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Students Use 802.11g To Save Cable Industry
LiquidFun writes "Business undergraduates at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business have written an e-business case for one of their case competitions that describes how to use 802.11g wireless technology to distribute cable content, both interactive and broadcast, throughout the home. They mention features like video-on-demand, cable gaming, etc. and even provide enough of the technical specifications necessary to start believing that this could work. They even make available their PowerPoint presentation that they presented to judges from both Cisco & Deloitte Consulting. I'd say a pretty good job for third-year undergrads."
Students bring peace to the Middle East, and an end to war and world hunger in a single session at the Mock UN.
No film as 11 because we all to happy to watch TV
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I don't want all my porn to be picked up by some alien Seti project.
"Radio killed the video star"
:-P
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
The 'future of cable' seems pretty neat, but with the people currently in charge, how long would it take before it's regulated and the consumer products have encryption (or some other way to keep you out and keep them in control) built-in?
"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
Lines like these might perk the interest of regulators.
Ryan Fenton
Well, it is good to see we are at least producing students that can actually put something together. Working in the consulting field myself, I seldom see people actually able to pull together a presentation.
On the other hand, 802.11g, like all wireless standards are cooperative shared bandwidth. From what I saw, there was a lot of bandwidth need in the presentation.
Also, with any technology that you are going to drop into the home, there are lots of hidden costs, support, hardware, etc as well as distributing and developing the devices necessary to enable not only wireless but VoiP, VOD, etc, etc... so I would say the cost model is a bit flawed.
Also, 802.11g is overkill for current cable modem speeds (upto 800Mbp/s is what I understand). I am not sure you can get that much more over cable at current cable quality (most houses are RG56 and not even RG8, which is what is recommended).
Also, there is a desire (altough draconian) for cable to use cable and telco to use copper and so on and so on...
Keep up the good thoughts though!
D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.
I'm inherently distrustful of the ability of Berkeley students to grasp the hard realities of the real-world when it comes to business. I went to a less idealistic (and more politically/culturally moderate) business school, and I didn't grasp them well enough until I had a few years of reality under my belt. The technology might all be there, but that's rarely ever been the problem with any business.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
What about in denser neighborhoods, or apartments. Where could be many different channels being watched , and open internet connections at the same time. Seems like the "54Mbps" would be used up pretty quickly.
And is it really even 54 Mbps? I seem to recall that the actual transmission rate is much lower.
They want to have the cable companies to combine with the telephone company and game companies and assign everyone a unique ID.
Ya know, a business case is always gonna look good if you're advocating a total media monopoly. Yes, if one company controls every possible communications mechanism we have, they will make lots of money.
This is an evil idea. Regulatory committees exist solely to prevent this from ever happening as it would destroy our way of life.
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My experience with the cable industry has been that they have huge opportunity, but are too risk-averse technologically to make these things happen. They are still, today, ham-strung by the GI/SA encryption duopoly that has made their settop boxes an embarassment in the CE industry.
Wireless doesn't provide the cable industry with any competitive advantage over a telco/satellite alliance. Both can offer the same improved services w/ or w/o wireless. Wireless scares both cable and DSL providers because it will make sharing of broadband that much easier, so they will make efforts to delay its deployment (although I doubt they can have much effect there).
Finally, offering "remote game-play terminals" as suggested in the ppt slides seems like an interesting idea, but ignores the bandwidth/compression costs of 30fps 1920x1080 low-lateny gaming that will be prevalent by the time this idea is executed. HDTV streams are 13-19Mbit/sec, but compressed-on-the-fly game content will be much higher bandwidth. It will also be continuous for the hours of game console usage/day. There's a good reason to put a powerful computer or a game console on the other end of the wire: 3D graphics are a GREAT compression mechanism.
Ahh the wonders of War Driving. If all goes well now people will have to fight off for some of tbe best spots for WI-FI.
"To all slashdotters, if you were denied admission to a top school in the past, today you can reduce your frustration by moderating me up!"
This project is a plan to incorporate the three primary uses of the existing nationwide cable network, voice, data and video, into one convenient and easy-to-use package that will satisfy most consumers' communication needs at a fair price.
Business school translator: turn cable internet into propriatory equivalent of cable TV and pay per minute phone service. Don't believe me? Read on.
# A better infrastructure in the future that will act as a stronger barrier to entry for new and existing competitors.
No competitors, self explanatory. I suppose they mean monopoly rape when they say "fair price".
Also built into the new digital cable box is a small camera which would allow for video conferencing, perhaps with other cable customers, over the cable network.
Ha Ha we will be seeing more of these clowns, I'm sure.
Phone service will also be delivered through the cable network. The existing cable network can easily accommodate the added bandwidth for several voice-data devices, such as telephones, which currently operates over an RJ-45 line. With a nationwide network, the cost of providing long distance phone calls for consumers is greatly reduced. Essentially, calls to anywhere inside the US would essentially be "local calls" as it would not cost anymore on the side of cable companies to offer the service. However, cable companies can still charge competitive rates for local and long distance calling.
What a grasp of technology they have. Voice over IP paid by the minute, just like the expensive antiquated system it will replace. Let's pay for infrastructure we don't have!
Oh yeah, they want to own internet gamming too. I wonder if they recomend only letting xbox connect? No, not that smart, they recomend developing IR joy sticks.
I love their mathematical proof of profit. Was a large business venture ever launched without such promisses? As Ikaos pointed out, a total media monopoly would make money. It's just funny to see them write it out they way they did without considering operating costs! The great power point using brains who thought this up would probably recomend M$/intel to hit the estimated cost of $650/house. Way to go guys.
Here's a clue stick: all of the above services are available now at no additional cost besides privately owned equipment. Figure out ways to offer these services without fucking your customers, who you so deridingly call "consumers" of the shit you would like to push.
PS, Star Office can save your M$ presentation as HTML and your .DOC paper in PDF or HTML so that anyone can look at it and you won't have to rewrite your work in Front Page. It's cheaper than all that monopoly priced Micro$oft stuff too.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Packet loss rates for 802.11 can become atrocious when you do something as simple as close a door. It might not be so great if every TV in the house needed line-of-sight to the 802.11 transmitter to get decent picture quality.
Problem 1: UDP and Congestion
One of the benefits of using a protocol like TCP is that congestion control can (and has been) added in. UDP, on the other hand, has no means of congestion control. The morale of the story is that all programs in your entire neighborhood using TCP could grind to a halt if your neighbor decides to use all 3 of his TVs at the same time.
Problem 2: Privacy
So, now anyone with a 802.11-equipped laptop and a packet sniffer can figure out what I'm watching? Even if it's "encrypted" as they say it is, what algorithms are they using? How are they handling key distribution?
Problem 3: Security/Theft
"Security is taken into account to ensure that no bandwidth that consumers pay for is stolen. The signal broadcasted by the wireless router to all devices would be encrypted to the receiver. Each receiver would have a unique identification address that associates it with a specific receiver. Therefore, if one receiver is reported missing by a customer, that receiver is able to be deactivated before the cable company replaces it. For computers, a closed Access point could easily be setup to ensure that data bandwidth is not misappropriated. This security system makes certain that only paying customers have access to appropriate content."
What in God's name does the above mean? Once the signal is out over wireless, anyone can grab it. And, once it's over ip, you can tunnel it to any of your neighbors.
Also, what if someone packet spoofs the video server with your address to start sending a new channel? How could you even detect that this was happening? Or, if someone wants to DoS you, they can just spoof a request for a whole bunch of channels.
Some of these problems are sovable, but there is not nearly enough "technical detail."
Blatant Fallacy: Cable Gaming
Move all the processing to the server and just broadcast the image? In the current model, server and client exchange minimal information about the state of the world in very compact formats. In their model, the client sends minimal information and server sends streaming video! This is hardly more efficient, especially since the cable company now has to have a gaming-class computer sitting in their office for every single customer who wants to play games at the same time! Oh, and what about lag? Do you really want to wait 100ms-1s for the command to be sent, processed and sent back? The lag would be horrific. I'm afraid that with current prices and technology, distributing tasks like graphics rendering are cheaper.
Grar, I can't stand these guys who dream up this crap and then pretend its possible.
The cable industry's problems are of their own making. The consolidators (Time Warner, Comcast, Charter, etc.) WAY OVERPAID for the systems they own and now they can't afford to run (or even maintain) them. Add the Rigas greed of Adelphia to the recipe too. Now they try to pass their bad business decisions off onto their consumers? I don't think so! Here in Santa Monica, CA you will pay over 40 bucks a month for basic analog service. Over half the channels on this service are over the air stations. Dish TV offers more 'premium' (that is not over the air channels) then cable does...for about HALF the price! So, I pay 50 bucks for an antenna one time, 22 bucks for 55 channels of Dish, and say SCREW CABLE! Not only that, cable's big advantage used to be that you got a better picture with their product. Not any more! Their picture SUCKS, with herringbones and left sided ghosts (both a result of bad system design and especially maintenance) on over half the channels (including HBO). They put out a lousy product at an overinflated price and I shall not shed a single tear when they all go into bankruptcy. Look, if I pay $250,000 for a house that's worth $50,000 that's MY problem. If I try to make it my tenants' problem, they'll leave...which is exactly what's happening with cable.
There's a cable company that's doing the same.
I'm sure either could bundle gaming and/or a 801.11g wireless access point if they felt like it.
However, they didn't ask the most important question, why do people pick DSL over cablemodem when both are available in the same area, and the more technically knowledgable they are, the more likely they are to pick DSL?
The cable company is too interested in telling people what we can and can't do with our bandwidth, and even that restricted-use bandwidth is shared between all the cablemodem users in a neighborhood, putting users at the mercy of their neighbors when trying to get the download speed one is paying for.
The business model discussed here is one I'd be even less likely to buy as an end user than the current one.
The other obvious point is. . . while I can imagine using broadband for VoIP local toll and LD calling and probably will when I am in an area where DSL is available, I can't imagine it as my only telephone access, if the cable breaks down and takes my phone out with it, just how am I going to report the problem to the cable company?
Cable is less reliable than phones are and putting all my electronic communication ability in one basket doesn't really appeal to me.
Not bad for a bunch of college students, I guess, but while I could imagine this getting funded and those kids becoming the new suits at a new startup, one would hope that VCs have more sense now.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Under the 802.11g wireless standard, which is capable of transmitting data at a rate up to 54mpbs
No, it isn't. Without any interference from other 2.4GHz devices, you can't really expect more than 22Mbps. And that is shared bandwidth - once you have two way connections between the AP and several client devices, they all share the bandwidth. If you have hidden node issues (one client can't hear one of the other clients talking to the AP) you have to go to RTS/CTS mode to avoid collisions which also decrease the effective throughput. There is also no proper QOS in 802.11/b/g, first come first served - on a wireless segment with moderate to heavy load, you can experience lag spikes if several stations wish to transmit at the same time.
The router will also broadcast a connectionless stream under the UDP/IP protocol to devices such as televisions. This connectionless stream will be broadcasted in real-time, continuously, whether a device is "listening" or not, so several devices (e.g. televisions) can simply listen in when they are turned on without having to send a special signal to the box.
Hold on. Will the cable box translate MPEG2 streams received from the cable side to video frames and broadcast those to 802.11g enabled TVs, or will it just broadcast the MPEG2 stream?
In scenario one - have they done the math on how much bandwidth this will require? Not to mention the cost of upgrading your TV to receive raw video frames over 802.11g?
In scenario 2 - have they considered the cost of adding the MPEG2 and 802.11g hardware to the TV? What about MPEG2 artifacts if some frames are lost?
When broadcasting over wireless, you have to take into account the maximum speed of the client with worst signal quality. You can't expect to use 54Mbps modulation if you want the TV at the other end of the house to receive the signal with low packet loss. You can't rely on always being able to use 54Mbps (22Mbps throughput) if you want reliable broadcast to other devices in the household.
What makes cable gaming different from existing gaming networks is that with existing gaming networks, all processing is done locally on the user's own machine. With cable gaming, the required processing is done by the company's machines. This minimizes the actual amount of bandwidth required to travel along physical cable lines, as well as negates the need for a game processor on the consumer end (i.e. a game console; Xbox, Playstation, etc.). The only additional hardware required on the consumer's end is a minimal amount of Random Access Memory (RAM) onboard the digital cable box that acts as buffer memory to ensure a smooth, seamless gaming experience.
Sending complete video frames through the cable net is somehow less bandwidth consuming than sending UDP packets containing the state of the game? Even assuming an MPEG2 video stream, I don't buy that without seeing hard numbers. I would also worry a bit about latency.
The idea to use available bandwidth on the cable to provide new services is intriguing, and should definately be explored. But I think that the engineering needed to make something like this work is a bit higher than what the paper assumes.
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!