free wireless access

midwest · 01:35 AM

If you are into wireless check out
http://en.fon.com

The are giving a Linksys WRT54GL or Buffalo WHRG54S for $5.00 plus shipping. You join a wireless club and agree to leave it open for one year for members to login to for access. You can also buy access passes. They have a map with worldwide locations. Thered ar over 7000 US locations up.

I sent for one today. Too good to pass up.

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midwest · 07-15-2006, 01:34 AM

Got my router today and had it up and running in five minutes. Another few minutes to register it with the FON site and I,m up and running and serving up free access, right across the street from a mickyD's no less. I
have their free access sticker on my front window and I'm wondering how long before smone logs in.

Its not wide open, you have to be a fon member or buy day passes. Another nice thing is it by default keeps the 4 wired ports blocked from the wifi saving me from having to do it.

When you first access it you are taken to fon page and members can go to their router config and create free access passwords for friends. Another nice touch.

Later next month I'm going to a Gov't Mule concert and there are some other fon'ers nearby so I'll get to check it out as a free user.

I'm now going to boot into boot into linux and see how painfull it is to get the built in broadcom to work. I hope I dont have to recompile the kernel.

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cmyksteve · 07-15-2006, 01:51 AM

Hi Ronnie,

I followed your link and this whole concept sounds really interesting. Not just the technical end, but like so many other things on the internet, the small independents have just as much access as the big corporations. It's quite different than the way the deck gets stacked in most bricks and mortar industries.

Are you planning to go with the external antenna to boost the range?

midwest · 07-15-2006, 04:37 AM

Yes, I'd like to get the gain up to 15 or so. I'm surrounded by used car lots, mickyD's and a mall so I dont even care if its FCC approved for the router. I'm just curious to see how far out I can push it and still get decent speeds.

Yes, its nice to see stuff like this happening. I really hope the cable companies wise up and realise that allowing wifi sharing like this can ONLY gain them customers. Cause If I get any static from charter I'll go to DSL in a heartbeat. Why is it that cable companies have their heads up their butts while almost every DSL provider does not care what you do with the hookup. Ah, I guess it's the "M" word (monopoly).

cmyksteve · 07-15-2006, 12:02 PM

I've seen reports on Public TV about cities and towns around the US trying to establish high speed connections for their areas only to run into legislation that blocks them. That's the sad part about our government that's come to light over issues like this.

Some of our political leaders are making short term decisions, siding with Comcast, Verizon and the like, letting them set up monopolies when it's in the best interest of residents, small business and communities to get the cost of high speed connections down to where everyone can afford it.

midwest · 07-15-2006, 12:31 PM

Yup, if a city wants to setup wifi they should be able to. There is federal legislation now that may allow it but some states have blocked municipal wifi.

The monopolies were needed to get cable in so the price of infrastructure could be recovered. The problem now is that even removing the local restrictions would not help get another cable co to come in cause the existing one, which has already got their ROI will drop prices and the new one would collapse. So no one would be foolish enough to try it. Also is the fact that many cities have contract that would be ruled by the courts as illegal. Clauses that ammount to tax extorsion of the cable co.

The feds(scotus) in their supreme wisdom ruled that cable co dont have to share their lines like telcos must, thus making competition a nonexistent possability. Some of the supremes must have cable co stock in their retirement funds.

midwest · 07-18-2006, 05:46 PM

dual boot update:

I have given up on wifi for the linux side. Not that is does not work. It does. I had to extract the inf and sys files from the xp file and use ndiswrapper to get it to work. The problem is that centOS uses a 4k stack in the kernel and the wifi refuses to use the stacks. I can recompile the kernel, not that big of a deal. Except that a updated kernel comes out two or more times a month so I would have to recompile with each update. Plus the ndiswrapper needs to be reinstalled after each kernel update. Too much BS just for wifi.

OTOH.
If I had used a different distro like redhat(fedora core), unbuntu or SuSe I would not have the problem as their kernels are not, AFAICT, 4k stacks.

Note: centOS is the most stable bug free distro you will find. It is that way by design. As a result it is behind the cutting edge (all other distros) that are eager to upgrade all packages to the newest and latest.

When I get a free day I will blow the linux partition away and start over with SuSe 10 then upgrade to 10.1. I already grabbed the SuSe 10 disks.

Jim · 07-18-2006, 06:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by midwest

Yes, its nice to see stuff like this happening. I really hope the cable companies wise up and realise that allowing wifi sharing like this can ONLY gain them customers. Cause If I get any static from charter I'll go to DSL in a heartbeat. Why is it that cable companies have their heads up their butts while almost every DSL provider does not care what you do with the hookup. Ah, I guess it's the "M" word (monopoly).

I can testify that Sprint doesn't care what you do with the hookup. I have 5.0m/640k DSL here, and we use every bit of it. I'm thinking of ordering another DSL line but afraid it may raise some eyebrows. We download 1000GB every 20 days and upload about 100GB. I called to get a price on a dedicated T-1 a few months ago which is about 1/3 of the speed we get now and they wanted $1700 a month. His argument was pretty weak in light of the fact we pay about $150 now for 5.0M and 16 ip's.

Speaking of cops.... Hey Steve my vehicle was robbed last night right here in little ole' Wauseon. Here's how smart they were - had a 17" laptop and portable xm boombox thing (portable FOX news to me) in the back seat, and brand new air nail gun in plain sight in the back of the truck. They broke into the FRONT seat and stole an XM radio reciever, JUST the reciever. Tore the antenna wire off of it rending it more useless that it already would have been to them after XM blacklists the serial number. The police came out, hinted that they knew who did it. Chatted for a while and left. And the thief is probably wondering why no one want to buy his new non working half radio today. Of course if he had the box he could take it up to WalMart and successfully return it, and it would go right back on the shelf. But thats another story...

midwest · 07-18-2006, 09:25 PM

I wish we had more of a selection here but I'm stuck with either charter(cable) or at&t/yahoo(dsl). Living in the Upper Peninsula has its advantages but technology is not one of them. OTOH, I have more recreation available out my back door than most other places in the lower 48.

Jim · 07-19-2006, 02:36 AM

I need to get up there one of these days. The U.P. is probably one of the places I haven't been. I've "charted a course" a couple times but it's never been feasable. :-) I'm tethered to an invisible rope of Internet connectivity. I had to go through South Dakota last year and before the trip checked Sprint for connectivity, there was none. Verizon said they had it so I signed up. Ten miles into S.D. and all the way accross the state it was dead air for both Sprint & Verizon except for the two towns in between. It's a nice state though. And as far as traffic on I90 - you are usually the only car in sight in a lot of places.

midwest · 07-19-2006, 12:28 PM

For us up here sprint and verision are like foreign words. The only thing in the air up here is birds, butterflys, pollen and of course mosquitos that have teeth.

cmyksteve · 07-20-2006, 03:57 AM

Here's something about wireless, further north in the UP, on Pasty.net. They've got a list of "wireless Pasty.NET HotSpots in the Keweenaw." Maybe a few laptops will make it up to deer camp this fall. :-)

midwest · 07-20-2006, 02:16 PM

There is a lot of bandwidth available up there. The backbone terminates at MTU in Houghton and a link then goes to NMU at Marquette. Where I am, on the MI-WI border we are sorta on the hind end. No one crosses the Menominee River with any type of lines. The major supplier here, UP Logon, who I used to work for and managed a POP in Escanaba, uses satellite to get out. That all severely limits what is available. Kinda sucks.

I was on the board of Mid-Pen Library when we started a cooperative and to get a line, we ran from Traverse City across the bridge up to here with a redundant T1 up to NMU. It was quite a set-up we established but would not have been available or financially feasable without a huge pile of grant money and help from Merrit-MSU. Unfortunately it was hijacked by some community big-wigs who tried to take it over and use it for their commercial benefit. Needless to say the large majority the original movers quit, myself included(I went to UP Logon), and the project nearly died. It never really did recover and never has to this day become self sufficient, which was part of the original charter.

Such is access in the sticks.

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