[CWN-Summit] FON

[Stelios Valavanis]

yeah. why do we care about freeloaders anyway? just open up the APs and let it 
flap in the breeze.

On Sunday 10 September 2006 19:12, David Young wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 09, 2006 at 12:16:11PM -0500, Dave Chakrabarti wrote:
> > David,
> >
> > So I picked a bad example :) But I'm sure you'll agree that FON has
> > managed to reach a fairly large number of people in a short period of
> > time, and is positioning itself to reach into the non-geek,
> > non-early-adopter community.
>
> Agreed.  That is exciting.  I wish the grassroots, open-source groups
> had such success getting the non-geeks involved.
>
> > Without a centralized server, I'm not sure how you'd handle
> > authorizations. Maybe you don't need authorizations? Maybe we just need
> > to serve up a page that says hey, this is social source wifi sharing,
> > use it for free and enjoy...
>
> If the purpose of authorization is to keep "freeloaders"---i.e., those
> who do not contribute by operating a hotspot at home---off the network,
> then a hotspot away from home can authorize access with the help of
> other hotspots.  Essentially, the hotspot away from home can ask your
> hotspot at home, "do you recognize this client?"  (Perhaps your client
> identifies itself with a cookie.)  Your hotspot at home says, "Yes,
> I know that client.  Here are my references," and it supplies the IP
> addresses for a number of hotspots whose owners have visited your home
> hotspot.  The hotspot away from home queries each of those hotspots,
> who (we hope) will vouch for your home hotspot, indicating that their
> owners have used it.
>
> > My main concern with FON is the privacy / security side of the equation.
> > As someone pointed out on their forums, the FON service presents a
> > gigantic marketing opportunity. Everything goes through their DNS. They
> > could have a log of all of your traffic and all of your content /
> > conversations in an effort to a. sell you stuff and b. keep our
> > terrorist-hunting governments happy. I'm not well-versed with wifi /
> > networking tech enough to know how this works, but since everything runs
> > through their portal, I'm assuming it's feasible. Giving Google's
> > affinity for this kind of marketing, I'm also a little nervous that
> > they've invested heavily in the FON project.
>
> It does sound like a data-miner's dream come true!  You can find out
> users' location, too.
>
> Dave

-- 
_______________________________________
stel valavanis  http://www.onshore.com/