$5 Social Wi-Fi Router 297
slashjunkie writes "BBC News is running a story about the Spanish firm Fon, selling subsidized Linksys WRT54GL Wi-Fi routers for $5, in exchange for the buyer agreeing to a 12 month contract of providing access to other Fon users within range. With the financial backing of Google and Skype, their goal is to create Wi-Fi networks, street by street, across Europe and the US. Buyers of the subsidized routers can classify themselves as 'Linuses', whereby they also get free access to all other Fon hotspots, or 'Bills', where they receive 50% of the revenue made by on-selling their Wi-Fi to other Fon users. 'Alien' users can buy 24-hour passes for 3 Euro. To deter misuse, all Fon users must identify themselves by a username and password before they can access the hotspot. As long as the owner's personal LAN is not accessible, this could be a good way to offset the costs of the average geek's bandwidth bill."
So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So what? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
What if another memeber of this services uses my WiFi AP to connect to kiddie porn?
A few days later, a few knocks on my door.......
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
BTW, I paid $75 for my wireless router, and I share with anyone that comes with in range. My essid is 'useme'. It's never caused me any problems. You can easily seperate your local network from the subnet that is used for wireless access, or simply setup a firewall between the local network and the AP. There are plenty of ways to protect your local network, although I would hope that this subsidized router would have something like this builtin because most of the people buying them probably won't understand the security issues involved.
Re:So what? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought there were less legal ramifications if you were an ISP versus a home internet user. I thought ISPs didn't have to worry about the content going across their network?
Re:So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought most ISPs in Europe billed based on usage, if this is the case why would you want to share with anyone?
Re:So what? (Score:2)
My house is down a side street. No-one ever goes past it. I'm going to send off for one of these: $5 sounds like a great price and there's no-one who is ever likely to want to share it.
I bet the router never arrives, though. These people are bound to go bankrupt in the next few days.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Interesting)
MAN, this is good coffee!
Re:So what? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Reminds me of the story I heard about the guy who wonders why they build power plants. "Why don't they just plug the power plant into the wall?" FON isn't creating bandwidth, and Google's dark fiber isn't directly connected to all these routers. Thus "AT&T et al" are still crucial players here and I doubt they're shaking in their boots...
Re:So what? (Score:2)
This is not the case in Scandinavia, I only know of a few ISPs that have transfer caps as well, with dialup connections you tend to have to pay by the minute though.. /Mikael
Re:So what? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So what? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
For the display you could always try a head mounted display [wikipedia.org]. The one pictured in the wiki is for stereo gaming, but they also make them to display on a single eyepiece.
Re:So what? (Score:3, Interesting)
Trackball sized pad on your hip? Would get uncomfortable after a while.
Head mounted displays have serious problems from headaches to inability to quickly change focus to the real world.
Speach recognition? Still not that great in studio quality silence, will be a disaster to use in loud areas, or places with m
Re:So what? (Score:3, Interesting)
You just described Wearable Computing [google.com]. If you're interested in it, you should subscribe to the Wear-Hard mailing list [haven.org] and become familiar with some of the research [gatech.edu] groups [mit.edu] working on such things.
You can have a wearable computer right now -- the technology exists, and some people use i
Re:So what? (Score:2)
" or 'Bills', where they receive 50% of the revenue made by on-selling their Wi-Fi to other Fon users"
Re:So what? (Score:2, Insightful)
Looks like Fon are trying to set up a social moverment rather than just another company. I shave to assume that the people who want to know why they should share their bandwidth are the same people who write code for Linux but don't publish it for fear that someone might benifit from their hardwork.
I don't really believe that the cost of the router is important to most people reading here, I suspect despite some people claiming to have bought their routers for thrupence hapney most ./ reader have >$100
Re:So what? (Score:3, Informative)
Your target (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Your target (Score:5, Funny)
What will happen? Will bcat go down in legend as the glorious killer of Ballmer? Or will he suffer the wrath of Ballmer's WWE-style chair-throwing moves?
Will Steve f***ing kill Google? And most importantly, will bcat brick his new WRT54GL when he tries to reflash it?
Tune in next week, same bat time, same bat channel.
Re:Your target (Score:4, Funny)
Or if not the same bat channel, at least a dupe bat channel.
Ballmer bashing... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So what? (Score:5, Informative)
From their "shop" [fon.com]:
Remember that you must register your router and keep it on at all times. This great low price helps us build the FON Community. Therefore, we will apply a $/€ 45 surcharge on all routers that have not been registered within 30 days of having made the purchase
So if you buy the router and don't activate it, they'll charge you $45 or €45 depending on where you live? It isn't really clear which value they go by, but I imagine it depends on what currency you used to purchase it. Personally, I think it's better for them to charge a flat €45 since it's worth almost 1.5 times the dollar at this point.
Re:So what? (Score:3, Informative)
Worth almost 1.5 USD for very small values of 1.5 [google.com].
TOS (Score:5, Informative)
Re:TOS (Score:3, Interesting)
I often wonder if the industry is specifically thwarting efforts to develop a wireless voice transmission medium for the public masses to protect cellular interests. I'd really love to see a low latency, high distance, high concentration 128kbps wireless link. This would allow employers, residences and municpalities to replace cell phones,
Re:TOS (Score:5, Informative)
No probs. The 802.11a,b,g family has two different MAC schemes (the idea is stolen from Cable actually).
There is a random access scheme similar to the ancient ethernet. In that case 20 VOIP users will simply bring the link down by trying to access the media.
There is also a scheme under which the AP will transmit maps which tell each client when to transmit. I do not have the time to do the exact math at the time, but it should be possible to accommodate 20 VOIP clients using this MAC and leave some breathing space for normal access (not a lot though). The problem is that for this scheme to be usefull the clients must have means of getting reservations from the AP. Tough luck - no such clients out there. Similarly, the AP must have an integrated Layer2-Layer3 filtering mechanism which hooks up straight into MAC and creates transmit maps based on statefull filter context. Once again - tough luck. There is no such AP out there (AFAIK). On top of that while this is in the spec it is hardly in use anywhere so the level of testing clients have is very low. I would expect some of the more cheap and cheerfull clients which do MAC portions in software to be broken with regard to this.
Re:TOS (Score:3, Informative)
The problem is that WiFi's channel access scheme is designed for packet switched data that often comes in large bursts. Its CSMA/CA scheme is great for that, but is vastly inferior in terms of overhead to TDMA or CDMA sc
Re:TOS (Score:5, Informative)
Although I can't find the page which explains it outside of my account pages (needs login, sigh) you can resell your connection and also sell your neighbours all-new connections, using a plan they have in place.
This has been there for yeaaars.
Re:TOS (Score:2)
Beware of SpeakEasy, they do not necessarily honor (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/clintjcl/76331315/in/ photostream/ [flickr.com]
Simply observe the chat above. I tried to make it abundantly clear that I could use 100% of my bandwidth 100% of the time. Within 6 months, after repeated harassment, they gave me an ultimatum: Use less than 100G per month, or be terminated.
Ultimately I was terminated. A few months later, I finally got $50 back; originally they were trying to charge me the $300 cancellation fee even though it was they who cancelled me, not the other way around.
In talking with thier esclation director, he admitted that I was having zero impact on network performance.
And, they say "no bots". And they consider bittorrent a fucking bot, if you'll believe that.
This was AFTER I installed a scheduler that basically only downloaded at 10% capacity during business hours. That wasn't good enough.
Buyer beware. SpeakEasy is nothing but another faceless corporation in my eyes. I've returned to the land of Mom-and-Pop ISPs. Silcon.com doesn't have great performance, but they leave me alone.
Re:TOS (Score:2)
Re:TOS (Score:2)
Maybe Fon can provide a list of such companies, and encourage their users to sign up with such ISPs...
Re:TOS (Score:3, Informative)
Re:TOS (Score:2, Informative)
Re:TOS (Score:2)
The price list on the website needs updating tho... Drop me a mail if your interested.
You can share your connection with as many people as you want, so long as your use of the line is legal. The only caveat is, if you sign up for a traffic-limited service (you dont have to, there are unlimited plans too) then your still responsible for the traffic usage, so don't let your neighbours push you over your quota.
Re:TOS (Score:3, Informative)
If you don't like the ToS, that doesn't mean you can break them.
Depending upon the location and the laws there, that may be exactly what it means. It is common for unenforceable and illegal terms to be written into end user agreements. In many places regulating how many people are using a service is a violation of FCC rules for common carriers. Additionally, in many locations in the US a few companies have been granted exclusive access to the public right of ways needed to deliver service and thus have
Re:TOS (Score:2, Interesting)
Which is to say, sharing the bandwidth you get through them = smaller bill.
Re:TOS (Score:3, Insightful)
Until it hits their pipe. If they don't like what you got going on, they drop you. The TOS is a declaration of resons why they would drop you, that's it.
So go ahead and build whatever network you want on your end - no ones stopping you, then have fun trying to find an outbound connection.
Re:TOS (Score:2)
Perhaps true, but that won't matter much when you discover that your network and equipment no longer have Internet access.
Legality (Score:2, Interesting)
shipping costs (Score:3, Informative)
I'll take one (Score:5, Funny)
That's exactly it (Score:4, Insightful)
From the corner of my street you can see 17 wifi networks, and many of them are unprotected. It seems unlikely that a FON user will ever feel the need to come across my network.
I like the idea, but city access points will provide so much more value to FON and cost their operators so much more that they'll likely end up with a bunch of APs buried deep in suburbia.
5euros != Actual cost (Score:3, Informative)
Interesting (Score:2)
The pricing model seems a bit optimistic if people live in a area that isn't likely to have many guests around.
I would rather do it the other way around saying that you pay full price for the line and then what you earn is subtracted from the line price first.
Linuses and Bills (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Linuses and Bills (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Linuses and Bills (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Linuses and Bills (Score:5, Funny)
Co-oping Internet networks the capitalist way (Score:5, Interesting)
In our neighborhood we already have 4 high speed internet providers, so competition is fierce but pricing is still fairly high due to local government idiocy (they want all the providers to pay a fee to be allowed to serve the area). We even have 2 medium-speed wireless providers who serve our area too, but they're also a bit expensive due to the village fees (how would the village stop them, though?)
This is the right step in the direction of providing inexpensive or free bandwidth to everyone. We don't need cities or governments paying for it, we just need the end profit-makers to subsidize the initial cost. Our connection should happily support 50 households (or more) for basic Internet usage, and if they want to use higher speed services, they're more than free to select from one of the providers available. For more, paying $5 a month for a decent 6 Mbps connection is well worth it, even if we frown on Bittorrent or other massive leach programs.
I've already talked to 3 other people in my neighborhood who are interested in doing the same thing. The plus side is that we communicate better (through a private forum) with each other than I've ever seen in a neighborhood I've lived in. We talk about security issues, odd cars on the streets, and all sorts of issue that people used to think we needed government for.
I really support these systems and would love to know if there is a way to privately sponsor some of these routers so that they're free, or even sponsor the bandwidth charges of people who offer this service to others through their own connection. Anyone know?
Re:Co-oping Internet networks the capitalist way (Score:2)
Re:Co-oping Internet networks the capitalist way (Score:3, Interesting)
We're also looking into some community social networking solutions for addressing concerns within our communities, something th
Legal can of worms (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Legal can of worms (Score:2)
Re:Legal can of worms (Score:3, Insightful)
This isn't a bad thing. An extra layer of anonymity on the net might preserve it in its present state for a few more years.
Re:Legal can of worms (Score:2)
Re:Legal can of worms (Score:2, Informative)
Fon does handle accountability. It's not just "Hey! I've got an open access point here! Have fun!" it's "this is a node in the network managed by this company. You have identified yourself with this company, so you are allowed to use this node in exchange for whichever of these return services is most convenient for you."
Re:Legal can of worms (Score:2)
Re:Legal can of worms (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Legal can of worms (Score:2)
Not all that good, even nowadays. A friend of mine had his home phone listed under the name "Mike Ockhurts" for years, my late grandfather is still officially paying my water bill 20 years after his death because the local water authority wants a large pile of money to close the account and reopen
What if (Score:5, Insightful)
What if someone uses your 5 euros ( = 6.5 bucks) subsidized router to download kiddie porn, send hate mail to CmdrTaco or skype Bin Laden?
What do the European laws say about that?
--
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Re:What if (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What if (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What if (Score:2)
Not a good idea... (Score:4, Insightful)
In order to safely share your connection, you'd need to make sure that the FON registration process can keep good records of the Fonero users, and that the firmware is able to filter and block access to inappropriate/illegal content (and I'm not convinced it can). Otherwise, users can anonymously use your connection for looking up kiddie porn... which your ISP will have something to say about if it is traced. You'd also have to daisy-chain routers together or somehow segregate this from your internal LAN, which is probably more expense/trouble than it's worth.
Add to this the fact that most ISPs frown heavily on you setting up a public access hotspot with a residential broadband connection (It's against the ToS of mine), and this 5/$5 router becomes more trouble than it's worth.
The only major benefit that I can see is the cheap router. In the UK, a WRT54GL is around £50 (or 70), whereas FON will sell you one for 50 (assuming you just pay the surcharge for not registering) which is just £35.
Re:Not a good idea... (Score:2)
I.E. They realize this is one of the major hurdles, and hope that the ISPs will allow users to do this. The theory is that it adds value to the ISP's services offered. Maybe one family can't afford broadband, but two families can afford to share it. But the real use of this service seems to be for roaming about with a laptop or something... you'll have access to a hots
Hmmm (Score:3, Insightful)
My mother would use it (Score:2)
But aside from that the connections is sitting there 24/7 and she pays something like $40 a month (I do not know if that is the price now, although I believe it was like that 1 year go, but with Telmex you can bet it is more now).
If I had the oportunity to share my connection and charge someting
How quickly could this rollout in the states? (Score:2)
I'm wondering, could SBC/ATT offer such a service in just about no time, using their installed base? Particularly when I use an external antenna, I pick up 2WIRE boxes everywhere. While I doubt the
Re:How quickly could this rollout in the states? (Score:2)
And, I'm too polite to just go and use someone's slightly guarded WiFi. I assume (though I know otherwise) if it's open, they're like me and welcome a little reciprocal friendliness (my kindness to strangers is throttled to 50kbps... get off my lawn kids). Just like I open doors as a matter of habit, but put a dollar-
Missing the point (Score:3, Interesting)
As to those of you who are worried about reselling our ISP's internet, it's FON's access point so it's not actually your problem. Besides as long as you don't have AT&T what are ya worried about?
Don't let the geeks do marketing (Score:2, Funny)
Privacy nightmare (Score:2)
Hmm... I'd go with the "Bill" option (Score:2)
Quite seriously, the amount of non-secured APs around my apartment is kinda scary. Then again, I couldn't afford my bandwidth if they didn't exist...
Lots of wireless already free (Score:3, Insightful)
Real Communism (Score:3, Insightful)
I remember eMachines tried something similar, free/cheap PCs in the 1990s bubble, subsidized by ads around the outer margin of the screen. They sank and wound up selling the PCs for $100 to anyone who'd pay, and just letting those who wouldn't pay keep them without making too much noise about it.
Re:Real Communism (Score:3, Informative)
For the love of (insert Deity here) RTA b4 comment (Score:5, Informative)
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/275421_goo
And Google if you want more.
The software is available for download if you already have a compatable router.
The $5 router is new but the warranty is null since the firmware is flashed with the FON version.
The firmware can split your bw between two ssid's one for FON and the other for private. Since the routers listed can be used with linux in the first place, (even the low ram ones per a Slashdot story from the past) then it is a good guess as to what the firmware is based on.
The router will indeed FON home (User>pass auth) and the interoperability and potential multipath routing seems inevitable when the density reaches a critical point in a particular area. (yes this is a guess rather than something in the site literature.)
But it seems like a good deal with little risk to the hot spot provider. The basic access is tracked and limited to users by password whether Linuses, Bills or Aliens.
ISP's who like to limit their users deserve to feel the slight pain of savvy users leaving for better ISP's.
I intend to dedicate one of my public IP's to the system and my ISP does not give a rats patoot what I do with is as long as I pay my bill and abuse does not get any valid complaints. I moved from comcast long ago and since my qwest router is bridged from my isp, Qwest has no say in how my bandwidth is used either.
Of course I live in a city where my wifi detector finds free open signals by the dozens at nearly every traffic light, I suspect some folks here will split off a portion of their BW if there is a potential of making a little money for their service.
I will become a Linus just to help the concept of universal wi-fi along if only a little bit. I am going to upgrade my wifi net anyway once the N becomes semi standard so I will have 3 FON compat routers to share with the neighborhood while keeping my private network kinda tight.
But go to the site and read for your self the details of the program.
http://en.fon.com/info/whats_fon.php [fon.com]
Then make your own pithy comments here.
terms of service? (Score:2, Interesting)
Let's pause and think about this for a mo (Score:4, Insightful)
At home - OK, covered.
In the car - Not often, but when I do I use cell phone GPRS via bluetooth to a laptop or PDA. Do I really want to be driving around to find a Fon hotspot (fuel costs and inconvenience) and how many will be on the side of motorways and main roads anyway?
At airports - Yeah, right, the paid wifi service providers are really gonna let this happen. Stand by for clause changes in all shop leases to prevent them having a Fon router.
At railway stations - See above.
When I am walking through a shopping centre - Well, maybe (but not very often), but see airports.
When I am walking through the suburbs - What, carrying a laptop or PDA out in the open? OK, maybe (but not often)
Pubs and restaurants? Hmm - let's see... "...well Mr (or Ms) landlord; you can have a 'free-ish' router in return for a service elsewhere that might be handy to you once in a while (or will give you a small kickback) - OR you can spend some money on a 'proper' system with controlled access and we'll maintain it for you and split the profits..."
So is Fon going to blanket cover massive swathes of the globe - nah, you'll end up with lots of little clusters and big gaps inbetween.
Nice idea, happy to see it take off, but am very sceptical.
Reciprocity (Score:2)
So is Fon going to blanket cover massive swathes of the globe - nah, you'll end up with lots of little clusters and big gaps inbetween.
I agree, partially. I don't see Fon covering massive swaths of the globe by themselves, but I do see Fon and hundreds of other companies and organizations covering significant amounts and agreeing to share access with one another. I see Google taking a role in making this happen. How many citywide wireless projects are going on right now? I know there is a county wide one
Not worth it yet for the rural people (Score:3, Insightful)
FON just seems like it's going to be better for suburbanites or urbanites who regularly walk around their city, not for those who drive twenty minutes to get milk.
Liability? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Liability? (Score:3, Informative)
Who would be liable for illegal downloads? You might be getting a $65 router for free but at the same time - you might end up with a huge hassle for usage.
To my knowledge no one in the US has yet been sued for illegal downloading. Uploading on this device, however, might be a different issue. Still, there will be logs of who was connected via any given point, since this service requires a username and password. It just makes the subpoenas slow and hard to get. I wouldn't worry about this. There are much
Not at my coffie house (Score:3, Funny)
not so interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:not so interesting (Score:3, Informative)
Linksys already doing this? (Score:5, Funny)
Isn't a company called Linksys also doing something like this? They seem to have pretty good coverage these days, and they don't even require a login. I think they may be using a different network topology, though.
Is it even safe to share WiFi any more? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why?
I don't want to be sued. If someone jumps on my connection, gets a million mp3s, downloads movies, and shares copies of everything I'll have the MPAA and RIAA all over me. If they don't care when an old grandmother doesn't even have a computer or an internet connection they'll be sure to sue me who has both, even if it's not me getting the files.
The USA is the most dangerous place in the world to have an open WiFi connection. This whole FON movement is just giving the lawyer wolves a whole new pack of clueless sheep to sue.
Is it worth it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Risks/Costs...
-download quota gets used up (as far as I see Fon doesn't have throttling mechanisms in place)
-your connection being used for illegal stuff, such as
--attacks on networks
--spamming
--child pron
-legal action from your current provider
Benefits...
+maybe you can use someone else's Fon hotspot
+you will get (at most) $1 per day and user
+a decent wireless router for 2/3 off (including shipping)
Sorry, even though I'm living in a national capital with quite a few Fon hotspots around, the risks and associated costs (if I got sued I'd need to pay a lawyer,
Re:Hidden message ? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Compile farm (Score:2)
Re:Compile farm (Score:2)
Re:bandwith bill reduction? (Score:2)