A feasibility study of an in-the-wild experimental public access WiFi network
Universal Internet access has become critical to modern life, leading to many explorations of approaches to increase its availability. In this paper we report on a study of one such approach, PAWS, that seeks to understand the technical and social constraints of providing Internet access, free at th...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Conference or Workshop Item |
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2014
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/37408/ |
| _version_ | 1848795452619620352 |
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| author | Sathiaseelan, Arjuna Mortier, Richard Goulden, Murray Greiffenhagen, Christian Radenkovic, Milena Crowcroft, Jon McAuley, Derek |
| author_facet | Sathiaseelan, Arjuna Mortier, Richard Goulden, Murray Greiffenhagen, Christian Radenkovic, Milena Crowcroft, Jon McAuley, Derek |
| author_sort | Sathiaseelan, Arjuna |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | Universal Internet access has become critical to modern life, leading to many explorations of approaches to increase its availability. In this paper we report on a study of one such approach, PAWS, that seeks to understand the technical and social constraints of providing Internet access, free at the point of use, by sharing existing broadband subscribers' connections. We elaborate the technical and social context of our deployment, a deprived neighbourhood in a medium-sized British city, and discuss the constraints on and resulting architecture of this system, including the authentication and security mechanisms necessary for a service of this kind. We then report on the use of our deployment over a period of seven months from July 2013 to February 2014, including analyses of the performance and usage of the network. Our data show that PAWS is socially and technically feasible and has the potential to provide Internet access economically to many who are currently digitally disenfranchised. However, doing so requires overcoming numerous challenges, both technical and social |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:32:19Z |
| format | Conference or Workshop Item |
| id | nottingham-37408 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:32:19Z |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-374082020-05-04T16:59:06Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/37408/ A feasibility study of an in-the-wild experimental public access WiFi network Sathiaseelan, Arjuna Mortier, Richard Goulden, Murray Greiffenhagen, Christian Radenkovic, Milena Crowcroft, Jon McAuley, Derek Universal Internet access has become critical to modern life, leading to many explorations of approaches to increase its availability. In this paper we report on a study of one such approach, PAWS, that seeks to understand the technical and social constraints of providing Internet access, free at the point of use, by sharing existing broadband subscribers' connections. We elaborate the technical and social context of our deployment, a deprived neighbourhood in a medium-sized British city, and discuss the constraints on and resulting architecture of this system, including the authentication and security mechanisms necessary for a service of this kind. We then report on the use of our deployment over a period of seven months from July 2013 to February 2014, including analyses of the performance and usage of the network. Our data show that PAWS is socially and technically feasible and has the potential to provide Internet access economically to many who are currently digitally disenfranchised. However, doing so requires overcoming numerous challenges, both technical and social 2014-12-06 Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed Sathiaseelan, Arjuna, Mortier, Richard, Goulden, Murray, Greiffenhagen, Christian, Radenkovic, Milena, Crowcroft, Jon and McAuley, Derek (2014) A feasibility study of an in-the-wild experimental public access WiFi network. In: Fifth ACM Symposium on Computing for Development (ACM DEV-5'14), 5-6 December 2014, San Jose, California, USA. free internet socio-economic wireless http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2674377.2674383 10.1145/2674377.2674383 10.1145/2674377.2674383 10.1145/2674377.2674383 |
| spellingShingle | free internet socio-economic wireless Sathiaseelan, Arjuna Mortier, Richard Goulden, Murray Greiffenhagen, Christian Radenkovic, Milena Crowcroft, Jon McAuley, Derek A feasibility study of an in-the-wild experimental public access WiFi network |
| title | A feasibility study of an in-the-wild experimental public access WiFi network |
| title_full | A feasibility study of an in-the-wild experimental public access WiFi network |
| title_fullStr | A feasibility study of an in-the-wild experimental public access WiFi network |
| title_full_unstemmed | A feasibility study of an in-the-wild experimental public access WiFi network |
| title_short | A feasibility study of an in-the-wild experimental public access WiFi network |
| title_sort | feasibility study of an in-the-wild experimental public access wifi network |
| topic | free internet socio-economic wireless |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/37408/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/37408/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/37408/ |