Über-Fi 

From the Greatest City in the World 

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Dark fiber notwithstanding, New York city is NOT supplying the bandwidth for all those 120 nodes you found between Tompkins Square and Battery Park. The report proposes that they SHOULD move to do that, abandoning current reliance on expensive contracts with Verizon for city needs, in order to create a climate where excess bandwidth COULD be provided more cheaply to citizens and community groups. All those nodes are leakage from people paying extravagant amounts for bandwidth - as almost everywhere in the United States. Most of them in the nycwireless ad hoc network are doing it in defiance of terms of service agreements that specifically prohibit giving it away.

Let's not leave your readers with the idea that New York is some kind of wireless utopia - yes, the density of wireless nodes is high, but how many are open? Midtown and downtown have cute wireless bubbles for the prosperous lunchtime laptop crowd. At one nycwireless meeting someone said they had had as many as 20 people on the Bryant Park network at one time. Golly! Where is the free wireless in the housing projects, in the outer boroughs?

There is the tendency in the blogosphere to assume that everyone has broadband, isn't it grand, we'll have videoblogging any day now. Thus all the whining when bloggers travel and have to put up with dial-up. Which is the state of affairs for 90% of internet users in the United States. Blogging? Creative liberation? For whom?

Your pal Dave Pentecost dave@gomaya.com

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Some details for the partial record.

Of the 178 different signals I picked up over the course of the day yesterday...

• 126 were open (the WEP column said "no")
• 8 were called "Verizon Wi-Fi" (consistent with this story, perhaps?)
• 11 were called default
• 4 were called "Apple Network
• 42 were called "linksys" or names that began with "linksys"
• most were on channels 1, 6 or 11
• 10 had signals the program I used considered "strong"

And just one, CornerCast, an NYCwireless node, was public, strong and fully useful. That was the one serving City Hall Park. It was strongest at the part closest to J&R, the vast retailer across the street.

discuss

Some details for the partial record.

Of the 178 different signals I picked up over the course of the day yesterday...

• 126 were open (the WEP column said "no")
• 8 were called "Verizon Wi-Fi" (consistent with this story, perhaps?)
• 11 were called default (and all but one were open
• 4 were called "Apple Network" (all were open)
• 42 were called "linksys" or names that began with "linksys"
• most were on channels 1, 6 or 11
• 10 had signals the program I used considered "strong"

And just one, CornerCast, an NYCwireless node, was public, strong and fully useful. That was the one serving City Hall Park. It was strongest at the part closest to J&R, the vast retailer across the street.

discuss

Some details for the partial record.

Of the 178 different signals I picked up over the course of the day yesterday...

• 126 were open (the WEP column said "no")
• 8 were called "Verizon Wi-Fi" (consistent with this story, perhaps?)
• 11 were called default (and all but one were open)
• 4 were called "Apple Network" (all were open)
• 42 were called "linksys" or names that began with "linksys"
• most were on channels 1, 6 or 11
• 10 had signals the program I used considered "strong"

And just one, CornerCast, an NYCwireless node, was public, strong and fully useful. That was the one serving City Hall Park. It was strongest at the part closest to J&R, the vast retailer across the street.

discuss