| Can we try and get away from this word "stealing". There's been quite a lively debate on alt.wireless about this. I've been trying to argue that if an AP has WEP off, provides DHCP which provides an IP, gateway and DNS, then as a guest I'm both morally and legally justified in assuming bandwidth is being offered. As a good citizen, and out of self interest I shouldn't abuse it, but I can't see anything wrong with using it. Others are arguing that I ought to get more formal authorization first and make some effort to find out who and what is providing the bandwidth. And that just because I can use it, doesn't mean I should. The problem I have with all this is the practicalities. Windows and particularly Windows XP will just go ahead without me doing anything. We know that there are lots of open hotspots out there that are not deliberate but there are also lots that are. We've got no convention for SSIDs that imply free sharing. And the most difficult problem is that it could be very hard to find the owner. The example I gave is Bryant Park. If I'm in the park, and I see WiFi with an SSID of NYCWireless I can guess what it is. If I'm in London and see "ReadyToSurf" what do I do? How about the SSIDs I'm seeing round London "UK-LON" with no WEP, DHCP and DNS? I have no idea who's running them or what they are. And I can't think of any way of finding out. My concern is not really for us insiders. It's for the average laptop user who doesn't know an SSID from their nose. If they open the laptop, Win XP gets a connection and they read their email, who's at fault? We should also recognise that the whole debate is happening because the industry isn't providing the tools or guidance to allow AP owners to make a deliberate choice over whether to share or not. Aberdeen is predicting that the home- residential market will get the lion's share of shipments this year. An awful lot of those WLANs will be setup using factory defaults on the AP and be connected to ADSL or Cable thus inadvertently sharing their bandwidth. This is *NOT* a problem until somebody abuses it and gets them thrown off their ISP for violating the ISP's AUP. The failure was that we didn't give them the tools to make a deliberate decision. The result will be a load of Government-Media noise about how free internet access will bring down western capitalism! And that doesn't actually help anyone. [from: JB Wifi] |
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[ 04-Jan-03 11:08am ]
