A wifi commons

As I sit here, my laptop can see 7 wireless networks other than my own - I suspect many of them have, like mine, been secured.

Here’s a question: what would happen if everyone with password-protected wifi in the UK reconfigured their routers so that up to 25% of their bandwidth was available unprotected to anyone who wanted to use it?

I don’t even know if that’s possible with current routers, but most of them surely have hardware that’s capable - and of making sure there was no route to machines on the the secure network from the public side.

Am I naive in thinking that this would create a sensible wifi commons across most major cities?

Update: James has pointed me to Fon who make a router that already does exactly this.

2 comments ↓

#1 Marcus Derencius on 08.06.07 at 3:23 am

That would be a neat idea.

Sometime ago, there was a open wifi network. A company was providing people the wifi router, and it would share a percentage of the bandwidth freely. The users of this free network must had to identify their selfs through this company page.

Nice idea, but no news since more than a year.

#2 James Adam on 08.06.07 at 9:05 am

It sounds like you’re describing La Fonera: http://www.fon.com/en/info/whatsFon

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