The Dream of Mesh Communities

SSIDChalking

UK Wi-Fi enthusiast Matt Jones became instantly famous in April 2002 for his suggestion of warchalking, the marking of sidewalks near Wi-Fi hotspots to indicate to passing wibos (a UK-ism for Wi-Fi enthusiasts) that an access point was nearby, and what sort of access point it was. (I discuss warchalking and the rest of the warmemes in detail in Chapter 18.)

The idea of warchalking quickly became a meme (an idea that resonates deeply with people and takes on a life of its own) even though, on examination, it doesn't make a great deal of sense. Chalk marks tend to vanish after a hard rain (it never rains in London, right?) and chalk is one of those things, like dead fish and loose iodine crystals, that do annoying things if you carry them in your pockets. I don't know how it is in England, but over in the States there are places where you can get tossed in jail for drawing things on private and public property.

But at the core, Matt was on to something: It would be useful to be able to tell, at a glance, when there's a public access hotspot in the vicinity. So I have a counter suggestion: Build ASCII representations of the Jones warchalking symbols into the first part of an access point's SSID. Any wibo without a stumbling program isn't serious, and stumbling programs detect and display SSIDs as part of their primary mission.

So consider these two hypothetical SSIDs:

 << O >> nutmeg  << )( >> coriander  

The first is a private node, not to be messed with or connected to. The second is a public-access node. The enclosing << >> symbols are to give some future generation of stumbling utilities an unambiguous way of separating the symbols from the SSID text proper, and would allow additional symbols if that would be useful, as in nodes that are available to the public but fee-based, as in T-Mobile or Boingo:

 << )( $ >> coriander  

I suggested this to Matt Jones in an email and he seemed receptive. Others have since posted independent suggestions on warchalking.org, but I believe I thought of it first.

Why is this important? As Wi-Fi hardware becomes ever more widespread, mistakes are going to be made, and there will eventually be legal consequences for connecting to an unprotected access point, even by mistake, if that access point is not intended by its owner to be public. SSIDchalking will allow a stumbling program (or something like Boingo's connection utility) to protect its users by discriminating between truly open public community hotspots and private hotspots owned by the clueless who can't figure out how to turn on Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP).