[Concept] Buy or sell excess bandwidth using bitcoin.

[Bitcoin Oz]

Alternatively allow port 8332 to be open and limited to wifi provider's node.  So your bitcoin client can get online but nothing else can.  Once you pay it unlocks full access.  Bitcoin doesn't really have the density yet but I could see it being popular way to pay for service someday. 

Or if at a retail joint, the cashier can sell scratch-offs with an Instawallet URL, preloaded with whatever the hotspot charge is.

Incidentally, there are multiple threads over time with basically the same topic of conversation.  Perhaps better progress would be possible if the conversation all occurred in the same thread:

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7998.0

Or on a github project 

[efiniti]

How's this for an idea:

In order to gain wifi access one must keep a webpage open that uses java to mine bitcoins, ala bitcoinplus.com. 

Free surfing for the end user.  Free bitcoins for the provider.  Don't have to worry about money at all.  Win-win.

[Explodicle]

How's this for an idea:

In order to gain wifi access one must keep a webpage open that uses java to mine bitcoins, ala bitcoinplus.com. 

Free surfing for the end user.  Free bitcoins for the provider.  Don't have to worry about money at all.  Win-win.

My opinion:

As a consumer, I would rather pay for internet directly than pay for CPU power that I usually won't need. If I wanted to pay for internet by CPU mining, I would do them independently. Unless there was a direct pay option, it would screw over people with slow computers, GPUs, or saved bitcoins.

As a guy with wi-fi for sale, I just want money, I don't want to set up p2pool or whatever.

[SgtSpike]

How's this for an idea:

In order to gain wifi access one must keep a webpage open that uses java to mine bitcoins, ala bitcoinplus.com. 

Free surfing for the end user.  Free bitcoins for the provider.  Don't have to worry about money at all.  Win-win.

No.  Just, no.

Think about who is going to be utilizing these wifi hotspots?  Typically, people with laptops - usually, laptops on batteries.  And those people aren't going to want their batteries sucked down in 15 minutes by something utilizing 100% of their CPU.

Ok, so you can provide them power, so that they won't run out of batteries.  Great, now the user just gets to have a super-hot computing device sitting on their laps or below their fingers, making them uncomfortable.  On top of that, you are now paying for the electricity for these users to mine on super-inefficient CPU's, which means, you'll be paying more to the electric company than you'll ever bring in in Bitcoins mined.

It's a bad idea, even though it sounds nice on the surface.

[Bitcoin Oz]

How's this for an idea:

In order to gain wifi access one must keep a webpage open that uses java to mine bitcoins, ala bitcoinplus.com. 

Free surfing for the end user.  Free bitcoins for the provider.  Don't have to worry about money at all.  Win-win.

No.

[mobile4ever]

I'm going to see if I can't make this this summer.

How are you doing with it? This is a great idea.

[byronbb]

Its just blanket wifi/cell coverage everywhere is soon to be standard. Paying people fractional bitcoins to seed bittorrents would be more interesting to me....

[giszmo]

Its just blanket wifi/cell coverage everywhere is soon to be standard. Paying people fractional bitcoins to seed bittorrents would be more interesting to me....

=)

[chrisrico]

The Hocnet project is one possible implementation of this idea. When it first started, the plan was to use bitcoins specifically, but due to various reasons they have decided (I think) to move to a more open ended OpenTransaction system.

edit... Upon second reading of the thread, maybe Hocnet is much lower level than the OP had in mind, but I think it's a fantastic concept.

[001sonkit]

I think that it could be a premium Tor, super fast one.
users could know the speed and bid of the node.
Bid could be on per thousand request or per GB

really, tor is just slow!

[Elwar]

Combine this with paying for traffic linking two wifi sites and you could avoid the need for ISPs.

[chrisrico]

Combine this with paying for traffic linking two wifi sites and you could avoid the need for ISPs.

That's exactly the idea behind Hocnet

[Bitcoin Oz]

Its just blanket wifi/cell coverage everywhere is soon to be standard. Paying people fractional bitcoins to seed bittorrents would be more interesting to me....

Yes I went to Mcdonalds and all they let you use is 50mb or 30 minutes for free then they boot you off the wifi. From what I have seen most of the "free" wifi spots are the same and the ones you need to pay for are really expensive.

[Bitcoin Oz]

Combine this with paying for traffic linking two wifi sites and you could avoid the need for ISPs.

That's exactly the idea behind Hocnet

This would solve a lot of problems.

[ralree]

Imagine a scenario where you park outside someones house and they have software on their router that allows you to send it bitcoins and access the internet using their connection, or even sitting at a cafe you send the p2p isp a coin and youre surfing.

No bank account needed and anyone can sit somewhere earning bitcoins all day just for sharing their wifi with people. I had this idea while sitting at a cafe in the city and they wanted me to register a credit card and give personal details to access a wifi point. Of course I avoided that like the plague

No one uses wifi anymore.  Everyone has 4g.

[kwoody]

would be a great idea, except most bitcoin users know how to crack wep encryption via packet injection

[tvbcof]

Kind of a nice idea.  I don't want to piss all over anyone's cheerios, but there are several problems I see right off hand:

1) I suspect it would massively break to the TOS on almost any consumer grade connectivity to re-sell it.

2) Probably among the very first handful of users on a freshly born service would be someone doing something naughty.  I've read of the cops kicking in the doors of people for not setting a password on their wi-fi.  The chief difference between some careless and clueless user like this and someone selling network connectivity and not being able to produce a 'customer list' would probably be a stay in jail.

[giszmo]

2) Probably among the very first handful of users on a freshly born service would be someone doing something naughty.  I've read of the cops kicking in the doors of people for not setting a password on their wi-fi.  The chief difference between some careless and clueless user like this and someone selling network connectivity and not being able to produce a 'customer list' would probably be a stay in jail.

Maybe over in the USA. Running a TOR exit node gets you the same kind of attention without actually ending up in jail but you will have to explain TOR to many people over and over again. At least that's how things work in Germany and with an open wifi you can also stay out of jail but might get some stress along the way.

[Adrian-x]

would be a great idea, except most bitcoin users know how to crack wep encryption via packet injection

what is a packet injection, is there an android app. for that, (non rooted market app)?

No one uses wifi anymore.  Everyone has 4g.

I travel and use WiFi, Skype works well, but would prefer the BTC WiFi Idea. ( I would run it on my DDwRT tomorrow if it happened. ) bring it on.

[Sukrim]

http://www.rugatu.com/questions/739/wi-fi-hotspot-enabled-by-bitcoin is still not claimed...