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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."
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?
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This report seems a bit outdated, don't you think?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.
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
Next on Slashdot: Apples better than Oranges?
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
www.enthea.org
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.
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 $45/month service does not look so bad. It can't hurt to stay connected while we cook up the future that excludes him.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
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.