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Wireless Mesh Network Trial in the UK
Huw writes "With cable only in selected areas and ADSL only available within three miles of selected telephone exchanges, residents of the South Wales valleys are pretty much stuck with dial up connections to access the internet. BT may have the answer with a wireless solution according to this article from the BBC. Quite how wireless networking will cope with a hilly area like this remains to be seen, but hopefully we'll soon see broadband available for anyone who wants it." The company home page has some more information about their system.
I think that the Apache WORM is more worthy news for the front page!!!
Check this norwegian wireless project...Broadband for the people.
http://www.norwaywireless.net
I haven't had any experiance with wireless at all, so I was hoping that anyone out there who's used this technology could enlighten me.
;) )
I would think (?) that there's got to be some latency with wireless access, but how much is it? Is it as bad as satilite access? Or is it just a little worse than, for instance, a regular cable hookup? (read: can you play quake without getting horrible lag?
Moreover, with all the cable companies limiting the use of cable modem service, and (I'd assume, please correct me if I'm wrong) wireless resources must be a lot more limited, are there large restrictions on what you can do with a wireless connection? For instance, running any sort of servers what-so-ever (I know my cable ISP hates it when I simply have ftpd running to transfer files from another machine). Of course, I doubt you'd run a server off a wireless connection, but, like in my case, sometimes you must, if only for a short period of time.
Anyone who's had experiance, I'd love to have your imput.
--
http://nemilar.net - Not your grandmother's soup kitchen
Trial customers in the 80-square-kilometre area will receive movies, music videos and entertainment shows on-demand to their living room.
They didn't mention what everyone will really be using it for: high-speed p0rn.
My other sig is an import.
Don't confuse this with the 802.11b networks BT are setting up, this is the fixed wireless in the ~15GHz range I believe. Anyway, I have cable... but the mesh I'd really be interested in is a mobile P2P Mesh
All forms of wireless connections are much more prone to manipulation and hax0ring than the good old fashioned fiber connections.
While wireless might be much easier to set up the total cost of ownership might be much higher due to hacking attacks and financial damages caused by the theft of personal information like credit card numbers etc. There are, of course, ways to secure wireless channels but usually administrators which non-academic background and managers without technical skills ignore the problems of open channels and therefore no decent security measures are applied.
It's also questionable if the existing encryption possibilities are strong enough. For some critical data doesn't become uncritical after a long time, therefore introducing new possibilities for a hacker with some decent equipment and enough time (3-4 months) on his hands.
I also wonder if the bad weather conditions in Scottland might render the service useless too. After all, in a decent thounderstorm both optical and radiobased wireless links become pretty useless.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
Hmm, perhaps it's just me, but the word 'Internet' is only used twice in the BBC article, and the idea that this network will be used for net access is passed over fairly quickly.
The bulk of it seems to be about how "Broadband gives computer users high-speed access to broadcast-quality films, video conferencing and other facilities." And how this network will be used to "receive movies, music videos and entertainment shows on-demand to their living room."
In fact, the only user testimonial in the article is:
"We have been watching music videos and flicking through films," tester Andrew Sharpe told BBC News Online from his newly wired Gelliwastad Grove address.
"Before, I was dialling up using a slow 56 kbps modem, but now I can't notice the difference from a TV picture. It's very impressive."
All-in-all, this seems more like a North American CableCo switching to wireless delivery in rural areas, as opposed to an ISP. In this article, at least, 'net access is only given a cursory lip-service.
"In my values, freedom is more important than 'serving users' in a mere practical sense." -- RMS
Ha Ha! Peer to Peer is everywhere. Everywhere!
http://investor.verizon.com/news/VZ/print_2002-04- 02_X119792.html
I've been using wireless for broadband for a few months now. In downtown Philadelphia the local cable company is not very serious about taking on new customers. We were told that someone would be there to set us up next week for about 4 months. We offered to pick up a box and install it, but they kept giving us the runaround.
The last time I had DSL the company went out of business a year into my 2 year contract. We also had problems with the local phone company using our DSL wire to string up new phones. (I'll never forget the Covad service guy: "Sir, your DSL line has a dialtone.")
My 802.11 wireless rig is going through a few trees and doesn't seem to mind. Hills are easy, it's called a rooftop mount.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Trial customers in the 80-square-kilometre area will receive movies, music videos and entertainment shows on-demand to their living room.
And just think, Verzion won't even roll out DSL in my area, unless it is to piggyback a more expensive service. (Verizon currently sells us a T1 which enters the building over a DSL line...won't sell us DSL, go figure.)
Communities have done things like this before, but never a phone company to my knowledge. That is where the news is with this.
Maybe the US telecom's could learn a lesson from the Brits.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
UK approval of 802.11a was delayed by the fact that military and satellite networks also use spectrum in the 5GHz range.
Intel's agreement with the UK regulator, the Radiocommunications Agency, sidesteps this problem by limiting users to undisputed parts of the 5GHz spectrum. (A similar agreement will allow users in the Netherlands to buy systems there too.)
Because of this limitation, UK users will have a maximum of four 802.11a access points in a given area, while the fully licensed product allows users in the US to have up to eight.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
I haven't used my wireless to play Quake, but I have no problems with speed and response time. I would expect no particular latency problems, because the total distances involved aren't exaggerated like they are with satellites.
____DevManager_____
RedHat announces RedHat 7.4. Updates include a new kernel (2.4.19-22), a new version of RPM, and many, many other packages. Be sure to download the ISOs from your nearest mirror, of course.
To paraphrase Douglas Adams:
Space is big, really big. It's mind bogglingly huge. You may thing the walk down to the chemist is a long way, but that's just peanuts to space...
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2118153,00. html
A packet sniffer will pick up a packet whether you pull it out of the aether over a wireless link, or by connecting to an insecure switch downstream. What the signal is carried on does not matter. If it routes on the internet it, by definition, can be sniffed, dissected, and disseminated.
Weather may be their problem, a profound misunderstanding of technology is yours. At least the weather will clear up on its own.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
As I have posted before, a simliar net is up for testing in Germany. Here's my posting:
;-)
Hi,
your news reporter from Germany back again
Heise had a story about a wireless self organzing net that's up for testing in the city of Ratingen, Germany.
The main facts: 2,4 GHz like WLAN, max. 1 km distance between the antennas, 44 mbit bandwidth per node - 33 mbit for relaying with the other nodes (normally 3 * 11 mbit) and the rest for the user of the node.
The links:
Heise Story in German [heise.de] or google translated [google.com].
Link to the technology provider DIRC [dirc.net] (click on FAQ to get the main points).
Bye
egghat.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
I've given Very Deep Thought to the question of mesh networks, and I came to the conclusion that it is impossible to prevent untraceable total denial-of-service attacks.
Are there any routing experts on Slashdot who can give me a reson why I might be wrong ?
yes and in addition to this the UK will have really 133t 3G mobile networks....oh hang on!
I would think a hilly area could actually be an advantage; just stick a node on the top of each hill and serve everyone around.
Somebody's gotta do something, I waited on Adelphia for 6 years before I finally got a cable modem a couple months ago. Now Adelphia is in huge financial trouble, figures...
The BBC article, however, makes this new system look very restrictive. They spew on and on about "Interactive TV", and video on demand. They then go on to say , "That technology has so far been used by eclectic hobbyist and community groups to exchange information and videos between computers. ... it threatens to make redundant wireless technologies such as the 802.11b standard." This "ecclectic" bunch would be you and me trying to run away from interactive TV and pay by the minute communications charges. I imagine that BT's "community web" will have the same dependency and restrictions on BT as the current BT. Your "redundant" 802.11b http server will be silenced when it interfeers with Girl Power or some other mass produced shit. USA telcom has made my cynical.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I gave up waiting for ADSL and got ISDN. I am quite happy with it as it is so much better than expected compared to a modem. BT have no plans at all to supply my area with ADSL and when the final have a plan it will take them over a year to actually do anything and my ISDN only requires that I have it for at least a year.
So I sit here dreaming of ADSL coming one day, somewhere in the future and then read that they are going to test this on the sheep in Wales. What is wrong with the Cotswolds ??? They are hills too !!! and there are more people here that would actually use this.
How many years will it be before we can have this ???
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Damn it!! give the technology to us up here in North Wales (the land that time forgot)!
Actually the ADSL range from the exchange was increased with the introduction of RADSL which varies the upstream bit rate according to line quality. The limit is now about 5.5km of average copper quality line.
Got the solution. Put the antennas on top of hills.
Can I have my multi-million dollar consulting fee now please?
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
I'm a bit suspicious of "it works great for the beta users". The question is how it will work under load. See the cable modem cap discussion for the issues.
Siting for gigahertz-range services in hilly terrain is tough. For an awful example, drive Topanga Canyon Road in Malibu, CA. It's a winding road in a narrow canyon, heavily used by film industry types who expect cell phones to work. There are little cell sites on phone poles every few hundred feet.
Meshes dont scale.
The radiant system uses 28 or 40 ghz point to point radios and they run ATM over that. The main feed to the messh is a 155mb atm link. Each hub has 4 directional antennas so it can talk to 4 other sites. The problems with this is it only goes about 3km (but 1km is more typical) and the hubs were about 7 grand each and I have now idea how much the main feed point would cost.
There are several compaines working optical mesh networks which I think will work as well if not better because they have much longer range (when the weather is good you can do a 20km hop but when the weather is bad you do a bunch of 1km hops) and are cheaper.
Good thinking here. try it see how it works. i have heard some bad thinks about mesh's but I would like a mesh better thank a dial-up and hey think of the business. Thats how you get business, by giving customers what the want. Or so I think/believe
~Entaundo
Oh, how true is that. The only reason I moved to Manchester was to get C4 and 5! Anythings better than S4C!
"You heard the man, Tubbs.. get undressed."
Arschficken mit Ziegen is perfectly good, contemporary German. Oh how I hate when people try to swear in a foreign tongue, and get it all wrong.
However, Polkatroll, "schne" is not a word in any language I know. You probably ment "schöne" or something the like.
Hmmm... baad f00d