Wi-Fi in the local (i.e Bend, OR) news:
tsweekly.com
FEATURE: The Wi-Fi Revolution
Even in Bend (yes, Bend) new Net technology is sprouting
By Melissa Bearns
It vibrates through the air we breathe, unseen and unregulated. It is an anarchy of the airwaves, as uncontrollable as a grassroots uprising. It is the front line of the technology offensive, a revolution exploding in the faces of the FCC and those who would chain down the Net.
It is Wi-FiãWireless Fidelity.
What makes Wi-Fi so hot is that it provides cheap, easy access to a high-speed Internet connection. A box the size of a thick paperback beams out a signal to an area about as big as Drake Park, and a computer card slightly larger than a matchbook picks it up. You don't need to be connected to anything.
Over the last two years, the popularity of Wi-Fi has grown faster than any technology in history and has exploded onto the mainstream, even in Bend. Already police and city officials can unplug but stay connected at high speed to the internal city network and the Internet. At Bellatazza on Wall Street, customers with wireless-enabled notebook computers sip latt¼s while they pay their bills online and surf the Net. Customers of Oregon Trail Internet can log on to their Wi-Fi network anywhere in downtown Bend.
Many new notebook computers come Wi-Fi-ready. If your computer isn't, the hardware costs only about $150, and once you've got it you can tune in anywhere there's a signal. Areas with a public, open-access signal such as that at Bellatazza are called "hotspots,² and they're popping up all over the country. Airports, including O'Hare in Chicago and San Jose International in California, some Starbucks coffee shops (but not the one in Bend), hotels, libraries and thousands of individuals are dotting cities and towns with hotspots. Pretty soon, Wi-Fi will be everywhere.
Right now, Wi-Fi is completely unregulated and unrestricted. Three wireless networking standards have been endorsed by the Wi-Fi Alliance, a nonprofit international association formed in 1999 to certify interoperability of wireless area networks. The standards are known as 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g.
It all started with 802.11b, which uses the 2.4-GHz band. Four years ago, 802.11a came out as a faster alternative to 802.11b but has rapidly waned in popularity because it uses a different bandwidth. In July, the Wi-Fi Alliance endorsed the newest standard, 802.11g, which is completely compatible with 802.11b but has transmission rates up to five times faster.
While all those numbers and letters can be confusing, the most important thing to understand is that to use an open-access hotspot such as the one at Bellatazza, you have to be using the same standard. Your best bet is to get hooked up with 802.11g.
But not every hotspot is open-access. When Laura Rumpler, communications manager for the City of Bend, connects through the city's Wi-Fi network, she has to log in, and all the data she sends and receives is encrypted.
For customers of Oregon Trail Internet, all of downtown Bend is a hotspot, but you've got to have a Wi-Fi account, at $19.95 a month, to get access.
Dave Williams of Redmond works at home as a technical writer for a company in Lake Oswego. He was looking for office space downtown when he saw an ad for Oregon Trail Internet's Wi-Fi service.
The freedom of Wi-Fi fits his working style, and he signed up for it almost immediately. Now he spends a few days a week working at the library in Bend. When he wants a good cup of coffee, he packs up and heads over to Bellatazza.
"I found working at home all the time really isolating,² he said. "This gives me the ability to work wherever I want to and I can choose how social I want to be.²
Bellatazza's co-owner, Stewart Fritchman, travels frequently as a consultant and discovered Wi-Fi hotspots while on the East Coast. He loved being able to use his own notebook computer to do his work and decided to make Wi-Fi available to his coffee shop customers.
Ray Spreier, co-president of Bend Broadband (formerly Bend Cable), said the company's high-speed Internet customers will soon be able to buy Wi-Fi-equipped modems through the company for home use. Customers may be able to log onto a Wi-Fi network throughout the city, similar to the one provided by Oregon Trail Internet, as early as the first quarter of 2004.
But Bend Broadband's most exciting project is a partnership with the city to wire certain areas of Bend with open access. They're looking at spots such as city council chambers, the county commissioners' chambers and other areas where the government and public interface.
That would mean people attending a city council meeting could pull up that week's council packet off the Web during the council meeting; they could surf the Net, answer e-mail, or do research while they waited for their item of interest to be discussed.
Rumpler already has that kind of access, and said it's transformed the way she works.
"I don't know what I would do without it,² she said. "A lot of my job is time-sensitiveãgetting news releases out and answering questions. So turnaround time is extremely important for me. When I go to City Hall, I can check my e-mail and answer questions right away. It's the same thing with news releases. I can do them anywhere I am.²
Currently, City Hall, the new police station, the public works building, and the fire administration building are all set up for Wi-Fi. But it's the police who could have the most to gain if Bend Broadband sets up a Wi-Fi network for them throughout the city, a project that's already in the works.
Police have been using notebooks in the patrol cars for about a decade but their transmission rate is extremely slow and limits them to basic text messages.
Broadband Wi-Fi access would make it possible for dispatchers to send maps, pictures of suspects, and even beam in real-time video from security cameras in banks and stores to police while they're on the road. All that information will be encrypted for security.
One downside of Wi-Fi is that for the unwary home user or business, it can pose a big security risk. While most Wi-Fi setups come with built-in firewalls or other secure protocols, many people don't set up those features and are unintentionally providing backdoor access into their personal computers.
Meyers has invited a few companies specializing in network security to try to hack into the existing city system, but so far, none has succeeded.
"War driving² is the term for driving around a city or town with a notebook computer looking for hotspots either intentionally shared by users or leaking out of homes and businesses. War drivers have been accused of hacking into people's private systems, and a few have been arrested for cracking the computer systems of large corporations.
War driving has spawned another phenomenon called "War Chalking² in which war drivers use symbols to mark hotspots where passersby can hitchhike on the signal.
The reference to military conflict is intentional. Wi-Fi is seen by many as a new frontier, a glimpse of a future that requires no allegiance to some huge corporation. It has rocked the foundations of the cell phone industry, which expected the next wave of technology to arrive on its time frameãand pay its fees.
Free and unlicensed, Wi-Fi is out of their control. Consumer demand for cheap Wi-Fi packages, available on the shelves of discount retailers, has skyrocketed. Last year, people bought about 12 million units, and that number is on track to more than double in 2003.
As more and more people share the airwaves, the dots marking hotspots on the city map of Bend and across the country may soon overlap, creating one giant Wi-Fi nation. It's time to unplug.
To learn more about Wi-Fi, log on to www.wi-fi.org. |
