OpenFON

I would like to be able to customize my firmware and have a blog/flikr on the front page.

I havn't recieved my router yet but hear are some features I think would be beneficial:

Be able to throttle up/download speed so fon user would not be able to hog all your band with.

a custimizable splash page with a registration free basic message board would be great.

I'd like to set-up the FON router as a WiFi repeater (not as a primary router) and as a GPS location sender.

Skins and plugins... Take a look at GBPVR.
You could creat something similar, open architecture. Don't try to be everything for everybody, you can't succeed and it won't be maintainable code, but open it up to people so that *they* can create the "skins", add or delete at will - modularly. People will come up with ideas that you had never dreamed of. And you won't have to code it or maintain it... My GBPVR has Sudoku on it, would never had figure that one out!

OpenFon sounds good, BTW. Did you register the site :-)

Hope it helps.

Cheers.

Blog? may be cool
Flickr? why not
News? why not
WiFi Thank you note? what's that?
Classifieds? nono
Customize your firmware? A must have!

Most of all, I think it would be nice to put Asterisk on the router, so to have voip features.

Next, could be nice to have all the infos and means to have hands on the firmware, so to be able to customize it.

Some good tech docs for programmers and sysadmin, would be appreciated. Maybe, a section of FON site could be devoted to collect technical infos, so that it would be easy for a developer to get all the inside specs and guides he need.

hi ejovi,

Definately:
-classifieds
-information update (lets call it a short-term blog. only has a fixed period of time-if there is a memory size issue)
-a user (AP owner) editable where where you allow certain URLs for free.

I don't think you should be able to customize the FM too much. To the point of it not functioning!

I;m sure there will be plenty of wishlists!

How about a Google Map of the local area, perhaps Frappr group? You could add in some local attractions, bars, restaurants etc. Make your FON point an Info Point. Speak to your local community, perhaps sell advertising space by way of a link on the map, or just give it away for free? Plus a generic guest-book.

More support for existing routers. Where are links for D-link routers?

Pre-N routers! How cool would it be to have Foneros broadcasting at 3-5 times the range of a normal router.

home@Asterisk would put FON over the top I would think. Kind of like a two fer!

Hm..
> FON, the aim widening.
> The suggestion that I already wrote about is following:
So As I said,
would be good to start (*)exhorting the owners of coffee bars, hotels, tourist agencies or any other places where is big circulation of people who needs access to Internet for communication everywhere.

AND AS A RETURN THE ROUTER SHOULD BE adjustable SO THAT WHILE SOMEONE IS LODGING TROUGH THEIR ROUTER ON FON NETWORK THEY CAN PUT THEIR BANNER OR SIMPLY THAT USER WHO IS USING SOMEONEs BAND WITH GET INFORMATION'S ABOUT THE USER IF THE USER SET THEM !

(*) this should be like an option in FON "offer",
something that user who shares bandwidth can setup in his account that if some one access the Internet via his AP can se message+banner or sth like that from that user..

BTW I'm not supporter for the sharing of bandwidth between my neighbors :)
That means FON firstly in most urban areas and business buildings or sth like that, than places that are mostly visited by tourists, than all others :)
is that fine idea? :)

P.S. please work a bit on organizing the support on local level by countries or regions, it will be easier for you!

Dovale..

What about some funcionality to keep a record and define a maximum of Kb/Gb of traffic that each allow for FON users to use? because the main problem - at least for me - with keeping and always open hotspot is the risk to have someone draining my monthlly share and I end up with a huge bill to pay.
Would be nice too to be able to see some statistics of the hotspot like number of users logged in at the moment and in previous time.
About the look, why not something like a wiki system, configurable to be open or closed for registered users or admins only editing.
Well...just some thougts

One feature that would be cool - after someone log-on my Fon router:
My favorite places, that could be bars, clubs, parks, beaches, museums, etc. in the local area.

That way Fon can also be a personalized city-guide.

Maybe it would be an idea to categorize it, in general therms. Music genre, underground, gay themed, club type, etc. That way the user of my FON can select what not to show from my favorite list.

Often the best places are not well known brand names or may be located outside the normal turist areas. It can also be a new way to "meet the locals".

What FON should focus on is providing us foneros with authentication and billing services for the aliens using our routers and internet connections. Your service to us is to provide us with these services which we can't handle on our own, and keep our wifi security state of the art. This is our true incentive to help you build and maintain the FON network, instead of running our own open networks and arranging our own login and billing systems. Though you may need to avoid using the definition of "franchise" for legal reasons, this is exactly what we are doing for you. You may wish to appeal to merchants who are looking for a convienient way to provide wifi access for their customers by providing free routers and a voucher generation system so they can simply plug-and-play the device you send them and begin recieving a percentage check from you each month. Merchant's customers (bills and aliens) could pay via credit card or paypal through your website, or by entering vouchers created at the cash register for prepaid access time. A popup web-based control panel would be nice so bills/aliens can check their remaining time and be alerted when it is nearly run out.

I'd like to see bills/aliens redirected and greeted with an actual HTTPS://login.fon.com login page provided by FON via VPN (not a local web server in the router). This will partly compensate for the unfortunate lack of WEP/WPA in the wifi connection itself. Give them full access to fon.com web pages, but no other internet services, before they register and log in so they can see what it is all about. Log their MAC address when they log in and give them a free first hour/dy of service for QOS purposes (NOT 120 DAYS for heaven's sake!!!), tied to their MAC address for future refrence. Foneros should be able to log into the router and register MAC addresses of personal computers which will be placed directly on their LAN instead of first visiting the fon.com website. Once logged on through fon.com's website via VPN, bills/aliens should be placed in a restricted internet zone which is firewalled from the fonero's LAN and other bills/aliens, but has full internet access as though it were the sole computer on that IP address. Make the initial DHCP license very short so computers which associate with the FON router but don't log on in a reasonable amount of time can be disconnected. If it is technically possible, have the router broadcast two SSIDs, one which is open, for bills/aliens, and one which provides a WEP/WPA connection for the linus who owns the router.

Future exciting technologies like WIMAX may not ever be provided on open-source equipment, but such internet resources, as well as current proprietary routers, may be used as FON devices by writing a host application that resides on an always-on computer connected to such a device instead. It should take over as DHCP server for the wifi/wimax WAP device, and work as a proxy server to firewall the bills/aliens from the LAN, and communicate with fon.com's billing services via embedded VPN. Future efforts should be spent on how to increase security for the linus, bills and aliens by enabling WEP/WPA on the wifi connection, and making it difficult for criminals to create a look-alike FON access points for the purpose of stealing credit card numbers, paypal logins and voucher numbers.

what post # 2, # 3 and # 8 said,

blog / custom front pg

able to throttle fon users bandwidth

able to access fon site /my site without being a user (not sure if this is already in there)

thanks and keep up the good work!

I would highly suggest that you do not open your firmware. That will only lead to hacks and things you cannot control. At the cery least I would keep the Fon services closed-source so that they can't be tamered with.

Things I would like to see.

If another Fon router is within range, have them communicate and share bandwidth and potentially have one router say to the other "I have a client whose signal is going down, get ready to take it." and hand off credetials so that the user wouldn't have to re-enter his information at the next router. I think that's feasible.

Hi,

another cool thing is a node xml feed to be used for palm applications.. in order to search nearest node....

I actually could do such application, but how to get those feeds?

keep up the good work.

Add Wordpress there are many themes that have such a thing as a flickrmap with geomapping and then always the different ways to display flickphotos with the API
for a geoflicker map visit www.flickrmap.com
pretty cool stuff

I would be nice that the router were Plazes ready, enabling the router to connect automatically to the plazes network. It might ease the process searching for FON hotspots all over the world.

1. QoS control (bandwidth, ports, etc.)
2. Asterisk support
3. Personalized homepage (ftp access would be nice, this would allow for script automation that lives outside the router).

First things first, I would prefer :

- a "management" webpage for our FON account and associated FONspots ("attach"/"detach" a wifi router - in case it changes - and when the Bill accounts will be available to manage more than one hotspot),
- along with a page to see the FON users who have connected to the hotspot (mac address/hostname/connection time/be able to send them short text messages?),
- and be able to draw an "activity graph" of the spot along the week with traffic and peak hours (with packets accepted/rejected - overall quality data about the FONspot use)

A kind of "administration suite" for the hotspot in fact, before customizing the Home page of the FONspot ?... What do you think?

Good job anyway for the firmware,
GL for the next steps
& "keep the faith"!
J.

I would like :

Not log into fon when using my own Fon WiFi accesspoint ( i cannot explain it to my girlfriend so now i have 2 accesspoints installed 1 fon and 1 for my own use )
( Maybe by autherising mac addresses as local machines , of via a certificate .. but PLEASE no login in a browser )

Logging of how many Foneros are / have been using my access point, even as a Linus i am curious if people are really using my FON AP

Able to customise Wifi Channel ( i have a lot of AP's in the neighbourhood wich makes the range not better when the are on the same channel )

Making security more vissible ( it's not quite clear now to me how my home network is disposed to other Fon users which use my AP ) Build in a Firewall which can block FON users completely from any other IP than the default Gateway ( Internet )

That's it i guess,
Hope to see some of the mentioned functionality in the Firmware, so i can get rid of my second AP and only use the FON AP.

Until than I just use 2 AP's becouse i believe in the FON concept ! Keep it going !

I'd like to to have on the start page, which I presume you mean:

Introduction about me.
Introduction about FON
Signup Option
List with number of FON hotspots in my city, state, country, world
Option to add an RSS feed to integrate my blog (possibly filtered by tag or category so I could have all posts tagged FON in there)
Contact Form
Image
A link to my Plazes history (or a few links in any case) (possibly limited to FON routers I used

Many good ideas already postet here.
Especially for germany it is important that people see very quickly that hey can trust the security. So it is important to protect the personal system completely against attacks and even to block certain search words (child pr0n etc..) It should have a clean and neat appearance and should not be overloadet with gimmicks.
Integrations with flickr and so on have no use to me. I prefer clean, simple, safe.

I think at least having a personalized logo of some kind and some text explaining about the person(s) running the AP, in addition to the Fon info... bascially a personalized landing page.

I love the "Local Users" feature, but you may want to make that stand apart from the normal Fon login.

Also, viewing/logging AP usage (i.e. how many people use it a day) would be nice to have, and I could feedback on such information on the blog on the AP, for example.

All in all, providing better look and feel customization would be great and help tell seemingly idential hotspots apart while mantaining the association With Fon.

I like the idea of a usage tracking graph.

I need the possibility of locking certain ports (email, my own local filesharing etc). Also, quota or bandwidth restrictions would be needed in some cases.

I also like the idea of a webpage with local info, either through a 'free' url on the internet (perhaps a lightweight webpage on FONs servers?), or a page that resides on the router. For people to use such a feature, it would have to be really simple to update. A possibility to leave comments would be great; Thanks for sharing!/I checked out that restaurant you suggested and it was GOOD..

Make sure the login page works well with PDAs and other small screen devices.

First build what you need to build (support for the Bills and the Aliens) then work on the "nice-to-have" stuff. I want nothing on my router. I want an infrastructure that allows me to throttle bandwidth in case i need it myself, a billing systems to handle the Aliens and most of all SECURITY. The script-kiddies are out there and you are the ONLY one who really knows how the routers work. Do the right thing and leave the hobbying to the people who have the time and knowledge to do this.

Blog? may be cool
Flickr? why not
News? why not
WiFi Thank you note? what's that?
Classifieds? nono
Customize your firmware? A must have

but staff at fon must feed!

Chad sounds a bit brutal but I see his point " bills/aliens redirected and greeted with an actual HTTPS://login.fon.com login page provided by FON via VPN (not a local web server in the router). This will partly compensate for the unfortunate lack of WEP/WPA in the wifi connection itself. Give them full access to fon.com web pages, but no other internet services, before they register and log in so they can see what it is all about. Log their MAC address when they log in and give them a free first hour/dy of service for QOS purposes (NOT 120 DAYS for heaven's sake!!!)"

Someone clever said "create a cause not a business" and “If it works, it’s obsolete.” FON is going to be it.

http://hml21st.com/web

A safe way of connecting the fon router to my LAN, which doesn't require it's internet connection to be directly connected to the internet. Without this, it's basically useless to me - I do not have a stand-alone modem. Just hope it's easy to revert to the original firmware...

S

I think you really need local classifieds - helps build strong community involvement. The future of the internet is local, local, local.

I also think a single forum for local users to share and discuss whatever is on their mind. Perhaps we can get local politians/councillors involved also.

I really like another posters angle of adding repeater functionality. I need to be able to separate the FON non-encrypted traffic from my domestic encrypted traffic.

Speaking of experience: I have been an early fonero here in Berlin and had many problems with the early fon software - see my blog. I also had problems with the fact that I had to log into the fon AAA server to get online in my own hotspot. Finally, I had too many DNS problems not being able to reach many sites.

The result is that I now kicked out the fon software and have an open hotspot that anybody can use without registering anywhere.

So my recommendation to fon is the following: If you want the support of the open and free network community your system and software should be open. The firmware should be opensource. I am pretty sure that in the long run the community does not accept one global company making most of the money from shared hotspots.

In fact I would just forget about charging from aliens in any way. Now that Google is a fon investor you can just make it advertising-financed . I never believed in paying for WLAN be it for private or business usage.

In this context I find it a bit tough to call "fon" a "movement" while fon is a for-profit organisation.

In fact, people choose hotels or cafes for staying there if they have free Internet access. And that's about it, free WiFi is the added value that people want.

Show Google on the first page of your captive portal and it will do the job. Internet users know how to type in URLs or google for URLs.

Hi,
I would like :
- Asterisk / Voip feature
- dns-sd / rendez-vous / zeroconf
- dhcp / dns / ldap server for local users
- possibily samba pdc

Maybe slapd and samba will be to heavy for the flash and ram on the system ...

I think the custom start page is going to have to be web hosted rather than taking up space on the router, where Foneros can choose from templates and add content via AJAX modules (something like MySpace.com and netvibes.com). Modules could be built for all of the sugested features above, giving Foneros a choice between Plazes maps or Frappr or both.

There needs to be more documentation so that foneros can take control over the security of their LAN. Also a whitelist of local machine's MAC addresses, rather than password authentication, is a good idea.

I'd like to see a FON plugin API as soon as possible, you can't possibly code all the requested firmware features in a timely fassion, and there are alot of good hackers out there who belive in you.

Definetely be able to customize the firmware. The admin access on the fon router (bought from fon) is disabled!!!

What the hell is this?? Fon hack!!

http://www.twindx.com/node/106

A parental control feature would be a helpful feature for hotspots.

Suggestions from my side (most is already said..., but anyway:

For the fon-accesspoint owner:
__Startingpage to log on should be customizable with some fields in the template to put html code in (like in a blog sidebar: flickr, links...: So make it clearly "FON"-looking but allow some variation.
__Bandwidth limitation for users: to have left something for yourself...
__How many users are connected via this spot-info, maybe with al little statistics like Statcounter (how many when...)
__customisible automatic redirection to a personal page (weblog etc.): For the ego fetishists

For the Linus - end-user
__Speedinfo/ bandwidth info: How quick am I here?
__How many users are connected via this spot-info: For the curious
__possibility to leave a note, to say thank you/greet etc. to the wifi-accesspoint provider (forum style): Social aspect!!!

For the Alien-Enduser
__same as for Linus, but with a clear billing-page with different services (paypal, credit-card, ...)

Where has KaiDemon gone? its in dd-wrt but not in fonadvanced. i can't see the point in taking it out, please put it back in. in fact the fonadvanced should, in my eyes be identical to the dd-wrt standard with a locked down chillispot and a few wifi tweaks, plus how about mac registering so that all personal devices (laptop, psp etc) can use the router without a hitch.

I believe that it would be a good idea to enable the end-user to visit predefindes websites, without login.

This will encourage cafees and other similar places to add a FON-spot. They will be able to serve the menu and todays specials online.

Would it not be to walk by your favorite cafe, thinking "what's todays special", taking out your PDA from your pocket, and get the result within a few seconds?
(Without the need to log-on)

I believe that this option would be great branding for FON.

What I want running on my own router? As little as possible.

What I want to see when I log on to another router? Something simple, something fairly "standardized" -- don't let people customize them too much.

in a router, i usually value stability over features. I did a lot of research on firmwares for my WRT54G before choosing HyperWRT + tofu/thibor.

i am now a happy user of HyperWRT 2.1b + thibor 14. It is very stable (reportedly considerably more stable than dd-wrt) and feature rich (i understand not as rich as dd-wrt).

i want to participate in FON movement, but i dont want to give up the rock-solid stability my HyperWRT + thibor 14 firmware. Any hope of getting the FON applications merged (or mergable) onto HyperWRT firmware base?

Features needed:
- bandwidth per Fonero
- limit total bandwidth (for all the connections)
It's very important for free hotspots because they have to pay a lot for the connection.

Also, there is an interesting idea between Linus and Bill. If a Fonero wants to have a free access it has very low bandwidth (must be configurable). If the Fonero wants more - it have to pay :)

Reading this, I remembered a project I wanted to do: Imagine this community portal...
1) captive web page (NoCAT) where there are blogs, community items, links
and
2) Rendezvous dns, for people to register their music & multimedia services.

http://developer.apple.com/networking/bonjour/index.html
So, you walk into a cafe, see the menu, the community postings, you open iTunes or whatever and see the radio stations people are creating and the media.

Allowing people to add their streams would be a great little php web app to hang off this web page.

If I find some time, I'll try to set this up myself and provide a link.
-Brian

Reading your content just made my day. Keep the good work. Table can Bet Round: http://www.walmartmovie.com/ , TV can Hope Mistery Central is feature of Big Game , Beautiful TV Fetch or not Bad Chair is always White Slot

First of all, FON must be free for all. Use localized ads as a revenue source. Get rid of Bill. This makes the whole thing much simpler and more secure to use.

Secondly, I need 100% security:
- Open Source Firmware (it will anyway be hacked sooner or later)
- No GUI customizations (router owner must not be able to log my account data through scripts)
- Adjustable firewall

Good suggestions here.

My only must have is:
More support for existing routers.
Only this makes building a strong fonero community possible. I don't like Linksys. Can't join before I can plug in my D-link. Hope it's ASAP.

Limiting bandwidth is my top nice-to-have.
I like Alexander Ivanov's (?) idea "If a Fonero wants to have a free access it has very low bandwidth (must be configurable). If the Fonero wants more - it have to pay" quite much.

+1 for Asterisk. Open phone service/VoIP is the next step.

personal wpa network part...

I dont know if you are still reding, but it will be nice if you could add a MAC ADDRESS LIST Fon ready, once u start to conect and disconect is tedius to connect and put the acount in once and again

I should enter my macad, and acount for that mac, into the router, every time I get to connect im not promt with the login site.

Is a VPN server included so I can roam around and still be able to log in to my network and surf securely from there?

A guestbook a la Appalachian Trail lean-to guestbooks would be fantastic. While logging onto an access point doesn't offer quite the same sense of community, it would definitely be nice to be able to keep a log of foneros who have come by your way!

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