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

[Dave Howe]

> http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/11/21/yourtech.wifis/index.html
Its a nice idea, but unfortunately gets easily bitten by the usual
networking bugbears
1. large wifi networks start to hit scaling problems - they start to need
routers and name services that are relatively expensive, and ip address
ranges start to become a scarce resource.
2. no matter how large the new network becomes, it still needs a link to the
"old" network; almost all ISPs frown on use of home connections for sharing
more than just the owner's machines, and many consider using even unmetered
in a manner they didn't provision for (ie, using unmetered more than 100
hours a month at the full bandwidth limit) as "abuse" and end the contracts
of those who do so. what you would need would be an ISP (or large
commercial) style contract with a guaranteeed bandwidth and dedicated ip
addresses - which do not come cheap enough to be worth giving away.
3. unmetered is only just becoming common in england, and is still mostly on
56K modem. broadband is often *massively* underprovisioned, and quite often
all the connections in an area feed to a single fixed-bandwidth multiplexor
at the telecomms office, so adding additional connections doesn't actually
add any bandwidth at all. the *only* end user deal is 500kb down, 250kb up
shared amongst *50* people in your area (the uk has a telecomms monopoly
from a recently privatised company that has already forced two would-be
competitors out of the market). Even now (given expected usage patterns) the
mere existance of a microsoft OS service pack more than 30mb in size is
enough to throw available bandwidth per-user below modem levels....