SF WiFi: Mayor loses vote on EarthLink Google WiFiinitiative

Matt Westervelt mattw at seattlewireless.net
Fri Feb 16 17:48:42 PST 2007 

Todd Boyle wrote:
> At 09:20 AM 2/16/2007, Matt Westervelt wrote:
>
>> Tell us the reasons you haven't done anything Todd. 
>
> Is that a counter offer?  I accept.  I presume you will
> disclose to us your analysis, in exchange for mine. :-)
>
sure.
> I didn't install SWN's Bx, Cx, etc. or any other CWN,
> because **I could not find a turnkey device that provided a
> useful enough function, cheaply.**  (Note this is within the
> political economy of a suburb, of single family houses.)
>
> The corollary to this, is that I couldn't find any turnkey device
> fit to sell or promote among my neighbors.
>
> The 2nd corollary is, as soon as there is a cheap, turnkey
> device i.e. not requiring a todd roll, every time one of my
> neighbors gets stuck, I would buy it, and promote it among
> my neighbors.
>
> But there has never been any such turnkey device.  I couldn't
> explain the value proposition. What useful thing would a Cx Node
> do for them?   Even if it was really lame, and did nothing else
> but VOIP and games for teens and tweens, or pool our upload
> connections, people might buy a thing if it was like, $50 to 100. 
At $50 to $100, you're never going to find anything that does what you 
want.

You want a lot, and you go on all day about the value of a decentralized 
system, the freedom of tcp/ip, yet
you can't see that it's worth more than free.     You'd make a lousy 
sales person.  I can see why you tore up
your accountants cert too.  

> But things at the $500 level would have to do something
> seriously good/useful.   Here in the suburbs, *every person* who
> would be a market for a CWN already has a broadband account.
> Will a Cx Node or CuWIN let them drop their broadband connection? 
> no.  Then, what cool application remains, that they don't already
> have on their DSL or Comcast?  (The answer includes things
> like the following, which are not politically correct)
>
Again, I think you're off base.   The cost of this isn't a problem to 
most people, a lot of it is how
you present your case.  *You* don't believe it has any value unless it 
provides big-I internet access, regardless of the
fact that it CAN provide Internet access in a number of different ways.  
You want to get it from your 1-hop away neighbor? fine,
how about 3 hops away. Sure.  Maybe you only want to do things on the 
list.  Fine.  It's your equipment, you get to use it how you want.

You are so close to 'getting it', but you always get lost in the 
details, trying to refine exactly what it is you think you should be 
*selling*.    I find it interesting that you have been going on about 
this for all of these years, yet still have done nothing to actually 
realize your wants and dreams other than bitch on mailing lists about 
how things aren't done to 100% of your 'requirements'.  

I have 2 kits with 3 antennas on my condo roof.    We've got APs 
scattered throughout the building, and about half of our building uses 
the network.   One connection off of the roof is to a nearby apartment 
block, and the other goes to the Westin.   A connection to a coop 
building down the road is planned, but they're still collecting gear.   
I got a mail on the support list today from someone down by REI that 
just did a survey, can see the link and will probably be connecting soon. 

My advice to anyone looking to build a network is "build your own node 
before you start worrying about anyone else's".   If you look at the map 
and don't see someone to connect to, put up a node.  Then the next 
person who looks at the map might do so as well.   If you just wait for 
the network to happen, it wont.   


> 1. free telephony, i.e. parasitic, e.g. VOIP and sharing telco lines 
> efficiently
available. currently requires a brain to set up. getting easier every 
day.   I'm sure we'd all love to hear what your idea of 'sharing telco 
lines' is though.
> 2. free commerce including unregulated payments/settlement infrastructure,
yeah. free peer to peer paypal. great.  you have to be high to think 
this is a requirement for any *network* to set up.  
> 3. free software, video and music content; unrestricted sharing of 
> content,
go ahead. it's your equipment. put up whatever you want on it.
> 4. connection poolling to give us faster/reliable upstream and downstream
faster than what. do you know what you're talking about at all?   I'll 
drop a clue on you.  The open source mesh networking protocols out 
there, OLSR, HSLS, B.A.T.M.A.N, SRCRR, and others all handle getting 
packets to where they need to go without a network engineer.  The catch 
is you have to agree with your neighbors on which one you're all going 
to use.   Density is key in this stuff, but it's pretty butt-simple, so 
once people do agree, it *meshes* together with little fuss. 

revisit:  are you talking about bandwidth aggregation?  that is an edge 
problem, not a network problem.    remember the whole 'get internet from 
whoever you want to' thing?  this falls -completely- under that.  


> 5. parasitic sharing of other electronic services like TV, or 
> CATV/broadcast.
>  including edited content, deleting ads or adding corrections or 
> improvements.
Your equipment, do with it what you think is necessary.   If you have 
some great TV-stealin box out there that parasitically shares, I doubt 
anyone cares if you hook it up.   Except of course for those people that 
seem to be sending out subpoenas and takedowns on the Internet all day 
long.  I guess if one of them is your neighbor you might get some 
static.  But that's really your problem, not mine.
> 6. unregulated porn.
Are you saying you're tired of the regulated stuff?
> 7. sufficiently strong privacy and anonymity, when desired for use cases,
If you want 'sufficiently strong privacy and anonymity', you probably 
shouldn't count on the network to provide it.  Pretty much guarantees it 
wont be.
> 8. sufficiently strong identity to enable use cases, when desired.
Do you want strong identity that provides privacy and anonymity at the 
same time so you can do your unregulated payments on your unregulated 
porn here?  Is that what you're really saying?
> 9. governance over these things by the physical device owners,
> who are the information stakeholders, instead of global corporations
> and governments. 
>
duh.
> These are the real reasons there's no $50 edge net device at
> CompUSA.  A manufacturer could be wiped out, lose their
> entire inventory and investment. So they don't dare.
>
no. it's not.  there is no grand conspiracy here.  what you want are 
applications, not devices.   devices enable those applications.

spend $50 on a device and you'll get what you pay for. 

If you want to build infrastructure, which is what we're talking about, 
you don't go with the lowest bidder unless you don't care about the results.

> And hobbyists in community networks tend to be in the tech. industry,
> and they also know what side of the bread the butter is on.
>
> i.e. they *invariably* adopt the consensus favoring police protection
> of intellectual property, and a regulatory regime that is based on rent
> collection for information and information services,
And you wonder why I don't usually respond to your mails.

You seem to want us to prove that the business models you come up with, 
that are just random ideas, will work before you'll do anything.  Guess 
what?  We don't know what applications/businesses/crackheaded ideas are 
going to be the killer apps here.    The whole idea of this thing is a 
big 'what if'.   What if we had some infrastructure that we all built.  
What could we do with it?   If you're interested in finding out, build 
up some infrastructure.   Try out some crackheaded business ideas.  Or 
don't.     For the most part, as Tyler said, we've laid a lot of 
groundwork.   We've gotten the question in people's heads, and we've 
worked on a lot of the weird technical problems that have come up, and 
we've even got a pretty stable platform that people (not you) are using 
to realize this dream here and elsewhere.    The reason it's not in 
every single home?  I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty sure it isn't 
because someone isn't promising them free unregulated porn.

Maybe I'm wrong, but then again, I don't live in your neighborhood.

-matt








>> >
>> > Why ordinary people never installed community wireless.
>> >
>> > Millions of people ran open APs on their DSL or cable.
>> > Usually accidentally but often willfully.
>> >
>> > But that's as far as it ever got.
>> >
>> > There was almost no routing beyond the original link.
>> >
>> > TOdd
>> > 
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