Homebrew WiFi on Sounder Train

Sounder commuter rail service from Tacoma is getting a technological boost from its own passengers. SeattleWireless member Casey Halverson is giving a not-so-subtle hint to Sound Transit by offering WiFi in the cars he rides in to and from Seattle every day.

The open wireless node can be found in the first car of the last morning train and in Car 403 on the 5:10pm return trip. Use SSID "FreeInternetAccess" or "seattlewireless" to connect - You may have to assign yourself an IP in the range 192.168.0.0/24 and use the Default Gateway 192.168.0.1 as the DHCP is sometimes flakey. Access speeds are 144Kbps for both uploads and downloads as the connection is cellular so don't abuse it with Bit Torrent. We suggest the Seattlest xml feed as an excellent application for this free wireless access, but you might want to send out a few emails as well. "Hey, Ma! I'm on the train!"

Halverson stresses the independant nature of the WiFi: "This node is confined to my backpack, and it's not currently mounted to the train or a part of SoundTransit in any way."

That gets the ball rolling on the Seattle-Tacoma train route, but Seattlest is still interested in hearing from any SeattleWireless samaritans taking the ferry over from Bainbridge...

Contact the author of this article or email tips@seattlest.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Dan in News on March 22, 2005 8:44 AM

Comments [rss]

Mike

There are other companies supplied such products for several year.

As one of the leading provider of 3G infrastructure company, we have evaluated several such products and selected Top Global MobileBridge back in 2003 (see http://www.lucent.com/press/1103/031112.nsa.html).

Top Global has several products, one for enterprise (MB8000) and one for consumer (3G Phoebus). I saw the cool 3G Phoebus in 2004 CES, it is a quite attractive design, check their website (www.topglobalusa.com) for more details.

ed

I thought this might be of interest to the readers of this forum. It was posted on the CNET Kyocera KR1 forum. The Kyocera KR1 is very similar to the Junxion box.

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Doesn't this violate user agreements?

Post by: ishimatsu on 01/05/06 Next message

I thought this type of application (using an EV-DO card in a wireless router) was expressly prohibited in the user agreements? I believe it is for Verizon. Any word from the DV-DO carriers about this type of device?

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Yes, You Are Correct About Violating Agreements!

Post by: Tom1257 on 01/07/06 Previous message |

You bring up a very good and valid point about violating your cellular user agreement with these type of devices. Very few people bother to read the fine print on their cellular user contracts. But most cellular companies have lengthy statements buried within the contract that the user signs, which clearly state that sharing devices and/or operating server or server like devices will violate the contract and may result loss of service, fines, legal action, etc... And I have heard of cases where a cellular carrier has gone after a customer for back payment, aka per Kilobyte charges, for violating their user agreement.

So if you are going to use one of these devices, you had better read your cellular contract carefully and confirm with your cell carrier that its use is OK to use such a device with your service plan. It would really suck to get hit with a 5 cent per kilobyte back charge, or some other fine, after moving few gigabytes of data - all the while thinking you were on an unlimited data plan. It always pays to do your homework and get the right data plan from your cell carrier, but remember you are probably not going to get the unlimited consumer data plan for $59 per month - you may wind up paying significantly more $$$ per month to stay legal with your carrier.

Robert B

You can build your own Junxion Box for around $200 with the Soekris Engineering net4521 board and box, www.soekris.com. That sure beats $699 for the same box that the Junxion boys in Seattle painted green. I like the fact that I can customize the software and the WiFi section on the Soekris unit. Lot of guys are building these little Soekris based units. Check out the Stompbox project at http://moro.fbrtech.com/~tora/EVDO/

Jonathan

Anyone with cellular wireless wanna ride the #5 from Greenwood with me?

John Daly

Hi from the U-district.

Anyone can become a "good samaritan" anywhere there is cellular data coverage from Cingular, Sprint or Verizon. We've done it a few times on the Bainbridge ferry. 1xRTT("2.5G") that Mr. Halvorson uses actually offers reasonable performance for basic email and web surfing, partucilarly relative to the alternative in many circumstance (no connection). The Junxion Box supports 2.5G and 3G PC Card modems...UMTS often takes you in the zone of low-end DSL experience, 1xEV-DO typically places you solidly in the zone of consumer/household DSL experience and faster...got to see the new HSDPA last week (in Ericsson's booth at CTIA..they were also demonstrating two Junxion Boxes on 1xEV-DO there: 1 running VOIP and a Sun think client laptop, and and 1 running X-Box Live) that Cingular will be deploying...Shazam!! The relatively high-speed wireless data network deployment race is truly on...and then there's the WiMAX wildcard of course (the Junxion Box will support WiMAX for backhaul if/when largescale deployments start happening nationally).

More trasportation & applications: Google uses the Junxion Box with UMTS to provide WiFi coverage on their employee commuter busses...Boeing used it on the Cape Canaveral tarmac for media connectivity during a recent Delta IV rocket launch...the Federal Reserve Board uses it for examiner teams visiting banks...etc...

While we don't sell direct (our distributor has 500 wireless VAR dealers, and carrier sales personnel are bringing us enterprise customers), and we are currently an enterprise product, a few reseller sites do carry our products. In case any "good samaritans" are interested, I recently posted a link one of them on our site at: www.junxion.com/purchase

-John