If you have a wireless router at home or at work, you might consider joining the [tag]FON[/tag] movement.
What is FON?
FON is a firmware update that allows you to create a WiFi hotspot at home or at your office (as long as you have a [tag]Linksys WRT54G[/tag] or WRT54GS), allowing others to safely share your connection. The bandwidth of your equipment will be controlled in such a way that you will always maintain a reasonable capacity for your own use in your local network. That limit is independent of the number of Foneros (aka FON users) that are connected to your joining point, but this is not yet implemented in this first release. But enough of tech stuff, the cool feature of FON is that you have three kinds of users, the Linus, the Bills and the Aliens.
The Linus – Inspired in Linus Torwalds and the OSS movement, this users allow full share of their connection to the other users, including the Bills and the Aliens.
The Bills – Guess who? The outline is easy: they’ll get 50% of the money generated by Aliens using Bills access points. In 2006 a billing system will be ready to begin earning money.
The Aliens – Aliens are users of the FON network that don’t have an access point and connect through Linus or Bills. Fees are 5€ for 24 hours of connection and 40€ for one month.
This project is brand new, with lots of work to accomplish, but the idea is there. This could help you pay your Internet bills or even provide you with a better and cheaper WiFi coverage than an ISP can. I hope they add new firmwares soon and include my SMC Barricade router.
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