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Is City-Wide Wi-Fi a Dead Idea?
An anonymous reader writes "Remember all those projects to cover cities with Wi-Fi? The BBC wants to know what happened to them. When it comes to underground wireless data access, there are obvious issues regarding implementing a wireless infrastructure in underground stations and tunnels, but above ground the BBC suggests that it may be other advancements, such as Wimax, that have made Wi-Fi a less attractive solution. PCMag, on the other hand, suggests that public Wi-Fi isn't dead at all and will make a comeback due to the increasing popularity of Wi-Fi-enabled smartphones. So, will city-wide Wi-Fi make a real comeback, or have other technologies, such as Wimax or 4G, killed the concept for good?"
Why is the particular technology of wireless communications so important?
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
The problem I've had with it is that each access point I've encountered usually requires a login and/or a fee to use. For example, Wifi in Starbucks requires a monthly fee from AT&T (or T-Mobile, can't remember). Across the street the library is free. The McDonalds next door charges $2.95 an hour, along with the Wendy's across the corner. The lobby in the hospital is free but requires a login that only the clerk at the front desk can provide. There is Wifi in the mall that is free.
I think that most people would prefer an all-or-nothing approach. Give me one Wifi experience or forget it. Having to keep track of a new login method every 200-500 feet is a hassle.
Its being killed by 3G and the iPhone. Five years from now few people will bother with ADSL or cable to the home, so they won't route to wifi.
Laptops are starting to come on the market with 3G modems built in. Telcos are starting to install small cellular base stations close to their customers. Pretty soon I expect the telcos will be doing a lot of the networking which used to be done in house.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
The range is too short, it always has been too short for any of this sort of stuff. I wish there was a longer range version of Wifi that an ordinary person could actually buy a router for without having to spend thousands.
4G and LTE will always be controlled by large, evil telcos and you will always need a subscription. I doubt anyone will be allowed to set up their own private LTE access point as nice as that would be. It would be nice if there was a version of LTE that you could use in unlicensed spectrum with affordable equipment and without dealing with a mobile phone company and proprietary 'locked down' equipment like that femto cell Verizon has with a GPS to make sure you are not setting up an AP outside the country
Is it in wide use already? Is it holding up? How does its infrastructure and maintenance cost compare to a wider range wireless? To me, it seemed that the biggest drawback to wide area WiFi is that each base station has a very limited range, cellular and WiMax has a range of miles between towers, for WiFi, you might be lucky to cover several houses with one base station. I tried working though all of what it takes, and it just seemed like too much work and too much money spent for too little in return.
Firstly, authentication and billing are solved problems. WiFi is made significantly less useful by the way every public hotspot has its own random billing infrastructure,
Funny most places i go to offer their WiFi for free, i find this a much nicer billing solution than my phone company charging me whatever the fuck they want.
Secondly, LTE is a natively IPv6 based protocol.
WiFi is protocol neutral, so all your IPv6 stuff is meaningless as you can use IPv6 over WiFi, just as easily as IPv4 over WiFi.
Finally, the LTE protocols include support for true single channel multi-cast.
While im no expert on wifi protocols there seams no reason that multicast can't be worked into them.
Thirdly, hand-off actually works in mobile protocols.
I'll give you this one, however I'd rather have a fully controlled home network and only be at the whim of my phone company while im outside.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
You could be in an RV with an AP less than 20 t, with a 10+ db radio and get 1 bar of signal, but move to a window and it'll go to 4-5 bars?
Note: being inside an RV is similar to being inside a Faraday Cage.
ERROR: SIG NOT FOUND (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?:
Who says its stealing? I keep mine open on purpose- if I'm not using the bandwidth, someone else might as well. I pay the same anyway. If its something I don't want snooped, I encrypt it.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?