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... there simply isn't enough legal wireless bandwidth to go around.

Exactly, which is why I specified a phased-array system, like the ones Vivato makes. Phased-array systems use multiple antennas and mathematical tricks to transmit/receive narrow beams of radio waves. (Each antenna gets a programmable signal delay. Pick the delays right and you can make a flat antenna act like the dish antenna of your choice.) The neat thing is that radio waves don't interact with each other, so you can run many beams on a single antenna array. The number of beams is limited by how many antennas and math chips you can afford, which greatly multiplies the data throughput. The systems would also use small dish antennas for the fixed building customers, meaning the customers don't see each other or other base stations, and nearly eliminating interference with omnidirectional wireless systems on the same frequency.

If we really want decent internet connections, we need to have neutral connections ...

It would work, and goddamn fucking well. We'd have a new era of blazing fast networks, rapidly improving because of intense capitalistic competition. It would be just like the Alexander Graham Bell era of cowboy telecommunications: whoever can deliver charging whatever the market will bear. Why, within a few years, it will have worked so well that people will forget there was ever a problem, and take the new status quo for granted.

And then the professional administrators will take over the regulatory agency. Just like the post-Bell Great Wars era of telecommunications. They'll have inherited the three-ring binders that tell how to do things, figured out years before by people who actually knew what the hell they were doing, so the system will keep working, a little creakily but not bad enough that the people who could fix it care enough to.

And then the professional administration layer will be captured by the industry that is being regulated. Just like the AT&T era of telecommunications. Gradual consolidation and mission drift will mean the industry becomes dominated by a giant near-monopoly, at both the government and market levels. It will end up running for the benefit of the people running it.

And then a social crusader or a revolution will smash the near-monopoly into bits and pieces. A new era of cowboy whatever will start, bringing cheaper and better whatever to the grateful capitalistic masses.

And so on and so forth.

You see, human enterprise has cycles just like wild things do. Riotous growth, consolidation, stasis, fire and chaos, ash. The wheel turns. People like you come up with these oh-so-clever little plans for perfecting an enterprise, but what you usually end up doing is yanking the wheel around to the stasis phase.

If you should succeed, start planning the anti-trust lawsuit before the network neutrality laws go into effect.

I saw pretty much this exact same thing about six months ago. It was made by Vivato (a couple of Vivato people, being a local company, had come to one of my CS seminar classes). And it had been around for a couple of years by that time.

Not sure if they have an 802.11g version out yet. The one I saw (and touched!) was an 802.11b version with some nifty directional (phased?) antenna array stuff, using multiple Agere PHYs and an embedded PPC CPU running Linux to control the whole thing.

Several of the ones I saw (probably the VP 1200 or its predacessor http://www.vivato.net/prodtech_overview.html) are being used to power the WiFi network in downtown Spokane, WA.

Do you know how much power one of these things consumes running flat out?

It exists, look at http://www.vivato.net/. It is a bit pricey, though; I'm too lazy to find it on their site right now, but I looked before, and it ran on the order of ten thousand dollars a copy.

So aside from being, literally, vaporware (laugh here, serious point next.), how does this technology compete with phased array systems such as those by Vivato? I understand the value of phased arrays are that they can focus the output into an extremely narrow beam and send it to just the right place. I Am Not A Physicist, but it seems like solid state electronics are a *little* bit simpler than plasma to work with!

And safer.

The big problem with widely scattered access points is user density (you can't have too many simultaneous users with so few APs) and physical alignment of the directional antennas. But you can use phased array antenna technologies to simultaneously increase the range, number of users, and security of access point installations. By electronically forming a narrow beam, the range increases, interference is reduced, and interception is more difficult. As a side "benefit" a phased array antenna could be used to track the bearing angle to each user and create directional lockouts to prohibit parking lot war drivers.

We've discussed this before here and here about products from Vivato.

The answer is to use something like the "wireless switch" that Vivato developed, which uses phased-array antenna technology and can give the full 11 Mbps 802.11b bandwidth to each client.

This is probably a good time to create a current review of the long distance (>> 300 ft) Wireless solutions that are available in the market.

Richochet is one http://www.ricochet.com/

and another is Vivato http://www.vivato.net/

What are the other ones in the market?

Each element (individual antenna piece) in a receive-only ESPA requires its own amplifier and phase shifter or time delay circuit. A good LNA die can be had for maybe $25. A good phase shifter die could be $200. Now those have to be packaged. A special-purpose LTCC package for those dice could run $200. There's $425 and you've not even put them together yet. Or integrated them on the beamformer. Or installed the antenna element! Or included a radome. Or power supply. Or control circuits.

The handwriting is already on the wall in the personal computer market. 10 GHz transistors being clocked at 3 GHz, talking across the circuit boards at 500 MHz, with everything running off phase- and frequency-controlled synthesized clocks. The crystal industry is really suffering: everybody is just buying 10 MHz fundamental crystals and synthesizing all the fancy clocks.

They don't make DSP systems fast enough! Show me a DSP that can eat a Ka-band (20-40 GHz) signal.

Want to mix it down? Fine: One mixer per element, plus LNAs= $$$$$$$!

Incidentally, Vivato has already demoed a phased-array wireless Ethernet base station. (I think they even take advantage of multipath.) Getting it to the mass market at a low price is purely a matter of time.

• 21st Century Airships
• Yahoo (German, Translated)
• www.telekom-presse.de (translated)

• Vivato's Wi-Fi switches deliver the power of network switching with Vivato genius radio antennas. Vivato's switches use phased-array radio antennas to create highly directed, narrow beams of Wi-Fi transmissions. The Wi-Fi beams are created on a packet-by-packet basis. Vivato calls this technology PacketSteering(TM). Unlike current wireless LAN broadcasting, Vivato's switched beam is focused in a controlled pattern and pointed precisely at the desired client device. These narrow beams of Wi-Fi enable simultaneous Wi-Fi transmissions to many devices in different directions, thus enabling parallel operations to many users - the essence of Wi-Fi switching. These narrow beams also reduce co-channel interference, since they are powered only when needed.

• Vivato's Wi-Fi switches significantly increase the range of Wi-Fi. Rather than transmit the radio energy in all directions, Vivato's PacketSteering concentrates the same amount of energy into a narrow, long beam. This beam is effectively a high-gain antenna that is formed for the duration of a packet transmission. The result is extreme range - extending the reach of Wi-Fi from tens of meters to kilometers.

  Another key attribute of switching is preserving compatibility with standard client devices. Vivato's Wi-Fi switches deliver increased capacity, range and security to standard Wi-Fi clients based on the IEEE 802.11b, 11a or 11g standards. With increasing capacity and range, Wi-Fi switches are more scalable than Wi-Fi traditional micro-cellular implementations and are managed in much the same way as Ethernet switches for easy adoption and widespread deployment.

I'm suprised the posting didn't link to the company website. The tech info doesn't really offer a whole lot in the way of useful information though. Anyone know a place with better details? (/. seems slow for me this morning too)

I'm suprised the posting didn't link to the company website. The tech info doesn't really offer a whole lot in the way of useful information though. Anyone know a place with better details? (/. seems slow for me this morning too)