Architecting Citywide Ubiquitous WiFi Access

The paper at [1] is going to appear at HotNets VI [2] in Atlanta, GA 
next week. The topic is very relevant to the PTP mission. Here is the 
abstract:

   "Cities around the world are currently considering building
   expensive Wi-Fi infrastructure. In urban areas, resident op-
   erated Wi-Fi access points (APs) are dense enough to achieve
   ubiquitous Internet access, provided we can induce the hosts
   to provide guest Wi-Fi access. However, sharing Wi-Fi in-
   volves taking on responsibility for the guest’s actions. Our
   main contribution is a novel mechanism to handoff the host’s
   responsibility to a trusted point by tunneling the guest’s pack-
   ets through it. The tunnel also guarantees that the guest’s
   traffic cannot be subverted by malicious hosts. Using tunnel-
   ing as a primitive, we show how to architect a citywide co-
   operative for safely sharing Wi-Fi with legitimate guests.
   We offer this as an economically viable alternative to invest-
   ing millions in new infrastructure."

It is an interesting read and is written by some very smart folks. In my 
opinion they make the right observation: "Why build a new municipal 
wireless network, when there is already an amazing density of networks 
deployed by citizens" [3] and the right conclusion: "People should share 
their networks". However, the architecture proposed has some problems:

   1. In their related work section, they fail to mention
      organized volunteer-based community wireless networks (like PTP!)
      and the relative success they have had. This is a big oversight.
      Actually it is a bit insulting that they mention Fon, but not
      PTP and friends.

   2. Their architecture only works for people who have a highspeed
      internet connection at home. Part of the draw of a municipal
      network is connecting people who otherwise wouldn't have
      or couldn't afford a wired connection. To incorporate a concept
      of free-riding users might actually make their proposal useful,
      but would also make it very very difficult to implement and
      maintain their design goals.

   3. They say that this approach is more economic than building out
      a new network (true), but they don't treat the hidden costs
      that would make such a deployment nontrivial: education, marketing,
      and support. Those who have worked in the trenches with PTP will
      note that these things certainly do not come for free.

In all likelihood, I'll write the authors with my criticisms - if I get 
any interesting responses I'll post a follow-up.

[1] 
http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/fac/Constantinos.Dovrolis/hotnets07/papers/hotnets6-final88.pdf
[2] 
http://www-static.cc.gatech.edu/fac/Constantinos.Dovrolis/hotnets07/program.html
[3] Something we've been saying for some time - and I think Russell is 
even quoted somewhere saying this.

--
Caleb Phillips

-- 
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