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Phones And Skype Get Together

Posted by Zonk on from the is-your-refridgerator-running? dept.

An anonymous reader writes "MSNBC has a look at some of the interesting gadgets that will be available for purchase now that Skype has published instructions on how to build the service into phones." From the article: "We saw one other innovative product at CES that is definitely worth a Skype addict's consideration. The Skype Wi-Fi phone, coming this March from Netgear, is basically a Skype cell phone. It connects to any wireless network, letting users make Skype calls completely unconnected to a PC or phone line. If it works as well as it appeared to when Netgear CEO Patrick Lo demonstrated it during a press conference by calling Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom, the little service from Luxembourg will have officially escaped from the confines of the personal computer."

42 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. Question: by HugePedlar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Eventually, we may all live in wi-fi enabled areas, with constant free internet access. It's already happening in some cities. If wireless IP phones take off, it's reasonable to assume we'll all be able to make free, unlimited phone calls to each other because everyone will have access.

    Will this happen, or will someone (e.g. the telcos) force regulation upon it? It seems lately that new technology that frees us up ends up being unreasonably restricted.

    --
    Argh.
    1. Re:Question: by HugePedlar · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yes, calling landlines will always be chargeable (though with Skype et al it's all local rates). The point I was exploring was that when we ALL have wifi phones there'll be no need to charge at all! One has to wonder whether the phone companies will "allow" that when the technology becomes ubiquitous.

      --
      Argh.
    2. Re:Question: by hamza.hydri · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "It seems lately that new technology that frees us up ends up being unreasonably restricted." Definitely true .... It would interesting to see how Skype changes the Wi-Fi market with its policies.

    3. Re:Question: by bfdhud · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I understood your comment, I think I just got on a soapbox and did not get my thoughts in order.

      I think they (phone companies both cell and LL) will not let go so easily, and most likely they will always have some customers.

      It will probably be quite similar to email taking customers away from the post office. There will always be a need for the Post office and they are going to get their money one way or another (by raising postage, charging more for other services).

    4. Re:Question: by swillden · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It will probably be quite similar to email taking customers away from the post office.

      I don't think postal service is a good comparison, both because there are things the postal service can do that e-mail cannot, and because e-mail *has* taken a lot of customers away from the post office.

      The postal service has two important abilities that e-mail does not. First, it can deliver physical objects. Second, it provides reliability and traceability for important communications, particularly when registered mail is used.

      Where those things don't matter, though, e-mail has largely replaced snail mail. There's a segment of the population that doesn't have or use e-mail, but it's shrinking (and aging) and will eventually disappear. Even among low-income people, e-mail use is the norm among the younger population.

      In the case of phone service, traditional phones do not have any similar advantages over VOIP. Sure, VOIP has some technical limitations at present -- many Internet connections aren't good enough to make it work well, and the 911 issue isn't fully resolved -- but those are technical problems with technical solutions. Largely, though, VOIP is a fully-functional, drop-in replacement for landline service (and, with enough WiFi hotspots, for cell service) that is more featureful and cheaper.

      So, no, I don't the growth and usage of VOIP will in any way parallel the history of e-mail.

      There is one element of e-mail's history that may affect VOIP, though: spam. The telephonic equivalent of spam, telemarketing, is pretty well managed at the moment. It's mildly annoying, but thanks to the fact that the telecommunications industry is centralized in a few companies, it can be regulated and managed with things like the "Do Not Call" lists and other rules about who telemarketers can call, and when. The most important factor that keeps telemarketing from being too much of annoyance, though, is cost. In particular it's far too expensive to conduct it from other countries in order to sidestep the regulations.

      Both of those elements disappear with pure VOIP calls. Not only would VOIP spam be dirt cheap (especially with recorded calls -- no need to pay a person to talk to the targets), but it would be cost-effective to do it from nations where regulatory force cannot be applied.

      However, VOIP is young enough that we have a chance to implement anti-spam technology into the foundations of the technology. We understand the dynamics of spam pretty well from the e-mail world, and people are already talking about what we should do to prevent SIP spam. If SIP spam can be avoided or minimized, then I think VOIP can be a perfect replacement for traditional phone service, unlike e-mail, which can never quite replace postal service.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    5. Re:Question: by Firehed · · Score: 2, Insightful
      You can't stop the signal.

      Though I suppose they can find some way to charge for it. I think we're being a bit too optimistic, no matter how good the idea is for everyone but the telcos. That's the problem with capitalism - free just doesn't work for the greedy. I could probably think of a dozen ways they could charge for it, but say even if it's $5/mo for the "phone port" on otherwise free wifi, it's still hella cheaper than your current long distance. At least if you make more than one call per month. In theory it's much better anyways, as they should be able to triangulate your location for 911 calls, assuming the thing doesn't have a GPS built-in (though that's all a GPS does, except it uses stuff floating in orbit rather than stuck to the tops of buildings, so in theory a "WGPS" would be more accurate.)

      --
      How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
    6. Re:Question: by swillden · · Score: 2, Informative

      In the case of phone numbers, most people already have the whitelist idea and apply it by being careful about who they give their phone numbers to.

      That's not sufficient, though. Telemarketing was pretty bad a few years ago -- not as bad as e-mail spam, but much worse than it is now -- and it's gotten better primarily because of regulation. Telemarketers are not allowed to call cellphones at all, for obvious reasons, and the do-not-call registry (the national one, plus the various state lists and the list managed by the Direct Marketer's Association before that) have made it fairly easy to avoid excessive calls on land lines. Before the regulations were in place, though, it was pretty common to get three or four calls per evening.

      Whitelisting by being selective about who you give your contact info to doesn't work, not without some help. Most people are selective about who they give their e-mail addresses to, also, and that clearly doesn't work.

      Explicit whitelisting has the serious downside that it tends to eliminate desirable contact from people who you just haven't gotten around to whitelisting (perhaps because you didn't know you wanted to). Even if you're willing to accept that, you still have the problem of how to know who it is who's contacting you. VOIP already provides caller ID, but caller ID is easy to spoof, both for VOIP systems and for traditional phone lines as well. VOIP spammers don't necessarily have any more reason to provide a valid "FROM" header than they do with e-mail.

      The solution is, first, to find a way to make sure that people *know* who is calling them. SPF is an approach to do that (in part) for e-mail, and there's a comparable proposal for SIP that is an IETF draft standard.

      Once you can trust the caller ID, then you can screen calls or, even better, use a "buddy list" system like Jabber does, where you can cold-contact anyone you want, but you don't actually get through to them until they decide to allow it. If they decide to allow it, however, you're whitelisted until they decide to remove you.

      Also, with trustworthy caller ID, you can build reputation systems -- blacklists, in the simplest form. Your VOIP phone can check the caller ID not only against your whitelist, but also against some public blacklist server. If that ID has accumulated enough complaints, as recorded by the blacklist server, then your phone may not even bother notifying you of the connection request.

      There's other stuff that can be done as well, but it all rests on having caller ID that actually works. That's what we *don't* have for e-mail (at present). But we can, and should, build it into the new VOIP infrastructure.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
  2. Most Important /. Question by Ohreally_factor · · Score: 5, Funny

    But does it play ogg?

    =)

    --
    It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
    1. Re:Most Important /. Question by Ziviyr · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'd think Speex was the better one to ask about here...

      --

      Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
  3. Picture and info by Zaffo · · Score: 5, Informative

    More about the phone (including a link to a large, print-quality image) can be seen at Netgear's site: http://tools.netgear.com/skype/

  4. Any sip account by cra · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'd love to have a phone like this that I could set up to use a sip server. Then I could use my "Home phone" from any WiFi point. Get enough WiFi points and I could even trash my good ol' cell phone. Well, almost. ;-)

    --
    This message has been ROT-13 encrypted twice for higher security.
    1. Re:Any sip account by dpoulson · · Score: 5, Informative

      You mean like:

      http://www.utstar.com/Solutions/Handsets/WiFi/
      or
      http://www.vocera.com/ (star trek - like)
      or
      http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/ZyXEL+P2000W

      All are wifi SIP phones and work well with Asterisk

      --
      http://www.22balmoralroad.net/ http://www.tinynetworks.co.uk/
    2. Re:Any sip account by glasn0st · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Alternatively, if you have a PocketPC PDA, you can run the freeware SIP phone SJPhone on it. Also works great with Asterisk.

      --
      ( ^_^)/
    3. Re:Any sip account by hashinclude · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yeah, but if you have a PocketPC based PDA, you can already run Skype on it.

      No need to have a SIP service (which may/not gateway into your asterisk box).

      --
      US is now divided as the "Red" and "blue" states. Red States = communist countries. Coincidence? I think not
    4. Re:Any sip account by glasn0st · · Score: 2, Informative

      Agreed. Although it may be off topic to this discussion, I strongly prefer SIP above Skype. Skype is a closed protocol, which has several important drawbacks.

      Because there are good customizable SIP products such as Asterisk, you can do much more. For instance, my Asterisk server at home has a "firewall" (caller screening), voicemail during the night hours, blocking of callers without caller ID (goes to voicemail), waiting music, hooks for shellscripts (sends me SMS at some events), queues et cetera. I don't see Skype offering a scripting engine, so Skype's limited to the advanced features they are willing to implement.

      Second, the Skype protocol locks you in to their service. If you go with SIP, you can choose from various SIP providers. This enables competition, as you can "shop" for the cheapest deals. For instance, I get my incoming landline calls through a dutch service which offers a "prepaid" dial-in number, with credits that don't time out like Skype does. This party is a bit more expensive for outgoing phone calls, so I route my outgoing calls through sipdiscount.com who offer free landline calls to many countries. If they are unstable, I can simply choose another SIP proxy. If Skype is down, you are out of luck.

      With SIP, regardless of your SIP provider choice, if you have a static IP address or dynamic DNS name, you can always accept free calls from any peer on the Internet. You'll always be able to make Internet calls for free and nobody can take that away from you.

      One problem of SIP is that it doesn't work with NAT easily; you have to have some UDP ports open, which many common home routers don't allow. At the other hand Skype seemed to work instantly behind a NAT.

      --
      ( ^_^)/
  5. What we need is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Someone just needs to write an open-source SIP/IAX Skype gateway so I can use my SIP phone (now available super-cheap) w/Skype. I see there is one out there, but it's windows only, thirty bucks, and closed source.

    Asterisk support for Skype, now there would be something!

    1. Re:What we need is... by dpoulson · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Definately. I'm still waiting.

      There's quite a bounty now to have a skype channel in Asterisk. Up to $1545 USD now.

      --
      http://www.22balmoralroad.net/ http://www.tinynetworks.co.uk/
  6. One problem.... by dpoulson · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There's no WPA support according to the FAQ. Also, how does it handle captive portals? Maybe it has a built in web browser, but I can't find any mention of it.

    Maybe we need to convince more hotspot providers to allow free skype calls!

    Anyway, wifi is still pretty rare around me, unless you want to 'borrow' home users connections, and thats getting quite dicey now.

    Darren.

    --
    http://www.22balmoralroad.net/ http://www.tinynetworks.co.uk/
  7. Oh, well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I knew I should have moved from Germany to Luxembourg. Smaller country == less political-assholes-that-like-to-restrict-shit-for- no-official-reason.

    Now I'll have to wait for 10 years before they let us have it.

  8. new song. by supernova87a · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "ding dong, telecoms are dead!"

    Who's crapping their pants now?

    step 1. Old telecom companies notice their revenue dropping like stones.
    step 2. old telecom companies attempt to preserve unsustainable revenue streams by limiting the bandwidth of competitors on their networks
    step 3. Customers sue over equal access to networks
    step 4. company such as Google kicks their asses by offering free, unrestricted wifi in every major city around the world
    step 5. old telecom companies stop whining and do what they should've done in the first place

    couldn't they have saved the trouble?

  9. Re:WEP Encryption... by Yaztromo · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The site states though "nobody will be able to be listening in"...

    This is because Skype already has its own encryption layer. An attacker might be able to do something annoying once they crack the WEP encryption (such as interjecting packets), but they won't be able to listen in to your conversation without then breaking the Skype packet encryption (which is probably stronger than WEP).

    However, I do share a general annoyance with devices that don't support WPA/WPA2. My wireless network is completely WPA2 based, and I have one device which does, at best, WEP. My current solution has been to disallow this device (a Palm Tungsten C) from connecting to my network by continuing to run WPA2, which is an annoyance (as it means I can't use its WiFi functionality in my home). Device manufacturers need to wake up to the fact that WPA and WPA2 are a reality, and that their devices need to support these modern standards alongside WEP.

    Yaz.

  10. Problem by ajs318 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There is a problem with this because, underneath it all, Skype is still a proprietary, closed technology. This creates an unacceptable barrier to anyone looking to enter the marketplace: competition is not fair and free.

    It's absolutely inconceivable that in a civilised country, anyone should have to licence "intellectual property" from anyone else just to do their job. This is nothing short of privatised taxation.

    The telephone network -- indeed, all public infrastructures, be they roads, railways, sewers, power lines or hospitals -- exists for the benefit of Society at Large, all of us, not just those who pay money to private corporations; and it is the place of governments -- as our elected representatives whose wages we pay -- to ensure that everyone has the ability to benefit therefrom.

    --
    Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
    1. Re:Problem by Yaztromo · · Score: 5, Insightful
      It's absolutely inconceivable that in a civilised country, anyone should have to licence "intellectual property" from anyone else just to do their job. This is nothing short of privatised taxation.

      That's odd -- last I checked, I can call SkypeIn users from my GPS Cell phone, the POTS pay phone up the street, and from my Vonage account.

      There are standards in this world for telephone systems, and Skype has to follow them in order to be accessable both to and from the rest of the world. It isn't as if Skype is the only telephony solution around, or like anyh Government is forcing its citizens to replace their existing telephony technologies for Skype.

      Skype being propretiary is a problem, but not for the reasons you give. If you want to compete against Skype, it's not a problem -- Gizmo seems to be making a go of it without any serious problems. So long as Skype intergrates with the rest of the International telephony network, there is no problem -- competing with them won't be impossible at all, and won't require you to license anything from them.

      Also on Skype's side is that at least they appear ready and willing to license their technology to a variety of hardware manufacturers.

      The big problems with Skype being propretary are:

      1. Platforms Skype Ltd. isn't interested in targeting won't be able to connect to Skype's network (at least without some software developer licensing the protocols from them). If you're on OS/2 and want to run Skype, you're SOL, and always will be.
      2. You have to trust Skype Ltd's security analysis of their encryption and associated protocols. Much of Skype's protocols are currently "security by obscurity", and while they may well be up to the task, it's hard to prove this point due to a lack of source code,
      3. You have to count on Skype Ltd. to improve the product over time, and have no ability to do so yourself.

      This might come as a shock to some, but some people are okay with such things. Personally it's not for me -- I have Skype installed for those times when I must communicate with other Skype users (although given the choice I prefer iChat AV, or the X-Pro softphone that is attached to my Vonage account when I need to call a normal phone system user from my laptop while away from home), but otherwise wouldn't use it as my primary telephone system. But not all people are me, and not everybody cares so much about the use of open standards, so long as they get what they pay for and the cost is low.

      So in conclusion I agree witth you that closed protocols are bad, but in this case not for the reasons you have given. The underlying telephone system is sufficiently open that any Skype-competitor can arrive on the scene and doesn't have to pay Skype a single penny for the privledge.

      Yaz.

  11. Skype and linux? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Skype under linux completely sucks. It seems after ebay took over skype, they chucked out the support for linux so much so that it doesnt work at all. Check this out http://forum.skype.com/viewtopic.php?t=32290&sid=8 0e30a3a5027922776d84bb7906d8bf1

    Skype, wake me up when you have fixed the audio bug, otherwise go to the DOGS

  12. Re:What we need is..., it is work in progress by what+about · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I had an Email from them saying that they are making one gateway for linux too. But of course it will be limited to one call, closed source, and with the level of support Skype is providing.

    Personally I am switching to normal SIP phones/services.

    If you are not bothered by having an italian operator you could use www.skypho.net (no, I am not from skypho, I am just a user)

  13. Calls using "Wi-Fi phones" by LinuxParanoid · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I puchased an HP ipaq 6315 a year ago which was one of the first mobile phones to have classic cell phone service, GPRS internet, WiFi and bluetooth all in the same device. Here's what I've observed and learned, the first of which relates directly to Wi-Fi phone calling:

        1) I tried making WiFi calls with Skype running on the MS PocketPC OS 2002. I *was* able to make a Skype call over WiFi... but I couldn't really hear much more than a word or two from the other person and lots of garble. Basically it was disappointingly unusable. I am not sure whether the slow 3-400MHz CPU is the problem or the nature of the non-optimizal internet connection and signalling overhead (I suspect the former). But I tried repeatedly, and I tried to move to be closer to the WiFi source with no positive effect. So this may not work great on mobile phones today. YMMV and "tomorrow" is a different story of course.

        2) The cell phone seems to end up in wierd states that need rebooting. This happened once every few months with my Palm-based Treo, but has annoyingly, and ironically according to Microsoft stereotype, definitely been a once a week-type issue with my PocketPC phone. *Most* annoying is when it happens when you're on a call and you get a second inbound call and then system then gives you an unending series of dialog boxes in confusion. (By rebooting I really mean a "soft reset" where you need to push a thin object into a hole.) To be fair to Microsoft, it may be true that some fraction of those hangs might be due to bugs in the apps that lead to a platform-level hang. *But*, I can't cut MS too much slack because the MS platform doesn't give me a way to kill/restart the app it seems. (Note: I haven't had time to spend the hours necessary to research and get to the bottom of this.)

        3) The cell-phone seems to lie about signal strength at times; it might show full signal but then right after I dial, it shrinks to two bars. I thought it might be a limitation of how polling/powersaving works, but in any case, I've found that I can't necessarily trust the "bar" ratings, even when I'm stationary, to describe signal strength until I actually make a call. I have zero idea whether this is caused by my phone, or just random emi interference, or the carrier or whether others have this same issue.

        4) My favorite feature on both my Treo Palm and the PocketPC phone has been the ability to sync contacts on my phone with contacts on my PC (in MS Outlook, which I use for contacts but not for email.)

        5) My second favorite feature has been the free downloadable musician tools available on the platform. (The selection was stronger on the Palm-based Treo.) I.e. metronome, tuner, and guitar chord charts. It's just very cool, since I always have my cell phone with me, that I also thus always have guitar chord charts in a pinch.

    YMMV but here are the lessons I shelled out too much bucks to learn so I pass them along to my fellow Slashdotters.

    Cheers,
        --LP

    1. Re:Calls using "Wi-Fi phones" by badzilla · · Score: 3, Informative

      I have an Acer N50 PDA with a 500MHz CPU and Skype really does work just fine. So does SJphone (SIP softphone) which can also make pretty good calls although seems more sensitive to weak wireless signal.

      --
      "Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
    2. Re:Calls using "Wi-Fi phones" by nbert · · Score: 2, Informative
      If a 400Mhz CPU is too slow to do simple analogue audio D-A and A-D converstion then the software is *seriously* badly written.
      Keep in mind that Skype-to-Skype calls are encrypted, which requires a lot of processing power. Not a problem for modern PCs, but it could be too much for this ipaq model.
      On a related note: Skype doesn't seem to care much about optimizing their software. I'm sometimes calling a friend who has a G4 600 Mhz and he told me that whenenver he is having a conversation Skype consumes more than 80% of the CPU power... It's not that bad with older versions of Skype btw.
      --
      I don't read replies by ACs.
  14. Office VoIP WiFi by bulach · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I wonder how long before offices around the world will start using WiFi-based phones backed by * instead of regular, wired PBX.

  15. Re:Skype and windows? by spaceturtle · · Score: 2, Informative

    Since this is slashdot & all I'd just like to point out that Skype worked fine for me under Linux, but under Windows XP (my sister's machine, honest!) I had huge troubles. First, the microsoft SP2 bluetooth stack doesn't support audio devices, (but does support interfereing with installing of the pre SP2 driver for my device, and the manufacturer went out of business before they released an SP2 compatible driver). Then it decided it didn't want to talk to the regular sound card either. YMMV ofcourse.

  16. Skype for Nintendo DS by blankoboy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I am suprised that no development house (or Nintendo themselves) has yet to start developing Skype for the DS (or have they?).

    Handheld wi-fi device already in the hands of millions
    +
    application with an installed user base of million
    =
    Millions of happy people talking to each other over SkypeDS!!

    ....not to mention many more units of the DS sold!

    /yes, we know that Nintendo already showed off a Skype-ish application with Wario on screen prior to the DS release.
    /yes, we know about DSspeak but alas it doesn't have the installed userbase of Skype.

  17. LIPA and Govt Security by Unknown_monkey · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What you can expect is that the Landline Phone Industry Association, LPIA, will begin a propaganda war against the wi-fi phone users, bringing back the phone phreaking icons to convince Congress that this wi-fi phone phreaking is destroying society and endangering the youth the same way as drugs and rock and roll.
    They will cite examples where someone uses one of these untraceable and unmonitored wi-fi phones to buy drugs while listening to rock music published by indie labels or worse yet, stolen from the internets.
    Then the governing bodies will generate laws to make it unprofitable for Netgear and others to manufacture the phones by loading up Federal Surcharges and eventually banning the phones because of international security concerns. The phones could be used by foreign agents to orchestrate activities that could harm our people. They must be stopped and their phones must be stopped.

    --
    Why are women so complicated? Find out how little I know here.
    1. Re:LIPA and Govt Security by arivanov · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If Skype gets anywhere close to mainstream it will be forced to provide mandatory legal intercept without any need for inventing fantom associations. This will be regardless of its use for drug dealing or not.

      And here comes the most interesting bit. In order to provide legal intercept capabilities it will have to provide law enforcement access via a remote control interface to computers serving as supernodes in the P2P network. These computers are not even owned by Skype and may be outside the jurisdiction of the party requesting intercept. In fact intercepting on them may be illegal in the country where they are located. This is bound to get very entertaining at some point sooner or later.

      And by the way using specially dedicated nodes for legal intercept only will not work because one of the requirements for legal intercept in telephony is that it should not be noticeable to either party in the conversation. A node located in a strange place will very happily show up in the netstat on both Linux and Windows and writing a utility which shows which address block is the supernode you are connected to is a piece of cake.

      --
      Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
      http://www.sigsegv.cx/
  18. Small EU Country Always = Luxembourg? by honeypea · · Score: 3, Informative

    I keep seeing comments that Skype is "Luxembourg-based". Skype's legal headquarters are (were, pre-Ebay?) based in Luxembourg for tax reasons, but just about nothing else is as far as I understood it. Estonians wrote the code, and it's touted as a big success story in Estonia. The co-founders are a Swede and a Dane. Newsweek might see minimal legal headquarters as being the basis to call it its base, but from a Slashdot readership's perspective, you'd think you'd want to know where the developers are, and what they're doing now.

    It's probably safest to say "EU-based". But I think Estonia at least needs a nod.

  19. Free Skype? by Jacek+Poplawski · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Is there any project to create Free Software application compatible with Skype protocol? I don't like Skype interface, and can't find any alternative UI...

  20. Re:WEP Encryption... by c0l0 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yeah, WEP is often referred to as Weakest Enrcyption Possible not completely without reason ;)

    --
    :%s/Open Source/Free Software/g

    YTARY!
  21. skype LD & 411 free by digitaldc · · Score: 2, Informative

    Free 411 and LD on Skype

    Just passing this along the information superhighway.

    --
    He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
  22. Re:Free as in idiot? by HugePedlar · · Score: 2, Informative

    It really gets MY goat that some people make stupid assumptions about others. FYI I live in England where healthcare IS free for everyone.

    Of course, free healthcare is provided by the government and therefore by taxpayers, but so is anything "free" like tarmac roads, schools and sanitation.

    Free internet access (taxpayer funded or otherwise) IS something to aim for, but NOT at the expense of healthcare or anything else - who suggested it was? Not me, that's for sure.

    --
    Argh.
  23. Use with WiFi hotspots by samwire · · Score: 3, Informative

    Haven't seen much mention of this so far.

    These wireless handsets, as has been previously pointed out, have been available for SIP networks for quite some time, along with decent wired handsets which also don't require a PC to be switched on. One good (albeit expensive) wireless SIP phone is the Hitachi WIP-5000 which has regular firmware updates including support for new features like WPA.

    The main drawback with most of these phones, though, is not just the lack of support for new security standards like WPA (many, like the skype phone, support WEP only). The biggest problem, at least here in the UK (I dunno if it's different elsewhere), is that most of the wi-fi hotspot providers do not run encryption at all. Instead, they have an open network but require you to login through a webpage, in order to bill you. This technology is fine for laptops and PDAs with web browsers but makes such phones utterly useless* except when you're at home or you're lucky enough to have a workplace which supports standard wi-fi.

    I'm sure someone will come up with a wifi sip phone with a browser eventually (Nokia's new E-series supports wi-fi, so that's promising) but, at the moment, the handsets are very expensive and not being able to use them at most UK wifi hotspots is a major drawback.

    Sam.

    * In theory, you could clone the MAC address to a laptop, sign in with that and then swop to the phone, but that's obviously far too much hassle for real usage.

  24. Too few frequencies by Kadin2048 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Er, no we won't. Not with the current bandwidth and channels available.

    Personal example: I live in an urban area, and there are already a ton of problems with too many 802.11b setups running on the same channels. Given that there are really only three totally independent channels (where you don't get overlap), it's quite easy to have an area where you should have service, but don't because of collisions between networks.

    When my internet at home went down a few weeks ago (due to an unfortunate incident involving a squirrel, and a lot of incompetence on the part of Comcast) I tried to use one of the fifteen or so networks that were being reported by my computer as being in range. I couldn't get a connection on a single one -- they were all piled onto Chans. 1, 6, and 11, and all around the same strength, and when trying to connect to one I'd just get strength figures that jumped between 50% and 0%.

    The WiFi bands were not set up with wide-area service in mind. Especially the original 802.11b, which is what you'd want to use for a commercial/free-internet service, because it's most compatible with existing equipment -- that 2.4GHz band was set aside for low-power, Part 15 devices, not broadcast. There's no governing authority to coordinate frequencies and channels and do interference mitigation, and there's overlap from other services as well.

    This idyllic picture of free WiFi for everyone, everywhere, is going to come to a screaming halt in any metro area or suburbs where there are a lot of existing equipment installs, especially ones operated by people who don't even know what they're doing or how to change their system from the default channel. The fact that some company is giving you free internet on Channel x isn't going to matter if both your neighbors have their own gateways running on the same channel. At best it's going to cause a lot of collisions and degrade service, at worst it will interrupt it completely. As more and more devices become WiFi enabled, this is going to become a bigger problem.

    My suggestion would be to get more frequencies -- lots more. The obvious choices would be the old analog cellular bands and the UHF television spectrum, but fat chance on either of those. We see spectrum, the FCC sees money in the bank (or in the budget, same thing). I have no doubt that we'll get "everwhere access" to the Internet -- it just won't be free; it'll be provided by your friendly cellular company at a stiff monthly charge and with a service contract.

    Under the current system, they're going to be the ones who get the bandwidth and frequency allocations necessary for wide-area, interference-free service; the rest of us will be stuck in the crowded electromagnetic ghettos that are the ISM bands, trying to scream to each other over the din of everyone else's transmissions.

    --
    "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
  25. Fond Memories by Kadin2048 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Information transfer is now relatively free and fast.

    Enjoy it while it lasts. Given the lobbying currently going on by the telecommunications companies, and the relative perceived ignorance/apathy of Internet users, I think we're quickly racing towards a future where how much you pay directly affects not only the speed at which you can get information (as it does currently) but also your quality-of-service and connection priority.

    You already pay extra if you want a static IP. You pay more than that if you want a synchronous connection where you can send and receive at the same speed. In some cases more than that, if you want certain ports unblocked so you can run a server. The 'two tier' internet already exists in terms of who can distribute information by running a server and who can't; eventually we're going to have that on the receiving side as well. You want to open a ton of connections and do P2P? Extra fee. You want a low-latency connection for doing streaming video or internet telephony? Definitely an extra fee.

    I have a feeling that at some point, we're going to look back at these early days of 'all-you-can-eat' Internet access for all, with a certain nostalgia. We're already looking back fondly on the days when anyone could set up a server on their cable modem in their basement.

    If you want a look at where the future is headed, take a look at Australia. They used to have unlimited-access internet plans there, but they practically don't exist anymore (I'm told), at least at the consumer level. Instead there are plans with varying levels of bandwidth/transfer caps.

    Going forward, once the packet filtering systems get a little better and a little more widespread, you're going to start seeing plans that limit transfer by type: you get unlimited transfer to your ISP's "preferred" VoIP carrier, but if you want to use your own, that'll be $15 extra a month. Same with streaming video and internet radio. "Unknown" and encrypted traffic will be capped or throttled -- so don't try to just tunnel it.

    While on the backbones we may have a "two-tier Internet," to the consumer there are going to be many subtle gradations that make up the tiers. It's going to be just like a cell phone: the most basic service costs one thing, but everything extra you want to do with it costs more.

    I don't think there's really any good way to avoid this. The Internet is becoming bigger and bigger business, and at the same time the companies that effectively control it are under more and more pressure to find new ways of squeezing revenue from their assets. Given that the government is pretty toothless when it comes to dealing with large corporations and their lobbying arms, I don't think that our children will have anywhere near the unlimited access to information that we've gotten used to lately. At least, not unless we buy it for them.

    --
    "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
  26. Re:MINE DOES, MINE DOES, MINE DOES!!! by Ohreally_factor · · Score: 2, Funny

    Let me be the first to congratulate you on your first ever post to slashdot!

    I'm not sure what else to say, as this is my first ever post congratulating someone on their first ever post.

    --
    It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.