Dan Rutter Suggests Tossing Some Wi-Fi At the Neighbors

A few days ago, Dan Rutter (the Dan in "Dan's Data") published an interesting idea for extending the sort of philanthropic technical pranksterism that spawned throwies by applying the same approach to Wi-Fi. That means, looking what he hopes is not too far down the road, creating Wi-Fi repeaters that are cheap enough to deploy on the sly and frugal enough with power to run on solar power or cheaply replaceable batteries. But as he says, "If you've got a lot of spare money, a ladder and no respect for private property, though, you could already be stealthily deploying Open-Mesh or other such gadgets all over your neighbourhood." In some cities at least, you'd be hard pressed to ever avoid at least one available wireless access point, but that's not the experience for most people, most places -- which bears correction.

It's a...!

[maxume]

Make sure to include a nondescript box and some blinking lights in the setup, we wouldn't want anybody to mistake it for any sort of improvised device.

I like it

[chuckymonkey]

I really like the idea that this guy has, but I hate to think about the crazy ISPs would release on us if people started doing this. They're as bad as the media companies for wanting control over networks. I can just see it now, every repeater that you install is considered a lost sale with potentially thousands of users using it. Cease and desist or we will sue you for one brazillion dollars. Yet another argument for treating the internet like a public utility, just one that you can opt out of if you so choose.

Re:Basic common law principle

[Anonymous Coward]

And if my dog poops on your lawn, feel free to eat that too.

Re:Basic common law principle

[jasomenaso]

Basic principle of law: If your apple tree drops apples on my lawn, I'm allowed to eat them.

I am not sure that "basic principle" holds up in Australia.

I am pretty sure the legal thing to do in this circumstance is to return it to your neighbour

Of course, in the USA I guess standard legal practice is to moan and whinge, go on TV about it, then take your neighbour to court for their tree dropping an apple that was just a tad over-ripe, contributing to your dental decay.

Re:Interesting

[karnal]

I actually heard somewhere that the correct definitions is "a series of tubes." Some other junk about trucks in the tubes or something....

Re:Interesting

[Yvan256]

Well, duh. The series of tubes only work for intranet-style networks, like a city. As soon as we're talking inter-cities, you need big, huge trucks. That's where the huge latency comes from and gets you killed in your favorite online game.