Reviving Ricochet: Better Than WiFi?

renard writes "Slate is carrying a column by Brendan Koerner arguing that reviving the Ricochet city-wide wireless network infrastructure would be a better idea than blanketing the nation/world with 802.11-ish WiFi. He reviews all the usual silly reasons why Metricom, the original owners, were unable to make a go of it, and makes a good case that things may go better the second time around."

Comments

Until...

[Nefrayu]

Until the government shuts them down because the terrorists are using them.

Re:Until...

[Anonymous Coward]

Terrorists AKA people with opinions not popular with corporate America or its government. Can't have them organizing, now can we?

Re:Until...

[axxackall]

Don't worry about people in America - the Big Brother takes care of them.

Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

Not having to pay to install it all those places like they did before is sure to help the new owners...

But, when people say better than Wi-Fi, better for whom? The internet service providers? Or the customers who might one day escape ISPs?

2nd time is a charm

[carpe_noctem]

Having worked for Ricochet this summer, I can say that they've spent a lot more time really thinking about their business plan and marketing strategies rather than rushing in like the old dot-coms. I've heard that a small subscriber base is starting to develop, and the Ricochet technology is being used (experimentally) by the fire and police departments for roaming internet access.

Hopefully, Ricochet will manage to do at least -somewhat- better than Metricom did, though seeing how they conducted themselves, they feel quite a bit more responsible than the archetypical dot-com business.

Re:2nd time is a charm

[Anonymous Coward]

one problem with the government using Ricochet.. denial of service attacks, 3G style (localized)

Re:2nd time is a charm

[rjamestaylor]

Having been a Ricochet subscriber up until they went dark (sucked) I am as excited as all heck that they are back live in San Diego (less than an hour from me in South Orange County). My radio is still charged and I turned it on a couple weeks back (just to see if something unannounced was happening!) only to see the bright red glow of No Service.

I am a current T-Mobile HotSpot subscriber but hopping from Starbucks to Starbucks is nothing like cruising I-5 between the 405 and 605 with a steady 128K connection posting on Slashdot, Instant Messaging friends and running PuTTY sessions to the web farm (while driving. . .oops). What a difference to be able to CHOOSE which establishment to park myself (rather than being forced to be at or really near a Starbucks). Seal Beach had particularly good coverage and there was this pub called Hennesseys. . .anyway. . . So, I use T-Mobile HotSpots, but long for Ricochet to be back on is SoCal.

One annoyance about the Ricochet site, though. On the page to find out if the service is available at your address the city name field is limited to 20 characters AND the query only works if the city name and state exactly match the Zip Code look up value. So? Well, since 1999 there is a city in the US with a name larger than "Truth Or Consequences", NM: Rancho Santa Margarita. I happen to live there.

Back in the day database designers used the fact that ToC, NM was, at that time, the largest city name in the US to set CITY name fields to 21 (or 19 if they didn't include spaces for some reason) characters (i.e., CITY varchar(21) default Null). Rules of Thumb are great, until hit with the hammer of reality. I can't tell you how many databases choke on the CITY name being larger than 21 characters. I have seen so many MS SQL and Oracle error pages it's not funny (well, it is).

Ricochet's form is set for 20 characters (weird) and chokes on incomplete city names. I know my city isn't served yet, but the way to get on the "tickle" list is to check out your location __successfully__ and then be added to the list.

Please, please tell every database/form designer you know to only require a Zip Code, match partial city names, or increase the CITY field to accomodate the "brevity challenged" new developments in SoCal.

Re:2nd time is a charm

[Anonymous Coward]

Rancho Santa Margarita. I happen to live there

You also happen to be full of shit.

I was also a Ricochet loyalist until they went dark. I did serious speed tests on the network here in Philly. I found two things... first, while stationary, one could attain speeds far greater than 128 if you were in an area with no other subscribers. Second, all that went to shit while mobile.

On the train, in a car, whatever... speeds dropped to about the 28.8 range moving anything faster than 30 MPH. It's the nature of the tech, look it up. This guy is sneezing his facts out his ass saying he was hitting a "steady" 128 while "cruising".

Re:2nd time is a charm

[rjamestaylor]

For such a vile creature you certainly are sure of yourself.

While I've heard others claim drop outs on trains, etc., my experience in Southern CA was as I described. This was not a one-time event. I drove the 5 from the 405 to the 605 daily as a Ricochet subscriber. It afforded constant connection on the route (PuTTY and its ilk don't abide connection drops nicely). I admit I wasn't testing the bandwidth all the time (dslreports.com thanks me, I'm sure) but the basics of an always available connection between Lake Forest, CA and Lakewood, CA was as real as you're crude.

Re:2nd time is a charm

[RabidOverYou]

> Please, please tell every database/form designer you know to . . .

It would only forestall the inevitable. Sure, bump the CITY field to 128, hell 4096 for all I care. Then some enterprising Chamber Of Commerce produces Yahoo!, California, or maybe Upper\East\Side\Manhattan, and something shorts a gasket.

Do you doubt it?

Re:2nd time is a charm

[jpt.d]

new city name...
''); show tables;

oops I made an error...
''); delete from accounts; delete from billing;

Re:2nd time is a charm

[Anonymous Coward]

One annoyance about the Ricochet site, though. On the page to find out if the service is available at your address the city name field is limited to 20 characters AND the query only works if the city name and state exactly match the Zip Code look up value. So? Well, since 1999 there is a city in the US with a name larger than "Truth Or Consequences", NM: Rancho Santa Margarita. I happen to live there.

Then do as half of the world does and abbreviate Santa to St. - it's not unheard of, you know.. Just think of all the keystrokes you'd NOT be typing! How about that for an anti-RSI measure?

Re:2nd time is a charm

[Psyko]

Use El Toro, 92610... We're neighbors...

Re:2nd time is a charm

[rjamestaylor]

Then do as half of the world does and abbreviate Santa to St. - it's not unheard of, you know..

What part of exact match did you not understand? No abbreviations worked the times I tried. (The usual abbreviation is "RSM", BTW.)

Since they're checking the entered city name and state against a Zip Code lookup, why don't they just require a Zip Code and provide the city and state from the look up table? Or, why not ask "Did you mean 'Rancho Santa Margarita'?" as a follow up when the Zip Code look up failed?

It's just an annoying example of sloppy form/database design imposing artifical barriers to prospective clients.

Also, RSM is a fairly affluent area. The median house price last month was $330k -- which is for a modest-sized 3BDRM home of around 1700 sqft on a small lot. Even at $40 - $50 per month, having Ricochet at any price will require some disposable income. Why alienate any potential customers by artifical constrainsts?

Note: I am assuming that Ricochet is not enforcing a business decision to slough off inquiries from communities with overly long and pretentious names. Perhaps my assumption is wrong and Ricochet truly intends to filter out communities with names that cannot be entered exactly within 20 characters. Shrewd.

Unconsidered implications of database constraints often lead to unintended enforcement of quasi-business rules. My complaint against CITY name fields is an example; another would be databases that require one or more entries in an ORDER table to add a CUSTOMER record (I've seen it), which logically would define "customer" as one who places one or more orders, but makes it impossible to add prospective customers to the database. While such a rule may be intended (especially if there is another table for prospects), but likely this is not due to a business rule but to an anal retentive database designer who tirelessly enforces strict semantical rules...and thereby fails to model true business rules. Sometimes the ARs are wrong, as in the 21 CHAR limit on CITY NAME.

Re:2nd time is a charm

[rjamestaylor]

Hi, neighbor! Damn. I've given enough information to identify myself to a neighbor who calls himself "Psyko". Time to move! :)

Re:2nd time is a charm

[First Person]

Back in the day database designers used the fact that ToC, NM was, at that time, the largest city name in the US to set CITY name fields to 21

Hmmm....And all this time I'd just assumed it was that large metropolis between San Diego and San Francisco, Ciudad del Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula. I've heard that some people choose to abbreviate its full name, though.

Some significant research was done in this area

[ekrout]

A group of college students reviewed Richochet's wireless network, with the following conclusions being made:

We presented the results of several experiments performed to evaluate the performance of Metricom's Ricochet network. We investigated the performance of the experimental deployment as part of the Daedalus project, as well as the commercial service. Our main conclusions and observations are summarized below.

• TCP throughput is between 15 and 30 kb/s, across a wide range of packet and socket buffer sizes. In the commercial service, peak throughputs are observed for a packet size of 512 bytes and socket buffer sizes of 4-8 KBytes.

• TCP performance suffers from long idle periods caused by reverse channel contention; large variations in round-trip time estimates (between 250 and 5000 ms) greatly increase loss recovery times and significantly degrade performance.

• Maximum UDP throughput is between 50-58 kb/s, when there is no reverse channel contention; parallel UDP streams in the same direction show a roughly linear performance degradation.

• UDP jitter under lightly loaded optimal conditions are between 10 and 30 ms across the range of supportable transmission rates. This implies the viability of real-time video and audio transmissions at low bandwidths.

• Measurements of interactions with the WaveLAN device show that the performance of the Ricochet network does not degrade as much as the WaveLAN network when simultaneous transmissions occur.

• The performance of the experimental deployment is roughly similar to the commercial service, implying that improvements made to the former are likely to improve the performance of the latter as well.

  The main page is at this site.

Re:Some significant research was done in this area

[carpe_noctem]

Elan Amir
Tue May 7 18:07:57 PDT 1996
Mirrored on the LARIAT Web site with permission

This report seems a bit outdated, don't you think? A lot of technology has come along since 1996. From what I've heard, the current Ricochet network can go quite a bit faster than 30K/sec.

Re:Some significant research was done in this area

[isdnip]

The poor performance you cite applies in the South Bay area, where Ricochet was first rolled out using low-speed 900 MHz radios. They later developed 2.4 GHz radios with a higher data rate. Thus the rough speed they were selling went from 28 to 128 kbps, with peak speeds higher.

Re:Some significant research was done in this area

[bergeron76]

I found many flaws in your statement, however the most striking is your comparison of:

TCP throughput is between 15 and 30 kb/s, across a wide range of packet and socket buffer sizes. In the commercial service, peak throughputs are observed for a packet size of 512 bytes and socket buffer sizes of 4-8 KBytes

Unless I'm mistaken, I calculate 15 to 30 kb/s (kilobits per second) to be less than 4 to 8 KBytes (Kilobytes per second). I'm basing my logic on the the fact that there are 8 bits in a byte...

There are a few other notable flaws in your logic, but I've already noticed that they've been commented on and as such, I won't continue to criticize.

DISCLAIMER: The parent of this thread is marked as one of my friends (although I've never met/talked with him in any way). However, I'm inclined to point out flawed logic whenever I see it. Please don't take it personal.

Re:Some significant research was done in this area

[druzicka]

Reread the original poster's sentence:

...and socket buffer sizes of 4-8 KBytes

The 15-30 kilobit number is a measure of bandwidth for typical traffic, and maximum bandwidth is acheived with buffers that are 4-8 kilobytes in size.

Ricochet

[YIAAL]

I'd certainly buy the Ricochet service. And I suspect that such broadbased Internet access would do more for homeland security than a lot of expensive government projects we'll see.

Re:Ricochet

[Jack William Bell]

Hey Glenn, you need to change your sig. It is pointing to the old blogspot address...

Re:Ricochet

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Jack, you need to shut the hell up. You sound like a whinning mofo.

Um...

[c0dedude]

I'm sorry, but those reasons look like something more from an irc chat than actual evidence of anything... some posters even include /me on a forum! Allow me to introduce you to this cool pronoun, 'I'. I iz h4x0r 1337, d00d!

ummm

[Anonymous Coward]

how about we not turn over another public recource to the coperations.

Re:ummm

[BitHive]

How about we learn to spell before we espouse our cynical ideologies?

Reviving ricochets...

[ekrout]

...with Flash!

(Reply and let us all know your best streak/score!)

er

[Anonymous Coward]

Next on Slashdot: Apples better than Oranges?

CONFUCIUS SAY

[Anonymous Coward]

Richochet bounce back.

Re:CONFUCIUS SAY

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice one =]

+5 Funny

How is a nation-wide WiFi possible?

[Proc6]

Isn't the range on 802.11b like a couple hundred feet? I keep hearing about blanketing the country with WiFi, but the last experience with 802.11b I had was horrible. In an apartment building, I could barely maintain a connection 2 feet from the wireless router. Cordless phones, microwaves, even fishtanks can hinder performance. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see 802.11b working for the masses as an ISP service.

Re:How is a nation-wide WiFi possible?

[interiot]

Isn't the range on ethernet only a couple hundred feet? In 1980, did we imagine that a large percentage of the country could have access to cable modem speed lines?

Re:How is a nation-wide WiFi possible?

[dirkdidit]

Signal repeaters and lots of them. Also if they license with the FCC they'll be able to use more powerful signals. Yes, I agree with you that WiFi might not be the way to go, but it will pave the way for future nationwide wireless internet. And as we know, any step forward, no matter how small or insignificant, is a step in the right direction.

Re:How is a nation-wide WiFi possible?

[isdnip]

Ricochet's best feature is that it is not 802.11. It runs at a slower speed, which allows it to have a longer range. I do find it odd that so many people are trying to blanket the country with Wi-Fi, a local area network technology. Well, of course Wi-Fi has the volume behind it, which makes the kit dirt cheap, but it's not really up to the job. Ricochet's range is nothing great; it needs a lot of lamp poles, but it is better suited to its purpose than Wi-Fi.

Re:How is a nation-wide WiFi possible?

[alienw]

You can't "license" your wifi station and get permission to use more power. You are operating in the 2.4 GHz band, which is unlicensed; thus, you cannot operate at any more power than the FCC permits for that band. And buying spectrum in another band, assuming your equipment can even operate there, is much more complex and expensive than you think.

Wifi is a wireless LOCAL area network technology. Any attempts to make it into a WAN are pointless, as it is not designed for that. It won't work well, and it would be too expensive. In any case, you would have to have a $500 repeater every 50 meters. Sounds pretty expensive to me.

If anyone creates viable wireless networks in the near future, that would be the cellphone companies. They already have most of the infrastructure deployed, and are the only ones who have expertise in that field. Cellular networks are pretty much the only good way to deploy cheap, scalable wireless data services.

Re:How is a nation-wide WiFi possible?

[Anonymous Coward]

2.4GHz is not unlicensed. Anyone with an ametuer radio license can transmit at up to 1500W of power in the 2390-2450MHz band. This includes most 802.11b channels. So someone with an amateur license could modify their devices to transmit at higher power levels to increase range legally.

Of course, amateur radio transmissions must be unencrypted, so you can't use ssh or any other software that encrypts your transmissions.

Re:How is a nation-wide WiFi possible?

[NineNine]

Nope. I've got at least 3 500' Cat 4 cables running along the floor of my house, and a few in my store right now. Works great. Fast, dirt fucking cheap, and no security problems.

Re:How is a nation-wide WiFi possible?

[Hidyman]

I work for a wireless internet service provider (WISP). It's pretty straight forward, put up an antenna on a 160' tower and you can cover 80% of a 3 mile radius. Point to MultiPoint. We have a link of over 7 miles at an 11MB rate. All of the equipment is very cheap and interference is not a problem. The only real problem is that it is VERY line of sight, including the fresnel zone, and trees absorb the microwave radiation. Luckily 24dB gain antennas allow cheap off the shelf cards to comunicate great distances, while maintaining FCC compliance. Plus there are 11 channels to choose from.

Re:How is a nation-wide WiFi possible?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Isn't the range on ethernet only a couple hundred feet?

The later variants of ethernet (including gigabit and WiFi) have hacks to expand the range (which was limited in the 10 and 100 Mbit versions by an interaction of packet size, inter-packet gap, and clocking variations).

As for WiFi's radio range (due to power and antenna limits), you can easily get >10 miles in a point-to-point link by using a directional antenna at one or both ends.

This is not STRICTLY legal, because the directional antenna concentrates the power in a tight beam, which is thus more intense, and one of the limits is on the intensity (rather than the overall power). The focussed beam can thus interfere with other stations farther away in the preferred direction.

But the Fed has shown no sign of trying to actually enforce that limit - despite the appearance of commercial operations selling equipment for the purpose and/or setting up commercial ISPs with links based on the hack.

And it's probably appropriate to allow it: While the directional antenna lets you compete with stations farther away in the preferred direction, it does so by weakening your signal (and your reception) in other directions. The two effects approximately balance out, and you're left making significant bandwidth competition in about the same area with a directional antenna as with an omnidirectional.

Even better: Directional antennas tend to be more heavily used in the boonies, where the spaces-between tend to be empty of users, and where wired ISPs are too expensive to be practical.

Re:How is a nation-wide WiFi possible?

[Agripa]

Last time I checked there were restrictions on what spreading sequences HAM operators could use. I very much doubt that Wi-Fi uses any of the permitted ones.

Re:How is a nation-wide WiFi possible?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cat 4?

What are you running, 16 meg Token Ring?

Re:How is a nation-wide WiFi possible?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are 11 channels to choose from, but only 3 NON-OVERLAPPING channels.

Do you work as a secretary?

Re:How is a nation-wide WiFi possible?

[joib]

Cellular networks are pretty much the only good way to deploy cheap, scalable wireless data services.


While not ready yet, the HAPS (high altitude platform station) concept looks cool. Basically, stick a phased array antenna on either an autonomous solar powered aircraft (like the NASA helios) or an airship. Cheaper than satellite, and thanks to array antennas capacity is huge. For more info, check for example
this overview.

Re:How is a nation-wide WiFi possible?

[akb]

As for WiFi's radio range (due to power and antenna limits), you can easily get >10 miles in a point-to-point link by using a directional antenna at one or both ends.

This is not STRICTLY legal, because the directional antenna concentrates the power in a tight beam, which is thus more intense, and one of the limits is on the intensity (rather than the overall power).


You should take a look at 802.11 (Part 15) Devices and the Rules and Regulations. It interprets the FCC rules in an easier to read presentation. Directional antennas are allowed and even encouraged by the rules.

Re:How is a nation-wide WiFi possible?

[Skuld-Chan]

There are portions of the 2.4 ghz band that are licesed - to amateur radio operators where they are primary users.

And us hams do get to use 100 watts ss on most any frequency authorized for spread spectrum use (in general 70cm and above)

Re:How is a nation-wide WiFi possible?

[Fjord]

As the other person said, the directional antennas are legal. There is a maximum power requirement, but you can choose how to spend this power. If you go omnidirectional, then you have a short range as the power is diffused over a volume (so you need to take the 3rd root). There are antenna that mostly go flat but circularily out (kinda 2nd root). And you can go directional.

Re:How is a nation-wide WiFi possible?

[NineNine]

Cat 4 works just fine. I stream MP3's, swap massive files, etc. Most people who buy Cat 5 are just suckers because they don't understand how networking works, and what real bandwidth flow rates are. I've never been able to "max out" my Cat 4 cable.

Re:How is a nation-wide WiFi possible?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is hardly pointless to try to use WiFi as a WAN technology. Unless you want to ignore the successes.

With the right antennas you can get more than 50 meters out of it. A lot more.

Still, when deployed in such a mode, it looses much of its utility for providing access to multiple clients.

Re:How is a nation-wide WiFi possible?

[alienw]

There are many restrictions on what you can do as a ham. First, you may communicate only with other hams. Read the rules for third-party messages -- they are not permitted in most cases. Secondly, there are several rules on prohibited content. You may not, for example, view websites with profanity, purchase anything, view any websites with any advertisements, or do anything even remotely commercial over that connection. Thirdly, I am pretty sure that the limit on 802.11b is not 1500W but rather something around 100W, with required frequency hopping. Also, I am not exactly sure how you're going to identify your 802.11b station. Remember, it has to be done so that anyone with appropriate equipment can read it - inserting your callsign in the data stream doesn't count since it is virtually impossible to read it.

Finally, the 802.11b devices probably don't meet the criteria required for ham-operated equipment. Read the FCC rules.

Bandages

[neksys]

The advantage to systems like Ricochet is that they are designed expressly for the purpose of wide-area deployment - unlike 802.11 solutions, which seem better suited to system-system connections. Wireless networks using WiFi solutions are kind of like using a ton of bandaids to cover an area - where Ricochet seems more like a large roll of gauze.

NICE Business model

[binaryDigit]

In addition to the $70-$80 monthly subscription fee, Ricochet customers were required to purchase a $250 modem. When it went belly up, Ricochet claimed only 51,000 subscribers in 17 cities and had burned through $1.4 billion in just two years.

Lets see, that'd be ~$22MB over those two years to cover $1.4GB, ouch. Where are these investors, I think I have some great business ideas ;)

Re:NICE Business model

[damiam]

~$22MB and $1.4GB? What do those stand for - megabucks and gigabucks? :-)

Re:NICE Business model

[Metrol]

$22MB and $1.4GB? What do those stand for - megabucks and gigabucks? :-)

Oh, this is just horrible. Malda goes and gets married, and already the slashes are dropping outta slashdot. There are bad omens in these signs.

Re:NICE Business model

[Anonymous Coward]

grrr

rarrr!

bowow! grar!

hisssssss

Re:NICE Business model

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey you! $MB, $GB? Megabucks, Gigabucks? Get yer stinkin' metric system away from my money! (it's a joke, laugh)

Outdated research...

[isaac]

This research is outdated; It is based on the older Ricochet system that used 900 MHz unlicensed spectrum for both client-to-poletop and poletop-to-poletop backhaul. The newer system puts poletop-to-poletop communications over the unlicensed 2.4GHz ISM band and/or the 2.5 GHz licensed wireless data services spectrum.

The newer system gives the poletops more bandwidth and keeps the poletop-to-poletop backhaul from stepping on the client radio transmissions.

Real-world maximum TCP and UDP throughput on the newer system approached 300kbps by my measurements. (That's going from a client radio directly to a wired poletop w/ no p-t-p backhaul.) More typical speeds were between 128-160kbps.

I found Ricochet generally more than adequate for 64kbps shoutcast/icecast streams. Under good conditions, 96kbps streams were rock steady - not bad! I frequently used Ricochet to listen to my old college radio station (some 3000 miles away) when I lived in Berkeley.

I hope to see the system come back; it worked well, (better than advertised) and provided something like the wireless equivalent of an ISDN line, more or less, for a flat $70/month, which was reasonable to me. At $45 it's a no-brainer.

-Isaac

Ricochet is nice in theory, but has some problems.

[Brett Glass]

I tested Aerie's "revived" Ricochet service in Denver, Colorado during Thanksgiving. (The company was nice enough to activate an old modem for me so that I could compare the service to the original Ricochet.)

One good thing I noticed was that setup and getting online are easier with Aerie's system than they were with Metricom's. There's no need to set up PAP or CHAP authentication or remember passwords; the system authenticates strictly via the modem's built-in serial number.

Unfortunately, I also noticed that the system was half as fast as it used to be. Before Metricom's bankruptcy, speeds of 128 Kbps (not blazingly fast, but comparable to ISDN) were easily achieved if you were close to one of the system's pole-top nodes. But Aerie has apparently throttled the system back to 40-50 Kbps -- about the speed of a V.90 modem. The company may have done this to reduce its upstream bandwidth costs or to compensate for the loss of the licensed spectrum that Metricom used to exchange data between its hubs (called "wired access points" or WAPs) and its pole-top units. (I believe that Metricom auctioned this spectrum off separately from the rest of its system.)

The system also suffers, as before, from its dependency upon being able to "own" the 900 MHz band. It is well known that, in areas served by Ricochet, it is virtually impossible for anyone else to use the 900 MHz unlicensed band (which is supposed to be free for everyone to use) because the hundreds of Ricochet transmitters blot out everything else on the band. (Worse still, they increase their transmit power when they encounter a source of interference, descending in a "swarm" upon anyone else who tries to use the band.) 900 MHz cordless phones will still work indoors (albeit with reduced range), but outdoor networking on that band is exceedingly difficult. And if someone manages to set up a robust enough link (perhaps by using an old Breezecom frequency hopping unit), Ricochet users nearby will experience serious interference.

Ricochet really should run entirely on reserved spectrum and not try to take over the "commons" by virtue of sheer numbers.

When it does work, Ricochet is convenient in fact can be very handy. But unless Aerie can boost the speed to the original 128 Kbps and overcome the problem of trying to monopolize public spectrum (which, to be fair, they inherited from Metricom), I suspect that few people will be buying.

I used to use Ricochet in Seattle

[Jack William Bell]

And I use 802.11B for home networking now. My take? Ricochet's only really cool feature was they way they used repeaters on light-poles. Other than that it was slower and more expensive (both in terms of equipment costs and connection fees) than WiFi.

If WiFi networks can do repeaters to extend range to an Internet gateway the same as Ricochet did, who needs it? Plus I like the idea of having my local network be my neighborhood, something Ricochet couldn't (or didn't) do. Check Seattle Wireless for one volunteer network that is working on these problems now.

Re:I used to use Ricochet in Seattle

[Stigmata669]

And why can't you put 802.11b repeaters on the top of light poles? That is not unique to Ricochet. The range isn't there without directional antennas, but WiFi basestations are $100 RETAIL with NAT and DHCP routing. Remove those features, and a company should be able to produce repeaters for reasonable costs.

I do believe that large area of coverage is the only way that a company will be able to generate revenue. I think starbucks tried to introduce wireless access in their shops, but $30 a month for coffee and net access is kindof insane. Perhaps if a p2p stlye co-op net company was formed where the access costs were trivial ($5 a month) but the customer would purchase all hardware, and would be required to have a repeater on their property. Now, where to start?

Re:I used to use Ricochet in Seattle

[Phoenix666]

My girlfriend's brother was in charge of all the nodes in the Tristate area (NY/NJ/CT). He said that the biggest obstacle to the network and a large part of why Metricom tanked was that they had to spend ungodly amounts of money on lawyers to acquire the right of way. So yeah, they're only on light poles, but when you have to spend about $10K per node to pay off the government it quickly runs into being a purdy penny. Also, factor in the sheer number of nodes you have to put up to counteract the in|famous NY canyon effect.

Ultimately Metricom's management came to understand that they should have phased their rollouts instead of going for that "large area of coverage" you're talking about. It makes a lot of sense. Jet-setting businesspeople notwithstanding, most folks are mostly mobile within a well-defined urban area. That means all the cops, firefighters, city inspectors, real estate folk, and many others. In fact, after 9/11 the FDNY hired my girlfriend's brother to bring back up the nodes in lower Manhattan to help the rescue effort coordinate its communications.

Fixed link -- Re:I used to use Ricochet in Seattle

[Jack William Bell]

Whoops, that's what I get for not checking the link. Seattle Wireless is a .net, not a .org domain. Sorry.

Also I forgot to make my real point in my rush to post. Basically I very much prefer the idea of WiFi networks growing as literal 'emergent networks' of volunteers and perhaps some local businesses to Ricochet or 3G, which can only be operated by giant faceless corporations.

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[account_deleted]

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Mental Picture

[Metrol]

This is probably way off topic, but...

Ricochet provides seamless coverage across an entire city that works even when a user is traveling 70 miles per hour on a highway

Did anyone else get an image of Bill Murray in "Where the Buffalo Roam" driving down the highway at 70 MPH while banging away at a typewriter? Oh yeah, and folks think driving with cel phones are bad!

Re:Mental Picture

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill: "Absolutely... I'm a total professional."

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Price to speed...

[Anonymous Coward]

Those would be excellent points if you weren't retarded. Ricochet isn't intended to be used as your sole connection to the Internet. That's completely missing the point of the technology! The idea is that if you live in a city with a Ricochet network, you can roam all over the place with your laptop and maintain connectivity in ways that are very difficult or impossible for WiFi to match. Speed is not the point; mobile connectivity is the point.

PCS Vision

[Anonymous Coward]

I get a reliable 30-70k. Even works in a car @ 80 mph

But did he tell you ...

[ukryule]

... what the ping-rate was?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Why bother?

[mveloso]

Do you really want to carry around another modem? If you're wireless, you've got 802.11b already, or will be getting bluetooth so you can hook into your mobile carrier's 3g/2.5g data network. Why in god's name would you want another access device/provider?

The article compares it to 3G ...

[ukryule]

The idea of Ricochet is that it can cover a whole city when fully deployed. The article was focusing on it killing 3G before it's born - which is possible.

However, if you're competing with 2.5/3G then you're competing on ubiquity not bandwidth. There's a lot you can do with low bandwidth which really is 'always on' wherever you are - but it will fail if people can't rely on it. For example, internet radio would be a great mobile app, but as soon as the signal starts pausing and hitting blackspots you'll turn it off.

It can't compete with WiFi on bandwidth. The question is can it compete with 2.5/3G on coverage?

Re:The article compares it to 3G ...

[MikePlacid]

I was Ricochet user and am now playing with 3g (Sprint PCS Vision). How do they compare? Speed is almost the same (128K down on Vision, up to 160K on Ricochet), I expect the coverage to be better on Sprint PCS (not only SF Bay Area is covered but also Oregon - but that is just an assumption, I have not tested it), the key feature is reliability. Sprint's Vision is so-o buggy. It give errors instead of stock quotes on the phone, it stalls each quater of the hour or so when used as a modem. And I can't even complain - modem usage is out of the scope of the contract...

I'd like Ricochet back - in the current conditions, with unstable Vision. If Sprint fixes its Vision - why bother changing providers?

how big is a richochet modem?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the ricochet modem like? Will it fit on a pc card? will it consume less or more power than an 802.11 card? If it doesn't have the battery life or small form factor of 802.11 hardware, I have no use for it.

They should name the revived service...

[Lazarus_Bitmap]

Rericochet

Re:retarded eh'?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you are one of those few people who works for large companies who live in large cities........not too many of those people around im sure.......

Why Wi-Fi is Better than Ricochet

[cosmosis]

Because its not owned by anyone! Its not propietary. What we don't need is another carrier. Its time we move beyond centralized distribution. Its time we adopted decentralized wi-fi, becuause it empowers anyone with a connection to become a node in the network. See Mesh Networks to see how this is possible.

Its time for a communications revolution that has an infrastructure that is built from the bottom-up from individual users. Its time to have a network that is now owned by anyone, but available FREE to everyone.

Richochet does none of these things.

Planet P Weblog - Liberty with Technology.

Re:Why Wi-Fi is Better than Ricochet

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinda like FidoNet. ;-)

Re:Why Wi-Fi is Better than Ricochet

[tacocat]

This sounds great. And it will probably be very nice to have. For a while.

This will fail once the script kiddies start to run them. Or you run into someone who starts blocking web pages based on some software that they purchased with no clue what they were doing.

The business model for Internet Connectivity is not the same as it is for nails. I can buy nails and hand them out to anyone I want to with impunity. I clearly cannot do that with Internet Connectivity unless it's against the AUP of my ISP.

I hate to say this, but the real solutions would be to either get it put into place with enough density of users that it become affordable, or to build a network the same way that we have a network of snail mail delivery. Government sponsored business whose mandate it to provide service to everyone, unconditionally.

And you still haven't solved the problem of bandwidth hogs. What do you do, make the hardware bound to 100K so that others can share?

Re:Why Wi-Fi is Better than Ricochet

[cosmosis]

No, all of the problems you pose are solved with software-defined radio and open spectrum. Spectrum scarcity is obsolete in the face of sufficiently smart software. And with mesh-networks, each person is both a receiver and transmitter, so each person IS the infrastructure - so there is no possibility of being a bandwidth hog.

The only thing keeping this totally free, hi-speed mesh-network from emerging are big players using political muscle to keep their outdated business and technological models in place.

Technologically, we can create this free and open network right now.

what would work really well

[utexaspunk]

would be if the cable modem/DSL providers wised up and took advantage of their last-mile dominance. they could build secure WiFi routers into all of their cable modems, and offer wireless access anywhere within their service area. i already pay for my internet access at home- why should i have to pay someone else to use it away from home?

Re:what would work really well

[Ungrounded Lightning]

... if the cable modem/DSL providers ... [built] secure WiFi routers into all of their cable modems, and offer[ed] wireless access anywhere within their service area.

GREAT idea!

It would also serve as a firewalled wireless hub for the home network, with no additional hardware.

====

Of course that's almost exactly what the volunteers are putting together at this very moment, but without requiring passing users to be subscribers (much to the consternation of the ISPs). B-)

I can imagine a similar volunteer-based system, where a cheap home hub comes stock with a firewall and a traffic shaper, so the owner's machines get their fill and passers-by can use the remainder. Plug it into the DSL or Cable modem, SHTTP to its configuration page and tell it which machines are yours, and you're up.

IN SOVIET SOUTH CALIFORNIA....

[Anonymous Coward]

Ricochet bounce you!

Why Ricochet will still fail

[KFury]

Pricing may improve, coverage may expand, but Ricochet will still fail for one simple reason at the core of its architecture: Latency.

I was a Ricochet customer for three years. I had one of their original modems, and one of the 'ISDN-speed' modems, and ping to *any* site was consistantly over 250ms. That might not sound like a lot, but as ping times have come down across the net, more and more applications rely on a low-latency connection. Even looking at a web page requires 4-8 handshaking traverses to initiate, process, and complete the transaction. This amounts to 1-2 seconds, on a good day, on top of transfer time.

It also makes networked games and other 'realtime' interactive applications nearly impossible.

The reason for the latency is simple: Ricochet gets its coverage by deploying arrays of transcievers that do double-duty: They talk to the end-user modems, and they also route date from transciever to transciever until they hit a landlined base station. This relay race usually means a signal has hopped from 1 to 8 transcievers before it even gets to the net, and the return trip is just as bad.

The alternative is wiring up each base station to a DSL or other landline, a topology that places Ricochet in the same realm as, but in between, Wi-Fi and 3G systems. If that's the case, costs will likely be higher than they were before, because each 1/4-mile cell requires its own pipe, and there's no strong difference why Ricochet should succeed, especially when it's playing catch-up in the client hardware deployment game.

No. Look for longer-range add-ons to the 802.11 protocol to fill the gap, if it needs to be filled at all.

Re:Why Ricochet will still fail

[t0qer]

The alternative is wiring up each base station to a DSL or other landline

Having worked there, I know what they did use for their land lines.

It was a routine brag that their WAP's were wired up with T1 lines, and how they were pac bells biggest customer. I forget the exact number of t1's they had scattered around, but considering SDSL is about an 1/8th of the cost if the new owners used SDSL instead of the old t1 lines, i'd bet they could turn a good profit.

Looking at the pricing though, $99@ month for that slow ass POS connection is a joke. I doubt the cool stuff that they used to offer (Like TMA, and modem to modem dialing through the network) won't be availiable at that price.

If ricochet REALLY wants to come back from the dead, they should change the price structure.
How much do these things really cost to make with todays manufacturing processes? Ricochet's been around about 8 years, so according to moores law the $300 they cost back in 1994 retail should be down to $60 dollars now.

I guess the only real value ricochet has is the fact that they've laid the network, unfortunately the new owners haven't priced according to moores law and simple depriciation.

Oh well, watch these guys die too.

Re:Why Ricochet will still fail

[Anonymous Coward]

You should have done you research they are pricing it at $45/month. So by your calculations this should be the deal of the decade.

Re:Price to speed...

[CrazyDuke]

Where the hell do you get $20 month cable internet?

Its $22 here for _dialup_. 128kbit/1.5mbit cable is about $55 a month which is better than the 128/768 adsl which was the best solution in city until around 3 months ago at $92 a month.

Ricochet Rabbit Say

[Jack William Bell]

Bing, BING, BIIINNGGG!!!

Just as I was about to click 'Submit' it hit me, I may be the only one around here old enuff to remember Ricochet Rabbit...

Re:Ricochet is nice in theory, but has some proble

[LostCluster]

Using unlicenced spectrum space in such a way really should be illegal. Just because the FCC doesn't require a license to user those frequencies doesn't mean you have the right to do whatever you want with it.

A lot of mod'ed WiFi setups tend to be illegal. Yeah, there are laws Pringles-can setup, they're just not enforced because you're not bothering anybody. What's illegal about it? There's a limit on how much signal power a single device can send in any given direction on the unlicensed bands. That law is there to prevent their from being 900MHz headphones with a signal strong enough to be heard a mile away... that would mean that people a mile away or more would have to deal with the interference this one device puts out, and it'd likely put out an unsafe ammount of cancer-causing RF signal into the immedate area too.

Covering the area with a carrier signal, even when there are no active users in the immediate area, is nothing short than wasting bandwidth that could and should be used by other things.

Re:Price to speed...

[the_2nd_coming]

where the hell do you live that you get cable at a dial up price?

Ricochet will die again

[MaineGuy]

Comparing Ricochet to WiFi is like apples to oranges. They were designed and deployed to meet different needs. I don't believe that former will fly for a number of reasons:
- Costs involved in "re-lighting" the network are high, so Aerie must take the fiscally conservative approach of matching deployment to customer growth. This will take time. Too much time. 3G networks from the national wireless providers will leapfrog Ricochet.
- Since the technology is proprietary and the penetration is low, hardware costs will remain high. The main reason 802.11b is so dang popular is because it's so cheap. And it's cheap because it's so popular. Ricochet won't benefit from scale.
- Like another poster pointed out, that kind of latency (250ms) is a killer, especially for a service that costs so much.

I disagree with the author of the article: wireless carriers aren't staying away because Ricochet is a "loser," they're staying away from an unattractive business that in no way integrates with the platforms in which they've already invested billions.

I don't believe Ricochet can grow fast enough to matter. It'll remain a niche player, generating small returns for a short while. Without money to spend on R&D, it'll simply hang on until it's surpassed, stranding its customers with slow, proprietary modems. Too little, too late.

Typical M$ thinking and I don't mind.

[twitter]

He says this:

Wi-Fi's limited range, combined with its susceptibility to interference from garage-door openers and baby monitors, means it would take thousands upon thousands of "hot spots" to blanket a city, to say nothing of a more rural or suburban area. Even if a company managed to set up a citywide Wi-Fi network, low-cost transmitters are readily available to the public at Best Buy or Circuit City, which has enabled volunteers to build small, gratis public-access networks in New York, Seattle, and Portland. It's hard to compete with free.
Ricochet isn't as vulnerable to competition from such civic-minded projects since its technology is proprietary and thus unlikely to wind up on retail shelves anytime soon. And people will fork over for Ricochet instead of settling for free Wi-Fi primarily because of its greater range.

He would not imagine people sharing and setting things up for each other, now would he? While he's bussy planning for you to "fork over money" others are building the next internet with 802.11b repeaters. Who wants or needs central control? Sorry, money dude, you can't really compete with free after all.

Until that happens, his $45/month service does not look so bad. It can't hurt to stay connected while we cook up the future that excludes him.

Re:Typical M$ thinking and I don't mind.

[praedor]

I still don't see it. Where is this free wireless networking? SOMEONE is paying the fees needed to tap into the internet backbone. Someone is paying DSL charges, cable access, satellite access or T1 fees somewhere. The only reason the rest are getting it free is because these someone's can presently AFFORD to give away parts of the bandwidth that they ARE paying for. No one. NO ONE. Gets a free tie-in to the internet backbone. One way or another, somewhere, money is changing hands to permit an internet access node to ACCESS the internet which is generously (for now, while they can afford it) handed out to any and sundry who wirelessly connect through their generosity. A few of those internet access point individuals lose their job or take a pay cut and it will have to be goodbye freebie.

So...quit calling it free wireless access. It may be PRESENTLY free to most people (or it may be covered by taxes if a municipality sets it up - which means you are paying for it) but there is payment needed to gain access to the internet. No getting around it. Pseudo-free is more accurate.

WiFi and Ricochet meeting in the middle?

[cheezus_es_lard]

Question; why couldn't Ricochet start transmitting on their own freqs as well as adding the 2.4 and 5ghz frequencies for added bandwidth? I mean, if they can put up repeaters in large enough numbers to satisfy their lower frequencies, they can certainly add 2.4 and 5ghz onto them within the power limits allowed and re-deploy them ONLY in major population centers at first, etc. etc., and offer higher bandwidths using the public spectrums of frequencies available. If they can use their existing RF usage hopping and tracking layer 2 capability (which I'm not very familiar with, admittedly) and apply it to these higher frequencies, wouldn't this be possible? I mean, all 2.4 and 5ghz equipment doesn't HAVE to be WiFi.... and if they've already got the hardware designers for their own gear, they can probably have them redesign for this application easily.

Any thoughts on this? I admit, I don't know much about the technical back end of the Ricochet/Metricom stuff, but I'm guessing the same usage can be applied to the different spectrums.

Oh yeah, if ya'll actually use this idea, like, send me some cash or something. ;-)

-cheez

Re:WiFi and Ricochet meeting in the middle?

[cheezus_es_lard]

Also, on a side note; Why is it that I have seen NO UWB-style products on the market? What would be so hard about building a modular system that would use whatever available freq, whether it be 2.4 or 5 or 900MHz or whatever. I'm not a ham (I'd like to be one, but haven't had time to study code exam or money to buy gear) but I understand something about data transmission; what would be so hard about inverse-multiplexing these streams; or at least multi-pathing packets or SOMETHING. I mean, it would likely have to be steered, or at least directional LOS or something, elsewise it could knock out everything in a band (maybe it could just rob 1 or 2 channels from a band or something). I'm not a rf engineer, or FCC regs geek, so I have no idea of the laws governing this; is this the concept behind the UWB shite being pondererd on now?

In confusion,
-cheez

Re:WiFi and Ricochet meeting in the middle?

[balloonpup]

I'm not a ham (I'd like to be one, but haven't had time to study code exam or money to buy gear)

Just so you know, there's a level of license called 'Technician' that requires no code. As to your second issue, if you have $100, you can get a fairly decent mobile (car mount) radio, or even a nice used base.

For more info, check out the American Radio Relay League's Website

Re:Yankees vs Texas Rangers???

[Cat_Byte]

TROLL??? I actually comment on something out of the article that I actually READ and state I'd like it based on current prices in my area and it's a troll????

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Ricochet is nice in theory, but has some proble

[X]

Dude, the whole idea with the Pringles-can's is that you DON'T use more power, rather you use a bigger antenna. Everyone I know doing the Pringles can setup is staying below the 1w power limit.

The nice thing about using better antenna's (particularly directional) is that you are in not impacting everyone else's available bandwidth.

Why Richochet will fail - redux

[ebusinessmedia1]

1) Aerie bought all remaining Ricochet assets for well under $5M - all the existing hardware, and patent rights. They have hundreds of semi's (trucks) full of Ricochet hardware sitting in a warehouse yard (in Denver, I think). That equipment, and Ricochet's IP, along with some clever attepmts to re-leverage this service back into a commercial arena is all that Ricochet really is. Read on...

2)Aerie *did not* get rights to the municipal utility poles that the Ricochet hardware is mounted on. They are renegotaiting rights to those poles at rates far below what Ricochet was able to extract (this will not be as easy as it sounds, and will be enormously time consuming - Aerie doesn't have a lot of time. Ricochet *did* pay too much for these rights, but again, it will take too much time for Aerie to renegotiate with municipalities. (see #3)

3. Aerie has just so much cash to burn. They were doing another network play that was failing when the Ricochet 'oppotunity' came along. They used some of the cash from their last funded venture to secure the Ricochet assets. Here's the rub: that money will run out within a year - maybe sooner. Aerie needs to procure 'x' subscribers by the end of the year to continue. (I've forgetten the exact number, but it was in the tens-of-thousands - around 50-60 thousand within the year, I think, maybe a few ten-thousand more).

Why do they need that number? Because they have to be able to manufacture additional modems and other equipment when their current stored supply runs out. This is a highly leveraged play in an environment that has very substantial new players coming forward.

Ricochet is now just a leveraged asset play compared to others efforts that are doing R&D, have product, a brand that didn't fail, etc. Thus, it's all but almost over for Ricochet. This is a 'last gasp' leveraged play they will garner some nominal level of excitement and buzz because Ricochet was popular in the press when it was operating. Futher, Aerie announced a lot of this many months ago, but in the near-long-term it will not be enough, time and money are disappearing.

4)They're signing up regional 'rights-holders'to sell sevices into their respective regions - they've done this in LA and Denver - I know they're working on a few more. (btw, they're keeping the SF Bay area to themselves, because they think they can generate enough subscriptions themselves to real estate, medical, and municipal groups to make their subscriber requirement in the region [byw, the Bay area loved Ricochet]))

5)If they (Aerie) don't achieve critical mass sufficient to be able to continue to manufacture additional equipment *or* they run out of money (and I wouldn't count on them getting additional rounds if they don't meet very critical milestones), then they're toast (even if they do meet milestones, their VC(s) will be sweating). I think Aerie had about $8M left when they did the Ricochet purchase. (btw, I don't quite remember what the *exact* purchase price of the Ricochet assets was - it could have been way under $5M, the number I stated earlier...however, that doesn't change the fact that Aerie is running on borrowed time).

Aerie is - with due respect - a bottom feeder - trying to leverage a once good business idea and technology who's time has come and almost gone.

Again, what's crucial here is that for those buying into Ricochet a second time, there is no guarantee that they won't get stranded again. Frankly, I think they will get stranded.

Frankly, if I were Aerie, I would find a partner willing to aggressively do something with the patents, look for regional providers who were community based (even not-for-profits, or non-profits) and license what they've got to already enabled communities for reasonable rates. In other words, open this thing up. It won't happen though, because this is all about a limited leveraged play that is already hanging by a thread.

Aerie doesn't have the *time* to build out, because they have a venture funder breathing down their back. Good money is not chasing bad these days - it's all but over. There are many community wireless-based ways they could go with this, but it probably won't happen, as they have a very tunnel vision view of what's possible in this domain.

Bottom line: there are commercial (e.g. real estate)professionals who will re-up with Ricochet *in already enabled communities* as soon as it becomes available. Ricochet will get some subscribers; however, it won't be enough to sustain Aerie long term, and the whole thing will either get re-sold (probably just the IP), fold altogether, or get parceled out to the already enabled municipalities as a cool emergency backup wireless system.

If Aerie does manage to survive, Ricochet has little promise of long-term continuance because again, this is a highly leveraged play controlled by a company (Aerie) that is simply tryiong to re-distribute a service - that's all. Even if they succeed short term, it will take a large miracle to get the additional cash to build out new communities, improve their technology, and meet hard charging, better-funded competition.

meshnetworks

[Anonymous Coward]

it would be great if we could some open source software, so anyone could build a system like the one at http://www.meshnetworks.com/

I don't really care what gets used

[Dylan_t_p]

just so long as I get broadband sometime this century it doesn't bother me I am about to go crazy living on 26.5k Dial-up

though for me it probably would end up comming to things

A.Which would I get the fastest
B.Which would cost the least

I wish I could get cable or dsl out here but I'm living in one of those nice digital voids where if you move a mile in any direction you can get broadband

I've gotten empty promises from the phone company saying we'll be expanding in a few months to your area off and on for the past year and a half and I'm yet to see anything, so just so long as whatever company that brings WiFi or a Ricochet-like internet into my area isn't a company like my phone company, I might get to get broadband sometime this century otherwise this time next century everyone on the planet will have broadband internet and this area will be the only place left still using dial up

IN SOVIET RUSSIA

[crawdaddy]

signal bounces you!

Re:Yankees vs Texas Rangers???

[Anonymous Coward]

HAHA! god I love slashdots moderation system when people can be modded troll for saying something that isn't being anything near a troll!

Re:retarded eh'?

[Anonymous Coward]

When I read your post, I checked my own post to see if I misspelled secondary, but as nearly as I can tell, I didn't use the word at all. So were you being clever or what?

Re:Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked at a local s.v. government for a brief period in 1996, right after Ricochet went up.

They paid a grand total of 3 free modems and accounts for rights to put up their transmitters on the lightpoles. Since City Hall couldn't get any service, the modems sat in my junk drawer.

However, now they are coming back online, I kinda regret not grabbing a few of the new usb highspeed modems out of the junk drawer when my old company went under.

Re:Price to speed...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ricochet isn't intended to be used as your sole connection to the Internet.

When Ricochet rolled out in 1995-6, they were very competitive with landline connections (28.8Kbs), and many of the early adopters used them as their sole connection.

Re:Yankees vs Texas Rangers???

[Cat_Byte]

Will someone please fix my mod here. I quoted the article and stated it would be better in my area. Now my very first mod makes me a troll. *grr* Karma Bad :(

Magnetic Antennas

[Mustang Matt]

I tested a magnetic 802.11b antenna up to about 120 mph and not only was I getting a strong signal, it didn't move either!

Ricochet Advertising Push

[MeatMan]

I live in San Diego, California. Just within the last few weeks, Ricochet Wireless has been advertising here, hard. I hadn't seen anything from them in even the newspapers for many, many months.

The deal they are offering in San Diego starts with what you need:
A Ricochet External Modem or Internal PC Card Modem available for $99.95*.(free if you sign up for 6 mos) A Ricochet service account at $44.95* per month, with no activation or per minute fees. A desktop computer, laptop computer or PDA meeting minimal system requirements of the External Modem or Internal PC Card Modem. A service address in a live coverage area. *Plus applicable fees and taxes

And this is what you get:
A Ricochet Modem A Ricochet software CD Up to 10 email addresses 10 Mb of personal web space An out-of-coverage, national dial up service plan No service contract is required Download Ricochet SoftwareSystems: Windows®, Mac® and Pocket PC® Compatible. Speed: Typical speeds of 176 Kbps, with bursts to 400 kbps. Access: Unlimited Internet access within the coverage area. Support: 24x7 toll-free 1-888-RICOCHETIt's not too bad a deal. Free modem with a 6 month contract for whatever platform you use, you're mobil and on the net @ 170+Kbps, go out of coverage area you have dial-up access still, and no service call from your neighborhood cable guy or phone dude.

802.11= More consumer choice

[Anonymous Coward]

While it may be easier and cheaper to implement a system like Richochet, I believe an 802.11 system makes it easier to "implement" (for lack of a better word) consumer choice. IIRC correctly, with Richochet equipment your only choices are Richochet, and, um, Richochet. With 802.11 the various networks show up on your machine, kind of like GSM providers in Europe. 802.11 could also allow for "roaming", as in you sign up for LAWireless, which has an agreement with NYCWireless so you can use it when you visit New York (I know NYCWireless is free, assume it is paid).

-P40

Re:Ricochet is nice in theory, but has some proble

[pwagland]

Dude, the whole idea with the Pringles-can's is that you DON'T use more power, rather you use a bigger antenna. Everyone I know doing the Pringles can setup is staying below the 1w power limit.

This is not entirely true, the "bigger antenna" as you put it, is actually a directional antenna. The card may well be putting out the same power, but in the direction that your can is facing you have a much stronger signal. Strictly speaking, if the antenna is good, it is illegal.

Think of it this way, it is not how pwerful the card is, but rather how "visible" the signal is. With the normal omnidirectional antenna the signal is quite dull, but with a directional antenna the signal is brighter, which is why you can "see" it further away, but only on the line of direction of the signal.

This is not really on the topic of the story, but it is important that people realise this...

People are missing the point about HotSpots

[SerpentMage]

The point of HotSpots are being missed. Hotspots means that only specific areas will be serviced. Your airport, your home, your coffee shop. It DOES NOT mean being able to travel along the highway. This is why WiFi does so well. It is the ultimate localized area ISP.

The problem with wireless and that is why WiFi does work is because you cannot cover large areas. Airtime is a scarce resource because if 1000 people are pounding a station you will get slow performance. That is part of the 3G problem. If Richocet actually had full scale implementation it would come to a crawl just like 3G. The towers can individually only handle so much performance. Unless of course every tower has a T3 connected to it.

Here WiFi has solved the issue because WiFi is generally not used to connect multiple WiFi's together. Instead WiFi is a wireless connection to a T1 or T3. Therefore none of slowdown due to wireless replication occurs. In other words we have hotspots of highspeed access....

At least in the Bay Area, you are SO wrong

[RockyJSquirel]

I used Ricochet in the Bay area and had fast latency.

It was good enough that:

1. I used it for terminal services (running the NT desktop through it), so I could work from home or a cafe and could edit, compile and run my programs without noticing any latency problems.

2.I had disk/network sharing over Ricochet without major problems. It's true that Windows NT network sharing is a dog, but it worked.

I now use Verizon 3G with 150k throughput and...

LATENCY MAKES THOSE USES COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE!!!

I get a minimum .5 seconds ping time for large packets...

Terminal services is too slow to allow editing.

Network/file sharing locks up the computer so that no program is usable.

Re:At least in the Bay Area, you are SO wrong

[KFury]

It's nice to know that 3G has a high latency, but I disagree with your opinion that being able to run terminal services means that the latency is less than I claimed.

You're saying that 3G's latency is unacceptable, and that it's over 0.5 seconds (500ms). I'm saying that ricochet had a latencyof over 250ms which, while twice as fast as 3G, and apparently fast enough for terminal services, doesn't mean it's fast enough for other tasks.

Thanks for adding info to the pot, but I think you're a little quick to say that my info's wrong.

Re:At least in the Bay Area, you are SO wrong

[Xerithane]

I'm saying that ricochet had a latencyof over 250ms which, while twice as fast as 3G, and apparently fast enough for terminal services, doesn't mean it's fast enough for other tasks.

I'll expand on his statements, I was a bay area ricochet user (Why do I suddenly feel like I'm in an intervention meeting) and depending upon the location ping times went from excellent to mediocre.

For example, Scruffy's in Sunnyvale would give you ping times 120ms consistently and well over the 128Kbps rate. My residence in San Jose had ping times ~300ms. Cupertino I'd notice in the 200ms - 400ms range (Britannia Arms/Rock Bottom). It all depends upon where you are at.

Sometimes Ricochet really kicked ass, if you knew where to access it.

Now I just realized that I only know Ricochet times from breweries and pubs... maybe it is an intervention.

The Ethernet Rule and why WiFi is winning

[Cato]

There are really only two rules in networking - Ethernet always wins, and IP always wins. In fact, that's just one rule - open, standard technology always wins.

The reason is of course that innovation and competition is maximised when there is a common standard on which the market is based - wired Ethernet has gone from 3 meg, via 10/100/1000 to 10 Gig, and changed media from thick coax to thin coax to UTP to fibre, and expanded its range to WANs (in the 10G incarnation).

WiFi is going the same way, and since Ricochet is proprietary there is no way it can keep up - early WiFi was LAN only and 2 meg, and is now 11 meg, 22 meg or 54 meg. There are now point-to-point long range implementations of WiFi, and point-to-multipoint to cover a few square miles (like DSL). Some companies are producing QoS-enabled versions of WiFi, and using it for VoIP service. Arraycomm is doing smart antennas that track individual users with a narrow beam as they move around, improving bandwidth. Mesh networks companies are adapting WiFi to Ricochet style deployments where packets bounce between poletop radios, or other customers' nodes, before hitting a wire.

None of this is happening for Ricochet, because the technology is proprietary, hence there's no competition and little innovation going on. It probably is better at covering a whole city than WiFi, but it doesn't matter, because WiFi will evolve to solve these problems - probably via mesh network technology, which is highly efficient since it can route around foliage or building blockage, and very scalable since crowds bring their own capacity with them.

Roaming and billing are happening as well, which are essential so that increased usage of popular hotspots can drive more investment in better kit to support more users. As much as people dislike bandwidth caps and time-based billing, this is one reason why mobile/cellular operators are still in business and Metricom isn't. It should still be possible for heavy users to get reasonable-cost packages that enable them to use a lot of bandwidth, and of course when they are at home or work they can use the same kit on a no-billing basis to access local WiFi networks.

Applications are coming along as well, due to this flexibility, including drive-by downloading, location-based apps (where's the closest Italian restaurant?), etc - whereas Ricochet was tied to the short-hop between poles model, providing very high latency that prevents VoIP, WiFi can be implemented in different ways, allowing someone to make VoIP calls when in a conventional hotspot. Although it's debatable if VoIP will be a real application for public WiFi, it is very useful for people with smart PDA/phone kit in a large retailer - just carry one device to check stock and make phone calls in-store.

The only question in my mind is how all this works with 3G, GPRS and so on - probably they will co-exist, with WiFi as the high-bandwidth option when in range and 3G/GPRS as the low-bandwidth option. Wireless kit will tend to support both WiFi and mobile/cellular standards (Nokia and others already sell WiFi/GPRS PC Cards), with seamless roaming and a single bill (which all the vendors are working on).

Re:Yankees vs Texas Rangers???

[jericho4.0]

hehe, it is your first mod. Some hints; get used to unfair moderation, don't feed the trolls, don't fret about karma, it's just a number, and only post if you have something to say.

Yeah great, but...

[tacocat]

Does their hardware run on Linux?

I couldn't find anything

Re:Yeah great, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

The old hardware would work in peer-to-peer with the SLIP driver. I am not sure about the newer hardware though.

Re:Yeah great, but...

[adamsc]

I'm not sure about the USB modems but the PC Card modems work with anything which supports PCMCIA serial devices and PPP - it appears as a stock dialup connection using 3333 as the phone number with no username or password.

Re:Price to speed...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok. I live in madison. I get 512kbs for $45.. so... wtf?

Uhm...

[Anyd]

I still don't really feel confident in any wireless over wired networks... I'm using 802.11a in my apartment and 2 walls and 30 feet basically destroy the signal. My roommate gets about a 10k connection about 50% of the time, and nothing the other 50! If there's enough wiring in my walls to kill an 802.11a signal so quickly, I don't know if ricochet would work any better.

Also, EVDO is around the corner.

[Magnus Pym]

Verizon is currently conducting 1xEVDO field trials in the east and west coasts. 1xEVDO is an open standard, a CDMA-based technology developed by Qualcomm corp. In loaded sectors, it provides 300-500Kbps downstream and 9.6-76.8Kbps upstream. Peak rates are 2.4Mbps/sec downstream and 153.6Kbps upstream. Round-trip ping times are between 110-150ms.

In the CDG conference that took place in San Diego last week, a Verizon honcho said that EVDO is the only technology that he has worked with which delivered more than it promised.

In the same CDG conference, handoff between an 802.11 network and an EVDO network was demonstrated!

Vendors making base stations for EVDO: Nortel, Lucent, Samsung, Ericcson.

Vendors making handhelds for EVDO: Samsung, LG, GTran, Motorola.

EVDO is a fully-mobile technology. You can surf the web at 70Mph.

EVDO has already been deployed in Korea commercially. It has 50,000 subscribers, despite handhelds still being relatively expensive.

Furthermore, check out the comparable technology being developed by the startup "Flarion",
http://www.flarion.com. Technically, this one seems to be on par with (maybe even better than) EVDO, but it is a proprietary technology like Richochet.

I am not sure whether these technologies will ever be widely deployed in the USA, but if they are, Richochet is a dead duck.

Magnus.

Exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

What is so funny about that?

Re:Exactly

[Anonymous Coward]

Because FidoNet makes me chuckle. It was only as good as its members, and unfortunately, there were some bad members.

Re:Ricochet is nice in theory, but has some proble

[LostCluster]

The limit is one watt of "effective radiated power" or ERP. What this means is that the wattage measured is not the power supply going into the antenna, or even what is actually coming out of the transmitter, it is what is observed when you place a meter at the strongest point in the system. In the case of the Pringles can, that's the mouth of the can.

When you take an omnidirectional antenna and make it directional, you are redirecting the power that was going to go backwards and sideways to going forward. You don't get to average out the measurements for the areas that you're sending zero to, your ERP is the power in the direction that you're broadcasting to.

Why is the FCC not cracking down on this? Too much work, and nobody really harmed when somebody does this. However, if your Pringles can network is interfering with your neighbor's 2.4 GHz phone, they can call you in if they want.

Re:Price to speed...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I live in Denver and have had Ricochet for about two monthes now. It costs $45.00 a month and it usually connects at about 130-140kbs. Also I do use it as a primary Internet connection. Its 3x-4x as fast as our 56k connection was plus I didn't have to pay for a phone line.

2.5G is already out there

[merlyn]

Why would I want Ricochet when my 2.5G 1xRTT service already runs at 144K in 30 major metro areas, with more to follow, for the price of an ordinary cell phone call? (With fallback to 14.4K CDPD in nearly all other areas.)

I'm sure the execs are looking at this hard. But with the cellphone companies already blanketing this market, Ricochet is going to have to be better/faster/cheaper than 2.5G to survive.

Re:2.5G is already out there

[adamsc]

Because Ricochet is faster (1xRTT's real-world 40-60Kbs is a at best third of the speed), cheaper ($45 / mo vs. $99, no need for a new phone) and easier to connect your PC to. In my experience, Ricochet takes a minute to setup on a new laptop, whereas I know people who've had to spend hours with working through the various permutations of settings and updates to get 1xRTT working (this will eventually improve as the software and hardware mature - it's a classic 1.0 release).

Re:2.5G is already out there

[merlyn]

Because Ricochet is faster (1xRTT's real-world 40-60Kbs is a at best third of the speed),

You're telling me Ricochet will promise 128K and deliver, constantly? I suspect the ratio of "marketing to true" will be constant for both technologies. I have no reason to believe otherwise.

cheaper ($45 / mo vs. $99, no need for a new phone)

My new phone was $100. And it's more than a rico modem. It's an actual phone with newer features than my previous phone.

Sure, I could have bought unlimited for $99/months. I have a feeling that price will come down. Instead, I pay for it with airtime, which can then be shared between my voice calls, my web calls, and my data calls. Slick.

and easier to connect your PC to. In my experience, Ricochet takes a minute to setup on a new laptop, whereas I know people who've had to spend hours with working through the various permutations of settings and updates to get 1xRTT working (this will eventually improve as the software and hardware mature - it's a classic 1.0 release).

I have a TiPowerbook. I bought the Windows connection kit for my phone. An hour of googling, one email, and I was up and running, even in a totally unsupported configuration. No big deal. For Verizon Express, it's a simple PPP connection to a given special phone number, with a user/password pair that is based on your phone number. No magic.

Re:Ricochet is nice in theory, but has some proble

[Chanc_Gorkon]

cancer-causing RF signal

Last I checked, the current theory is RF doesn't cause cancer. If it does, give me facts!

In any case, I hope Aeerie does it right and blows the doors off of the 3G cell providers. Every one of them charge out the ass for a crappy connection and the base MB per month they give you is only enough if you just use the wap browser without paying megabucks to get more. In any case, the Richochet modem is the best idea and I think can be very successful. If they use the 900 MHz band though they should look into trying to license another band although alot of the cordless phones and WiFi stuff is up stream now. You can still buy 900 MHz cordless phones (that's what I use so it doesn't mess with my WiFi), but most who get new cordless phone see higher MHz and think better (I know, about as much sense as CPU MHz).

What I want to see from my wireless internet...

[foxtrot]

...and why I'm not sure Ricochet is the right answer:

Currently, I'm using a RIM pager and SSH via Mobitex to do "wireless internet access"-- not bad, but there are a lot of places where I don't have quite enough signal to send and this small 8 line screen is insufficient for many things-- it works okay for a geek like me, but it ain't ready for the masses.

What I think that people can use is a technology that is

a) largely ubiquitous and easy to deploy and cover large areas. Issues buying space on celltowers notwithstanding, Ricochet looks like a better answer than wifi here.
b) Reasonable speed. Face it, you're pretty much guaranteed to not be able to play Quake on any wireless link longer than the one between your Airport base station and your laptop in your home. Reasonable means I need to be able to interactively browse the web with a minimal amount of waiting and read my email-- and Ricochet is "fast enough" for this-- but wifi would be better.
c) "I want all of that... in here." This is my big problem with any of the Mobitex solutions, like a RIM pager or a Palm VII-- you get a small subset of the web, you can get mediocre SSH. An easy rule of thumb is if you don't have an IP address, chances are you're not "on the internet".
d) Size. Here's where Ricochet really loses-- I've never seen a Ricochet modem that wasn't larger than the object I wanted to plug it into (like a Palm or an iPaq.) Ricochet's great if you just want to use your laptop on the train in to work (until it goes into a tunnel...) but it's not a solution for "Hey, when's Nemesis playing at the Cineplex 1000? Lemme whip out my PDA and find out!" Wi-fi can be done in a PCMCIA card.

Re:Price to speed...

[Anonymous Coward]

The *modems* cost $99 (unless you sign up for six months service, in which case the modem is free). The *service* is $45/month.

Poor quality wireless will always win

[PotatoPhysics]

All you ham radio operators out there in Slashdot land will remember packet radio. At design time Packet radio was the cheapest, simplest and least robust hack TAPR could come up with. It was basically a Bell 202 phone modem with the X.25 protocol strapped on top. Lack of forward error correction and low bitrate for the bandwidth were some of the highlights of this protocol.

Amazingly, hams managed to turn this turkey into a globe-spanning email network. I ran a node for this system for a number of years and tried to carefully baby the outmoded and weak communications links it was based on. In the later part of the 90s this network just sort of collapsed with the advent of the infinitely superior Internet.

I believe that the invention of packet radio set back amatuer radio for years. We could of been designing elegant PSK modems and high performance P2P networking protocols for years, but, instead, all of our efforts were concentrated on 1200 baud FSK keying. We wouldn't of made the Internet but we could of had a robust network for handling emergencies when the normal wideband systems failed.

meshing.

[joshuaos]

I think that the biggest problem with WiFi is not it's limited range, but the fact that it was designed with corporate users in mind, not community networking. 802.11 would be a better solution if it meshed easily and every node acted as a router, transmitting packets for it's neighbors. Fortunately, some companies are working on the problem now, but it's a damn shame it wasn't done right the first time.

Cheers, Joshua

Let me help you see.

[twitter]

I still don't see it. Where is this free wireless networking? SOMEONE is paying the fees needed to tap into the internet backbone.

This does not have to be the case. Large networks do not charge each other for access to and fro, that's what makes the internet work. A large enough network of 802.11b would not need to pay fees to connect to the "real" internet of adverts and old media suck. The old word would break down the doors demanding access. A large city, with millions of people living close to each other, is an ideal place for such a thing. You only need a few people sharing the bandwith they pay for on a short term basis. Then, good bye charge by the byte telcos. Indeed, a large enough city net would be just as interesting a place as the "real" internet is anyway.

Re:Let me help you see.

[praedor]

I know about mesh networks, etc. Still wont work as a replacement of the internet. Say you want to send an email to your Aunt Martha in California and you live in Florida. You need to tap into the internet somewhere and that somewhere connection is costing someone money.

Wifi mesh networks don't apply to rural areas and will only be possible in cities on limited scales (HUGE cities ala NY with buttloads of big buildings all over the place blocking signals, etc). Even then, with every small to large town "meshed" via wireless...you are still leaving out the more rural users AND you are localized to your own geographical area. Want to see a webpage based in France from your "free" wifi network in Newark? Can't because wifi wont go over the Atlantic. You want to email your friend in Britain? Can't because wifi wont cross the Atlantic. Somewhere, sometime, a paid for internet connection is necessary to get connectivity beyond your very local area. The utopian dream of a wireless wifi-based nationwide/worldwide network is just that, a dream of with no reality, no chance. It is nice to have local wifi networks to tap into but it isn't a replacement for the backbone of the internet which costs money to tap into. Companies don't just give away their bandwidth and allow any and all to use their connection. Telcos don't, cable and satellite operators don't and wont and can't. Someone is paying for the penultimate internet connection somewhere...or all you have is a limited peer-to-peer wifi network with retarded personal web pages on it.

Re:Ricochet is nice in theory, but has some proble

[Brett Glass]

Yes, monopolizing unlicensed spectrum via sheer numbers should be illegal. In my hometown of Laramie, Wyoming, we had a 900 MHz wireless network that served several community institutions and businesses. The local gas company, a rapacious monopoly known as Kinder Morgan, became a Ricochet franchisee and attempted to install the system all over town. It wasn't an adequate replacement for the existing system (it would only have run at 64 Kbps, tops), but would knock it right off the air. (The Ricochet equipment isn't designed for speed, it's designed to get through the walls of buildings and compete viciously with anything else on the band.) Our community network would have been off the air, together with some of our schools.

Only by protesting before the City Council were we able to get Kinder Morgan to agree to shift us to 2.4 GHz if they took over the 900 MHz band. (They almost did it, too, but then abruptly terminated their franchise when they realized it wasn't making money.) But they almost got the entire band to themselves, despite the fact that this was public spectrum. Nasty. For the full story, see http://www.lariat.org/metricom.html.

Monet Mobile's wireless offering

[habig]

Anybody know if Monet Mobile's new product is related to Richochet? They sound like they do the same thing. Monet's test marketing their service here in Duluth, and I'm sorely tempted to dump the cable company for their wireless broadband connection, if I can get linux drivers working.

San Diego is better but the general pattern holds

[adamsc]

In San Diego, I see 180Kbs routinely now; with Metricom I used to see 220Kbs and often hit 300Kbs+, a level I have yet to see with the new service.

Re:Ricochet is nice in theory, but has some proble

[akb]

Please don't spread FUD, you make it sound like pretty much any antenna is illegal. 802.11 (Part 15) Devices and the Rules and Regulations interprets the FCC rules pretty clearly. You get 1 watt without an antenna. With an antenna the rules are crafted to encourage the use of directionals.

I may be unfair to 3G

[RockyJSquirel]

To be fair to 3G I have to say I have a suspicion that some of the latency is in the USB connection to the cell phone, because I get data for a little while AFTER the phone shuts down when the batteries run out.

I'll have to try a pcmcia card version of the connection to make sure.

Rocky J. Squirrel

Re:Yeah

[foo *Azaziel]

My work just took over a WiFi network... they named it HotSpotzz (http://www.hotspotzz.com/)... .. . and in responce to a lot of peoples questions about different types of WiFi... and the question about the hardware working with Nix... It depends :p... (what a lame answer I know) But If it's a laptop, there are pcmcia slot cards that pick up the frequency. Most ISP's use the cards MAC addy to authenticate them to their towers. For instance, we have a network of wireless repeaters (on top of about 1/2 the MacDonalds in SLC) and you can use any of the SLC repeters if your card auth's.

UPDATE: Ricochet responds

[rjamestaylor]

I received the following message from a San Diego-based representative:

• Robert,

  I have word back from our engineers that the database we are using does not appear to have Rancho Santa Margarita as an existing city. However, we do have an update of the database coming and they tell me that it should be fixed at that time.

  Thanks,

So, the fix is coming and those of us in brand-spanking new cities will be brought in out of the cold by Ricochet.

Here's another database design danger: out of date validation contraints. I doubt you'd really want to alienate people in brand new communities, especially since such people usually have a high discretionary income and tend to be early adopters. . .Instead, the out of date databases will surely have Compton, CA well covered and having lived within 2 or 3 miles of Compton prior to moving to RSM I can suggest that the demand for highspeed mobile Internet access is not quite a priority in Compton.

Hey

[Anonymous Coward]

Where's that smoke coming from?

Last Post!

[alpg]

I have never seen anything fill up a vacuum so fast and still suck.
-- Rob Pike, on X.

Steve Jobs said two years ago that X is brain-damaged and it will be
gone in two years. He was half right.
-- Dennis Ritchie

Dennis Ritchie is twice as bright as Steve Jobs, and only half wrong.
-- Jim Gettys

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