Mobile Wifi Backpack 278
ruzel writes "Julian Bleecker's web site TechKwonDo describes a project that is a wifi base station in a backpack. 'WiFi.Bedouin is a wearable, mobile 802.11b node disconnected from the global Internet. It forms a WiFi "island Internet" challenging conventional assumptions about WiFi and suggesting new architectures for digital networks that are based on physical proximity rather than solely connectivity.' The motivation is essentially subversive but what other uses are there for a device like this?"
WiFi Pacman (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What the fuck? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a wifi station that's not plugged into a broaddband connection.
It has no uplink.
Usually, there's an uplink, right?
Think of it like Gnutella. Anyone can become a hub, and if two people connect to it, you are part of the same network. Now imagine gnutella over something like, CB radio. It's all proximity based.
All inventions aren't about solving an existing problem. Sometimes, it's about enhancing life.
Try War Panting. (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, though, I don't really see a great advantage of having a singular wifi-spot and no internet connectivity. If you had, say, a satellite uplink, you could then provide wifi to a group in an area, but it's not like I could post on slashdot if all I had was an intranet island, particularly one with minimal range.
I can see some interesting social environments that could crop up as a result of wireless in general, though I think it'd happen along the PDA or bluetooth front. Information trading, for instance - social groups could share info like MP3s without fear of reprisal from the big bad media companies. I hear text messaging is really huge in places like hong kong, where you can pick someone up in a bar using your cell phone. I imagine if you were in a wilderness or military setting, it could be pretty nice, but they already have things like GPS and secure satellite uplinks. But base station backpacking?
Here's an ideal situation. Have a LAN party in the middle of the Ozarks by linking your backpacks together in a chain. Sure, you can play Quake now until your laptop dies. This, of course, that defeats the WHOLE PURPOSE of being in the woods, which is to get away from technology.
It's got a few bells, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
To understand what I mean, go to a Macworld Expo Keynote with your Airport card. You'll see dozens of different Airport networks pop up. Because everyone has Rendezvous, you can use iChat to chat with any of them, and you can use Rendezvous to share your locally available web pages automatically. They'll even show up in Safari's bookmarks. The best part is, you could see what pages you're going to, rather than being redirected at random.
When I go to the AdHoc Conference this year (used to be MacHack), I'm going to have my powerbook set up with a Wiki so that, if I collaborate on my Hack again, it'll be an easy way to share the information. Also, during the Hack contest, anyone who wanted to could open a copy of SubEthaEdit and record their notes from the show. It allowed a quick collaboration between several to dozens of people on covering the show.
So, in general, it just doesn't seem to do much for you, aside from pranks. I suppose it's good for people who don't have Rendezvous enabled throughout their operating system.
Re:Motorola/General Dynamics (Score:2, Interesting)
Really, it's backpack sized with more range and more bw, but in effect it is looking a lot like the dream of bluetooth to me. I could be wrong though.
sorry, I don't get it (Score:1, Interesting)
I have a sharp Zaurus with hostap, which is a base station in my pocket (and yes I'm happy to see you
I never thought of this as "shattering new paradigms" or "redefining networking" or "revolutionizing the world of computing" or whatever.
This is the same mentality that says "windows" or "plug and play" or "1-click shopping" should be a brand, instead of just being the way things are.
*shrug*
Re:Other uses.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What the fuck? (Score:2, Interesting)
So, it's not supposed to solve anybody's problems, unless they're having funding problems.
The big question for me is: Is this a
(I think it's a pretty cool art project, actually, but not one that should be covered here on
sounds like ideal ad-hoc network... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hacker potential (Score:3, Interesting)
You see, WinXP joins the network with the best signal. If I'm sitting next to someone, they'll bump onto my open network and may not even know it, leaving me free to sniff away.
Whaddya think? Is there potential for this sort of trick?
Re:So what's the usefulness? (Score:3, Interesting)
when the power goes out, we are still running because of the distributed nature of the system and it's access points the Local Cable provider can go down taking all cable modems offline and we are still online. If we lose our Net connection also then we are still live but not net connected.. Which is not bad as the microserver (a 486 baby AT motherboard with a 256Meg CF card for the OS and webfiles) is still running and taking over to redirect all web connections to a web page stating the problem and allowing access to the mini-forums for communication.
it works great.. we had a nice test last fall when we lost power here in the midwest.. our network was up and live for 4 hours and 20 of us were chatting about what happened over the wireless net. Now expand this to the portable side and you can easily add portable extensions by using this setup for special events.
I can only imagine the same thing can be done easily with a few "backpackers" at a medium sized event.
Re:What the fuck? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:Future of the Net... (Score:2, Interesting)
Imagine, if you will, a central server somewhere on the internet (maybe you run it, maybe you lease time on it, whatever.). You have the IP address (and/or domain name), as do your friends and family. You log onto this trusted server, send some validation string (password, processor ID, whatever) that identifies you as you, and the server provides you with LAN emulation services; i.e., everyone who's logged in has access to each other's computers just like they were all sitting on the same router.
With this environment in mind, you could set up 'global' messaging services, file sharing utilities, have a central virus scanner that eliminates the need for six people to buy six copies of NAV (dubious legality here, but if you're using one copy of Norton to scan the contents of your own LAN...hmmmm)...all sorts of random ideas and thoughts.
Thoughts, comments on what you could do with a trusted computing environment...
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Military, SWAT, gaming (Score:1, Interesting)
I could think of a few other uses as well, police (riot control, SWAT) gaming...(imagine setting up anywhere and people can join in no cables.."flash mob gaming")*phew*
Oh, I finally get it -- and it's actually cool! (Score:3, Interesting)
I read the website for a while. My second thought -- "oh, go hijack people at Starbuck's onto your Internet. Cute, immature crap."
I download the docs and read them, and buried deep within, it starts talking about geographically-based ad-hoc networks. Finally, a point. And quite a good one, actually.
The Internet's great and all, and it's not like you can't talk to a guy that's 20 feet away from you with it -- provided you know his (absolute) IP or hostname or something.
What this guy's talking about is being able to address people/things based on a relative measure -- geographical proximity to each other and this backpack. There are community tools on it to facilitate the coalescence of "instant communities" that can exchange very ephemeral information (broadcast a message saying you have beer to everyone in your section of the office) or use local resources ("print on the nearest printer").
It's not nearly as cool and avant-garde as this guy wants to think it is. It's not even new. (Jini, anyone?) He's applied more of a people angle on it, creating "communities" instead of just ad-hoc networks, and focusing on ways to make people interact with each other on the network -- or at least with the hoodlum who set it up.
It is a cool idea, though, IMO. Sometimes you want to talk to Jane or everyone in #slashdot, wherever she is or they are. And sometimes you want to talk to whoever (or whatever -- see the printer example) is nearby and (maybe) meets some other criteria.
It won't be remotely practical until the whole darn thing sits in the iPaq frontend, however.
Re:"island internet" (Score:2, Interesting)
I can see several exciting uses for this:
1. Spread a half-dozen of these floating rigs through a mass-demonstation/concert/march/fair, and let people find each other.
2. Same idea, but walk around a college campus and propagate a proximity-based contest, political viewpoint or research project (statistics based on respondents.)
3. Spider 100 major websites and then re-propagate the content to others, on subway and commuter trains.
4. How small can you make these things? Can you shrink wifi access point and itsy-bitsy webserver, antenna and power supply into something the size of a cigarette box? Take several hundred of these and drop over a moderately large area for propaganda, marketing or just to see what happens.