilla techies. For over a year,
Judith Escalona has been exploring ways to bring Wi-Fi to
East 106th Street between Lexington and Third Avenues, the
location of MediaNoche, a new-media gallery and digital
film studio of which she is co-director.
At the beginning of this month, Ms. Escalona attended a
workshop on setting up community nodes offered by
NYCWireless, and she was impressed. The gallery already
provides wireless access inside, but ultimately she wants
to "blanket the whole area." Neighbornode, she said, may
fit the bill.
As with other Wi-Fi projects, there are concerns. For some
people, opening their virtual space means a loss of
privacy. Mr. SantRam, for instance, no longer does his
Internet banking from home, since others have access to the
Internet through his system. Instead, he trusts the
landlines of the computers at his school. Mr. Geraci and
Dana Spiegel, a director of NYCWireless, feel that with
standard security measures and common sense, there should
be few if any problems.
Another fear is that precious bandwidth will be soaked up
by thirsty neighbors, and monthly access charges will
skyrocket. Monowall permits the person who sets up the hot
spot to allocate bandwidth and maintain a healthy personal
reserve.
If these do-it-yourself nodes catch on, a new form of urban
communication may emerge, taking advantage of the
coincidence that a Wi-Fi hot spot and a city block are
roughly the same size.
"Different nodes as they get set up can talk to each
other," Mr. Geraci said. "They can forward information from
one to the next. You get this grapevine of information at
the street level."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/21/technology/circuits/21spot.html?
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