[OpenWireless Tech] Hello World

Fri Nov 2 02:59:01 PDT 2012

Hi!

On 04:05 Fri 02 Nov     , Todd Freeman wrote:
> > 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.
> =============================

I do not deubt this scales for your city. I also do not doubt this can be
done by other cities as well. But I do doubt that you can find a person with
the experience, the willingness to invest time+money and knows way to get a
reasonable uplink so quickly.

> > 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 ?

If they somehow depend on you to provide connectivity, then you have a
monopoly. The ownership model and the technologies used make no difference.

> 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.

This is why I meant above whether it scales. You might have gotten an uplink,
other people in other cities might not...

> 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.

But to do this you might need lots of high-throughput links on your own and
this might not be cheaper than buying the bandwidth in bulk. Also, free
peerings with tier 2+3 providers will probably not save you much bandwidth.

> So no, I am not trying to just create my own monopoly.

Are you "not trying to" or are you "trying not to"?

> ============================================================================
> 
> > 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.

What I meant is "is the traffic between the APs and the uplink encrypted" or
is just the link client-AP encrypted?

> ===========================================
> 
> 
> > 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,

Well, if you are willing to take this risk, then it's fine. The question is
just whether there are enough people like you...

> with the added bonus of all the users being inherently anonymous.

Being really anonymous is way harder than not doing authentication. You need
a big network and harden very piece of the network stack the way tor does.

	-Michi
-- 
programing a layer 3+4 network protocol for mesh networks
see http://michaelblizek.twilightparadox.com