has created a home-brewed self-contained WiFi device that he totes along in his backpack. And get this. Whenever he’s going to or from work, he allows fellow commuters in the same train car to share his cellular connection. I’m sure this is an EV-DO (Evolution-Data Optimized) cellular network, which is vastly superior to GSM for data communications as it’s based on CDMA technology. Somehow I think the folks here in Africa and Europe got scammed by GSM and it’s expensive implementations and promises, but that’s just my opinion. Oh, you wanna see how powerful (er fast) EV-DO is? Well, take a peek at this blurb:

Compared to the EDGE networks employed by GSM networks, the EV-DO feature of CDMA2000 networks is significantly faster, providing access to mobile devices with air interface speeds of up to 2.4 Mbps with Rev. 0 and up to 3.1 Mb/s with Rev. A. HSDPA a competing technology for W-CDMA, along with the new Qualcomm Rev A modems have the ability to maintian both circuit switched voice and packet data calls from the same radio, this functionality is not available in Qualcomm Rev. 0 chipsets.{source}

Now, apparently users Casey’s “train network” are able to upload and download at 144 Kb/s which ain’t to bad considering it’s, um, FREE.

Well, here’s the setup info if you’re in the Seattle area and want to try it out:

The open wireless node can be found in the first car of the last morning train and in Car 403 on the 5:10pm return trip. Use SSID “FreeInternetAccess” or “seattlewireless” to connect – You may have to assign yourself an IP in the range 192.168.0.0/24 and use the Default Gateway 192.168.0.1 as the DHCP is sometimes flakey.

I’m sooooo jealous!! Get tons of EV-DO wireless gear here.