open wifi

What is CommonsNet?

It is already a few posts of Commons Net but I suppose you may wonder what CommonsNet is and what can it do for you. I think that it’ s the highest time to talk about CommonsNet. Let me explain it step by step.

CommonsNet is an open source project of FOSSASIA . FOSSASIA has participated for several years as a mentor organization in Google Summer of Code, and  CommonsNet is being developed as this year project.

This is how FOSSASIA sees CommonsNet:

CommonsNet

Develop Website for Standardized Open Networks Agreement similar to Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a wonderful example how standardized processes can enable millions of people to share freely. What about sharing your Internet connection? Across the world there are different legal settings and requirements for sharing of Internet connections and specifically Open Wifi connections. The Picopeering Agreement already offered a basis for completely free and open sharing: http://www.picopeer.net/

However, in many settings people cannot enable unrestricted level of sharing, e.g. if you share Internet in your office, you might need to reserve a certain bandwidth for you and restrict the bandwidth of users.

We need a website, that reflects these details and makes it transparent to the user. Just like at Creative Commons the site should generate a) a human readable file and b) a machine readable file of the level of sharing that is offered by someone. Examples are, that networks are completely free (all ports are open, all services are enabled, bandwidth is unrestricted) compared to networks with restrictions e.g. no torrent sharing, limited bandwidth and an accepted user agreement that is required.

This is how it actually looks, and is being developed on CommonsNet website

We decided to create a simple and user-friendly wizard form to let our users provide their wifi details in a convient way. We divided these different kind of wifi information into four different section like wireless settings – the most basic wifi information like ssid, password, authentication, speed and standard. Then we’ve decided that payment and time limit are also really important part of sharing wireless connection, so we enable our users to mention these details as well.

CommonsNet-wizard 1

Then, you can provide your wireless connection usage’s conditions.

CommonsNet wizard3

And finally we’ve put a section legal restrictions which is one of the most important part of using wireless connection and Internet resources and what vary over the world due to different legal systems.

For now our users are obliged to type legal restrictions on their own, but we are working hard on making it simpler for everyone by creating legal restrictions’ data base, which will let you simply choose your own country and the legal details will be provided and put into wizard form automatically thanks to collected resources.

CommonsNet wizard 4

And as you successfully finish filling form, you will be able to generate your pdf file or code to your website in order to share a transparent wireless connection with your users. It is so simple, but makes our world more transparent and trustworthy.

Feel free to visit us and test it https://commonsnet.herokuapp.com/

Don’t forget to join us on our social media profile where you can be up to date with our amazing work, and updates.

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CommonsNet – WiFi Standards

Introduction

There is no doubt that WiFi is a crucial technology that most of us use every day. But have you ever  noticed on wifi router that there are a few different number and letter tagged on the end?  These designations present different properties of the WiFi like speed, allowed devices, range and frequency and they create WiFi standards. If you know what standard you have, you can tell much about your wireless connection, and use it in the way you want. CommonsNet team focuses on providing users with transparent wifi information so let’s talk today about them.

WIFI Standards

802 – this strange number means naming system which is used by networking standards. WiFi uses 802.11. All WiFi varieties has this number, followed by a letter or two which, is very useful for consumers, because as mentioned above it helps to identify wifi properties life maximum speed, range and required devices.

Specific router may support not only single, but multiple standards at the same time. It happens in order to ensure compatibility with different pieces of hardware and network.

 

802.11

This standard was created In 1997 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).  It was used for medicine and industrial purposes. Unfortunately, 802.11 supported a maximum network bandwidth up to 1 or 2 Mbps – not fast enough for applications. Therefore this standard was rapidly supplanted and is no longer used.

802.11b

This standard became the most commonly adopted in consumer devices, especially because of its low-cost. It supports bandwidth up to 11 Mbps. 802.11b uses radio signaling frequency  – 2.4 GHz, and due to this, its signal has good range – about 100m – and is not easily obstructed, but due to the fact that it works on 2, GHz it may interfere with home appliances.

802.11a

This standard bandwidth is up to 54 Mbps and has signals in a regulated frequency  around 5 GHz. There is no doubt that this higher frequency shortens the range, and needs more power to work correctly. This also means that signal has more difficulties while penetrating obstructions like walls, doors, windows. This standard due to working on different frequency is incompatible with 802.11b standard.

802.11g

In 2002 products supporting a new standard emerged on the market.I t’s actually the most popular WiFi standard. It focuses on combining the best of both 802.11a and 802.11b. It supports bandwidth up to 54Mbps, and it uses the 2.4 Ghz frequency for greater range. It is compatible with other standards. But it’s impossible to use it in older devices. If you try to do it, the speed will be 4 times slower.

802.11n

This standard was designed  to improve  802.11g  by utilizing multiple wireless signals and antennas (called MIMO technology) instead of one. It provides up to 600 Mbps  of network bandwidth, but in reality it usually reaches up to 150 Mbps. 802.11n also offers  better range over earlier Wi-Fi standards due to its increased signal intensity, and it is backward-compatible with 802.11b/g gear.

802.11ac

The newest generation of Wi-Fi signaling in popular use, utilizes dual band wireless technology, supporting simultaneous connections on both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. It offers compatibility to 802.11b/g/n and bandwidth  up to 1300 Mbps on the 5 GHz band plus up to 450 Mbps on 2.4 GHz.

Summary

As you can see based on above description there are different wifi standard which differ from each other in their speed, range and devices’ support. Some of them are not actual anymore, but some of them can be still used simultaneously. You can choose this one , which is best suitable to your needs.

As a CommonsNet team we believe that we will create a great CommonsNet website which helps users to be aware of wifi’s properties they have or use, and if necessary improve it to provide and share with other people the transparent wireless connection of the best quality.

With support of http://compnetworking.about.com/cs/wireless80211/a/aa80211standard.htm, http://www.androidauthority.com/wifi-standards-explained-802-11b-g-n-ac-ad-ah-af-666245/

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AngularJS makes coding CommonsNet easy

Wizard form

Have you seen a wizard form? I am sure you have.  I think the usage of it is very common these days. I like it very much, too. I think its structure is extremely user-friendly, because it can help us to avoid discouraging users from filling the form with all data. As a user I don’t want to be pushed to fill long forms. It’s annoying. But while you use the wizard no matter how long the form is, firstly you can quickly see the progress of you work and then,  don’t see it at once, just fill one field at a time.

That’s the result why have I decided to use it in CommonsNet project, too.

CommonsNet wizard

Angular JS

To implement this on CommonsNet website I have decided to use AngularJS which makes it easy.

I have used Model View Controller which  is a software design pattern for developing web applications. A Model View Controller pattern is made up of the following three parts

Model − It is the lowest level of the pattern responsible for maintaining data

View − It is responsible for displaying all or a portion of the data to the user

Controller − It is a software Code that controls the interactions between the Model and View.

This model helps us to isolate the application logic from the user interface layer and supports separation of concerns.

The ng-controller directive defines the application controller. A controller is a JavaScript Object

Steps to create AngularJS app

1. Load AngularJS on your webiste.

 src = "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.3.14/angular.min.js">

2. Define AngularJS app using ng-app.

<body ng-app = "app">
   ...
</body>

3. Then I have created views – five different html files for each wizard step. Please take a look at partials folder where you can find them. partials.png

4. Next, I have created a .Controller –  WizardController in AngularJS.

var WizardController = app.controller("WizardController", function ($scope) {
// controller logic goes here
}
);
wizard controller.png

 

It is a JavaScript function. I have defined which  view has to be displayed by .controller on each step. As you can see it’s quite easy and clear. You can quickly define and see which step is it , how is its name and which template should be used. It definitely enables you to maintain your app easier, because changes can be made quickly and does not influence on other part of code so you can take control over your code.

5. Then I have used  this line of code to call to my WizardController to display and maintain my views and that’s it.  See the progress on CommonsNet

<div id="wizard-container" ng-controller="WizardController as vm">
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