2 ms·
They ended up doing this in Mountain View. It was actually truly anonymous (other than what the networking protocol needs - MAC address etc.): it was just an o
by nostrademons 6y ago
They ended up doing this in Mountain View. It was actually truly anonymous (other than what the networking protocol needs - MAC address etc.): it was just an open wi-fi network that blanketed the whole city. You'd connect with your device, and it didn't ask you anything: no capport, no splash page.
Speeds were pretty slow, which is why I didn't use it as my default connection, and presumably why the program was eventually discontinued (the official reason was lack of usage). It also wouldn't surprise me if they ran into abuse issues (eg. people downloading torrents on it all the time to avoid the RIAA).
- kijiki 6y agoI don't know anything about the SF program, but I lived in Mountain View at the time (still do). They put one of the mesh nodes on a street lamp about 200 feet away from my house. I played around with using it as a backup for when the DSL was down, but I gave up because it required you to log in with a google account.
- nostrademons 6y agoI don't recall it requiring a Google account, at least when I tried it. Perhaps they changed it over time. Back then you could just sign up for GMail accounts without giving over any useful personal information though.
- kijiki 6y agoI used a burner gmail account to try it out. It was slow enough the idea of creating new burner gmail accounts every time I wanted to use it was uninteresting. IIRC, it was below 128kbit/s for me, though there was at least one mesh hop away from a node that had a directional antenna pointed towards 444 Castro. Perhaps it was faster if your local node happened to have a direct uplink to either 444 or the 'plex.