Freedom Wi-Fi!
Utopian ideas about universal equality and the abolition of money are particularly relevant in a crisis, because with both the one and the other there are big problems. But high technology makes it possible to realize some of them now. We are talking about open Wi-Fi-networks that allow free use of wireless Internet.
“Free” hot spots now surprise no one: they are in cafes, airports, and private apartments. But where and when you need the Internet, you can’t guess, much less you can predict whether there will be a free “hot” point there. Under the conditions of Moscow, the likelihood that you will be provided with fast mobile Internet is not very high.
Judge for yourself: the area of ​​the entire city is 1,000 square meters. km, "habitable" territory - two times less. The standard Wi-Fi source in open areas covers about 0.03 sq. Km. Thus, to “capitalize” the capital in a rough approximation requires at least 17,000 points. Given that Moscow is not a level field, but a densely built metropolis, the number of points grows several times, to about 50,000.
Is it a lot or a little? The largest Wi-Fi network in Moscow, Beeline WiFi, as of February 2009, only 14,500 access points were operating, of which only 500 were free. This amount is clearly not enough for quality coverage of Moscow. The network of the competitor - Mobile TeleSystems, which unites different providers, is total less - only 7705 hot spots.
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Private Wi-Fi sources can not be counted, but on Yandex.WiFi volunteers have already noted 909 hot spots. What is important: 70% of them are free, and there are already more of them than free points in Wi-Fi networks organized by operators. But they are still a hundred times less than the required amount.
The situation can drastically change the owners of Wi-Fi-points, voluntarily opening them to all comers. The socialist idea “from each according to his abilities to each according to work” acquires here a completely understandable meaning: any member of the network can use it for free if he himself provides his own resources for it.
The potential army of volunteers is impressive: at the time of writing this article (February 2009), only Stream has 700,000 broadband Internet subscribers in Moscow, of which 70,000 have a Wi-Fi router at home. The entire capital market is about 2 million points of wired broadband access and 200,000 already operating Wi-Fi routers scattered throughout Moscow.
Table 1 Number of Wi-Fi
–Points:
The idea not only looks beautiful, but is already being realized. The most "lit" company in this area is FON (www.fon.com). The seriousness of the project can be estimated by the list of its investors, including Skype and Google.
The principle of “background” resembles a social network: everyone who connects is given a router, which becomes a new cell of the network and at the same time serves as an entry ticket to it. The owner of the router has access to the network while its own point of operation.
One of the advantages of such a network is that it is not limited to a city or country — FON has been working all over the world, and since January 2009, in Moscow, in partnership with COMSTAR-UTS (the Stream trademark). In the nearest office of the operator, we were given a FON Wi-Fi router with a rent of 30 rubles per month. True, if you do not have a modem or bought it earlier, you will have to forcibly rent it too. “Modem rental is needed to register a Wi-Fi router with the regulatory authorities as a communication network node, which COMSTAR-UTS does at its own expense,” the company representatives told us.
Connecting the router is maximally simplified. On the site www.fon.comstar.ru, the user enters the device code, as well as the location address, name and other data. Subsequently, they are displayed on the map, where you can see all the available routers and their status: whether the point is on or not.
FON Disadvantages
Firstly, the presence of a monthly fee, because the network organizer is experiencing costs, even despite the fact that the main work falls on the users themselves. Now the fee is low, but when the network reaches a critical mass of users, the operator can raise the cost.
Secondly, there are still too few points: in January only 500 subscribers connected to the Moscow FON. COMSTAR believes that in the coming months the flow will double, but even in this case, the critical mass will increase from one to two years. However, when the base reaches 10-20 thousand points, a snowball effect may occur, which will lead to the fact that hundreds of thousands of subscribers will come to the network in just one year.
Third, the user’s motivation mechanism is not thought out. For example, he may incorrectly indicate the address of the location of the router or deliberately place it in a “deaf” place. Here the principle of social online communities would be useful: the more you give to the network, the more you get from it. In particular, you can track traffic through a router: the higher it is, the more advantages it has for its owner (for example, the higher the speed with which the user connects to other points). This will force subscribers to place the router on the balcony or near the window, in general, so that the signal from it reaches the maximum number of users.
Fourth, the network of private Wi-Fi-points wins in mass, but loses in the effectiveness of the distribution of signal sources. The fact is that organized networks like “Beeline WiFi” are built “according to science”: in crowded places and taking into account the landscape. No one plans to distribute points in the free network, so you should not take it as a complete replacement by another method of mobile Internet access (see the sidebar). But if the network of altruistic vayfayshchikov will successfully develop, then each of its users, according to our calculations, can save up to 50% on the mobile Internet.
PS Wi-Fi Alternatives
On the street, “room” Wi-Fi perfectly complements Wi-MAX. However, the connection costs money and requires the purchase of a modem, while Wi-Fi is already built into 90% of manufactured laptops. Mobile phone modems that support 3G will also have to be bought and carried. All standards, including Wi-Fi, have both advantages and disadvantages, but they complement each other well. Sooner or later, manufacturers of laptops, netbooks, communicators and other mobile devices will begin to build chips that work with several standards at once into their devices, and the user (or program) will choose a network that works better and / or costs less. The only question is which of the standards for high-speed mobile Internet access will be fixed in the market, because so far there is no unity in them.
Original article here: http://www.tehnichno.ru/lenta/1432/0
“Free” hot spots now surprise no one: they are in cafes, airports, and private apartments. But where and when you need the Internet, you can’t guess, much less you can predict whether there will be a free “hot” point there. Under the conditions of Moscow, the likelihood that you will be provided with fast mobile Internet is not very high.
Judge for yourself: the area of ​​the entire city is 1,000 square meters. km, "habitable" territory - two times less. The standard Wi-Fi source in open areas covers about 0.03 sq. Km. Thus, to “capitalize” the capital in a rough approximation requires at least 17,000 points. Given that Moscow is not a level field, but a densely built metropolis, the number of points grows several times, to about 50,000.
Is it a lot or a little? The largest Wi-Fi network in Moscow, Beeline WiFi, as of February 2009, only 14,500 access points were operating, of which only 500 were free. This amount is clearly not enough for quality coverage of Moscow. The network of the competitor - Mobile TeleSystems, which unites different providers, is total less - only 7705 hot spots.
')
Private Wi-Fi sources can not be counted, but on Yandex.WiFi volunteers have already noted 909 hot spots. What is important: 70% of them are free, and there are already more of them than free points in Wi-Fi networks organized by operators. But they are still a hundred times less than the required amount.
The situation can drastically change the owners of Wi-Fi-points, voluntarily opening them to all comers. The socialist idea “from each according to his abilities to each according to work” acquires here a completely understandable meaning: any member of the network can use it for free if he himself provides his own resources for it.
The potential army of volunteers is impressive: at the time of writing this article (February 2009), only Stream has 700,000 broadband Internet subscribers in Moscow, of which 70,000 have a Wi-Fi router at home. The entire capital market is about 2 million points of wired broadband access and 200,000 already operating Wi-Fi routers scattered throughout Moscow.
Table 1 Number of Wi-Fi
–Points:
| Required to cover Moscow | "Beeline WiFi" (requiring payment) | MTS (paid) | Yandex.WiFi (free) | Beeline WiFi (free) | Volunteer Network Potential (is free) |
| 50,000 | 14,500 | 7,705 | 619 | 500 | 200,000 |
The idea not only looks beautiful, but is already being realized. The most "lit" company in this area is FON (www.fon.com). The seriousness of the project can be estimated by the list of its investors, including Skype and Google.
The principle of “background” resembles a social network: everyone who connects is given a router, which becomes a new cell of the network and at the same time serves as an entry ticket to it. The owner of the router has access to the network while its own point of operation.
One of the advantages of such a network is that it is not limited to a city or country — FON has been working all over the world, and since January 2009, in Moscow, in partnership with COMSTAR-UTS (the Stream trademark). In the nearest office of the operator, we were given a FON Wi-Fi router with a rent of 30 rubles per month. True, if you do not have a modem or bought it earlier, you will have to forcibly rent it too. “Modem rental is needed to register a Wi-Fi router with the regulatory authorities as a communication network node, which COMSTAR-UTS does at its own expense,” the company representatives told us.
Connecting the router is maximally simplified. On the site www.fon.comstar.ru, the user enters the device code, as well as the location address, name and other data. Subsequently, they are displayed on the map, where you can see all the available routers and their status: whether the point is on or not.
FON Disadvantages
Firstly, the presence of a monthly fee, because the network organizer is experiencing costs, even despite the fact that the main work falls on the users themselves. Now the fee is low, but when the network reaches a critical mass of users, the operator can raise the cost.
Secondly, there are still too few points: in January only 500 subscribers connected to the Moscow FON. COMSTAR believes that in the coming months the flow will double, but even in this case, the critical mass will increase from one to two years. However, when the base reaches 10-20 thousand points, a snowball effect may occur, which will lead to the fact that hundreds of thousands of subscribers will come to the network in just one year.
Third, the user’s motivation mechanism is not thought out. For example, he may incorrectly indicate the address of the location of the router or deliberately place it in a “deaf” place. Here the principle of social online communities would be useful: the more you give to the network, the more you get from it. In particular, you can track traffic through a router: the higher it is, the more advantages it has for its owner (for example, the higher the speed with which the user connects to other points). This will force subscribers to place the router on the balcony or near the window, in general, so that the signal from it reaches the maximum number of users.
Fourth, the network of private Wi-Fi-points wins in mass, but loses in the effectiveness of the distribution of signal sources. The fact is that organized networks like “Beeline WiFi” are built “according to science”: in crowded places and taking into account the landscape. No one plans to distribute points in the free network, so you should not take it as a complete replacement by another method of mobile Internet access (see the sidebar). But if the network of altruistic vayfayshchikov will successfully develop, then each of its users, according to our calculations, can save up to 50% on the mobile Internet.
PS Wi-Fi Alternatives
On the street, “room” Wi-Fi perfectly complements Wi-MAX. However, the connection costs money and requires the purchase of a modem, while Wi-Fi is already built into 90% of manufactured laptops. Mobile phone modems that support 3G will also have to be bought and carried. All standards, including Wi-Fi, have both advantages and disadvantages, but they complement each other well. Sooner or later, manufacturers of laptops, netbooks, communicators and other mobile devices will begin to build chips that work with several standards at once into their devices, and the user (or program) will choose a network that works better and / or costs less. The only question is which of the standards for high-speed mobile Internet access will be fixed in the market, because so far there is no unity in them.
Original article here: http://www.tehnichno.ru/lenta/1432/0
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/52335/
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