WiFi & Cellular Unite

blake213 writes "Newsfactor is reporting a story on how WiFi Metro and Green Packet are teaming up to do a 90-day field test of combined WiFi and cellular romaing technologies in the S.F. Bay Area. Supposedly a user can roam between two coverage areas with uninterrupted service."

Comments

WiFi networks everywhere

[vidnet]

Seems wifi is popping up everywhere, so anyone with a laptop can get access anywhere...

It's just that people who need constant access aren't really the kind of people who like to go outside :)

Sharp Light! Sharp liiight!

Re:WiFi networks everywhere

[invenustus]

I have a dream. I dream that someday I will drive around these United States with my laptop in the shotgun seat or in the back, listening to Internet radio. (MLB radio, if we're being totally honest.) So in fact, there are people who DO go outside and need permanent connections.

It drives me crazy that there are any number of companies providing cheap digital voice and text messaging services, but they can't do a simple TCP/IP link.

There's one problem I see. If I'm talking on my Cingular phone, and I drive out of Cingular's coverage area and into Cellular One's, they're smart enough to start routing my calls that way. However, if I were using an IP address owned by Cingular, is Windows smart enough to let Cellular One tell it I have a new IP address now?

And when that fails...

[flipflapflopflup]

they can aim there mobile at Jim's house.

GPRS

[Mwongozi]

For clarification, they're talking about data access, not voice.

I'm a bit confused, though. Isn't this what GPRS is supposed to accomplish?

Re:GPRS

[blacksmith]

I'm a bit confused, though. Isn't this what GPRS is supposed to accomplish?

WiFi runs a lot faster than GPRS. Eight slot GPRS will give you about 115.2 kbps, whereas WiFi gives you ~10 Mbps. Both are best case figures.

Re:GPRS

[tomsparrow]

GPRS is only 2.5G though, 3G will close the gap slightly. I do wonder if it's worth the effort given what you can use a portable device for anyway.
Email and web browsing don't need 10Mbps. I suppose you could pull MP3's (or vorbis) while wandering round town, but I would still get them at home where bandwidth is (and will be for some time yet) cheaper and carry them with me.

"3G promises increased bandwidth, up to 384 Kbps when a device is stationary or moving at pedestrian speed, 128 Kbps in a car, and 2 Mbps in fixed applications." (Webopedia)

Re:GPRS

[dk.r*nger]

Basically, yes..

But you still have to pay for GPRS access ($20/mb in Denmark), whereas Wi-Fi is free and thus prefered over mobile access when available..

- Ranger

Re:GPRS

[cyberformer]

Even that is too optimistic for GPRS. No-one has actually made an 8-slot GPRS terminal, because each slot requires as much bandwidth (and more importantly, as much energy, leading to overheating) as a regular voice channel. The fastest is 57.6k (4-slot) down, 43.2k (3-slot) up.

Of course, GPRS can cover several miles, whereas W-Fi's range is around 100m. There's always a trade-off.

Phreak City

[joe_fish]

Well I dont see any reason why this is not possible - the hardware for WiFi and Cellular would seem to be *fairly* similar technology (radio + CPU). So in theory if you could register on one network, and when signal strength goes down, just register on the other. The biggest technical problem from what I can see would be for IP addrs and routers.

But you can bet it will be a phreakers heaven. Bruce Schneier is always saying that holes occur when you try to force together 2 systems that were not designed to work with each other.

I'm willing to bet that stealing other users sessions will be common place for quite a while if they ever get the thing into full production ...

Where's the Linux competition for Pocket PC?

[ahfoo]

It's really too bad that there's no Linux alternatives for the Pocket PC platform because it seems like it's finally taking off. Taiwan OEMs are going nuts this year at Computex with wireless Pocket PCs and stories like this about ironing out the wrinkles in GPRS are starting to convince me this might become a significant market where I used to be convinced it was an overpriced gimmick. If the prices come down into the few hundred dollar range in the next few years these things might become ubiquitous.

Re:Where's the Linux competition for Pocket PC?

[Mwongozi]

Well isn't the Linux competition for PocketPC... uh, Linux?

You can already install Linux on an iPAQ, other hardware can't be too tricky.

Re:Where's the Linux competition for Pocket PC?

[tomsparrow]

I think some people might disagree with the being no linux alternatives.

Re:Where's the Linux competition for Pocket PC?

[ahfoo]

Nice links, thanks for that.
I'm definitely going to follow up on this Ipaq Linux stuff. As for the Zaurus, I was under the impression that it relied on a lot of Java.
A company I work with was considering using Linux on a line of Pocket PC type devices, but they thought they needed to use a lot of Java and that the licensing costs for Java were actually expensive compared to going with MS when they added in all the in-house development they had to do.
But I must admit I didn't know about iPaq Linux. If it's less dependent on Java it might be quite interesting.

Re:Where's the Linux competition for Pocket PC?

[ahfoo]

Well, phones are one thing, but I was talking about the Pocket PC as in the platform rather than the software because that's what Taiwan OEMs are going to crank out so that's what will become the commodity hardware and the default standard. I understand that Pocket PC is only a Microsoft standard, but it's not just a software standard. It's a quite specific hardware standard as well.
The current generation is built on StrongArm206 CPUs and the Xscale 400MHz CPUs are coming already in production so bloated software isn't really as big of an issue as it is on say a cell phone.
I think this IPaQ stuff looks very intriguing, but I'm afraid my suspicions are confirmed on further research. They've got TWM up with a few basic apps that need major tweaking just to view properly. This is a far cry from KDE or Gnome with OpenOffice Lite and Navigator for PocketLinux.
I'm not complaining. I'm just surprised nobody is more aggressive in this market as it looks like the volume is definitely heading north on these puppies and the dealing would be done as a wholesale licensing rather than retail so it should be profitable. The big question mark is, how much is Windows really charging for licenses? Who knows?

Re:Where's the Linux competition for Pocket PC?

[ahfoo]

Tale a look at Pocket PCs? I work with a major Pocket PC OEM.
But that's not why I'm posting. I wanted to follow up on that Symbian link. Hey, that's actually the hot tip. Thanks.
I was making the mistake of thinking is was Ximian so I was sort of dismissing it out of hand as I was just at the Ximian site a few weeks ago and there was nothing about wireless. But Symbian, hey, they've got it goin' on. And the MS troll above should take a look as well.

GPRS are different

[jukal]

WLAN is a short-range solution, GPRS is long (or mid)-range. WLAN provides (if available) relatively high band-width for limited amount of users. GPRS provides more trustable relatively low-bit rate for more users. WLAN is governed by laws of a jungle. GPRS is strictly governed. I quess these are the main differences that the user will see, in addition that the standards are very different.

Nokia sells a card with support for both WiFi 802.11b and GPRS, maybe because the two things are different.

What you might see is automagic switch to 802.11b network when it's scanned to provide better and trustable bit-rate, and switch back to GPRS when the WLAN network fails.

Oh, this will be great...

[march]

Cool! Given the range of WiFi in my house, we will now have antenna towers every 50 feet rather than every quarter mile.

Hey, the tops of those telephone poles aren't being used - maybe we could use those. Go Global Irradiation!!

Re:Oh, this will be great...

[TheSync]

Hey, the tops of those telephone poles aren't being used - maybe we could use those. Go Global Irradiation!!

Uh, Ricochet units are already on poletops in some areas...but mostly turned off now.

I was thinking...

[swordboy]

Why don't cellular providers make an adapter to plug their cellular access into the junction box on the outside of a house? I use my cell phone as a primary (actually, I have two and it is still much cheaper than the rape provided by Ameritech) and this has worked well for me. I would really love it if I could plug in a cellular access module into my house so I could use my POTS infrastructure with the service.

802.11 War Dialing

[bill_mcgonigle]

Meanwhile, the geeks at the Shmoo Group are finding open 802.11 networks and making VoIP calls over the 'participants' Internet connection. Very clever.