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Retired blog about web development, scripting,
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FoN
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[hardware]
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Being at a different location and not having WiFi internet available (like at my parents' place) is seriously disturbing. There was a wireless network within range but it was password protected.
Wouldn't it be nice if everybody opened up their wireless for passers by to use?
Enter FoN. It's not completely perfect but it has a lot of ideas headed into the right direction.
Recognizing the vital importance of free WiFi should be (for institutions) the incentive to open up their networks. For people it could be more motivated by hospitality and kindness.
Anyway, I don't care why you do it. I just do not want to pay €5 for 30 minutes of internet access. Paying for internet by the minute? That is so last century and it wasn't even cool back then.
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Made by alper at 2005-12-06 00:36
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Re: FoN
There remains a considerable problem in router hardware. I really wouldn't mind doing this. I get extremely annoyed as well when my iBook senses 5 different wifinets within talking distance, ALL of them locked. However, and I did check, there is simply no way for me to open up PART of the bandwidth to all users. I also want to generally prevent someone living nearby to use it on a permanent basis - while leaving the connection open to passersby. If I had known all of this back when I bought my wireless router, I might have sprung for some linux-based wifi router so that I could load it up with the tools needed to run stuff like FoN, but, alas, I haven't.
For those of you with iBooks or recent powerBooks:
While you can normally use fancy packet injection strategies to crack most basic protection schemes in minutes, AND while there is some great mac software to automate this process for you, it won't work on your iBook/new powerBook. The airport extreme wireless card that's integrated into ibooks/powerbooks has no open source drivers.
Refer to this sourceforge project for progress on reverse engineering it.
The problem is complicated, but it also makes a working hack for this thing extremely tantalizing: The broadcom chipset (on which the airport extreme is based) offers direct access to the frequency spool. Meaning, you can use it to send and receive traffic on restricted military frequencies. This is also the reason why broadcom will never ever release anything about it, no source, and no specs. It may offer interesting new hacks on (illegally) creating your own wifinet with many kilometers of reach, by dropping to lower (reserved) frequencies.
It's really 'unfair' that 90%+ of the spectrum has been reserved. Every government is pulling this. Heck, how the microwave manufacturors managed to get together and force the 2.4Ghz band to be freed all over the world (incidentally also the range on which ALL common free wireless transmitters work including bluetooth and wifi) still makes me wonder. The (to me) juicy ranges, from 300Mhz to 1Ghz, are all reserved or cost a wad of cash (ie: 800/900Mhz, used by mobile phones). These ranges offer less speed, but offer considerable range for little power. I think, when you're on the road, the first priority is having some sort of connection in the first place. Battery life is second to this, and speed is the least of your worries. That need could be fulfilled easily if all governments united and freed up, say, 700 to 750 Mhz for free use by everyone.
Back to the iBook:
Unfortunately, the progress appears to be moving in the wrong direction - a binary-based hack that makes it work for linux by faking the environment for some binary driver that ships in the ROM of a linux-based wifi router. That'll never make it work properly with kismac, I'm afraid.
Made by:
Reinier Zwitserloot
on December 08,2005 03:53
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There remains a considerable problem in router hardware. I really wouldn't mind doing this. I get extremely annoyed as well when my iBook senses 5 different wifinets within talking distance, ALL of them locked. However, and I did check, there is simply no way for me to open up PART of the bandwidth to all users. I also want to generally prevent someone living nearby to use it on a permanent basis - while leaving the connection open to passersby. If I had known all of this back when I bought my wireless router, I might have sprung for some linux-based wifi router so that I could load it up with the tools needed to run stuff like FoN, but, alas, I haven't.
For those of you with iBooks or recent powerBooks:
While you can normally use fancy packet injection strategies to crack most basic protection schemes in minutes, AND while there is some great mac software to automate this process for you, it won't work on your iBook/new powerBook. The airport extreme wireless card that's integrated into ibooks/powerbooks has no open source drivers.
Refer to this sourceforge project for progress on reverse engineering it.
The problem is complicated, but it also makes a working hack for this thing extremely tantalizing: The broadcom chipset (on which the airport extreme is based) offers direct access to the frequency spool. Meaning, you can use it to send and receive traffic on restricted military frequencies. This is also the reason why broadcom will never ever release anything about it, no source, and no specs. It may offer interesting new hacks on (illegally) creating your own wifinet with many kilometers of reach, by dropping to lower (reserved) frequencies.
It's really 'unfair' that 90%+ of the spectrum has been reserved. Every government is pulling this. Heck, how the microwave manufacturors managed to get together and force the 2.4Ghz band to be freed all over the world (incidentally also the range on which ALL common free wireless transmitters work including bluetooth and wifi) still makes me wonder. The (to me) juicy ranges, from 300Mhz to 1Ghz, are all reserved or cost a wad of cash (ie: 800/900Mhz, used by mobile phones). These ranges offer less speed, but offer considerable range for little power. I think, when you're on the road, the first priority is having some sort of connection in the first place. Battery life is second to this, and speed is the least of your worries. That need could be fulfilled easily if all governments united and freed up, say, 700 to 750 Mhz for free use by everyone.
Back to the iBook:
Unfortunately, the progress appears to be moving in the wrong direction - a binary-based hack that makes it work for linux by faking the environment for some binary driver that ships in the ROM of a linux-based wifi router. That'll never make it work properly with kismac, I'm afraid.