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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."
Until the government shuts them down because the terrorists are using them.
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yeah
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?
Slashdot Editors are still trying to beat the 50% average for all words linked on the home page record.
Sig
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.
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
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.The main page is at this site.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
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.
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
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!
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
how about we not turn over another public recource to the coperations.
...with Flash!
(Reply and let us all know your best streak/score!)
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
I frequently ricochet my cum off of your mom's forehead.
Next on Slashdot: Apples better than Oranges?
Richochet bounce back.
How much longer before we all get WiFi...
Installed in our brains so the government can track us, and we can operate eBay from our cars?
Paranoia? I don't think so!
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
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.
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
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
He just HAD to throw something in there about my Rangers in the article. I'd subscribe to something like this if it were available in my suburbia part of Austin. I don't even have access to DSL. You would't BELIEVE what ISPs charge for ISDN these days. $150 for 128K??? I'll stick with my $19.99 64K channel thank you.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
I often ricohet a load of sperm off your sister's tonsils.
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
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
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.
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.
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
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.
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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!
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
Imagine a BeoWolf cluster of these bad boys!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ricochet revives YOU!
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.
I get a reliable 30-70k. Even works in a car @ 80 mph
Jared Stattlemeyer
Keith Baker
Age: 33
Residence: Boulder, Colorado
Occupation: Freelance Game Designer
Wizards: How long have you been playing RPGs, and how long have you been playing D&D?
Keith: I started playing D&D in fifth grade, sometime around 1978. I still have my 1st Edition books, although my basic D&D set and white box rules have gone missing over the years. I've been roleplaying continuously since then. When I was growing up I was the gamemaster more often than not -- I always enjoyed coming up with stories.
Wizards: What first interested you in gaming and D&D?
Keith: I really enjoy the whole process of interactive storytelling. I've run my favorite adventure about ten times now, and it plays out differently every time depending on who's involved. I love to see what players will do when presented with difficult decisions. I like to write prose, but in some ways its more fun to see how other people will shape a story than to control every element of it.
Wizards: What are your favorite games/settings, and why do you like them?
Keith: Well, D&D for one. I like the changes in 3rd edition; the streamlining of statistic bonuses, armor class, saving throws, and multiclassing is very convenient, and I like the implementation of skills and feats although high-level combat can get fairly complicated, with all the options available to characters and attacks of opportunity and all. Of the D&D settings, I think that Planescape is my personal favorite.
I'm also a fan of [Atlas Gamess] Over the Edge. It's a different style of game, with very simple rules in comparison to D20, but it gives the gamemaster a lot of flexibility and it's an easy system for bringing in new gamers. Plus, I love the bizarre, conspiracy-laden world of Al Amarja.
Other systems I've been playing over the last few years include Feng Shui, the Hero system (primarily Champions), and more recently the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG. I'm looking forward to checking out D20 Modern.
Wizards: Do you have a particular experience or situation from gaming that stands out in your memory? Something funny, exciting, or weird?
Keith: All I'm going to say is Five Ducks in a Battlesuit.
Wizards: Do you have a favorite designer? If so, who?
Keith: There are a lot of talented people out there. If I had to pick a personal favorite, I think it would be a tie between Robin Laws and Jonathan Tweet. Robin Laws's Cut-Ups Method (from the Over the Edge book Weather the Cuckoo Likes) may be my all-time favorite game mechanic.
Wizards: What got you interested in fantasy as a genre?
Keith: We had a recorded version of The Hobbit that I used to listen to all the time as a kid. It was read by Nicol Williamson, who also played Merlin in Excalibur, which threw me off when I saw that movie -- Hey, it's Gandalf!
Wizards: Who's your favorite fantasy author, and what's your favorite fantasy novel or series of fantasy novels?
Keith: My current favorite is George R.R. Martin and his Song of Ice & Fire series. He's created an intricate world filled with well-rounded, fascinating characters -- what's not to like? I'm also fond of Sherri S. Tepper's True Game books, Tanith Lee's Tales from the Flat Earth, and Stephen Brust's Vlad Taltos books. And for a different sort of fantasy, I recommend Milorad Pavic's Dictionary of the Khazars.
Wizards: Of Wizards/TSR's authors or books, who/what's your favorite?
Keith: Richard Baker, no question. Of course, that may just be because his last name is Baker
Wizards: What interested you in submitting to the fantasy setting search?
Keith: I love to create worlds -- It's one of the most interesting parts of roleplaying, and it's not something you get to do very often. Coming up with ideas in the first round was just a lot of fun. Getting the chance to develop one of those ideas into a full-fledged world is an incredible and unexpected opportunity.
Wizards: Is your setting one that you've been working on for some time, or did you devise it just for the fantasy setting search?
Keith: Both. There are many elements of the setting that are drawn from my old campaigns, but the composite was something I came up with on the spur of the moment. The basic idea occurred to me when I was trying to think of something new and interesting, and then I started tying in things that worked from old campaigns.
Wizards: Without revealing too many specific details, do you work on your setting alone, or are you part of a team?
Keith: I'm working alone. With that said, there are certainly people who deserve my thanks -- notably Lee Moyer, John Blakely, and my wife Ellen -- for providing inspiration. Should the setting make it out, they'll certainly recognize the impact they had on it.
Wizards: How did you feel when you found out that your setting was chosen as one of the 11 best out of almost 11,000 submissions? What about being chosen as one of the 3 best out of those 11?
Keith: I found out I was one of the eleven during a layover at an airport, and I spent the next two hours racing around the airport trying to get emails and get things mailed out in time -- it was such a crazy situation that I was too numb to really realize what was going on. As for being one of the final three, I was shocked. When I got the phone call, I was definitely expecting to hear Thanks for playing, here's a copy of our home game.
Wizards: What do you currently do for a living?
Keith: I used to be a computer game designer. For the last six months I've been working as a freelance writer. It's been a bit of an adjustment financially, but I really enjoy the work.
Wizards: What do you plan to do if your setting is chosen and you receive the $100,000 contract?
Keith: Jump up and down screaming for half an hour? Start eating something other than ramen noodles for dinner? I love what I'm doing -- it would be wonderful to have enough financial security to be able to do it without worrying about being eaten by wild dogs (I must know at least three good writers that's happened to).
Rich Burlew
Age: 28
Residence: Queens, New York
Occupation: Graphic Designer
Wizards: How long have you been playing RPGs, and how long have you been playing D&D?
Rich: I've been playing D&D for eight years, but not consecutively. I began playing in high school, and played with a group of friends. [That lasted] for six years, until life interfered and we stopped seeing much of each other during college. I didn't pick the game up again for seven more years, until 3rd Edition came out. A few weeks later, I was sitting in a game, and a few weeks after that, I was DMing again!
Wizards: What first interested you in gaming and D&D?
Rich: Honestly, the artwork. I was picking up copies of Dragon magazine based solely on the great covers when I was, like, twelve and then started realizing that there was this whole game that went along with it that had even more cool art. I bought the books for two whole years before I first got a group together to play.
Wizards: What are your favorite games/settings, and why do you like them?
Rich: I've never used any of the pre-published settings for D&D; I always preferred to create my own. I guess that's just my own quirk. I've also played Shadowrun and Paranoia, as well as a never-ending variety of strategy and board games, with Babylon 5 Wars and Talisman being my favorites in each respective genre.
Wizards: Do you have a particular experience or situation from gaming that stands out in your memory? Something funny, or exciting, or weird?
Rich: Ninety-nine percent of my time spent playing D&D, I was the Dungeon Master, so most of memories involve ways I've screwed with the players. I really am most proud of the times I've evoked real emotions from players over fictional events.
Probably the best moment for me in my recent gaming career came in a campaign where the PCs had been traveling with a bumbling NPC paladin since the beginning of the story. I finally revealed that this so-called paladin was actually the very enemy they had been pursuing the entire time, and that he had in fact been using the PCs to aid his nefarious deeds. It was very tough for me to keep from blurting that out to the players for so long, but the payoff was great. And did they ever enjoy hunting him down after that.
Wizards: Do you have a favorite designer? If so, who?
Rich: I can't say I have a favorite designer because in all truth, I never read the names of who wrote the books until after I was selected as a finalist and realized I might be meeting some of these people.
Wizards: What got you interested in fantasy as a genre?
Rich: Fantasy books are, almost by definition, more exciting than real life. All my life, if I was going to invest the time in reading a book, it had damn well better be chock full of stuff that was never, ever going to happen [in the real world].
Wizards: Who's your favorite fantasy author, and what's your favorite fantasy novel or series of fantasy novels?
Rich: I actually read a lot more science fiction than fantasy. When I do read fantasy, I demand that it bring something new to the genre. I can't take another Tolkien retread. I've been reading the Rokugan books, which I find interesting for being set in an entirely different culture. I read a lot of comic books, particularly those that blur the line between fantasy and other genres -- a lot of Alan Moore's work: Promethea, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
Wizards: Of Wizards/TSR's authors or books, who/what's your favorite?
Rich: Probably Hickman & Weis, though not the Dragonlance stuff so much as some of their more experimental stuff once they left TSR. I like the Death Gate Cycle a lot. It showed a lot of unique spins on fantasy.
Wizards: What interested you in submitting to the fantasy setting search?
Rich: Once I saw the announcement, I realized that if I didn't submit, I would spend the rest of my life wondering if my ideas could have made it. I'm not a professional writer, and I saw this as my one chance to get my ideas out to the world, so I grabbed it.
Wizards: Is your setting one that you've been working on for some time, or did you devise it just for the Fantasy Setting Search?
Rich: The world I am working on for Wizards now was created solely for the Setting Search. I entered four one-page submissions: the one that was selected, the one that my players have been exploring for the past two years, and two other new ideas.
Wizards: Without revealing too many specific details, do you work on your setting alone, or are you part of a team?
Rich: Nope, just me. I'm too much of a control freak. Of course, with 100 blank pages staring at me, I'm beginning to think that maybe [a team] wouldn't have been so bad!
Wizards: How did you feel when you found out that your setting was chosen as one of the 11 best out of almost 11,000 submissions? What about being chosen as one of the 3 best out of those 11?
Rich: As you know, there was a big delay picking the eleven semifinalists. By the time I got the call, the whole thing had completely and totally left my mind. So it was a bolt from the blue, complete and total surprise, shock, disbelief, then party time. This may sound conceited, but once it got down to eleven people, I was much more confident of my abilities. I basically had a little worse than a one in three chance, so it was really just a matter of doing my best and not worrying about the rest.
Wizards: What do you currently do for a living?
Rich: I'm a graphic designer. I mostly work on educational textbooks. I do layouts, electronic illustration, photo retouching, etc. I always thought if I got a chance to get into the game industry, it would be on the strength of my page design.
Wizards: What do you plan to do if your setting is chosen and you receive the $100,000 contract?
Rich: I'll do as much work as Wizards wants me to on the new setting, obviously. Beyond that, I have no idea. If I can figure out a way to combine my graphic design with my game design and actually make a living off it, I will pretty much have completed every dream I've ever had.
Nathan Toomey
Age: 33
Residence: Washington, D.C. area
Occupation: Graduate Student
Wizards: How long have you been playing RPGs, and how long have you been playing D&D?
Nathan: Because my first experience playing RPGs was with D&D, the answer is the same for both: since I was twelve. I have played continuously since then until the last couple of years when I moved away from my gaming group to begin my graduate studies. Now I play [Neverwinter Nights] online with my old gaming group as we all now live in different parts of the country. My grad studies have kept me too busy to find a new local group with which to play tabletop.
Wizards: What first interested you in gaming and D&D?
Nathan: I had just begun reading J.R.R. Tolkien at the time that I first played, and the games similarity to that world, i.e. the fantasy genre, really engaged my imagination. The fact that the game was open-ended, without boundaries, and really freed ones imagination to explore was the most important aspects of the game. Also, the fact that the games and adventures took place in a medieval-like world also greatly excited me. From an even earlier age, I had been fascinated with the middle ages, knights, castles,swords, etc.
Wizards: What are your favorite games/settings, and why do you like them?
Nathan: Dark Sun, because the land is so inhospitable. That had a lot of original and clever things in it. What DM does not secretly like the idea of running a party through a harsh world in which the players have to scrape and struggle for every scrap of equipment, treasure, and survival itself?
Forgotten Realms --This was and still is the quintessential gaming world. It is generous with its creative landscapes, cultures, and history. It would be hard to not find a place for your own campaign story in this huge and wonderful place.
Planescape -- Though I never really got to venture far into this setting, this is the one setting in which I wanted to play the most. The art, the vision, the sheer, horrifying complexity and alien hugeness of Planescape is all just wonderful stuff, truly wonderful stuff.
Wizards: Do you have a particular experience or situation from gaming that stands out in your memory? Something funny, or exciting, or weird?
Nathan: Here is one experience that exemplifies how badly things can go wrong. Our party was exploring the ruins of an ancient city when Grath -- our aspiring but not yet achieved paladin -- became annoyed by how long Daggo -- our intrepid dwarf fighter-thief -- was taking to search for traps. In his impatience, Grath decided to kick open a door at random, breaking a warded circle that contained a demon. After stomping on our party for a while, the demon grew bored when we withdrew into a holy sanctuary. His taste for death not near sated, the demon left the ruins for the surface to begin his career of world destruction. Battered, bruised, humbled, and thinking ourselves trapped in the sanctuary, we looked for another way to get back into the ruins besides opening the only door we thought was guarded by the demon. We found a secret passage leading to a section of the ruins we had not yet explored. Upon entering this passage our dwarven thief set off a ward of pain that afflicted most of the party. Wracked with pain, Daggo pleaded with Spiro, the partys only mage, to dispel the effect. Having spent most of his arcane power on the demon, Spiro remembered a recently acquired scroll of dispel magic. Excited and feeling useful, Spiro hurriedly whipped out the scroll and read the runes scribed thereon. Instead of releasing the pain and agony of his comrades, he released a 10d6 fireball, which not only almost finished off the party, but also destroyed over half the partys magic items. Hunkered over the crispy remains of the unrolled scroll, only sputtering smoke coming out of his mouth when he tried to speak, Spiro dared not return the blank stares of his party members. Moreover, the ward of pain was still in effect.
Wizards: Do you have a favorite designer? If so, who?
Nathan: This is truly cruel limiting me to just one, but if you insist, then I must say Tracy and Laura Hickman for the original Ravenloft module. That was such a wonderful and visionary module at that time. I still have wonderful memories of DMing that game, several times.
Wizards: What got you interested in fantasy as a genre?
Nathan: That would have to be the master of fantasy himself, J.R.R. Tolkien. But perhaps even before him, my interest in mythology and fairytales probably led to my love of the fantasy genre. Some other important writers that got me interested in the genre were Michael Moorcock and Fritz Liebers Fafhrd and Gray Mouser books.
Wizards: Who's your favorite fantasy author, and what's your favorite fantasy novel or series of fantasy novels?
Nathan: Again, J.R.R. Tolkien and his Lord of the Rings. I hate to be so predictable.
Wizards: Of Wizards/TSR's authors or books, who/what's your favorite?
Nathan: I hate to admit that I have never read any Wizards/TSR books, but this is more because by the time they were hitting the big time, I was too engrossed in school and had very little time to read anything that my professors didnt tell me to read.
Wizards: What interested you in submitting to the fantasy setting search?
Nathan: The primary reason is the chance to contribute something to a gaming community that has meant so much to me, inspired me, sparked my creativity, given me so much enjoyment, and introduced me to my best friends. And, I would be dishonest if I did not admit to liking the proposition of getting to work with Wizards for either a short or long time period. Oh, and the monetary size of the reward was not just an afterthought.
Wizards: Is your setting one that you've been working on for some time, or did you devise it just for the fantasy setting search?
Nathan: The setting as a whole was created for the Fantasy Setting Search, though it is comprised of pieces, themes, and storylines that I have either DMed myself or have had kicking around in the back of my head for some time.
Wizards: Without revealing too many specific details, do you work on your setting alone, or are you part of a team?
Nathan: The original idea was my own, and I developed the framework in isolation. Since being notified of my acceptance into the final round, however, I have employed the help of two of my best friends and long-time gaming buddies, whose imagination, knowledge of history and human civilization, writing ability, and knowledge of the gaming and fantasy fiction genres are a tremendous benefit.
Wizards: How did you feel when you found out that your setting was chosen as one of the 11 best out of almost 11,000 submissions? What about being chosen as one of the 3 best out of those 11?
Nathan: I was very amazed and excited when I discovered that I had made it to the second round. For one thing, I was stunned that my submission had even been found among the 11,000 received by Wizards. On the day that they notified me of the good news, I left for a short vacation not knowing anything. By the time that I got back home and checked my email, I had almost missed the deadline to respond.
I was extremely anxious after I sent off my submission for the second round. Leaving class one night almost exactly two weeks later, my phone alerted me that I had voice mail. There it was, a message from Peter Archer telling me that he had some news that would interest me. I could have died. News that would interest me had to be good, so I was bubbling over with excitement feeling fairly confident that I knew what it meant. The next day, when I did finally reach him and he confirmed my suspicions, it felt like a huge weight had been lifted from me. I had done it!
Wizards: What do you currently do for a living?
Nathan: I am in the last semester of my graduate school program in national security studies. I have been employed in this career field for the last two years while getting my masters degree. Since May of this year I have been employed as a contractor to the Air Force Nuclear Weapons and Counterproliferation Agency at the Pentagon.
Wizards: What do you plan to do if your setting is chosen and you receive the $100,000 contract?
Nathan: Take a vacation to Italy.
... what the ping-rate was?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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?
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?
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.
-Laz
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.......
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
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?
Ricochet bounce you!
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.
Kevin Fox
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.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
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...
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
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.
where the hell do you live that you get cable at a dial up price?
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
- 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.
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.
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
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
sigs are a waste of space
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.
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/
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
signal bounces you!
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?
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.
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!
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
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.
"It is essential that justice be done
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
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...
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....
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
I used Ricochet in the Bay area and had fast latency.
.5 seconds ping time for large packets...
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
Terminal services is too slow to allow editing.
Network/file sharing locks up the computer so that no program is usable.
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).
Does their hardware run on Linux?
I couldn't find anything
Ok. I live in madison. I get 512kbs for $45.. so... wtf?
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.
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.
What is so funny about that?
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.
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.
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.
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).
Gorkman
...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.
The *modems* cost $99 (unless you sign up for six months service, in which case the modem is free). The *service* is $45/month.
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.
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
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
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.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
- Robert,
So, the fix is coming and those of us in brand-spanking new cities will be brought in out of the cold by Ricochet.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,
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.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Where's that smoke coming from?
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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