Cease and Desist!

My ISP (Speakeasy) sent me a nice letter recently informing me the Eurpopean Union's copyright infringement division was displeased with me. The said that based on these allegations, I would be in violation of the Speakeasy Acceptable Use Policy. "How can that be?", thought I. I buy my music on iTunes, I do not partake in bittorrent, limewire or any other version of the now dead Napster (old school version not the new subscription based system) music/file-trading system Hell, I pay for stuff!. I have encoded all my purchased CD's and boxed them away but I keep them to myself. In fact I am a true supporter of "legitimate" digital music use via iTunes or any other service that, in some way, supports the artisits that create the music I love. This includes freely distributed music a la Radiohead.

So why was the European Union comin after me? Speakeasy's Tech Support and Security groups were very helpful in pointing out to me that they could track streams of file sharing originating at my IP address. So I thought deeply about this (for 2 seconds) and arrived at the most logical conclusion. My neighbors were connecting to me via Free The Net, the Meraki based San Francisco free wifi network and uploading/downloading music to their hearts content. I have 2 repeaters on my roof and 4 others in houses nearby providing firewalled access to the Internet. This made me sad. I was very pleased to provide an un-asked for service to my neighbors who may not have - or may not be able to afford - Internet access. I wrote to Meraki explaining my dilemma and asked of there was someway to restrict my neighbors from conducting file trading on my network.

People in my hood are sharing music over my wireless network and
abusing my speakeasy acceptable use policy. Speakeasy.net has warned
me that any continued abuse will result in disconnection of my
service. Therefore I must inform you that unless you can lock it
down so only port 80 is being used I will have to disconnect the
Meraki repeaters and access points from my network.

I am very sorry. This seems like a real shame. I was very eager to
participate in "Free the Net" but now I am a bit saddened that folks
are abusing it.

Please get back to me and let me know if there is anything you can do
on your end.

They replied back with...

Hey Bruce,

grr. that's really irritating. but actually what's surprising is that
we haven't had to address this issue so far. as far as blocking
everything but port 80: I don't think any of us would be happy with a web-only Internet connection, so that doesn't seem like a good answer. to me it seems the real solution here would be to figure out who the culprit is and block them.

I looked on your gateway and didn't see anyone transferring an
inordinate amount of traffic. do you happen to have any idea who it is? do you know if it is bittorrent they are using? maybe they are using a different gateway at least part of the time (probably mine, hehe).

next week I guess we can figure out how to set up the right counters on your gateway so that we can figure out who it is (any insight or additional info you can provide would obviously be super helpful). hopefully Speakeasy can wait that long. if you need to unplug, we understand, but leaving your repeater plugged into power would at least soften the blow.

ugh,

So far they have found no way to track or stop the activity and I love my Speakeasy service. So I have no choice. Until such a time as I can trust my neighbors not to conduct activity that the European Union deems as illegal or until Meraki finds a way to filter this traffic out, I must disconnect my network from "Free the Net". I still have repeaters on my roof but they are no longer connected to my network, file traders now siphon off some other guys pipe or tube or truck that backs up and unloads Internet.

Comments and suggestions, as always, are very welcome.

What are some undiscussed issues surrounding San Francisco's Metro WiFi plans?

I am a San Francisco resident and I have been pondering this Google/Earthlink deal for quite awhile. I authored a couple of postings at Glenn Fleischman's WiFiNetNews site and Om Malick's GigaOm and I am just reposting because I feel that I did not get a sufficient answer to them , although there were some interesting comments later. Here are some open questions to the world at large:

How does the SF WLAN look to affect existing WLANs? What about the businesses that are in and around SF that already have WiFi? Is this new network going to stomp all over the existing networks? Causing co-channel and adjacent channel interference? Are employees of these networks going to connect to the free network while still connected to the wired Ethernet cable of their company's network. Possibly opening up a security hole? What if your company has a "No Wireless" policy, will you be able to just sit by a windows and connect to the MetroWLAN to check your stocks, Gmail account etc? What kinds of security/ authentication system (if any) are going to be used in the big Muni wireless deployments like Philadelphia and San Francisco to ensure the privacy of your internet communication.

Many companies have invested a great deal of time and money into putting up wireless networks in their offices. Some financial companies spent up to a million dollars on their WLAN. This new network may cause a whole host of problems for them. Did anyone consult with any of the existing businesses in downtown SF and/or Mountain View as well? [Editorial Note: I later learned there was an open forum and the results were hilarious. I have also learned that the City's Board of Supervisors is less than optimistic about the whole plan, regardless of the PR steamroller that The SF Chronicle has implemented] Should citizens and businesses have a say in how their "airspace" is used?

It sounds honorable and good to provide free WiFi to the community. I live here in SF and nobody asked me nor did they put up a votable resolution, They are just doing it. This was proposed years ago for a fraction of the cost it would take to implement now by the BARWN folks but was dropped. Why?

I still have to pay for Water, Trash, Phone, Streets, Schools etc. Why should I get free WiFi? I would rather get free trash pickup, or lower local taxes. (We liberals love taxes ;-)

If Gavin Newsom, Mayor of our fine city, has so much buy-in, or Mountain View as well, then why are so many of the companies in these areas scared to death that their investment of hundreds of thousands of dollars might just have been for naught. I have personally spoken to several IT people in Mountain View that really do not want Google's WiFi to tempt their users to connect to it instead of the encrypted and authenticated network that is provided for them.

I also have heard that people who are near one of the Metro WLAN APs cannot use their internal WLAN because the free city WLAN is MUCH LOUDER than their own (Caps are intended). So now what do they do? The Tropos APs that are being implemented in Mountain View and are being considered for San Francisco, are 1 watt (4 Watt effective output) transmitters. thats 40x more powerful that a default configured Cisco unit (which comes at 100mw). Additionally, there are only 3 non overlapping channels, so chances are 100% that this network will stomp all over the internal WLANs of Wells Fargo, PG&E, Charles Schwab and whoever else has offices downtown.

Similarly, in SF we already have around 100 APs per block, residentialy. We have been unwired for years. Heck, every coffee shop in town, of which there are legion, has free WiFi. So why do we need all this other WiFi drowning everything else out?

I actually asked a gentleman that works for a Mesh AP firm about this, He said not to worry about it, that the skin of the building would block a majority of the signal. Then after I distracted him with a tangential question I brought him back around with this question, "how do get access to the signal from my house, this is supposed to provide the community with Internet Access. will I be able to hear it from the core of my building?" and he replied, "...of course you will we will be transmitting at 4W (effective). It will be like I was right there in your living room."