Get Free WiFi by tunneling through DNS - Hak5

Interesting video on Hak5. Looks like your in trouble Fon!

"DNS Tunneling

The basic premise comes down to this: If you can connect to a wireless access point that has a captive portal running, constantly forwarding your web requests to a payment page, you can most likely bypass those restrictions if you can get name resolution.

Simply open a shell and ping your favorite website. It doesn’t matter if you get ICMP packets back, what you’re looking for is name resolution. If ping says “Pinging www.l.google.com [74.125.95.99]” or similar you should be all set to tunnel your traffic over DNS

In order to get going you’ll need a domain, or sub-domain, a set of Perl scripts called Ozyman, a server to run the ozyman and ssh daemons on, and a little luck

Full step by step instructions can be found at Mubix’s wonderful blog o goodness at Room362.com."

Newsletter: January/February 2009

• fon.com
• Tips and tricks
• FON Wiki
• FON Shop
• FON Maps

YEAR OF THE OX MEETS THE MONTH OF THE AX

FON chops down the price on the La Fonera 1.0!

To celebrate the Chinese New Year, we are offering our FON router, the La Fonera, at a discount for a very limited time. The La Fonera 1.0 will be available for just €15/$15*. Kung Hei Fat Choi!

Offer valid until March 31, 2009. Limit one per user registered with FON. Promotion code required.

Use the FON promo code: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Click here to enter the FON store.

*Price includes VAT/Tax. Shipping not included.

FON SAVES THE DAY

Big city blogger offers thanks to unknown Fonero in small town

Richard Allan, Head of Government Affairs for UK and Ireland, and political blogger, offered thanks on his blog to a Fonero in the small town of Bejar, Spain whose FON WiFi signal allowed Richard to finish some urgent business and get back to enjoying his holiday. According to Richard, “the blog underestimates my desperation at needing to access my work email for an urgent task. This was casting a cloud over my whole holiday. I spent hours trying to find some connectivity and FON really did save the day. Once I saw the FON access point in Bejar I thought I should be OK, but the service was even better than expected - cheap and very easy to use.”

GET READY FOR FON´s BEST ROUTER YET,
THE LA FONERA 2.0

Designed to fit your Web 2.0 lifestyle

Here is what to expect from the next generation of FON routers. Thanks to a USB port, and a growing selection of free open-source applications, the La Fonera 2.0 will let you control data streaming without even having to turn on your computer. While the La Fonera 2.0 manages uploads and downloads at home, you and your laptop will be free to do anything and go anywhere else. The La Fonera 2.0 will also allow you to share printers, scanners, webcams and other USB devices. And, as with all FON routers, the La Fonera 2.0 will allow you to make money and roam the world for free at FON Spots.

We’ve kept the La Fonera 2.0 as beta while our techies perfect its features. But, full functionality for everyone is coming soon. So, get ready!

Learn more about the Fonera 2.0.

Can´t wait? For a chance to win the La Fonera 2.0 (beta version) today, click here.

3 years of Fon

Well its been three years for Fon and today we will take a look at the current development of the La Fonera 2.0

From the fonosfera blog:

"OktoPussy represents the extendability of our firmware. It’s many arms resemble the plugins you will be able to install in it. It can use many arms at the same time, doing different tasks! It’s multimedia (remember when this word was being use for the very first times for PCs? Now it’s come to the routers!)

The new features and fixes are the following:

• Improved look and feel: added a few new buttons and icons
• New status page. We still want to integrate more information and format it in a nicer way… but now you can see some traffic stats on the different interfaces. Tell us if you love the graphics like we do!
• Added and fixed access to some services from the WAN interface: ftp now works and the webcam can also be accessed from the outside. Samba is the pending issue though, sorry windows lovers…
• New languages! Hungarian is there (thanks bmpeter) and well… any others would also be there but we need you guys to translate! Here you can find what to translate…
• We fixed the whitelisting system. Sorry, some of you reported you couldn’t sell passes from your devices. Too bad… but over!
• There’s a button to reboot the device and one to reset it to factory defaults
• Added the option to enable/disable replying to pings on the WAN side.
• Some internal working as I said… if you’re interested on what, check the svn logs.

And well, the first to arms of OktoPussy (official ones) are DDNS (DynDNS support) and, surprise, a FONBackup tool!"

"OktoPussy is making making good use of it’s name. Here it comes as OktoPussy-2 ‘reloaded’

In no time it has changed to adapt to the environment. This is the new stuff it brings for you:

• Samba works on WAN! Oh yes… You can finally connect the hard drive of your Fonera 2.0 from your home network! Some people were dying to have this
• More and more languages! Can you speak Traditional Chinese, Dutch? Then the OktoPussy-2 is for you!
• Hey! How about this? we like Windows too! (well, we don’t, but need to pretend). NTFS issues have been fixed so far. If you still experience trouble, go buy a new hard drive!
• We have added a nice timer for when you reflash the fonera and get rid of OktoPussy-2 to get the next animal. OktoPussy-2 will say goodbye like a real gentleman. No need to wonder if the flashing is over or not, it will let you know!"

"The Fonera 2.0 keeps growing and showing new abilities: now it’s a jukebox!

What do you need?

• Fonera 2.0
• USB 2.0 HUB
• Cheap USB audio card - or any similar model (the cheaper the better: they don’t lack quality)
• USB hard drive or Pendrive
• Speakers
• mp3 music

What do you get? A device able to play your music. either single songs, full directories or m3u playlists (yes, we used a standard) from your hard drive. You can let it playing and turn off your laptop."

and a video from Martins Blog:

America's Most Wired Cities

A good article on msn.com. Doesn't have much to do with Fon. LINK

America's Most Wired Cities

By Elizabeth Woyke, Forbes.com

Seattle takes the lead in our annual list of the most broadband-connected U.S. cities.

Move over, Atlanta. Seattle, home base of Microsoft and Amazon, is now the country's most wired city.

While these marquee names have long lent the Emerald City techy cachet, it was Seattle's increased use of broadband that powered it up Forbes' annual list of the 30 most broadband-connected cities in the U.S. High marks in two other wired city categories -- broadband access and Wi-Fi hot spots -- helped Seattle clinch the top spot.

Since 2007, Forbes has measured cities' wired quotient by computing the percentage of Internet users with high-speed connections and the number of companies providing high-speed Internet. Since many urban residents access the Internet by Wi-Fi, we also measure the number of public wireless Internet hotspots in a particular city.

Our formula remains the same as previous years with one exception: the addition of broadband penetration data from Scarborough Research. The change was made to complement similar data from Nielsen Online.

Though Atlanta, Forbes' top wired city in 2007 and 2008, has been dethroned, the Big Peach continues to ride high at No. 2. The Southeast telecommunications hub boasts plenty of broadband users and lots of broadband service providers.

Washington, D.C., rocketed from No. 11 last year to a solid No. 3. Like Seattle, it made dramatic progress in its broadband adoption rate. It also improved its Wi-Fi hotspot showing to rank second only to Seattle.

D.C. scoops up another honor this year, as the wired city to watch, thanks to technophile President Barack Obama. Obama's support for universal broadband and fluency with mobile devices is expected to boost Internet and Wi-Fi access nationwide.

Rounding out the top five wired cities are Orlando, Fla., and Boston. As the location of Walt Disney World, the destination of millions of tourists a year, Orlando is packed with broadband providers and Wi-Fi access points. Boston's strengths include a plethora of universities and an urbane population that help keep its broadband and Wi-Fi usage high.

The surprise of the list is Minneapolis, which improved its standing from No. 11 to No. 7, beating New York and Portland, Ore., among others. Minneapolis' secret? A particularly broad range of service providers, including a number of neighborhoods with 20 different access options for high-speed Internet.

North Carolina suffered the biggest drop, with Raleigh declining to No. 15 from No. 3 and Charlotte dropping to No. 20 from No. 7.

Three California powerhouse cities -- Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco -- shifted places this year to occupy the middle of the list. Los Angeles and San Diego improved their standings while San Francisco dropped seven places due to a relatively low number of broadband providers and Wi-Fi hotspots. However, its No. 1 rating in broadband adoption means that San Francisco can take pride in having the most tech-savvy residents of any U.S. city.

After California, Florida and Ohio placed the most cities on the list. Under Gov. Ted Strickland, Ohio has invested several millions of dollars in promoting Internet technology across the state. The ultimate goal is "100% broadband access in Ohio and greater awareness of the personal and economic growth potential" broadband can bring, says Keith Dailey, a spokesman for the Ohio governor's office.

Each year, a few cities slide off the list and a handful make their debut. Dallas and Houston fell just short of the top 30 this year while New Orleans (No. 18), Honolulu (No. 25), Cleveland (No. 26) and Austin, Texas, (No. 30) were added.

While this ranking aims to be as current as possible, advances in broadband technology sometimes outstrip the data available. Take No. 10 Baltimore and No. 14 Portland. The two cities are the first U.S. markets to be outfitted with Clearwire's new brand of superfast wireless broadband, WiMax. But the time lag inherent in collecting broadband data and the difficulty in measuring wireless broadband coverage by city means that neither city's standing takes WiMax into account.

That could change as soon as next year. A Federal Communications Commission spokesman says the agency plans to collect "considerably more detailed" information on broadband access in coming months. Mobile data usage is flourishing, which in turn is affecting the number of Wi-Fi hotspots that restaurants, cafés and retailers offer.

Obama's technology policies may have the biggest impact. In October, the Senate approved the Broadband Data Improvement Act, which calls for better federal and state data on the availability and quality of broadband service in the U.S.

Obama's broadband policy came into focus last month with a proposal for $6 billion in grants for broadband infrastructure as part of a proposed economic stimulus package. The funds are intended to "provide business and job opportunities ... with benefits to e-commerce, education and health care" in underserved areas, according to the bill.

Technology policy groups are hoping for even greater government support. "It's a step in the right direction, but not as effective as what we need," says Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. ITIF would like to see tax credit provisions for broadband as well as grants, which Atkinson calls "cumbersome" for companies.

"Investing in broadband will have an impact on jobs, education, health care and carbon emissions," says John Davies, vice president of Intel's World Ahead Program, which promotes technology access and education. So expect the next year or two to bring vast changes to all American cities, whatever their "wired" rank.

Lower Prices for Fon Passes

Looks like once again Martin decide to change the price of Fon passes. Although at this point we don't know what kind of change, but hopefully it will be a little better. The price of passes previously almost doubled in price. First $3 and $10 for a day pass and a pack of 5 day passes respectively. Currently, $4.90 and $14.90 for a day pass and a pack of 5 day passes respectively. Next step, probably somewhere in the middle.

From martins blog:

"We also have some things that we are playing against. As I warned my readers, we spend with the increase of fares for the aliens. We will lose again in two weeks. This was a mistake, but he showed the benefits for a CEO to have a blog. Bills criticized me when I realized I had made a mistake."

Express your opinion on the Fon Boards: "Lower passes prices in 2 weeks"

Looks like we will have to wait and see. I always thought that the prices were pretty good to begin with, but on the other hand almost all of the passes sold on my Fon Spot were sold when the prices were at the highest. So from what I get out of this is if you really have the need to WiFi (occasionally, not everyday), Fon is a viable option. At the current price of passes it would cost you almost $90 for an entire most of wifi passes (one pass a day). Seems like you might be better off paying for an internet connection and buying a Fonera to get the roaming that you may need. So if your an alien, think twice about your internet usage, think about Fon's poor coverage and reliability of their services before purchasing large amounts of day passes.

Fon 2008

Today I'm going to take a look at what Fon has accomplished (or lack of for that matter) during 2008 and what we could potentially see this year.

1) We saw the failure of the fontrepreneur program. It was a good idea, but it showed that foneros don't want to put out money and buy routers to help expand the community.

2) Fon started to offer unlimited access to GMAIL and other Google services at all Fonspots. Makes sense since Google provided funding for Fon, but to bad you don't have to authenticate to use these services. So in return, you have no idea who is using your connection.

3) La Fonera 2.0 was first mentioned last April and now is currently selling as a beta model. Firmware being developed by the fonosfera community started off slow, but now things are starting to pick up.

4) Fon raised an additional $9.5 million in funding.

5) Fon and BT started The World’s Biggest Mexican Wave.

6) Martin's Blog: "Why do some Foneros disconnect their Fonera WiFi router?" As if he already didn't know why people do it.

7) Martin releases Fon's economic figures back in May. Too bold of a move, it seemed to cause quite a stir amoungst the community. LINK

8) Change of FON_AP to FON_FREE_INTERNET. Somewhere I missed out on the free part.

9) Fon Russia and Comstar Partnership

10) The ZON@FON WiFi Community in Portugal

11) In July Fon Started a wiki. http://wiki.fon.com

12) FON’s partnership with Sony PSP

13) Joikusoft and FON unveil Wi-Fi HotSpot software for Mobile Phones. LINK

14) "One million Foneros!" hahaha...

15) Fon Raised the price of day passes, lowered the price of La Fonera, and limits the number of 15 minute free trials aliens can use.

16) Meraki comes out with their solar powered nodes and shortly afterwards Fon hints at their version of an outdoor fonera model.

17) I'm sure there is more, feel free to comment below.

Now onto 2009.

1) Fon should release a final version of La Fonera 2.0. Hopefully, as long as Fon doesn't screw anything up. The ideas are pretty good for it. As Long as its affordable, I'll buy one.

2) Maybe we'll see an outdoor fonera. More than likely it will be expensive and a piece a crap. It doesn't need to be a fancy router, it just needs to withstand the elements. Something like this will help Fon out a lot. Coverage is a huge issue that Fon has yet to deal with. Most people have their routers deep within their house, where the signal is lucky to reach outside. This doesn't benefit anyone, but the owner of the hotspot. An outdoor fonera will get that precious FON_FREE_INTERNET signal to cover more area and would help Fon and foneros.

3) I know Martin has hinted at this is the past, but maybe we could see a Wireless-N Fonera. Hopefully we won't see this.

4) Fon needs to develop better firmware for La Fonera and La Fonera+, along with new firmware for non-fon routers (linksys, etc...)

5) or Fon could just FAIL.... (always a possibility, really don't want this to happen)

Anyway, 2008 was a fun year for me and My Fon Blog. I saw Fon do some stupid stuff and some good stuff. Personally I'm looking forward to 2009, this could be a big year for Fon. On a side note, I finally got paid from selling passes on my Fon Spot, almost $30. So it is possible to make money from Fon (It took me two years to get there and most of it was made in the last 2 months). So Fon can do good, it just depends on location. If they can continue to expand the community, we might just be getting somewhere. Who knows, we'll just have to wait and see.

I'm pretty sure I missed stuff, so if you have any ideas, comments, or thoughts, feel free to comment below or drop me an email. Have Fon everybody!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year From My Fon Blog!