[H-GEN] Wireless, the NBN and the Sun

Gary Curtis gazilla at gmail.com
Sun Sep 18 01:48:57 EDT 2011


...and then there's the Serval Project...

http://www.servalproject.org/

Not the same thing as Fon, but would be fun to play with.
It would have immediate use in the bushwalking fraternity.
I am keen to load the Android app at next Humbug and test it.
I will need a couple of other Android users to volunteer as well.
The Serval dudes will be at LCA 2012.

Gaz



On Sun, Sep 18, 2011 at 13:47, Russell Stuart
<russell-humbug at stuart.id.au>wrote:

> [ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
> [ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ]
>
> Some while ago Gary, Scott and myself were sparring over the NBN.  Gary
> said the NBN's charging model was all wrong.  The NBN charges your ISP
> $24+GST a month for the equivalent of the existing copper connection
> connected to both the phone and ADSL at the exchange, which is roughly
> equivalent to what Telstra charges now for the sale thing.
>
> Gary didn't like that model.  He wanted a NBN username/password that
> allowed him to use anybodies NBN connection, anywhere, anytime, and have
> it be charged back to him.
>
> At the time I thought it was an absurd idea.  I still do - the NBN can't
> work that way.
>
> But the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced it would be
> possible to layer that sort of model over the NBN.  If I were doing it I
> would base it on OpenWrt.  Set up something that had private and Guest
> ESSID's.  The Guest ESSID would act like a giant captive portal, where
> you authenticated yourself with my servers and the router reported your
> data usage back to the servers.
>
> Given that a byte transferred over mobile wireless is currently 10 times
> more expensive than a byte transferred over a land line it should not be
> difficult to come up with a charging scheme that worked for everybody.
> The guest user gets a cheaper and faster connection than he would get
> with his phone, I get a cut, and the NBN land line owner gets to make
> money from his NBN connection.  In effect, it turns every residential
> line owner into a wireless ISP, competing with the likes of Telstra.
>
> Wonderful.  Except now I discover it has already been done.  Not here,
> but in Europe:
>
>  http://corp.fon.com/en/this-is-fon
>
> Is there nothing new under the Sun?
>
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