Neighborhood Area Networks? · Slashdot Mirror

Posted by michael on Thursday October 18, 2001 @05:15AM from the flying-cars dept.

schmaltz writes: "Recent discussions about long-haul wireless on Slashdot seem geared mostly to benefit institutions, really, until this post on the peer-to-peer-oriented Decentralized list opened my eyes: "What will society do, when there are kits in every computer store and mall, for 802.11a neighborhood routers? What if you could buy a kit with four pole-mounting 15DB directional antennas, and a router in a sealed case that maintains mesh networks? ... There will be a great blooming of local gaming, IM, and voice/video telephony ... a lot of sharing of music and video on these NANs (neighborhood area networks) ... share a 2nd phone line ... we will all realize pretty quickly this is NOT the Internet ..." Maybe NANs could put the telephone company out of business. Seems like the equipment and software are either available or nearly so -can this be done today? I want to build the first NAN AP on my block!!"

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FCC by pbrammer · 2001-10-18 05:21 · Score: 3, Troll

This all works well, but the FCC, RIAA, et al will all step in and crush those networks. Don't ya think? They have vested interests in local bell cos and won't let them die because we have taken matters into our own hands. Phil