[OpenWireless Tech] Hello World

[Todd Freeman]

> I think an important point we need to ask ourselves here is, what do you
> want the fundamental coverage to be like, and how do you expect the
> clients to use the network. Please do not take offence to this, but from
> what I can tell the roadmap is designed to be very similar to tor,
> something you use every once in a while to do a limited number of things
> because its ungodly slow, but with the added bonus of very spotty
> coverage and no idea where any of the APs are, so you would be biking/
> walking around (not driving because you would leave wifi range before
> you even detected it). Also the quality is impossible to maintain even
> to a minor degree as you will likely have a lot of people with DSL
> modems and 128-512k upload caps.
>
> What I like to envision is something similar to clear4g, A network with
> ubiquitous coverage that is always on, and the security is managed by
> any local org (towns/cities/educational institutions etc..) not by the
> people running the APs. By making sign up for the central cert auth
> anonymous and easy, the network operator can still comply with DMCA
> requests, etc.. by terminating the account (but leave email acct intact
> for 30days for them to remove anything they need) Thus the network
> operator still gets safe harbour protections without permanently
> blocking anyone’s access, and without having any useful information to
> give to LE by design.

This is a nice idea. But how is this supposed to scale up to provide service
for every city in the world? And what is the difference to mobile phone
networks today?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This is how it is supposed to scale up to provide for cities:
http://chiwifi.net/Diagram1.png I did link to it in my second email.
The entire point of my project http://chiwifi.net/node/7 is to provide city level connectivity, I think the internet would be more free then it is now if it was broken up into metro areas as hubs. Each metro area in of itself could have multiple networks.
=============================


> By allowing the network operator things like centralized auth, they can
> also be encouraged to run addon services like increased bandwidth caps
> as well as location based services or even telco services. This is how
> we will be able to break the monopoly comcast,verizon,att, et al .. have
> on internet. We need to be able to make a business case to people we
> want to run this system.

... and create a new monopoly in the process?

> and
> finally it has to be easy to incentiveize large orgs to adopt it.
what do you mean?

++++++++++++++++++++
These both mean the same thing, How is it a monopoly if we release it
for free open source, and each city/organizational unit needs only
supply the hardware ?

Do you think the cities will pay for 10gbit uplinks to the internet with
no way to re-coup any of the losses initially? There must be something
they can use to recoup costs at the beginning. Once you get to city
sized providers, peering becomes much cheaper and often free. level3
does not buy bandwith from cogent, they "peer"
The same thing can happen we we add enough smaller peers to the internet
that are large enough to make an impact, by removing huge sections of
the bases from the current monopolies.
So no, I am not trying to just create my own monopoly.

============================================================================

> But one of the things the above system has that is crucial for its
> adoption, is capacity. So long as we use industry standards for the auth
> mechanism (wpa2-ent) which almost all routers already support, the home
> users only have to change the router mode from router to AP with
> wpa2-ent,and point it at the local network operators servers. no special
> firmware required. Anyone can make a system more complex, layering on
> encryption with a shovel is not the answer.

This is the exact case where the encryption layer would be required. Well,
except you do not lots of random individuals (AP-owners) to be able to sniff
your passwords.


TLDR; network needs to be designed with very low overhead, not rely on
VPNs to be secure, and have throughput that is better then tor.

... except your network needs VPNs or some sort of higher-layer encryption to
be secure (see above).

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Are you seriously implying that wpa2-ent is insecure ?

it also provides 256AES encryption of the traffic. VPNs are not going to be more secure then that, but they will double the encryption overhead.

===========================================


> So as I said, what do you want the client experience to be like ? If you
> want it to be like tor, noone will want to use it for their everyday
> use. Besides if we already have tor, what is the point of making another
> tor ?

I guess the question is rather what client experience we can provide. If AP
operators are not willing to take the legal risks like you do, what can we do?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++
The individual operators (people who host the towers) do not take any
risk in my system, all the risk is assumed by the network operator, that
is why the network operator distributes the auth and IPs. I don't
imagine anyone would try to run a city sized network and assume they
could do it with no risk, but i DO expect the individual tower owners to
be able to expect to operate the towers with no risk, which is exactly
what my system provides, with the added bonus of all the users being
inherently anonymous.

==========================

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.eff.org/pipermail/tech/attachments/20121102/56ac29bb/attachment.html>