Open Wi-Fi
O número de hotspots residencias, empresariais, públicos e governamentais não pára de crescer nas grandes cidades contemporâneas. Estou agora em um hotspot, em um café, e vejo 10 redes ao meu redor. Estou usando o Loki (vejam post sobre o site ontem) para me localizar sem GPS: ele usa os hotspots para me dar minha exata localização no Google Maps (sei assim as ruas ao redor, o que tem perto, cafés, galerias, restaurantes…). Nada mais simples do que colocar essa estrutura a serviço dos usuários evitando o gasto de dinheiro público para criar redes municipais wi-fi.
Estudantes do MIT e da University of Cambridge criaram um sistema que permite, com seguraça, abrir as conexões e compartilha-las (Via ars technica). Vejam trechos:
“The initial excitement and advantages of municipal WiFi projects have been met with increasingly complex and insurmountable obstacles. At first it was just a few telecom and broadband providers objecting to their turf getting trampled, but soon issues like economics, politics, and the bigger picture began stopping many projects dead in their tracks. (…) Dubbed ‘wireless cooperative,’ the proposal is based on the fact that many urban areas are already peppered with plenty of personal and business hotspots – they just need some finessing to go municipal.
(…)The idea is that current residential and business owners could open up their WiFi access points and implement controlled, secure tunneling practices to allow guest access but also protect all parties involved. The system would offer a trusted point on the Internet that guests could access via an encrypted tunnel, preventing any kind of unfortunate mingling or malicious activity between the host of an access point and its guests. (…)
(…)There are a handful of obstacles for the vision of open, WiFi cooperatives, however. One of the most significant is that ISPs could chose not to support it, or if they do, they could increase fees for Hosts who choose to open up their access points. Another issue is simply a social one of participation. Many residential users are unlikely to want to open up their WiFi for free, let alone have the technical prowess or desire to manage such a system. Security concerns go without saying.(…)”