Amazon Sidewalk

04 December 2020, 12:52 PM

wtg

Amazon Sidewalk

quote:
You may have received an email from Amazon this week which, let’s face it, came across as equal parts exciting and terrifying.

“A new feature is launching on your Echo device: Amazon Sidewalk.” - exciting.

“Amazon Sidewalk is a shared network that helps devices work better.” - neutral.

“When enabled, Sidewalk uses a small portion of your Internet bandwidth to provide these services to you and your neighbors.” - terrifying.

Everyone likes new features, especially when they don’t have to pay for them. But you’d be forgiven for having reservations about a network run by Amazon that shares your bandwidth with complete strangers.

Here’s a quick overview of what you need to know about Sidewalk. You can then make your own mind up as to whether it’s for you or not.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/p...ker/?sh=592e83d2acfd

Comcast has been doing something similar for years.

04 December 2020, 03:50 PM

ShiroKuro

We do not have an Echo or Ring camera (or Google whatever it's called for that matter). So am I correct in understanding that, as long as we don't have those (or similar Amazon-enabled devices), we will not be involved in this?

04 December 2020, 04:37 PM

wtg

I don't have a good understanding of how these devices work and interact. I know there are devices from Amazon like the Echo and Ring doorbell that seem to be under the umbrella of Amazon Sidewalk. I don't know if there are other places that the technology reaches, for instance maybe Alexa-enabled cars?

Markj or Ax might be able to put the pieces together for us into a coherent picture.

There was a piece on Amazon Sidewalk on appleinsider. This is one of the comments.

quote:
Before everyone gets their skivvies is a twist, this is very likely an Amazon precursor to what Apple will do with AirTags. Amazon Sidewalk is all about providing a very low cost, low bandwidth, highly distributed, mesh network (using BTLE and 900 MHz) for locating and discovering identification tags and exchanging a few bits of data with simple sensors . It uses a small slice of each participants' WiFi bandwidth (1/40th with a hard monthly cap) as a backhaul to bridge sensor/tag data up to the cloud through your WAN connection. By meshing together all of the participants' data feeds they can achieve area wide coverage, i.e., several square miles.

There's nothing inherently nefarious about what Amazon is doing, and if you don't like it, don't use it. When Apple rolls out their wide area coverage for AirTags you'll be able to decide whether you trust Apple more than you trust Amazon, and sign up with Apple to help facilitate the same sort of service. Or not. Nobody has to do anything they are not comfortable doing. Until we have some sort of third-party or governmental infrastructure in place to support these kinds of services, companies like Amazon, Apple, and Amazon (and others) will try to utilize whatever connectivity opportunities are available to them. Amazon Sidewalk is just the first of the opportunists to hot the street, or should I say, the sidewalk.

Comcast has been doing a version of allowing sharing among users for a while. If you rent their gateway, it's automatically set up to allow any Comcast customer to access something called 'xfinitywifi', which is unsecured access to the internet that basically runs over Comcast customer internet connections. I don't think it counts against the customer's usage.

When I had Comcast equipment, I turned it off. Now that I have my own modem and router, I don't have to worry about it.

As another appleinsider commenter said...

quote:
Another way for Amazon to track and identify you. Groovy.

06 December 2020, 12:08 PM

Axtremus

Privacy concerns aside, just from the standpoint of who will be paying for the data traffic, “Amazon Sidewalk” is arguably worse than XfinityWifi in that, when Comcast sticks XfinityWifi into your Comcast-provided routers, Comcast have enough sense to use a separate channel for XfinityWifi data traffic, separate from your own data traffic, and where there are “data caps” Comcast knows to separately account for XfinityWifi traffic so it won’t count against your “data cap.” “Amazon Sidewalk” gives your no such consideration, Amazon by itself has no capability to get your ISP to separately account for “Amazon Sidewalk” traffic apart from your regular data traffic. So, yeah, you will foot the bill to carry the data traffic for “Amazon Sidewalk.”