Sell Your Wireless Bandwidth

BilSabab writes "Yahoo! News is reporting on the release of LinSpot 1.0 for Mac OS X. Linspot enables users to sell access to their wireless network to anyone who enters the hot zone." The software is free, but LinSpot takes a cut of the action.

Interesting read on I, Cringely

[oacis]

This sort of ties in with the ideas of Robert X cringely, which can be read here:

For Love Not Money: How WhyFi can turn hotspots into a real industry [pbs.org]

and

WhyFi Not? - Bob Defends his Wireless Networking Idea [pbs.org]

Yes, I realise WiFi, not WhyFi - those are the titles.

Only works through CPU not AP

[Blinkslowly]

What they don't make obvious is you can only sell your bandwith with your CPU acting as the access point. You can't just setup your Air Port base station and rake it in.

Re:Only works through CPU not AP

[Greedo]

What they also don't seem to mention is that you can't set the price of your bandwidth. They do that for you.

But, in relation to the parent comment, It'll only be a matter of time before this is ported to Linux, and someone gets it installed on those configurable, cheapo LinkSYS routers.

My ISP already offers this

[bobrk]

With Sonic Hotspots [sonic.net], you get a special IP number routed to their VPN aggregator. None of the riffraff get on your network.

Nat masking

[goombah99]

Wont the airport's fire wall NAT, mask how many MAC addresses you have?

Re:Automatic Updates?

[System.out.println()]

A lot of software (particularly Mac software) does this. " has detected that there is a new version, would you like to download and install it?"
Sometimes it gives a brief description of what's new, and it can almost always be disabled.

Re:No thanks

[dr.badass]

Though I agree with the sentiment, it's worth noting that by default, Windows XP won't connect to unencrypted access points, and that Microsoft-brand access points are encrypted by default.

Of course, we all know that WEP is next to worthless, but having it enabled by default is one thing that Microsoft does right.