Steal This Film II Released
By vortex, Section News Posted on Fri Dec 28th, 2007 at 23:48:38 GMT
Steal This Film II is finally released! Sequel to part one concentrating on The Pirate Bay, and the copyfighters Piratbyran, this installment brings the history of technology and politics of media distribution to the masses in tasty and easily digestible form. From Eben Moglen to Howard Rheingold, from yours truly (vortex) to kids in the street simply stating they've never bought a CD in their lives. It's a high quality production that questions the very productisation of the human cultural need to communicate and share. As the introduction states, "This is not a film about piracy". Torrents available for xvid, DVD, iPod, and HD formats. Comments >>

Navizon: P2P GPS Wireless Positioning
By Anonymous Hero, Section News Posted on Tue Aug 30th, 2005 at 12:56:27 GMT
Just a quick note to let Free2Air and it's members know about the release of Navizon, -- the first Peer-to-Peer "Wireless Positioning System" that successfully blends GPS, WiF and Cellular positioning technologies -- together into one accurate "mobile geo-location" system for WiFi and/or cellular enabled Pocket PC's (Windows client coming soon). Here's how it works: 1) when used with a GPS device, Navizon maps the Wireless landscape (the Wi-Fi access points and cell towers) everywhere you go within your favorite cities, neighborhoods and routes. 2) by mapping the broadcast signals from these available WiFi and cell towers Navizon instantly triangulates your exact geo-location and can "power" your Pocket PC personal navigation apps (via a COM port). 3) an automatic and simple Sync process then links your data to the Network and allows other members to benefit from Navizon's free wireless positioning system -- without having to purchase an expensive GPS device or to pay hefty monthly service fee to a cell phone carrier. Navizon is collaborative, useful and fun.... and everyone wins: Navizon Users with GPS: -- now have GPS coverage in places they've NEVER had before (inside buildings, urban canyons, underground) because Navizon "works where GPS doesn't"! -- now have access to an accurate positioning system in their favorite cities and neighborhoods even when they don't have their GPS devices with them (left at home, at work or in the car). Navizon Users without GPS: -- now have access to a free "software-only" GPS positioning system that uses the WiFi and Cellular features of their Pocket PC's to accurately "power" their navigation apps. To learn more visit www.Navizon.com and check out our coverage in New York City, Miami or Toronto -- just a few of the cities where users have already begun contributing data.... but stay tuned... Navizon Network coverage around the world is growing fast, VERY FAST! Best regards, -Jim ========================== James P. W. Parsons Mexens Technology jim@mexens.com www.mexens.com home of www.Navizon.com Comments >>

Berlin OLSR Wireless Mesh Testbed at Wizards of OS 3
By vortex, Section News Posted on Wed Jun 16th, 2004 at 10:37:33 GMT
What happens when 20 very funky wirless meshcubes supplied by 4G Systems get together with Andreas Tønnesen, the author of a fresh implementation of a mesh routing protocol called Optimised Link State Routing (OLSR)? Why, mesh madness at the Wizards of OS conference of course!! snapshot of Berlin MANET mesh (click for detail) The network consisted of 3 rooftop meboxes together with various indoor units providing a stable backbone, with multiple roaming meshboxen (in cars, on foot, and on rollerblades!!) filling the gaps of coverage between the Berlin Conference centre, and c-base (the oldest crashed spaceship on earth!). The topology diagram represents the self-formed routing mesh between each meshbox. the amazing tiny meshbox Each tiny meshbox features 2 wireless interfaces, one to join the MANET mesh, and the other used as a classic access point for non-meshed wireless clients (essid: freifunk.net). The mesh works suprisingly well, although Andreas has his work cut out in some debugging, as some members of the OLSR mesh occasionally lost their routing tables causing the mesh to briefly lose contact now and again. mesh coverage between Berlin Conference Centre & c-base A wireless survey utilising kismet and a GPS unit gave a good indication of the area covered. (6 comments) Comments >>

Mesh Group Approved by IEEE
By vortex, Section News Posted on Wed Jan 21st, 2004 at 15:26:23 GMT
By Glenn Fleishman Special to Wi-Fi Networking News Permanently archived item http://wifinetnews.com/archives/002814.html IEEE approves formation of mesh task group for 802.11 protocols: The IEEE has approved the formation of a Task Group for fulfilling the promise of the wireless distribution system (WDS) that's been part of 802.11 since the beginning, Robert Moskowitz of TruSecure's [1] ICSA Labs wrote in to tell us. The mesh task group will work inside of the 802.11 Working Group to take the extremely vague specification for the WDS and provide a protocol for auto-configuring paths between APs over self-configuring multi-hoptopologies in a WDS to support both broadcast/multicast and unicast traffic in an ESS Mesh, according to the group formation proposal that was approved. The WDS part of 802.11 specifies the original and destination machine's MAC addresses, but also provides for two addresses for intermediate machines. Inpractical use of WDS to bridge wireless networks using gear from Linksys,D-Link, Buffalo, Apple, and others, each access point has a very loosely defined idea of where to pass traffic to get it closer to the destination address. The current implementations -- mostly a single Broadcom standard -- broadcast MAC addresses across access points as if the access points were ports on an Ethernet switch. The new task group will provide a wider range of tools for establishing the paths between access points while also providing a protocol that can bedeveloped against. Right now, multiple implementations of simple WDS don't always work together, and even multiple devices all using Broadcom's chipsetand firmware use different ways of connecting and won't always interconnect. Bonus: Explanation of WDS from [2] The Wireless Networking Starter Kit, 2nd Edition. Here's how my co-author Adam Engst and I describe how WDS works from ourbook on wireless (2nd edition released last fall): WDS is a clever part of the original 802.11b specification from 1999, but it wasn't until 2003 that it started appearing in standard, inexpensive equipment. WDS connects access points wirelessly as if they were ports on an Ethernet switch. On an Ethernet switch, each port keeps a list of all the machines connected to it and broadcasts that list to each other's port. Every computer on the switch's network receives these broadcasts and uses them to discover the MAC addresses of all the other accessible machines. Whether a computer wants tosend data to another computer that's on the same or a different port, it makes no difference: the originating computer still puts the same destination address on the packet. The switch, however, recognizes the destination address of each packet and routes it to the correct port and onto the destination computer. Each access point in a WDS-connected network works in just the same way as aport, tracking the MAC addresses of all the connected computers and broadcasting lists of addresses to other access points. When a computer connected to one access point wants to send a packet to a computer connected to another, WDS ensures that the first access point delivers the packet tothe appropriate access point, even through intermediate access points. In the end, WDS appears seamless to you, and no special magic is involved. It's just a clever way of keeping track of which computers are connected to which access points and making sure data can flow from any computer on the network to any other computer. URLs referenced: [1] <http://www.icsalabs.com> [2] <http://www.wireless-starter-kit.com> Comments >>

Compact Wifi SWR meter design
By vortex, Section News Posted on Sun Dec 14th, 2003 at 21:13:26 GMT
After three unsucessful attempts at building a WiFi standing wave ratio (SWR) meter, raylab has found a new SWR meter design from the Netherlands, which looks relatively easy to build. SWR meters allow antenna builders to measure how well signal transmissions flow through cable and antenna installations, which makes it an invaluable tool for DIY antenna builders. This is invaluable in (heh) more rigorous testing of our helical, patch, spider, garlic and omni antenna constructions and lastly of course draws us ever closer to developing hot, aesthetic templates for spray-on WiFi antennas. Stay tuned for a review of our first prototype. (1 comment) Comments >>

Nuevo Record para Phoenix Wireless Networks
By Anonymous Hero, Section News Posted on Tue Aug 19th, 2003 at 07:22:44 GMT
Este viernes día 1 de Agosto miembros y colaboradores de la asociación Phoenix Wireless Networks, en Tenerife, España. Hemos conseguido superar nuestro propio record alcanzando una distancia de 39.4 Km a una velocidad de 11 Megas y con niveles de señal bastante buenos (en torno a los -71 dbi). Las pruebas se han realizado desde los municipios tinerfeños de Punta del Hidalgo y La Guancha y se han empleado para establecer este enlace antenas direccionales de 19 dbi y 24 dbi, punto de acceso DLINK DWL900 AP+ y tarjeta PCMCIA Avaya. Durante el enlace se pudo establecer una videoconferencia así como medir la velocidad de tranferencia que rondaba los 490 Kbits/seg. En contra tan solo cabe destacar la presencia de calima e intervalos nubosos que dificultaron la orientación de las antenas. En las pruebas han colaborado Jesús D. José Alberto, Eudaldo, Carlos (equipo de Tejina-Punta Hidalgo) y Fidel, Jesús P. y Mary (equipo de la Guancha) y las empresas Risk Informática y Hard Memory Technology S.L. a las cuales agradecemos su colaboración y aportación de material." (2 comments) Comments >>

Linksys Access Point breaks GPL?
By adamb, Section News Posted on Wed Jul 30th, 2003 at 07:57:03 GMT
O'Reilly's sysadmin and community wireless champion Rob Flickenger has blogged details of suspicious findings on firmware of the Linksys WRT54G wireless access point. "Now that we are able to execute arbitrary commands on the WRT54G, it is obvious that Linksys is running modified software covered by the GPL. One perfect example of this is Zebra, the advanced dynamic routing software package. By opening the firmware file directly, as well as by making queries through the makeshift ping interface mentioned earlier, we noticed that the zebra running on the WRT54G doesn't use the standard configuration file locations. This means that it must certainly be a modified binary. So, naturally curious, I wanted to find out what Linksys had to do to get Zebra running on this hardware. I stopped by the Linksys "GPL Code Center", and downloaded their zebra archive. You can imagine my disappointment when I realized that this is in fact just a copy of the original source code available from zebra.org. Where are the changes to the source tree? I have just asked Linksys that very question, but as they still haven't gotten back to my first query, I expect my email to be filed under irrelevant and forgotten." Rob's email to Linksys asking to obtain the source of the code is archived on the NoCat mailing list. (2 comments) Comments >>

The story of gastower
By vortex, Section News Posted on Thu Jun 5th, 2003 at 09:25:35 GMT
This is/will be a history of the host gateway gastower, run by ambienttv & free2air. (1 comment, 20 words in story) Full Story

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