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Wi-Fi Spreading Fast But Lacks Profits
clapton_fan writes "The New York Times has a story that details the spread of wireless networks but says the concept has been short on profits thus far. Its growth is mainly attributable to homes and small businesses. Corporations are reluctant to embrace them because of security concerns.
Meanwhile, Intel is planning to have every device that uses an Intel chip Wi-Fi enabled which will make it difficult for companies that sell Wi-Fi as an accessory to prosper."
Why is everyone concerned about these companies being profitable? Let's get Wifi into as many hands as possible. The faster wireless networks can grow, the faster we can shit-can cable and phone companies and their arbitrary caps.
I think that a lot of that is over-reaction anyway. Airport hasn't killed Wi-Fi in the Apple market. Airport cards and base stations are great, but I know lots of people who use aftermarket cards and third-party base stations. Intel is going to be a strong competetor, but that doesn't mean that they can M$ the other makers out.
>> and as such, the video card and sound card industries flail in lack of funds.
You're being sarcastic, but they have suffered.
We're down to NVidia and ATI for video, Creative Labs and Santa Cruz for audio. And both are pretty much stuck to producing 'higher end' cards geared at gamers or audiophiles, respectively.
For the average office type desktop box, what's onboard is more than adequate. 6 channel AC97 and 64 megs shared-ram agp video is pretty hefty when you're just making up excel spreadsheets all day.
Remember the cirrus logic, trident, savage, et al 2 meg workstation cards? Fire up the original dos version of Doom and look at all the different sound cards you had to choose from. All gone, all obsolete.
Also, I don't think this is just internal usage. They're after integrated 802.11 just like one has integrated ethernet on the mobo. I envision a place to screw your antenna in on the rear IO panel.
Which I'm all for. PCI cards take up too much room. We need to pave the way for smaller form factors.
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The internet was also another technology that was spreading fast but failed to bring lots of profits. Most of the money moving around was investments, not actual revenue. There are no easy profits. There are always competitors, margins are razor-thin and even if you are doing well you need to watch your back for the one that will bring you down. In other words - business as usual.
That is, of course, unless you found some way to create a monopoly and maintain it. Monopolists are the only ones that get the goose that lays golden eggs. WiFi is not going to be that goose.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Valid points, I'll more than give you that. But the average desktop user usually has some kids involved--beit themselves children or having kids. Kids like to play games, and usually will install a 3d one or two. That'll still tax a card, and even without good graphics, 3d games are getting larger and larger, and the cpu needs more power just to keep up. That's not even terribly high-end. I hate average users, but I don't think that most give them enough credit--I don't--and this is a good example of where. They know when something doesn't look good, and Quake III Arena on a built-in SiS video chip doesn't look good. Almost no gain from a built-in Wi-Fi chip won't look good.
But valid visions on just some place to screw in an antennae on the back. That wouldn't surprise me in the least. But most built-ins will be--just as they are now--inaddequate for all but the most trivial uses. And with Wi-Fi becoming more and more accepted and used, the more power will be needed. Joe Schmoe won't be able to get good reception from his desktop in the bedroom of his 3 room apartment from his kitchen computer unless he gets an add-on card. And that's going to be a lot of add-on cards.
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Ah, yes, I see...just like how motherboard venders include sound and video, and as such, the video card and sound card industries flail in lack of funds.
Your sarcasm is misplaced. The road of progress is littered with failed graphics card companies, and the big two (ATI and Nvidia) get by on sales of their chips, not their video cards. And a quick search for sound cards at OfficeMax showed only two cards. Doesn't exactly sound like a growning industry huh?
Thats not to say that video and sound cards don't have their nitches (for example, gaming), but you simply can't make money marketing to a nitch (and especially not at 100 bucks a pop).
When millons of computers are shipped with built in wi-fi, the same thing will happen to the wireless market. Why would a large corporation buy any cards or add-ons when the 2000 PCs it just purchased can handle wi-fi just fine?
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Okay, let's make this plain off the top...this post is probably at least 75% pure, unadulterated flamebait. Having said that...
What is so hot about WiFi, anyway? I mean, I can see it for corporate and educational campuses, letting Joe or Jane User pop a card into their laptop, tablet, etc. and access the 'Net from wherever they happen to plop their arses. Email between colleagues, data-sharing for study groups and all that...those are the benefits of WiFi in those places. Beyond that, what's wrong with tried-and-true copper? Does everyone really need a wireless Ethernet adapter for their desktop box? I know I don't; I get along fabulously with a 10/100 switch feeding packets to the various boxen in the house, and it's good enough for server testing, print sharing and the occasional fragfest.
My own position on the matter: For the 40% (my own estimate) of the American populace that has two or more boxen in the home and wants to network them, the best means is Cat5 in the walls. No interference from such sources as lightning, mercury lamps, microwave ovens, cordless phones and so on, no security risks with someone wardriving by and trying to crack in (yes, it's a remote concern here, but according to some "experts" it's also a valid concern), and in the long run it's a damn sight cheaper. So someone wants to plug a laptop into the network...what's so hard about leaving a length of cable dangling off the hub? 100baseT, 16-port hubs are well within the financial reach of anyone who can afford to run three computers in the home.
Don't get me wrong here...I think the technology for 802.11b is a Very Good Thing Indeed. But Average Keyboard Pounders don't need it for most applications. Copper's cheaper, more reliable and keeps the snoops at bay.
These are all my own, personal and (probably) minority views on the matter...YMMV.
'Nuff said.
All the world's an analog stage, and digital circuits play only bit parts.
802.11(a/b) are open standards, with published docs. Intel could try a MS move to "embrace and extened" it, but I'm sure that would fail. The most propritery systems I've heard of are encrytion schemes that use dynamic keys (instead of incredibly stupid static keys, currently specified by WEP). This is a trade off for companies, they get secure wireless systems but are tied to a single vendor. A new WEP standared is needed (anyone know if one exists/in the works?) so wireless can really explode in the enterprise market.
" So, let me get this straight: because Intel packs wi-fi onto each intel chip, wi-fi won't sell as an accessory? Ah, yes, I see...just like how motherboard venders include sound and video, and as such, the video card and sound card industries flail in lack of funds."
The companies that used to make "Super I/O cards" may turn out to be a better comparison. The market for separate cards for IDE controllers, serial ports, and parallel ports, hasn't disappeared (after all, Promise makes some money selling their IDE controllers), but it's tiny compared to what it was before these features became standard as an integrated part of the motherboard.
With sound and video, there are clear gradations of quality. Wireless network access is more of a binary quality - it either works or it doesn't. There will probably always be a niche market for external wireless adapters with special features (longer range, etc), but I suspect that integrated wireless access devices will become the norm.
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
Won't happen. Unlike power lines, there is no limit to the number of WiFi providers operating in a given area, so competition among different providers is possible and desirable. Think of cellphone access as a model here, not local telephone service.
on the contrary, there are only a limited number of 802.11b channels available, and only 3 of those don't mutually interfere. If 3 cellphone companies saturate those channels, there's no room left for community WLAN projects apart from point-to-point high gain pringles-can project. you could, if you really wanted to, run new parallel power lines to sell electricity down - there's not nearly enough available spectrum for wifi to gain massive widespread use. Also, my current wifi network consists of 2 Belkin USB wifi thingies seperated by one wall and 3', and I get a 1-2 second dropout every couple of minutes which makes it pretty much useless for UT2003! Anyone got similar issues?
"802.11 is FREE, all you need to do is buy a lousy wireless NIC and an AP. After that you get 10mbps, instead of crappy unreliable 1.5mbps "
Odd. I just put a 802.11 card in my computer. I got NO BANDWITH. Turns out the only way I'm going to get any connectivity on my wi-fi card is if I connect another node to an old-school source of bandwith (Cable modem, DSL modem, a computer with dial-up.)
Turns out that 802.11 is just another protocoll, not a magical source of 10mpbs bandwith. If you want to get 10mbps out of the 802.11 hardware, you're going to need 10mbps+ of some other sort of data-pipe. Perhaps 10 of your neighbors have 10 wi-fi cards connected to their "crappy unreiable 1.5mbps" cable modems. 802.11 is all about leeching ALOT from your neighbors while they leech a little back from you.
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
The Government's biggest concern about 802.11 is wireless Access Points (APs) being set up by workers behind the firewall. This could allow anyone (including Terrorists) access to Government Information that would otherwise be protected. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Pentagon have banned 802.11 until security concerns can be addressed. I'm sure the Government worries about open APs being used for DoS attacks and such, but access through rogue APs is a bigger concern.
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