2006 22
Help Wanted: Turning Laptops into Hotspots
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in Fon with No Comments
Right now FON is only router based. We chose routers as people tend to leave routers always on. So we are happy with our solution. But occasionally I can see how foneros may want to share wifi through their laptops. So we would like to launch another FON modality and that is those of laptops who become FON hotspots. As you may know I am not a programmer. If anything I am a dreamer at FON, probably the Chief Corporate Dreamer. So this is what I am dreaming from the little I know about laptops. This is an invitation for developers out there to send us proposed solutions with their budgets so these ideas can become a reality.
There are three main kinds of laptops, Windows, Mac and Linux.
Mac laptops are great for FON as they already have a built in functionality that turns them into hotspots when they receive internet over lan or 3G. What we need here is a download that turns them into FON hotspots.
Linux laptops are great for FON cause our two software developments openwrt and ddwrt are linux based. But the problem is that not all of them become hotspots. I need more information on this, on how Linux based laptops could become FON hotspots.
Windows based laptops are even more challenging as our software is in Linux. But maybe somebody out there can think of a solution.
And lastly none of this laptops can become hotspots when they use their radio to get wifi signal, so I am interested in FON selling a USB wifi pen drive that turns this laptops into hotspots through the pen drive, so they get wifi normally but they emit wifi through the pen drive.
If you have any ideas along these lines please write to me.
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No Comments
Dan on February 22, 2006 ·
I kind of second the comment from the previous poster. IP routing on a Win2K platform has been developed by a company in Canada that I worked, for example. It can be worked on to do what you want, but it’s a not trivial. Adding multiple ineterfaces in Windows is trivial, but routing them, with security, as you want is not. It’s a major professional project.
However, I am not sure many people will want to turn their laptops into this sharing node. A laptop is normally used for serious and business purposes, a router contains little or no business information. As for other OS laptops, not many of them round compared to Windows. Thanks.
Martín Varsavsky on February 22, 2006 ·
Enrique, FON got to Google and Skype blogging. I hope they are serious enough for you. When I blog these things I get the most amazing responses, that´s why I go on doing it.
Regards,
andrew on February 22, 2006 ·
I believe Martin’s issued a proposal that’s open to professionals and amateurs alike. All that aside many of the web’s best features came not from professional firms, but amateurs writing open software on open standards.
Martín Varsavsky on February 22, 2006 ·
Dan,
But Macs have these functionality and friends of mine who are Mac users love it.
Regards,
Dan on February 22, 2006 ·
BTW, you also asked about Linux laptops. Turning Linux laptops into FON-type hotspots is not a problem (done it too, although it was a paying hotspot).
I am not sure what the MACs actually do, but the problem is to make sure the different subnets are isolated and the redirections, that’s is the more difficult part, and it would be the same with Windows. If you decided to make your laptop share one of its Wi-Fi channels, you don’t want hotspots users with access to what’s in your lap-top. For Windows you are probably looking at from 2x4mo to 2x6mo for all the engineeering project phases. It’s easier to bring along a FON router…
Hope it helps.
Regards,
Javier Frachi on February 22, 2006 ·
Hi,
I could work but why not first make FON avaible for most people. I mean, Martín invest a lot of money in publicity but if you give wifi router with 1 year payed of internet acces to most of the schools and you let to people who work in the school to connect free you will have more people to suscribe to FON.
Why? Because if you think a little bit, in all the quartiers (barrios) there are scholl and most of the are in the center (geografically talking). So all the citizen who live there they will entuastic because the could get internet for just suscribing or sharing his internet.
Also you let student acces to internet, we needed for search text or pdf or send something.
Could we FONEAR EDUC.AR ? ? ? ?
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Enrique Braun on February 22, 2006 ·
A humble advice: If you think that FON is a serious company, you would have to do outsourcing to serious companies and will have the perfect combination. This necessity (convert laptops into hotspots) is trivial for a serius company of systems. There are hundreds in the world, and some in Spain. I think that is not a good thing to do professional things with amateurs.
Regards,
Enrique