CNN.com - WiFi activists on free Web crusade - Nov. 29, 2002

[Eugen Leitl]

On Mon, 2 Dec 2002, Peter Fairbrother wrote:

> What I don't understand is how a node knows the location of a person
> who moves about in the first place.

The node spans a cell. Similiar to your cellular phone, you can link an ID 
to a cell. Within the cell you can use relativistic ping and/or signal 
strength (that's how mobile phone localization is done today). Since cells 
overlap you've got a lot of constraints to get a position fix.
 
> Also, I don't like the idea that my location is known by the location
> of my equipment. But I know very little about geographical routing.

Your location is already known, whether you're using wire or wireless.  
Wireless has limited range, cables are expensive enough so that their
lenght is being minimized. Traceroutes and signal pings and already
existing IP location databases make anonymity a myth. The only way to
address it is to use anonymizing proxies/traffic remixing.  Geographic
routing is intrinsically resistant to address spoofing (neighbours will
refuse routing packets from obviously bogus origin). If you want to avoid
disclosing your physical location, use a higher, anonymizing protocol
layer.