SuitWatchFriday, December 28, 2001
Winning the wireless Free-for-all
In one corner, Sky Dayton: founder of Earthlink, the world's biggest ISP, if you don't count AOL.
In the other corner, Brewster Kahle: co-founder and director of the Internet Archive (which runs on clusters of Linux machines); co-founder, president and CEO of Alexa (which aids Web navigation for Windows and Mac clients while also archiving massive hunks of the Web on Linux Cluster hosts for just $4k/terabyte); and co-founder of SFLan, which provides free wireless access in San Francisco. Joining Brewster is Tim Pozar, a telecommunications engineer and proprietor of Late Night Software. Both are members of the Bay Area Wireless Users Group (BAWUG)
Between them, the wide-open wireless access space. Code name; 802.11b. Nickname: WiFi.
Last week Sky Dayton called attention to WiFi by unveiling Boingo Wireless, which will aggregate hundreds (ultimately, thousands) of wireless access points and services, in the same way Earthlink started out by doing the same with smaller ISPs. The idea is to mask many vendors behind one intermediary: many wholesalers, one retailer.
Glenn Fleischman, the Seattle Times columnist and WiFi guru, gushed thusly about the Boingo announcement:
The Boingo model places a software interface on top of the myriad of login and authentication systems used by individual wireless ISPs (wISPs). In interviews conducted over the last two weeks, Dayton said that the software handles and hides the interaction with its partner networks to provide a seamless login...
By requiring client software, initially available only for Windows, Boingo offers a variety of features in one bundle: single user login, WEP key management, Wi-Fi network profile management, preferred network priority, VPN (virtual private network) service to Boingo's public servers, quality of service (QoS) tracking, and connection logging. Boingo also throws in authenticated SMTP mail service, which allows outbound email service anywhere on the Internet.
The software includes both a network sniffer and a location finder. The sniffer requires card drivers that support NDIS 5.1, the newest version of a protocol that abstracts communication between an operating system and drivers, allowing more robust, consistent, and simple interchange. Vendors are rapidly deploying updated drivers because of XP's support for them. The sniffer can show all networks and their signal strength in the vicinity, and brands any partner networks with a Boingo label (see screen capture). The location finder includes both Boingo partners and free community network hotspots that have allowed Boingo to list them. The software will constantly update its list of locations, checking at each connection, and uses XML-based structures to make downloads and installs quicker and more modular
In another piece Glenn said, "This launch will most likely transform Wi-Fi public space access from a niche market to a national infrastructure and hasten the integration with cellular networks."
One more thing:
A Macintosh version of the connection software is planned for 2002, but the company did not want to issue a prediction for delivery. (Dayton himself is a committed Macintosh user.)
Of course, nothing about Linux. Which means this isn't about "national infrastructure" at all. Whatever else it might be, Boingo Wireless is mostly about building yet another locked-up network.
Meanwhile, back in the other corner, Brewster Kahle and Tim Pozar are busy leveraging the abundance of the net, small-time -- by opening their personal WiFi signals to anybody who can get them. This is a tough mission, given the limited range of your basic WiFi base station. Your cordless phone has better reach. But these guys know a little about broadcasting. Tim Pozar, a participant in both SFLan and BAWUG, is a veteran broadcast engineer who serves up WiFi to his neighborhood with a rooftop antenna. "I've gotten to know the neighbors much better," he says. "Occasionally, they bring me pies and things like that." Tim calls loose organizations like SFLan NANs, or Neighborhood Area Networks. He writes:
Thanks to NANs, anyone can walk around with a personal digital assistant (PDA) and be connected all around the 'hood. For instance, while walking down to the local coffee shop on a Sunday morning, you could connect to the cafe's webpage and put in an order. Once you get your hot cup of joe, you sit down and start to use the cafe's local wireless network to check the New York Times. You walk back home and decide to make a run to Fry's to pick up the latest "Tomb Raider," and on the way you forget where Fry's is. You open your PDA again and connect to a nearby AP, get the address, and look up the driving directions from Yahoo! Maps.
NANs are free wISPs. Next to Boingo's grand ambitions, MobileStar and WayPort, the current leading commercial wISPs, look pathetic. Even though it supplies WiFi though countless Starbucks, MobileStar is bankrupt. WayPort is only rolled out in a few airports and hotels. But credit where due: neither company cares what you use for a client. All their login and authentication stuff shows up when you to first head for the Web through a browser. They do everything at the server. Same with whoever-it-is (a four-letter acronym of a name that starts with S) that supplies the Ethernet service in Marriott hotel rooms. All you need to log on and pay are DHCP and a browser.
It's significant that MobileStar and WayPort were first out of the gate with commercial WiFi, because we have a baseline functionality to compare with what Boingo Wireless wants to put us through. MobileStar and WayPort differ from Brewster and Tim's free NANs in just one respect: they charge you money to use them. In this respect they are no different than any ordinary ISP.
What matters is that the base functionality comes from the server side of the wireless link -- essentially fromt the Net itself.
So we have two different approaches to this wireless space. One either gives away or sells a basic service. The other replaces that service with a fancier one that requires a fancier client.
But that fancy client is a set of handcuffs. And that's your lock-in lesson right there. Give them client too fancy to refuse -- then lock them in with it.
To be fair, I don't believe lock-in is Boingo's real intent here. They probably think they're just delivering some services Microsoft was kind enough to help out with by baking WiFi access into XP. But as long as Boingo's services depend on features available to only one kind of client on one kind of operating system, it's a lock-in strategy.
In the vast middle ground between locked and free, bet on the freedom fighters.
That's why my advice to Sky and the folks at Boingo is to join the opposition. They can do that two ways. One is by adding a basic service that doesn't require a special client. The other is by finding ways to support the NANs of the world.
In way to support NANs is by joining Kevin Werbach and others who want Open Spectrum, which will add enormous range and bandwidth to the tiny sliver of spectrum where WiFi operates today.
That way there isn't a fight. Everybody wins. Just like they do every day the Internet persists.