When I moved to the temporary housing that Microsoft provided me in Redmond in 2004, the first thing I did was to buy a laptop. The most memorable access point around me was an open connection with the name "Bring food and beer to B308". I used that person's Internet for a while, and wanted to bring beer to them. Unfortunately, when I surveyed the area, I could find no "Bxxx" blocks in Timberlawn Apartments, only A's. It was probably a neighboring complex. I want to use this opportunity thank that person.
It really was revolutionary. Surprisingly the biggest target market for WiFi ended up being phones, which already have a wireless connection to the Internet.
2003 WiFi was routinely awful, though. Generally unstable, poor compatibility and lousy range. A lot better now, but still could be easier for non-techs.
Also unsecure. I remember driving around looking for Wi-Fi to steal internet from, I routinely found network shares full of sensitive documents. And I only looked for open WiFi and wasn't even trying to hack anything.
If I actually wanted to hack into networks, encrypted WiFi used WEP which could be cracked in minutes on a typical laptop. Most communication was unencrypted too, pwning entire WiFi networks wasn't even fun considering how easy it was.
I still find it strange how people use the word “WiFi” to mean internet. For so many young people today, WiFi IS the internet. They have never plugged in an Ethernet cable in their life.
I still get frustrated by WiFi, though, and never use it for my computers unless I had no choice. So many devices these days, the performance is still subpar. Packet loss on the best connections cause so many performance degradations.
> I still find it strange how people use the word “WiFi” to mean internet. For so many young people today, WiFi IS the internet.
I don't think that's the case, people don't call mobile internet "WiFi". In their minds "WiFi" probably means "home internet", so it's more like they call LAN "WiFi", because they have never used cable connection.
I don’t think people realize tha Wi-Fi is a brand name for 'IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence'." WiFi, Wifi, or wifi, are not approved by the Wi-Fi Alliance. Despite common belief the name Wi-Fi is not short-form for 'Wireless Fidelity'.
I still remember the shock when my father told me he had connected his laptop to the internet without a cable. I'd heard of wireless networking but didn't know it was a standard feature in laptops at the time and all you need is to find a wifi point.
> Like other open spectrum technologies rising in its wake, Wi-Fi is a way to use the handful of frequencies set aside for unrestricted consumer use. That's true of the old CB radio, too, but unlike the trucker channels Wi-Fi is digital and smart enough to avoid congestion. After 100 years of regulations that assumed serious wireless technologies were fragile and in need of protection by monopolies on exclusive frequencies (making spectrum the most valuable commodity of the information age), Wi-Fi is fully capable of protecting itself.
It’s true that, unlike other wireless transmission technologies, Wi-Fi allows any company to make a product that can transmit or receive on all frequency bands authorized by a country, whereas for mobile networks, for example, each operator acquires exclusive rights to a frequency band.
That shows that open standards work well and enable healthy competition.
Side note, it's interesting how common it is for tech-savvy people to wire their homes for ethernet (more common now than 10-15 years ago) and how it is still common, or at least not rare, for people reliant on wi-fi to suffer from video streaming issues. The underlying technology keeps getting better, so maybe the improvements will outpace the growth in congestion at some point -- fingers crossed that makers of apps and household appliances don't eat up all future gains and keep us stuck in the same place.
> A box the size of a paperback, and costing no more than dinner for two, magically distributes broadband Internet to an area the size of a football field. A card no larger than a matchbook receives it.
An interesting historical document for studying the unit systems used in 2003.
And the FCC just so happened to approve the spectrum of frequencies that human bodies absorb, turning each Wi-Fi hotspot into surveillance spotlight, and each handheld device into a unique beacon. With everything we know about NSA's influence in other government agencies (like NIST), I think it's entirely reasonable to ask, "why 2.4 GHz?" But I've not seen anyone ask that question here. I'd also wonder whether NRO has satellite capability to measure Wi-Fi signals (and interference from human bodies) from orbit.
2.4GHz was used for microwave ovens and thus the spectrum was reserved for their interference. Or rather, the spectrum was made free for low power uses because Serious Business couldn’t be done on those frequencies due to the microwave ovens.
TL;DR because the FCC regulates available frequency bands, and 900MHz, 2.4GHz, and 5GHz were the ones that were 1) the right combination of high enough to be fast and low enough to be energy efficient and easy to generate, and 2) actually available for use at the time.
When I moved to the temporary housing that Microsoft provided me in Redmond in 2004, the first thing I did was to buy a laptop. The most memorable access point around me was an open connection with the name "Bring food and beer to B308". I used that person's Internet for a while, and wanted to bring beer to them. Unfortunately, when I surveyed the area, I could find no "Bxxx" blocks in Timberlawn Apartments, only A's. It was probably a neighboring complex. I want to use this opportunity thank that person.
It really was revolutionary. Surprisingly the biggest target market for WiFi ended up being phones, which already have a wireless connection to the Internet.
2003 WiFi was routinely awful, though. Generally unstable, poor compatibility and lousy range. A lot better now, but still could be easier for non-techs.
Also unsecure. I remember driving around looking for Wi-Fi to steal internet from, I routinely found network shares full of sensitive documents. And I only looked for open WiFi and wasn't even trying to hack anything.
If I actually wanted to hack into networks, encrypted WiFi used WEP which could be cracked in minutes on a typical laptop. Most communication was unencrypted too, pwning entire WiFi networks wasn't even fun considering how easy it was.
Yikes. I forgot you could get free WiFi practically anywhere you could get a signal because everyone's WiFi was open or easy to hack.
Biggest market agreed. But relative impact on utility of laptops seems enormous.
I still find it strange how people use the word “WiFi” to mean internet. For so many young people today, WiFi IS the internet. They have never plugged in an Ethernet cable in their life.
I still get frustrated by WiFi, though, and never use it for my computers unless I had no choice. So many devices these days, the performance is still subpar. Packet loss on the best connections cause so many performance degradations.
> I still find it strange how people use the word “WiFi” to mean internet. For so many young people today, WiFi IS the internet.
I don't think that's the case, people don't call mobile internet "WiFi". In their minds "WiFi" probably means "home internet", so it's more like they call LAN "WiFi", because they have never used cable connection.
Please make sure to throw away your Kleenex before stepping onto the Escalator.
I don’t think people realize tha Wi-Fi is a brand name for 'IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence'." WiFi, Wifi, or wifi, are not approved by the Wi-Fi Alliance. Despite common belief the name Wi-Fi is not short-form for 'Wireless Fidelity'.
I still remember the shock when my father told me he had connected his laptop to the internet without a cable. I'd heard of wireless networking but didn't know it was a standard feature in laptops at the time and all you need is to find a wifi point.
> Like other open spectrum technologies rising in its wake, Wi-Fi is a way to use the handful of frequencies set aside for unrestricted consumer use. That's true of the old CB radio, too, but unlike the trucker channels Wi-Fi is digital and smart enough to avoid congestion. After 100 years of regulations that assumed serious wireless technologies were fragile and in need of protection by monopolies on exclusive frequencies (making spectrum the most valuable commodity of the information age), Wi-Fi is fully capable of protecting itself.
It’s true that, unlike other wireless transmission technologies, Wi-Fi allows any company to make a product that can transmit or receive on all frequency bands authorized by a country, whereas for mobile networks, for example, each operator acquires exclusive rights to a frequency band.
That shows that open standards work well and enable healthy competition.
Side note, it's interesting how common it is for tech-savvy people to wire their homes for ethernet (more common now than 10-15 years ago) and how it is still common, or at least not rare, for people reliant on wi-fi to suffer from video streaming issues. The underlying technology keeps getting better, so maybe the improvements will outpace the growth in congestion at some point -- fingers crossed that makers of apps and household appliances don't eat up all future gains and keep us stuck in the same place.
I would love for a single AP to serve 500mbps throughout a whole house.
Though I would certainly not have complained about 50-100mbps throughout in 2003 — 1GBps wired networking was not mainstream then.
My tp-link ax6000 does that just fine.
> A box the size of a paperback, and costing no more than dinner for two, magically distributes broadband Internet to an area the size of a football field. A card no larger than a matchbook receives it.
An interesting historical document for studying the unit systems used in 2003.
What might be the 2025 equivalents?
And the FCC just so happened to approve the spectrum of frequencies that human bodies absorb, turning each Wi-Fi hotspot into surveillance spotlight, and each handheld device into a unique beacon. With everything we know about NSA's influence in other government agencies (like NIST), I think it's entirely reasonable to ask, "why 2.4 GHz?" But I've not seen anyone ask that question here. I'd also wonder whether NRO has satellite capability to measure Wi-Fi signals (and interference from human bodies) from orbit.
2.4GHz was used for microwave ovens and thus the spectrum was reserved for their interference. Or rather, the spectrum was made free for low power uses because Serious Business couldn’t be done on those frequencies due to the microwave ovens.
Less conspiratorially, Wired themselves have an article about that: https://www.wired.com/2010/09/wireless-explainer/
TL;DR because the FCC regulates available frequency bands, and 900MHz, 2.4GHz, and 5GHz were the ones that were 1) the right combination of high enough to be fast and low enough to be energy efficient and easy to generate, and 2) actually available for use at the time.
Remember the Steve Jobs presentation where he put an iBook through a hula hoop to prove there are no cables? Classic
https://archive.is/8tLce