Mobilestar Less Mobile; Excite@Home Less Exciting

jc1 writes: "MobileStar, provider of 802.11b wireless LAN connectivity throughout 500 of the USA's Starbucks cafes, has laid off 88 of its staff, which a source described as "everybody". With the demise in August of Metricom's Ricochet service, one is left to wonder if there is a business to be made in providing public wireless Internet services." Or any broadband internet access at all - Excite@Home, currently in bankruptcy proceedings, has stopped taking any new orders.

Comments

Re:Hard times for Linux-friendly ISP's

[Russ Steffen]

That is correct. I keep an Earthlink account for traveling. No problems connecting with Linux - it's just plain old PPP. Their Windows software is just a dialer that knows all the local access numbers, and there are plenty of other ways to get those. I just keep the current list in my Palm.

Lack of advertisement!

[krokodil]

I've emailed Starbucks about availability of this service and they responded that they do not advertise it until all stuff is trained, but I am welcome to go to the store and try. I went, and it actually works very nice, thought little expensive.

Taking into account all expenses of running T1 into each of 500 stores, delaying service roll out could cost a lot. I guess it cost enough to run Mobile Star into financial problems.

Re:ATT@Home DHCP problems

[DavidJA]

This is one time Linux dhcpcd is a bad thing- it's one of the few DHCP clients that actually plays by the rules, releasing your IP when you shutdown. Windows doesn't bother.

F.Y.I. There is no requirement in the RFC for a client to release the IP address.

MacOS 9 and before will release the lease upon shutdown and there is nothing more annoying then 50 angry mac users screaming at you at 8:30AM because the DHCP server went ass-up the night before and none of them have IP addresses.

FROM: http://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2131.txt

"...where the client retains its network address locally, the client will not normally relinquish its lease during a graceful shutdown. Only in the case where the client explicitly needs to relinquish its lease, e.g., the client is about to be moved to a different subnet, will the client send a DHCPRELEASE message."

Re:excite@home doesn't really provide the service

[michael_cain]

At least as of today, this simply isn't true. AT&T Broadband (where I work) owns the head end equipment, and in some cases the cable modems. The backbone was owned and operated by @Home until recently, when they sold it to another part of AT&T (not Broadband), who leases capacity back to @Home. Key servers (DHCP, DNS, mail) and routers are still all owned and operated by @Home.

This arrangement, with @Home controlling the IP service, made some degree of sense when it was originally set up. Much of the friction between @Home and its cable-television shareholders (AT&T Broadband, Comcast, Cox, etc) that has been reported recently is due to the cables wanting to provide services to IP devices other than PCs, and @Home dragging their feet about supporting them.