WIFI and Spectrum

A free public Wi-Fi access point

Wardriving is the act of searching for Wi-Fi wireless networks by a person in a moving vehicle, using a portable computer or PDA.

Software for wardriving is freely available on the Internet, notably NetStumbler for Windows, Kismet or SWScanner for Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFly BSD, and Solaris, and KisMac for Macintosh. There are also homebrew wardriving applications for handheld game consoles that support Wi-fi, such as sniff_jazzbox/wardive for the Nintendo DS, Road Dog for the Sony PSP and Stumbler for the iPhone. There also exists a mode within Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops for the Sony PSP (wherein the player is able to find new comrades by searching for wireless access points) which can be used to wardrive.

A map of Seattle's Wi-Fi nodes, generated from information logged by wardriving students in 2004.

In December 2004, a class of 100 undergraduates worked to map the city of Seattle, Washington over several weeks. They found 5,225 access points; 44% were secured with WEP encryption, 52% were open, and 3% were pay-for-access. They noticed trends in the frequency and security of the networks depending on location. Many of the open networks were clearly intended to be used by the general public, with network names like "Open to share, no porn please" or "Free access, be nice." The information was collected into high-resolution maps, which were published online

Congrats to whitedice, who managed to accumulate a million located new-to-WiGLE networks.. *by himself*! I, for one, welcome our new cyborg nethugging overlord.

-bobzilla

White Space

While existing companies control access to the internet it is with some contention that I see people regardless of the portal created through to internet access should have "free access" to this. Currently Governments hold the rights to auction so anything that is derived or sold by the government rightfully belongs to the people.

White space in telecommunications refers to unused frequencies in the radio waves portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.

National and international bodies assign differing frequencies for specific uses, and in some cases license the rights to these. This frequency allocation process creates a bandplan which in some cases for technical reasons assigns white space between used bands to avoid interference. In this case, while the frequencies are unused they have been specifically assigned for a purpose.

As well as this technical assignment, there is also unused spectrum which has either never been used, or is becoming free as a result of technical changes. In particular, the planned switchover to digital television may free up large areas between 54MHz and 698MHz. Various proposals including those from the White Spaces Coalition suggest using this bandwidth to provide broadband Internet access. However, these efforts may impact wireless microphones and other technologies that have historically relied on these frequencies.

It is with some insight then that if this is currently free then such attempts to build new devices to access this without using current patented technologies would then be invited under the auspice of a open source and competitive standard to allow such an expression by the peope?

The White Spaces Coalition

The White Spaces Coalition consists of eight large technology companies that plan to deliver high speed broadband internet access beginning in February 2009 to United States consumers via existing 'white space' in unused television frequencies between 54-698 MHz (TV Channels 2-51). The coalition expects speeds of 10 Mbyte/s and above, and 50 to 100 Mbyte/s for white space short-range networking.[1] The group includes Microsoft, Google, Dell, HP, Intel, Philips, Earthlink, and Samsung Electro-Mechanics.