[MLB-WIRELESS] Your AUP, Internet Sharing and FON

[Dan Flett]

> My read on this is if and when they try to open up here the 
> ISP's will join ranks and change their AUP to exclude it. Aus 
> is a bit of a telco backwater that already has more 
> restrictive use & higher prices than other markets so why 
> would they open it up?
 
> My work  ISP (USA - Speakeasy) has signed up to allow FON but 
> they have already been open for a long time being based in Seattle.
> 
> The concept is very neat - I think quite in line with what MW 
> members are informally offering each other anyway really.

Yeah, we know it's a good idea, but FON is interested popularising the
concept in a formal way, worldwide.  They now have some serious money with
which to do this, and FON's founder, Martin Varsavsky seems to have the gift
of the gab and has a knack for talking his critics into becoming supporters.
The FON website even has a section aimed at ISPs where it is pointed out
that an ISP that allows FON differentiates itself.  The broadband market is
very homogenous - products are mostly the same and everyone is cutting each
other's throats.  Some smaller ISPs in Australia may decide that they can
get an edge by allowing FON - they wouldn't have much to lose.  A FON
customer effectively has a roaming agreement with any other FON connection
worldwide - which an ISP can use as a marketing point.

I made a couple of errors in my last email - the source code for the FON
firmware is indeed available, but it's hard to find - in a non-obvious
place.  FON is derived from DD-WRT, and was written by the DD-WRT developer.
The FON firmware source code is available in the same place as the DD-WRT
source code - www.dd-wrt.org.  I intend to compile it and see if the result
is the same as the publicly available bin images.

I also wrote that the FON firmware features a mesh-networking daemon.  I
looked into it further and it seems that it doesn't have any sort or routing
daemon.  It would appear that FON routers act as stand-alone APs.  I guess
it stands to reason.  A mesh network or any sort of routed network requires
a human-administered IP address allocation scheme.  FON probably do not want
to get involved in running metro-area networks.  So I wonder how FON feel
about having their connections redistributed the same way they redistribute
ISP feeds? :)

Cheers,

Dan

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