We have three wireless routers in the house but we are not using them to the full advantage. The first one is called "Tyler Durden", the second "Life Is Too Important To Be Taken" and the third one is a Fon-hotspot. The ideal would be that we use one or two of these routers to share internet, and since the Fon-router has a great antenna attached to it, this one would be perfect to share our internet with at least 50 households. There is however one big problem with this router.
Fon is a shared internet network. Once you start sharing your connection, you also have access to the other Fon-hotspots. This might sound pretty good, but, really, why would internet-sharing be done through a closed network? I want my internet that I share through Fon to be accessible for all. But the software that comes with the router does not allow this. It would be cool to see that changed and to hack that software, so to allow open/ free/ real sharing.
We actually have a great spot on the balcony for a router. There is already an electrical wire out there that we can use to power the router. So we can actually already make the power cable connect to the router and use the FON router as it is. The other router could also be used for this (we just put it on 'open', though only as long as the house and the open/shared network are separated so sniffing the home-network is impossible) but the reach is far more limited and moreover the router is not as weather resistance as the FON-router, which is also designed for outdoor use.
What do you think?
See for other Fun Tasks and Things you can do that will make your Mom feel Proud also this wiki-page.
Comments
Hacking fon
After robins post, some thoughts and finally managing to create an account here, my first contribution are some hints for using the fon router in a more casa-robino-style.
a) A not recommended way (as this data could also be used to reconfigure/hijack the router): Publishing the login data via the wifi's name or the welcome page from fon
b) The easy way: Fon is allowing one free page per wifi and you can announce it on the automatic startpage, just set this to an internet proxy service (and maybe add some info in the textbox.)
http://hujiko.com
http://behidden.com
http://anonymouse.org
http://megaproxy.com
http://proxy.org
Advantages:
- Very easy
- done in 2 minutes
- Basic anonymization (don't rely on it!)
Disadvantages:
- No other services than webpages
- No usage of browserfeatures like bookmarks
- Some pages are limited
- The proxy servers are very often slow
- The proxy servers are known and often blocked (i. e. at cockroaching)
Tested on my fonrouter - works!
c) Provide the frameset yourself: Announce an url under your control via the fon startpage from your router. The basic idea is to provide a frameset with two frames. Via the top one you get a simple form to enter any url and after "submit", the related page is displayed in the bottom frame. But a "quick & dirty" solution doesn't work via fon-router (I've tested it on mine), because the other pages are called directly, so you need to proxify the requests (and stop outbreaks from frames)
d) The nerd way - really hacking the fon router
Obviously it's possible to hack a fonrouter:
http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=r_v0NIHfdNE
http://hak5.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=9908
And this is maybe the way to go:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/What_is_DD-WRT%3F
or
http://stefans.datenbruch.de/lafonera/
To nerdy, to weird? Maybe you want build up a growhouse out of empty plastic bottles instead:
http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/09/24/jasmine-zimmerman-bottle-house-at-bu...
la fonera hack
as xo said, if you can put open software on the fonera depends on its current fireware version, see http://stefans.datenbruch.de/lafonera/
also a hardware hack exists. you need to open the fonera and solder a little bit as far as i know.
but why don't you open the "home" network on the fonera to everyone? i'm not sure if you can set it to "no password", but if you need to set a password, you could call the spot "Password_is_Hello" or something like that ;)
maybe !
depend on the model of the router Fon some have ssh where you can change the firmware.
FYI: I'm taking back one
FYI: I'm taking back one more router ;)