Dummies, Wireless

Chapter 16: Going Wireless Away from Home
Opening up to your neighbors
When we say, “opening up to your neighbors,”
we’re not talking about group therapy or wild hot
tub parties. Wireless networks can carry through
walls, across yards, and potentially around the
neighborhood. Although wireless LANs were
designed from the start for in-building use, the
technology can be used in outdoor settings. For
example, most college campuses are now wired
with dozens or hundreds of wireless access
points so that students, staff members, and professors
can access the Internet from just about
anywhere on campus. At UC San Diego, for
example, freshmen are outfitted with wireless
personal digital assistants (PDAs) to schedule
classes, send e-mails and instant messages, and
even find their friends at the student center (by
using a locator program written by a student).
Many folks are adapting this concept when it
comes to access in their neighborhood by setting
up community wireless LANs.
Some creators of these community LANs have
taken the openness of the Internet to heart and
have opened up their access points to any and all
takers. In other areas, where broadband access
is scarce, neighbors pool money to buy a T1 or
other business-class, high-speed Internet line to
share it wirelessly.
We think that both concepts make a great deal of
sense, but we have one warning: Many Internet
service providers (ISPs) don’t like the idea of you
sharing your Internet connection without them
getting a piece of the action. Beware that you
may have to pay for a more expensive commercial
ISP line. Before you share your Internet connection,
check your ISP’s Terms of Service (TOS)
or look at the listing of wireless-friendly ISPs on
the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Web page
(http://w2.eff.org/Infrastructure/Wireless_cellular_radio/wireless_friendly_isp_list.html).
The
same is true of DSL, fiber-optic, and cable modem
providers. Your usage agreement with the
provider basically says that you won’t do this, and
ISPs are starting to charge high-use fees to lines
that have extranormal traffic (that is, those lines
that seem like a bunch of people on the broadband
line are sharing the connection). One ISP
that not only allows you to share your Internet
connection by hot spot but also encourages it is
Speakeasy (www.speakeasy.net).
This situation is much different than the cell phone industry, in which you
can pretty much take your phone anywhere and make calls. The cell phone
providers have elaborate roaming arrangements in place that allow them to
bill each other (and in the end, bill you, the user) for these calls. Hot spot
service providers haven’t reached this point. However, a couple of trends will
help bring about some true hot spot roaming:
� Hot spot aggregators, such as Boingo Wireless, are bringing together
thousands of hot spots. Boingo (founded by Sky Dayton, who also
founded the huge ISP EarthLink), doesn’t operate any of its own hot
spots but instead has partnered with a huge range of other hot spot
operators, from little mom-and-pop hot spot operators to big operations,
such as Wayport. Boingo provides all the billing and account management
for users. Thus, a Boingo customer can go to any Boingo partner’s
hot spot, log on, and get online. (We talk about both Boingo and Wayport
in more detail later in this chapter.)
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