Re: CNN.com - WiFi activists on free Web crusade - Nov. 29, 2002 (fwd)
On Mon, 2 Dec 2002, Eugen Leitl wrote: Of course it should be given an unique IP address. Actually there is no reason that a fixed IP is ever used. You actually don't even need a fixed hostname (at least above the per-connection level, you do it for convenience). -- We don't see things as they are, [EMAIL PROTECTED] we see them as we are. www.ssz.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] Anais Nin www.open-forge.org
Re: CNN.com - WiFi activists on free Web crusade - Nov. 29, 2002 (fwd)
On Mon, 2 Dec 2002, David Howe wrote: I think what I am trying to say is - given a normal internet user using IPv4 software that wants to connect to someone in the cloud, how does he identify *to his software* the machine in the cloud if that machine is not given a unique IP address? few if any IPv4 packages can address anything more complex than a IPv4 dotted quad (or if given a DNS name, will resolve same to a dotted quad) You don't. What you'll need is an extension to the current software, which is woefully inadequate for distributed/cloud/grid processing. It was never designed to do this sort of stuff. Plan 9 solves all these, plus you get to keep your IPv4 and IPv6 (not that it's of any real use in that environment). -- We don't see things as they are, [EMAIL PROTECTED] we see them as we are. www.ssz.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] Anais Nin www.open-forge.org
Re: CDR: Re: CNN.com - WiFi activists on free Web crusade - Nov.29, 2002 (fwd)
On Sat, 30 Nov 2002, Dave Howe wrote: Jim Choate wrote: On Sat, 30 Nov 2002, Dave Howe wrote: The scaling problem is a valid one up to a point. The others are not. The biggest problem is people trying to do distributed computing using non-distributed os'es (eg *nix clones and Microsloth). not as such, no. the vast majority of free internet cloud users couldn't care less about computer resources and/or distributed computing They don't careYet! see... Smart Mobs: The next social revolution H. Rheingold ISBN 0-7386-0608-3 Leonardo's Laptop: Human needs and the computing technologies B. Shneiderman ISDN 0-262-19476-7 As to the other points you make, they are all addressible and are in fact being implemented now using existing technology. -- We don't see things as they are, [EMAIL PROTECTED] we see them as we are. www.ssz.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] Anais Nin www.open-forge.org
Re: CNN.com - WiFi activists on free Web crusade - Nov. 29, 2002(fwd)
On Sun, 1 Dec 2002, Tyler Durden wrote: Photons are bosons, so they don't interact with each other. Generally, don't forget 'entanglement' which is clearly interacting with each other ;) Well, by interfere I meant in the detectors of course. So are you telling me that two WiFi receivers pointed in different directions will not receive the same information? I don't think WiFi (IR) is all that directional is it? If it is, then maybe we CAN have a new LAN segment. It all depends on the antenna. If you use a Pringle Can kludge they are quite directional. There is at least a couple of the Austin Wireless group who have worked with other groups to build a phased array assembly that allows 801.11b to reach several miles instead of several hundred feet. It claims to be able to handle multiple connections. Haven't had a chance to look at it and see if it really works as advertised. Several of Hangar 18 are currently working on 'Open Air Optical Network' serial adapters that will work with Linux, Plan 9, Winblows, etc. Just about anything that will do SLIP or PPP over a serial port and has line of sight for he lasers. Our next project along these lines is to start using 900MHz radios to increase the 'backbone' range. The idea here is to expand the current 'regular Internet' backbone for open-forge.org (two sites seperated by about six miles using ISDN, with one site using a T1 to access the regular network). When we get this up we should have about six to eight major 'backbone' sites scattered around Austin using 900MHz to connect to the T1. Our current backbone project is created by several commercial entitites and individuals using non-consumer AUP's (for 'free', we use Tit-for-Tat, we only interact with other 'producers' not 'consumers' - the idea is to promote others to handle the fan-out to a larger user community). We've got nodes in several states. We're currently looking at setting up the auth servers so that we can better manage resources and access. We've got somewhere in the neighborhood of about 40 machines in the pool. We'll be using not only the traditional DNS but also custom namespaces (accessed through VPN Gateways). We're also building a pool of 'community accessible' process servers (ala Plan 9). -- We don't see things as they are, [EMAIL PROTECTED] we see them as we are. www.ssz.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] Anais Nin www.open-forge.org
Re: CNN.com - WiFi activists on free Web crusade - Nov. 29, 2002 (fwd)
at Monday, December 02, 2002 8:42 AM, Eugen Leitl [EMAIL PROTECTED] was seen to say: No, an orthogonal identifier is sufficient. In fact, DNS loc would be a good start. I think what I am trying to say is - given a normal internet user using IPv4 software that wants to connect to someone in the cloud, how does he identify *to his software* the machine in the cloud if that machine is not given a unique IP address? few if any IPv4 packages can address anything more complex than a IPv4 dotted quad (or if given a DNS name, will resolve same to a dotted quad) The system can negotiate whatever routing method it uses. If the node doesn't understand geographic routing, it falls back to legacy methods. odds are good that cloud nodes will be fully aware of geographic routing (there are obviously issues there though; given a node that is geographically closer to the required destination, but does not have a valid path to it, purely geographic routing will fail and fail badly; it may also be that the optimum route is a longer but less congested (and therefore higher bandwidth) path than the direct one. For a mental image, imagine a circular cloud with a H shaped hole in it; think about routing between the pockets at top and bottom of the H, now imagine a narrow (low bandwidth) bridge across the crossbar (which is a high cost path for traffic). How do you handle these two cases?
Re: CNN.com - WiFi activists on free Web crusade - Nov. 29, 2002 (fwd)
On Mon, 2 Dec 2002, David Howe wrote: I think what I am trying to say is - given a normal internet user using IPv4 software that wants to connect to someone in the cloud, how does he identify *to his software* the machine in the cloud if that machine is not given a unique IP address? few if any IPv4 packages can Of course it should be given an unique IP address. IPv6 is pretty popular with the ad hoc mesh crowd, btw. It's the only address space where you can still get large address slices for free or nearly so. (The space is probably large enough so that one could really map WGS 84 - IPv6, and have very few direct collisions -- if it wasn't for small well-populated address slices and addresses and networks with magical meaning). But it should also get a geographic address, preferrably one refinable to ~~um scale, if needed. Bits are cheap, right? address anything more complex than a IPv4 dotted quad (or if given a DNS name, will resolve same to a dotted quad) odds are good that cloud nodes will be fully aware of geographic routing (there are obviously issues there though; given a node that is Hopefully, geographically closer to the required destination, but does not have a valid path to it, purely geographic routing will fail and fail badly; it Geographic routing stands and falls with some (simple) connectivity assumptions. These are present in wireless dense node clouds in urban areas. may also be that the optimum route is a longer but less congested (and therefore higher bandwidth) path than the direct one. The connectivity in a line of sight network is not very high, and it is perfectly feasible to maintain a quality metric (latency, bandwidth) for each link. Given short range and high bandwidth within each cell that's not worth the trouble. For a mental image, imagine a circular cloud with a H shaped hole in it; think about routing between the pockets at top and bottom of the H, now imagine a narrow (low bandwidth) bridge across the crossbar (which is a high cost path for traffic). How do you handle these two cases? High-dimensional networks don't block (map a high-dimensional network to Earth surface to see why). But that doesn't help much with current networks, where no satellite clouds are available. It hurts, but for nodes at and nearby the edge one would need to use special case treatment (implementing backpropagating pressure flow, so there would be less incentive to send packets to nodes at a wall).
Re: CNN.com - WiFi activists on free Web crusade - Nov. 29, 2002 (fwd)
On Sat, 30 Nov 2002, Dave Howe wrote: without routing and name services, you have what amounts to a propriatory I believe I mentioned geographic routing (which is actually switching, and not routing) so your packets get delivered, as the crow flies. The question of name services. How often do you actually use a domain name as an end user? Not very often. People typically use a search engine. It doesn't matter how the URI looks like, as long as it can be clicked on, or is short enough to be cut and pasted, or written down on a piece of paper and entered manually, in a pinch. So you need (distributed) searching and document (not machine) address spaces, which current P2P suites create the architecture for. NAT solution - no way to address an interior node on the cloud from the It depends on how large the network is. Wireless is potentially a much bigger node cloud, so the current Internet could became a 'proprietary niche' eventually. However, there is no reason why the nodes wouldn't have a second address, or the IPv6 address would double as a geographic coordinate. At least during the migration. internet (and hence, peer to peer services or any other protocol that requires an inbound connection not directly understood by the nat translation - eg ftp on a non standard port or ssl-encrypted as ftps) Fear not. under ipv6 you can avoid having to have a explicit naming service - the You obviously understand under naming service something other than DNS. cloud id of the card (possibly with a network prefix to identify the cloud as a whole) can *be* the unique name; routing is still an issue but that Anything which relies on global routing tables and their refresh will always has an issue. Which is why geographical local-knowledge routing will dominate global networks. reduces to being able to route to a unique node inside the cloud - which appears from a brief glance at the notes from Morlock Elloi (thanks again :) to have at least a workable trial solution. if a IPv6 internet ever becomes a reality, clouds would fit right in. It is a patch, not a solution. But wireless ad hoc meshes are really a first real reason to go IPv6. TCP/IP tunnelling without a name service at at least one end isn't workable; *static* NAT/PAT is of course a name service and can't be considered, but SOCKS and socks aware p2p is a definite possibility. The best solution would seem to leave the multilingual node the choice of means of delivery. It would be completely transparent to the packet.
Re: CNN.com - WiFi activists on free Web crusade - Nov. 29, 2002 (fwd)
On Sat, 30 Nov 2002, Morlock Elloi wrote: Self-routing mesh networks have potential to sidestep this. Transistors are small and cheap enough even today - the centralised communication infrastructure is there so that you can be charged, not because technology dictates that any more. With wireless there is a potential that everyone paves (and marks street number) in front of their house. The only way to subvert this would be to erase santa monica from minds of everyone. I don't see that happening. The cool part about wireless meshes running geographic routing is that they're self-labelling, and create a grassroot positioning service. It can be coarse, like a node id'iing a cell, or really fine-resolution using relativistic ping to the end-user device (ideally, all nodes, even your handheld, are part of the ad hoc mesh). If your space is labelled, you can just publish a database which allows you to annotate arbitrary 3d coordinate regions with info. Could be proprietary, could be something like a Wiki. Of course, virtual graffiti will result in lot of database defacement, so you have to use prestige accounting to be able to filter out the twits. The day that I can send a packet from LAX to SFO via non-ISP-ed network will be the beginning of the end of telco/telecom monopolies. Or, should I say, directory monopolies. The only way to make this low-latency is relativistic cut-through in the wireless domain with some serious local bandwidth, and some long-range links. Somebody needs to be motivated to haul boxes up the mountain ranges. This needs permits, and dedication, and some $$$s. High-latency low-QoS services should be dead easy, though. There goes SMS...
Re: CNN.com - WiFi activists on free Web crusade - Nov. 29, 2002 (fwd)
Eugen Leitl wrote: On Sat, 30 Nov 2002, Dave Howe wrote: I believe I mentioned geographic routing (which is actually switching, and not routing) so your packets get delivered, as the crow flies. The question of name services. How often do you actually use a domain name as an end user? Not very often. People typically use a search engine. It doesn't matter how the URI looks like, as long as it can be clicked on, or is short enough to be cut and pasted, or written down on a piece of paper and entered manually, in a pinch. ah. Sorry, I don't think of dns as a name service (apart from once removed) - we are talking DHCP or similar routable-address assignment. under ipv6 you can avoid having to have a explicit naming service - the You obviously understand under naming service something other than DNS. yup - I recognise anything as a naming service that allows you to associate a routable name with a node that otherwise has only a mac address; Anything which relies on global routing tables and their refresh will always has an issue. Which is why geographical local-knowledge routing will dominate global networks. Indeed so - but of course the current internet *does* work that way, so any new solution that advertises itself as Free Internet access *must* fit into the current scheme or it is worthless. The best solution would seem to leave the multilingual node the choice of means of delivery. It would be completely transparent to the packet. Unfortunately, such abstraction fails unless the *sender* knows how to push the packet in the right direction, and each hop knows how to get it a little nearer; this more or less requires that each node be given a unique identifier compatable with the existing system, and given the existing system is still ipv4, there are problems.
Re: CNN.com - WiFi activists on free Web crusade - Nov. 29, 2002 (fwd)
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/11/21/yourtech.wifis/index.html Its a nice idea, but unfortunately gets easily bitten by the usual networking bugbears 1. large wifi networks start to hit scaling problems - they start to need routers and name services that are relatively expensive, and ip address ranges start to become a scarce resource. 2. no matter how large the new network becomes, it still needs a link to the old network; almost all ISPs frown on use of home connections for sharing more than just the owner's machines, and many consider using even unmetered in a manner they didn't provision for (ie, using unmetered more than 100 hours a month at the full bandwidth limit) as abuse and end the contracts of those who do so. what you would need would be an ISP (or large commercial) style contract with a guaranteeed bandwidth and dedicated ip addresses - which do not come cheap enough to be worth giving away. 3. unmetered is only just becoming common in england, and is still mostly on 56K modem. broadband is often *massively* underprovisioned, and quite often all the connections in an area feed to a single fixed-bandwidth multiplexor at the telecomms office, so adding additional connections doesn't actually add any bandwidth at all. the *only* end user deal is 500kb down, 250kb up shared amongst *50* people in your area (the uk has a telecomms monopoly from a recently privatised company that has already forced two would-be competitors out of the market). Even now (given expected usage patterns) the mere existance of a microsoft OS service pack more than 30mb in size is enough to throw available bandwidth per-user below modem levels
Re: CNN.com - WiFi activists on free Web crusade - Nov. 29, 2002 (fwd)
Jim Choate wrote: On Sat, 30 Nov 2002, Dave Howe wrote: The scaling problem is a valid one up to a point. The others are not. The biggest problem is people trying to do distributed computing using non-distributed os'es (eg *nix clones and Microsloth). not as such, no. the vast majority of free internet cloud users couldn't care less about computer resources and/or distributed computing - they want to access websites, ftp servers and read/send their email. with a large(ish) number of otherwise standalone nodes, you need to worry about addressing space, routing and (to conserve what little bandwidth you have to the classic internet) caching. ad-hoc routing also doesn't scale well - so you get into issues of cells mapping to address ranges and dynamic allocation to mobile nodes as they move from cell to cell (there are probably better ways to do that than cells and static ranges, but self-networking swarms blow out their bandwidth purely negotiating routing long before the amount of traffic those nodes needs becomes an issue) its possible I am wrong and there is a wonderful distributed-computing method to solve these purely network routing problems, but it is news to me. 2. no matter how large the new network becomes, it still needs a link to the old network; Granted, up to a point. That point is when this network has more resources than the 'old' networks. At some point the old networks move over and start running from the new one. that would require that the new network be not only larger (and more cost effective) but joined up enough (and routing-efficient enough) to see it become the primary backbone. I am willing to imagine a world where classic isps have a peering arrangement with such cloud networks (giving free access to their own sites in return for free access to Cloud sites by their customers) but there is always the prisoner's dilemma (which has been attempted by so many ISPs lately) of refusing to peer with anyone they think they can sell transit to instead. almost all ISPs frown on use of home connections for sharing more than just the owner's machines, and many consider using even unmetered in a manner they didn't provision for (ie, using unmetered more than 100 hours a month at the full bandwidth limit) as abuse and end the contracts of those who do so. what you would need would be an ISP (or large commercial) style contract with a guaranteeed bandwidth and dedicated ip addresses - which do not come cheap enough to be worth giving away. Bullshit on the too expensive to give away. A typical commercial setup (2mb bandwidth, no ratio, no contention (sharing) over a dedicated line) is about 700ukp/month. (say about a thousand dollars). ok, to a large commercial operation that is about the cost of one employee - probably even less. assuming that it came out of a pr budget though, that is one less staff member and/or one less campaign a year, for the (dubious) benefit of whatever pr you could get by donating it. I didn't say it was too expensive to give way, I said it was too expensive to be *worth* giving away compared to cheaper pr stunts that don't have to paid for every year as an ongoing cost (with all the pr loss of having to shut it down if it becomes too much of a drain) and that is a *recent* cost - as little as two years ago you could pay that for a 512K link. Irrelevant since there are plenty of commercial feeds out there that are not ISP's. yes, of course there are - but they aren't cheap. the US has a history of cheap connectivity and free local calls - the uk (along with most of the rest of the world) doesn't. I keep seeing thes ney saying views yet the guerrilla networks just keep getting bigger... There is a ratio thing - anyone with a home broadband connection (which is a lot more common in london, where most of the free MAN schemes seem to be concentrated) can afford to carry a few freeloaders on an ad-hoc basis, and it isn't currently in the interests of the telco monopoly to crack down on it - it doesn't cut into their core business (selling phone lines and leased lines) and the traffic blips can be absorbed by the ISP who has statistical models of how much they can underprovision their total sold broadband and/or dialup pool bandwidth by without complaints (the monopoly, who is also an ISP got its sums wrong a couple of years back when it first went unmetered and the *average* bandwidth allocation during busy times was less than 2Kbits - and that was dialup pool only) If the number of freeloaders became significant, and more importantly, became predominantly home users (who want continuous high bandwidth) rather than passing war driving people grabbing a few ks of download for email or a quick website surf purely because it is cool) then it would both cut into the bandwidth available to the person paying for it, and the higher average load curve would alert both the isp and the telco to take a closer look at why that user is using so much bandwidth.
Re: CNN.com - WiFi activists on free Web crusade - Nov. 29, 2002 (fwd)
Geographic routing completely eliminates need for expensive routing and admin traffic. Name services? Who needs name services? Localhost is sufficient for a prefix to an address namepace. without routing and name services, you have what amounts to a propriatory NAT solution - no way to address an interior node on the cloud from the The importance of geographic routing is that the cataloguing system is public. Imagine that city streets had absolutely no signs and no house numbers. In order to get to, say, quality whorehouse, you need to pay for someone to guide you, and ultimately that someone may choose not to. If, however, streets were marked, you could use maps from many sources - or even create your own - to guide you. Localities put up the addressing infrastructure and they get aggregated on global levels in any desireable/sellable form. Compare this to Internet, where you essentially have to pay to get routed via closed systems. These characters were routed based on decisions and policies of no more than 2-3 corporations. We all know what the consequences are. Self-routing mesh networks have potential to sidestep this. Transistors are small and cheap enough even today - the centralised communication infrastructure is there so that you can be charged, not because technology dictates that any more. With wireless there is a potential that everyone paves (and marks street number) in front of their house. The only way to subvert this would be to erase santa monica from minds of everyone. I don't see that happening. The day that I can send a packet from LAX to SFO via non-ISP-ed network will be the beginning of the end of telco/telecom monopolies. Or, should I say, directory monopolies. = end (of original message) Y-a*h*o-o (yes, they scan for this) spam follows: Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
Re: CNN.com - WiFi activists on free Web crusade - Nov. 29, 2002 (fwd)
Eugen Leitl wrote: On Sat, 30 Nov 2002, Morlock Elloi wrote: 1. large wifi networks start to hit scaling problems - they start to need routers and name services that are relatively expensive, and ip address Geographic routing completely eliminates need for expensive routing and admin traffic. Name services? Who needs name services? Localhost is sufficient for a prefix to an address namepace. without routing and name services, you have what amounts to a propriatory NAT solution - no way to address an interior node on the cloud from the internet (and hence, peer to peer services or any other protocol that requires an inbound connection not directly understood by the nat translation - eg ftp on a non standard port or ssl-encrypted as ftps) Actually, even a MAC has enough address space to label entire Earth surface with ~1 address/m^2, IPv6 addresses are plenty better here. And of course no one forces you to use actual IP addresses. You can sure tunnel TCP/IP through a geographic routing protocol. under ipv6 you can avoid having to have a explicit naming service - the cloud id of the card (possibly with a network prefix to identify the cloud as a whole) can *be* the unique name; routing is still an issue but that reduces to being able to route to a unique node inside the cloud - which appears from a brief glance at the notes from Morlock Elloi (thanks again :) to have at least a workable trial solution. if a IPv6 internet ever becomes a reality, clouds would fit right in. TCP/IP tunnelling without a name service at at least one end isn't workable; *static* NAT/PAT is of course a name service and can't be considered, but SOCKS and socks aware p2p is a definite possibility.
Re: CNN.com - WiFi activists on free Web crusade - Nov. 29, 2002 (fwd)
Morlock Elloi wrote: Not so. Self-organasing mesh networks appear to have some interesting properties. There is a number of open solutions and at least one startup I know about based on this. snip links fascinating - I obviously have a lot of reading to do - thankyou :)
Re: CNN.com - WiFi activists on free Web crusade - Nov. 29, 2002 (fwd)
1. large wifi networks start to hit scaling problems - they start to need routers and name services that are relatively expensive, and ip address ranges start to become a scarce resource. Not so. Self-organasing mesh networks appear to have some interesting properties. There is a number of open solutions and at least one startup I know about based on this. Real stuff ... http://w3.antd.nist.gov/wctg/manet/manet_bibliog.html http://locustworld.com/ http://www.mitre.org/tech_transfer/mobilemesh/ ... and rants: http://www.wirelessanarchy.com/ http://www.gldialtone.com/whyP2Pwireless.htm http://slashdot.org/articles/02/10/01/2220255.shtml?tid=126 = end (of original message) Y-a*h*o-o (yes, they scan for this) spam follows: Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
Re: CNN.com - WiFi activists on free Web crusade - Nov. 29, 2002 (fwd)
its possible I am wrong and there is a wonderful distributed-computing method to solve these purely network routing problems, but it is news to me. I just don't see how a single WiFi cloud will be able to scale very far. All the WiFi users within eyeshot of each other are always going to contend for bandwidth, no? It'll be just like the old half-duplex 10BaseT copper LANs. And I still don't understand how a WiFi router will help you...if the different Layer2 LANs overlap in space at all, they'll interfere with each other optically even if they are on different segments. (With copper you didn't even have this problem.) Thus, aren't you stuck with zillions o little WiFi islands that must not overlap without things getting very slow? As for service providers not wanting freeloaders, I'd point out that DSL cares much lessthe DSL connection is mapped over ATM and is basically a dedicated connection to a router port, with fixed bandwidth in either direction. Whether that port is processing lots of freeloader packets or idle packets from a single dedicated user shouldn't matter much. Uh, but now that I think of it ATM does allow for some oversubscription, so in order to maximize the conection between the DSLAM and the ATM switch that's in front of the router (it might be in thesame box as the router, I know!), maybe they'l discourage freeloading. BUT, DSL companies have been touting that they're very happy for you to put a home-based LAN on your side of the connection (Cable Modem providers don't normally like that). From: Dave Howe [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Email List: Cypherpunks [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: CNN.com - WiFi activists on free Web crusade - Nov. 29, 2002 (fwd) Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2002 20:57:13 - Jim Choate wrote: On Sat, 30 Nov 2002, Dave Howe wrote: The scaling problem is a valid one up to a point. The others are not. The biggest problem is people trying to do distributed computing using non-distributed os'es (eg *nix clones and Microsloth). not as such, no. the vast majority of free internet cloud users couldn't care less about computer resources and/or distributed computing - they want to access websites, ftp servers and read/send their email. with a large(ish) number of otherwise standalone nodes, you need to worry about addressing space, routing and (to conserve what little bandwidth you have to the classic internet) caching. ad-hoc routing also doesn't scale well - so you get into issues of cells mapping to address ranges and dynamic allocation to mobile nodes as they move from cell to cell (there are probably better ways to do that than cells and static ranges, but self-networking swarms blow out their bandwidth purely negotiating routing long before the amount of traffic those nodes needs becomes an issue) its possible I am wrong and there is a wonderful distributed-computing method to solve these purely network routing problems, but it is news to me. 2. no matter how large the new network becomes, it still needs a link to the old network; Granted, up to a point. That point is when this network has more resources than the 'old' networks. At some point the old networks move over and start running from the new one. that would require that the new network be not only larger (and more cost effective) but joined up enough (and routing-efficient enough) to see it become the primary backbone. I am willing to imagine a world where classic isps have a peering arrangement with such cloud networks (giving free access to their own sites in return for free access to Cloud sites by their customers) but there is always the prisoner's dilemma (which has been attempted by so many ISPs lately) of refusing to peer with anyone they think they can sell transit to instead. almost all ISPs frown on use of home connections for sharing more than just the owner's machines, and many consider using even unmetered in a manner they didn't provision for (ie, using unmetered more than 100 hours a month at the full bandwidth limit) as abuse and end the contracts of those who do so. what you would need would be an ISP (or large commercial) style contract with a guaranteeed bandwidth and dedicated ip addresses - which do not come cheap enough to be worth giving away. Bullshit on the too expensive to give away. A typical commercial setup (2mb bandwidth, no ratio, no contention (sharing) over a dedicated line) is about 700ukp/month. (say about a thousand dollars). ok, to a large commercial operation that is about the cost of one employee - probably even less. assuming that it came out of a pr budget though, that is one less staff member and/or one less campaign a year, for the (dubious) benefit of whatever pr you could get by donating it. I didn't say it was too expensive to give way, I said it was too expensive to be *worth* giving away compared to cheaper pr stunts that don't have to paid for every year as an ongoing cost (with all the pr loss of having
Re: CNN.com - WiFi activists on free Web crusade - Nov. 29, 2002 (fwd)
On Sat, 30 Nov 2002, Morlock Elloi wrote: 1. large wifi networks start to hit scaling problems - they start to need routers and name services that are relatively expensive, and ip address Geographic routing completely eliminates need for expensive routing and admin traffic. Name services? Who needs name services? Localhost is sufficient for a prefix to an address namepace. ranges start to become a scarce resource. Actually, even a MAC has enough address space to label entire Earth surface with ~1 address/m^2, IPv6 addresses are plenty better here. And of course no one forces you to use actual IP addresses. You can sure tunnel TCP/IP through a geographic routing protocol. Not so. Self-organasing mesh networks appear to have some interesting properties. There is a number of open solutions and at least one startup I know about based on this.
