Verizon down in Midwest and California

Hey, we've been getting a ton of reports that Verizon's network has been down for several hours in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, and California, possibly as a side effect of merging in the Alltell network. (engadget)

Security in a Community Wireless Network

One of the inherent features of wireless technology is that the RF signals don’t stop at your walls. From an enterprise perspective, this is viewed as a weakness. However, from a community wireless networking perspective, this is viewed as our primary advantage and benefit. RF signals know no boundaries.We can’t see them, but they’re everywhere.This means that the wireless network that provides bandwidth to users in a community also has some inherent security risks that need to be considered.

Every Computer Needs to Be Protected

Firewalls placed between the DSL/Cable connection and the community wireless network can be configured to block typical attacks coming from the “outside world.” For example, the wireless network can be protected from port scanning, worm attacks, and other malicious activity coming from the Internet by enabling a firewall at the point of entry of the DSL/Cable connection.

Social Ramifications

For most of us, we cannot imagine a daily existence that lacked basic necessities such as electricity, hot water, indoor plumbing, natural gas, and so on. However, people living 100 years ago would have considered these modern conveniences to be a luxury. Nowadays, we take these things for granted. Can you imagine living in a world without them? That sensation—a bizarre and barbaric “how could you live like that” feeling—is the way that people will view our lives 100 years from now. Bandwidth is quickly becoming a “fourth utility,” comparable to electricity, water, and gas. In the future, people will just expect it to be there… anything less will simply be “uncivilized.”
Many decades ago, computers were thought of as stand-alone tools. While first used as business devices, they eventually filtered into home life for utility and recreational purposes. As computing evolved, the idea that computers could interact and “network” together grew in popularity. Before the advent of the Internet, computers were networked to share files and devices, such as printers. Early networking attempts were focused on lowering hardware peripheral costs. For example, by networking an entire business you could

Wireless HD Video Standard Finalized - Promises 1080p Support

The Wireless Home Digital Interface (WHDI) Consortium announced on Tuesday that their wireless technology specification has finally reached a completed state. The new standard will give consumers the ability to transmit high definition (HD) content around their homes wirelessly.
The WHDI, which is a formed alliance between Amimon, Hitachi, Motorola, Sharp, Samsung and Sony, was first revealed in the summer of 2008. This Tuesday, just a mere year and a half later, the group revealed that the impressive video technology, which promises to wirelessly deliver uncompressed HD content with ease, had reached version 1.0.
When the standard was originally proposed Amimon indicated that the technology would only support 720p content, however this has since changed, the standard now supports 60Hz 1080p video, with latency coming in at less than a millisecond.

Get a Free Eye-Fi Wireless SD Card for 200GB's Google Storage

Want 200 GB of online space for your Picasa web albums and Gmail attachments? Grab it for $50, and Google will give you a 4 GB Eye-Fi card with wireless uploading capabilities for free.
The 200 GB of space is an annually renewing cost of $50, but you can downgrade to a lesser plan or cancel after one year. The Eye-Fi card, on the other hand, is yours to keep. It's an SD card (technically an SDHC) that automatically uploads pictures from your digital camera to online accounts like, say, Picasa, when it's on the same wireless network as your laptop or home desktop. Adam's had nice things to say about it, and based on an approximate value of $70, you can

Benefits from Providing Wi-Fi

Benefits for Property Owners
The advantages to deploying free wireless access are numerous. For a property owner, providing bandwidth
is a way to “give back” to the community. Property owners can leverage their valuable rooftop locations for mounting antennas and other gear in order to provide a community resource for all to share.

In addition to the community benefit, property owners can also make their own properties (particularly rental locations) more attractive to potential tenants. Since a renter can avoid a monthly service fee for Internet access, the value of that particular property is greater then other locations where the renter would have to pay a monthly fee for bandwidth.

Why Wi-Fi?

So, you may be wondering:Why should I build a community wireless network? The answers to this question are as varied and diverse as the communities themselves that have deployed wireless networks.

Early models for building wireless networks focused around their commercial potential. For several years, a number of companies (both venture capital and privately funded) embarked upon the task
of setting up as many for-pay hotspots as fast as possible across the country.This “land grab” mentality was met with limited success. While some market existed for paid Internet access in “captive audience” scenarios (such as hotels and airports), most venues are now discovering that the cost and hassle of the billing process make it more attractive to just offer Wi-Fi as a free service or “amenity” that compliments their business.

For example, coffee shops and hotels are not in the business of being an ISP. By offering free access, they can focus on what they do best—making lattes, yummy treats, and providing lodging for guests. Retail locations have now discovered that offering free Wi-Fi has enormous benefits as a marketplace differentiator. In other words, while the early models were to hope that Wi-Fi could be used as a revenue source, nowadays, these venues have made a significant change in perspective.They realized that millions of people had Wi-Fi built into their laptops, but a very small percentage were willing to pay for Wi-Fi when roaming outside of their home.With Wi-Fi revenue at miniscule levels, and deployment costs getting lower and lower (thanks to cheaper and cheaper hardware!), these venues understood that it made more sense to offer Wi-Fi for free as a way to attract more customers.

We’ve seen this paradigm before: hotels (like any industry) are always looking for a way to attract new customers and gain a competitive edge. Decades ago, hotels advertised these differentiators in bright neon lights. First is was “Air Conditioning,” then “Color TV,” then “HBO,” and now “Free Wi-Fi.”

Beyond the commercial applications, one of the most exciting areas of Wi-Fi proliferation has been in residential neighborhoods—in particular, in disadvantaged and low-income neighborhoods. However, regardless of your socio-economic status, the idea of sharing bandwidth and saving money has always been an attractive motivator.With the advent of 802.11, we can now legally share our
Internet connection and get to know our neighbors better at the same time!