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Cisco Unveils Amazing New Wireless Plans
StDave writes "Yesterday Cisco announced a very cool technology. It is a 44Mb wireless technology that doesn't require line of sight and has a range of 30 miles. Take your ADSL line on the road with you. " Wow - they've found a way to use the "ghosting" caused by obstructions to tv and cell signals. Base units will cost around 150,000$ and the transceivers will be under 500$, with start of marketing sometime around June.
Americans may think wireless technology is cool, but they miss out on so much by not using GSM mobile phone infrastructure. Roaming. When a European goes to America, their mobile phone still works. Amazing, huh? Not really. Get with it, folks.
Dear Santa,
I've been a really good boy all year and now is the time to really show me how much being a good boy means to you. I know that 150 thousand dollars is a lot of mney but I'm sure you have an elf or two at cisco right?
Fish! LipHo
I'd wait and see what sort of encryption they're going to use for this before jumping on the bandwagon. I wouldn't particularly like to have my data broadcast all over the city if all they offer is XOR "encryption"...
This kind of system gives a small to medium size isp a chance to break the monopoly on broadband (DSL/Cable) Internet connections. In my area (SE RI/MA), (Cox) cable internet is unavailable, MediaOne RoadRunner is nonexistant, DSL is a year off, T1 is overpriced and ISDN is crappy. If an existing dialup isp implimented this technology, it would be a great way to move into the high bandwidth market. Someone doing this could force broadband companies to compete, which is good.
What about security though? I assume they'll have link level encryption.
Simply put, wow. ~If~ this works, it'll blow a _lot_ of ISP's out of the water. Anyone know how to write a business plan? Let's see, start with a nice dual 750 Athlon with FreeBSD...
Dive Gear
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
I've been looking for something like this since my days as an undergrad. Wireless has the unique ability to take all your expenditures and put them up front. I can see a local ISP buying two or three of these and having the same coverage as they do now. After that they just have to collect enough money to pay for overhead and the P&I on the loans.
There are problems though. In my area a 30 mile radius encompasses a few million people. Is there the ability for orthogonal coding or seperate channels, or is this bandwidth shared per foot print? How many orthogonal channels are capabale in a footprint? If it's not a lot this could be worse then cable modems (I used to work with cable modems in high density installations about 10 years ago, and after the first large group gets on you wish they hadn't).
If I recall my Future Tech class correctly, a few cable-alternative services have been using MMDS for nearly 20 years. I'm pretty sure that Cleveland and New Orleans services still exist today. It was cheaper to set up MMDS towers than to string cable through an already-dense wire-line infrastructure, apparently. Are there other markets outside of the U.S. that currently make use of MMDS?
;-) Before I get myself into a cosmological debate, I'll just stop here.
Still, it's very cool to have yet another fat pipe, especially since it's wireless. I'm just sort of puzzled that the article seems to be implying that MMDS is some sort of fantastic new invention. The Cisco tech's a novel use of the spectrum, granted, but the bandwidh's been there for a while; since the beginning of time if you want to be literal
-Chris
If shared, then over a radios of 30 miles it's not necessarily a whole lot -- especially in the city.
If per station... err... Please mommy?
-- Slashdot sucks.
While not terribly difficult in theory, that it works over such distances is an impressive feat of engineering. However, I would like to see how it works in the real world. If it compensates for interference by lots of resending, dropping bandwidth, that's fine, but if it cuts out, that's a problem.
While I don't doubt the article, I want to see it in production before I praise them too much.
One thing that I've always wondered, why do we see so few high bandwidth wireless technology. I mean, one should be able to just use more frequencies. I guess that there is a real shortage of available frequencies. I wonder how much of that is technical hurdles and how much is beaurocratic messes between the DOD, FCC, etc., fighting over it.
Well, as IP carries more and more information, I wonder if we'll be able to reclaim all the bandwidth from audio/video broadcasts as the world moves digital. HDTV promises more (over the airwaves) channels because the signal is smaller... that seems a little silly. People that want more channels currently have Cable and DSS options, and Telephone will do so too. I think that society has more uses for the airwaves than broadcasting more garbage. As long as people get reasonable channels for their kids, news, and evening entertainment, I think that society would be better served by allowing new technologies to claim the bandwidth... but that's just me.
On the other hand, more radio stations with lower barriers to entry (licenses trump the real expenses) so that there are real alternative stations instead of the same drivel on all of them.
Alex
this would be great for ant body who had the cash to start up there own isp . the only thing i can see limiting is the 30 mile radius but im thinking that extra base units would make up for that . i wonder what would be a good price for this service ?
now only if i could get the money to start this up in my town !
music the paint
dancefloor the canvas
Music the Paint dancefloor the canvas your body the brush
1) What kind of security will be implemented? What kind of ecyrption will they use to make sure no one will catch all my "bits and packets" (hehehe kind of like "bits and pieces") and seeing all my pr0n?!?
2) I have a cellular phone from a certain digital provider that will remain nameless (::cough:: sprint pcs
Charlie
-- .sig files go when they die?
Child: Mommy, where do
Mother: HELL! Straight to hell!
I've never been the same since.
Just like driving a car:
(D) to go forward
(R) to go backward
Supposedly the AWACS bird that Israel is selling China detects planes using similar technology- interactions with surrounding radio / EM waves.
excellent post
Nice tech and all (I work w/Cisco prod all day long, and am a cheerleader most of the time) but there is no way that this will free us from telecoms. Distance limitations are unacceptable, unless someone wanted to build a system that bounced data from one side of the country to another using this ... and that would be very prohibitively expensive.
I like the tech, on the other hand, if it can be developed as a service-provider based alternative to microwave. I have seen DS3 microwave systems going moderate distances across a metro area, and you end up saving the cost of the hardware very quickly when compared to paying local loop fees for that kind of circuit. If this could be rolled out by a motorola as a point-to-point connection between business buildings, with cpe hardware costing a few hundred dollars, they could bank.
Maybe that mythical Metro Area Network will emerge eventually, after all...
good. fast. cheap. (pick any two, you can't have all three)
So long as it doesn't give me leukaemia !
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_54 5000/545086.stm)
Bah.
"What do you mean?" "Me? I don't mean anything."
What effect will this technology have on humans? With all the noise about cell phone causing brain cancer, the last thing I want to do is get nutsack cancer because my laptop has one of these units in the PC Card slot. Having a mobile connection this fast would be great but I ain't gonna give up the family jewels for one...
Save the testies!
Technical specs at http://www.cisco.com/w arp/public/cc/cisco/mkt/servprod/wt2700/
Hmm,
Here in the UK, BT have announced that a 512Kbs ADSL line will cost the end user 50 pounds a month plus installation and equipment costs. If this new Cisco wireless stuff really can give me 44Mbs all to myself with no connect charges... I'll buy one straight away.
Hopefully Cisco won't delay selling this stuff in the UK. (which is what normally happens) I could see quite a few people in the UK switching to this kind of technology if it can deliver what it promises. (Like we all believe press releases...)
Where do I sign up?
On another note, if I could get 44Mbs over 30 miles, would I get 4.4Mbs over 300 miles? I realise that is an oversimplification, but 4Mbs+ over 100s of miles would be a godsend to countries with poor infrastructure (e.g. Africa, Russia)
----- Documentation is worth it just to be able to answer all your mail with 'RTFM' - Alan Cox.
Well, this is great, but what about during rain and thunderstorms? I can't afford the $40-100 dollars per month for the slow stuff at 500K/100K up/down speeds. Can you imagine what they'll charge for this speed? Hope it's more like $9.95 unlimited per month with roaming in any state or country! Moreover, the base station is really going to be bandwidth constrained with everybody hitting them at 44mbs. Why don't telcos just bite the bullet and run 1Gbs fiber to all of our houses. Thus, the internet speed wars would then be over! :)
Why do geeks want portable technology? Are you always on the move? I'm not (well, I go to school every day but if I didn't I wouldn't be).
- Kaatunut
http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/779/servpro/solut ions/wireless/faq.html Q. What does "Broadband Fixed Wireless" mean? A. Broadband defines communication with data rates exceeding 1.5 Mbps. Fixed wireless is not mobile wireless, which allows users mobility while using the service. Fixed wireless is communications to buildings or a cell site, which does not move.
Coincidence?
Maybe so, but even if it is, you've now got virtually all the ingredients needed for "car traffic control" systems. All you'd need, to finish it off, would be some decent sensors on the cars, to detect what objects are near, and some means for a central computer to determine optimal paths.
The latter part is almost done, with existing car navigation systems, but this would need to be a bit more refined.
I see a lot of potential for this device, far beyond mere wireless web surfing.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
If a company is big, it always tramples on small ones, even without noticing. To compensate, it should bring big and positive changes. Cisco would be a worthwhile big company if it delivers this.
While I'd like some more technical information on this, my first thought was that this may be the (relatively) inexpensive solution we're looking for to solve the infamous "last mile" problem.
I'm not sure how much it costs to lay fiber, but I'm willing to bet it's not cheap. I'm betting it's even more expensive in more dense, urban areas. While your average Joe can't afford to cough up $150K for the base unit, your average telco *can*.
Imagine getting your home net access wirelessly. Your ISP could sell or lease you the receiver unit in much the same way that some people lease their cable modems. The connection speeds are higher anyway (is this 44 megabits shared? anyone know?).
The increasing use of wireless networking technology has us all focused on dinky little PDA things, dreaming of roaming connectivity. It had never even dawned on me that wireless connections might be the solution to the last mile problem.
I'd be a little worried if I was a cable provider...
Anthony
^X^X
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
"I think any time you expose vulnerabilities it's a good thing." -Attorney General Janet Reno
just look at that story header...
cicso? really??? do you EVER read what you write, or does that not leave enough hours for surfing?
PPPhhhhppphhhttttt!!!!!
I noticed a while back, I didn't post a comment cos I didn't want to be moderated down to redundant when the spelling mistake was fixed... (it happenned before...) I still don't want to be moderated down, hence the AC.
Sorry about the double post, my first time and I may have screwed it up :) Is this use of the "ghosting" really new? It is common practice in digitial wireless technology to use a RAKE receiver structure to resolve the reflections and recombine them to use the reflected power in addition to the line of sight path. Id be more curious to see what spectrum they are using and how their broadcast bandwidth efficency and absolute bandwidth compare to current technologies. I would think that that would make the definable difference. BTW 30 miles in an urban terain is going to require a _LOT_ of power, espically if the 44Mbps is not shared.
yeah, but then no-one is going to hear you because as AC your comments are rated zero and anyone worth their salt will be browsing at 2 or higher to get rid of all the dross that somehow slips into the system...
Handle your own security. The Freedom client has been released! Your ISP could transmit everything on open airwaves in the clear, and nobody will be able to tell even what sites you're visiting.
Quite.
You will also find that moderators are unlikely to moderate your posts up as they think it's giving Karma away...
"I can't do that... there are registered users who deserve the Karma more than you.... hahahahaha"
Kinda lame attempt at posting flamebait...
/. is to post stuff about how the newest technology has really been around for years, or to misspell something, or to post something mathematically (or technologically) inaccurately.
IMO- My guide to flamebait on
You DO mean $150,000, right? Not 150,000$.
Man, the updates here are fucking stupid in every way. It's proven by the post. Guess Roblimo is the least stupid, though. This isn't the story for all Robs, however.
Doesn't it seem like the days of the high powered transmitter broadcasting 80,000 watts of music power are over? I predict there will no longer be high powered TV and radio transmitters but instead we'll have small transcevers on every block covering just that block, channeling TV and radio on demand over the same protocols as internet traffic. They're already going to deallocate the FM, AM, and TV bands. Why not just make that the end of high powered transmissions and make us all use cell recievers.
I started reading this story and thinking about the Airport base station and transciever card I just got for my iBook yesterday. 150ft range or so, fast, works great, but this thing puts it all to shame.
Then I read how much it cost.
Ouch!!
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Have the health concerns ever been proven? I recall those studies linking cancer and microwaves are conflicting and inconclusive.
Go away you troll and back under the bridge with your FUD.
I'm surprised at the amount of response to what is basically puffery from Cisco marketing. Those of us in DC or San Francisco have been able to use Ricochet wireles for a few years now. True, the speed is 28.8 kbps, but Metricom is rolling out R2 in early 2000 to 28 markets. R2 will be ~128kbps, fully wireless, and work at up to 70 miles per hour, i.e. driving down the highway. It's been testing okay, and should be priced between $50-100 per month. IMHO, this is a lot more interesting right now. Yours truly, Mr. X
Greeting from Newbridge Networks, where wireless LMDS networks (higher microwave frequencies used = MORE bandwidth) are already available TODAY! Read about it now! Come get your OC-3 or T1 pipe... ethernet available too...
Just so you know, I write this from the background of a hardware engineer in the Wireless group at Newbridge. If you have any questions, please post them. I'll be watching. Otherwise, try emailing me at "myname"@newbridge.com
I have SOOO many comments to make, I'm going to have to make them in point form otherwise I'll be here all day. So, here we go:
1. What Cisco is proposing using multipath effects to avoid the line-of-sight problems is asking a LOT. I really doubt this is possible. I was involved in a research project over a year ago that basically ruled out this from being possible.
problem A: If you use a non directional antenna (easiest to set up, no alignment issues) you are then presented with the amount of processing needed to weed out signal from reflections - it is enormous. Your antenna also has no gain - a big problem with lossy low power MMDS or LMDS systems. No signal = lots of noise = low bandwidth or high error rate.
problem B: The other problem is cost to install a system like this. Lets say you find a nice shiny building to bounce your microwave signal off of. It's a LOT tougher to align your dish antenna to a unknown point on a building (trial and error) then to point your dish to a fixed known point. This could NOT be done by joe blow on his roof - you would need a pro installer to do this with specialized test equipment = $$$$$! You also need to do LOTS of thinking about what reflection you are going to use - too much work to make it cheap. TIME = $$$$.
The numbers they are quoting sound like marketing magic.
Enough marketing hoopla. Check out what we built... and you can have today!
Here's a few more links for you. Good techie stuff.
Check out: How to maximize the use of your available spectrum
and
Newbridge features, like QOS and awesome network management. Does CISCO offer this end to end networking? I think not.
More points:
This technology doesn't work on the move. It isn't meant for vehicle platforms. Fixed sites only.
30 MILE range? I think not. NO WAY they could get regulated. Think of the interference problems on adjacent cells, especially since they are using the multipath effects.
Typical cell sizes for LMDS MMDS systems are around 4 Km. (2.5 miles)
ISP's love this stuff because it can get them into peoples homes - last mile. Don't need cable, dont need phone lines.
If you have any questions, please post em. Man, the signal to noise ratio in this topic has been pretty bad. I hope this helps clear a few things up.
Your are a sick person. I see that /. has somehow moderated your comment in a way that it is not labeled "flamebait" or "troll" and that is good because such labels are above you. You really should not have anything to say at all because I am sure that it is not nice.
Also, European mobile phones generally use the 900mhz band. All US cell phone providers I am aware of use 1900mhz, so unless you have a dual-band phone using that wavelength, you're SOL (many European dual-band phones use 900/1800.) In any case, most dual-band European phones I've tried in the US have poor range compared to local PCS phones.
What I really want to see is the toys Qualcomm was talking about a while back. That'd really make wireless data traffic fun. And if this Cisco bit can do even local roaming, like ricochet, you're still doing very well.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
At 150k/base station it's gotta be comparable to cable/DSL (if you can serve something in the 800 customers range).
Most cellphone studies are funded by industry and if the data is undesirable, it is then quashed. Why? Well, funding of studies satisfies gov't requirements that some sort of product research be done. In the past year, there have been preliminary reports in Seattle area newspapers about research that finally shows correllation between microwave radiation of cellphone intensity and cellular damage. A summary article was published in one of the major newspapers at this URL http://www.seattle-pi.com/pi/national/cell01.shtml under the title "Cell phones harm memory, study finds" which was the top headline on Section B, Wednesday, December 1, 1999, of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
At 2.5 - 2.68 GHz I wouldn't stand in front of the transmitting gunplexor.
or was that the last post?
The article talks about using the ghosting effect caused by office blocks etc.
So, will it work in the areas that need bandwidth the most- RURAL areas?
I don't understand why there is such a rush to provide more and more bandwidth for cities. Surely the bandwidth shortage is in rural areas, which often can't get ISDN let alone cable or ADSL? And why the hell would anyone want to work from home if their office was less than five miles away?
I'll never understand those townie folk... :-)
--
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
yeah, this is exciting tech... maybe for a large corporation with many buildings all over a city, when you don't want to string fiber everywhere. That can get expensive. A half mil for the base and 150k a base is a tad expensive for home users. Intercity backbones baby. Large businesses will use this for their _really_fast_ net access, without buying an OC3.
-----
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Let's also not confuse with Sisco, the food distributor.
Although I heard that they were trying to cash in on all of the Internet hype by developing a line of snackable network switches.
Every one seems to be forgetting the cost of plugging the base station into the backbone when they are talking about this being a cheap way for small ISPs to get a leg up.
If anyone out there has some secret connection to buy 400km of fibre I'd love to hear it. No one talks about this for some reason. Its not price/installation/right-of-way/etc.... Its that you can't buy the stuff. It's like RAM except worse!!! If your telco doesn't have a contract dating back with Corning or someone a few years then there will not be any fibre for them to install in the coming years.....
something like this around three years ago... you'd have a "Pizza box" on your home, that would serve as your Phone/internet connection. Had to be within 5 miles of a base station (cell tower, with line of site), Pizza box had a dish on it that you would have to point at the nearest main station. Each dish could support 5 phone lines (they were cell phones) and a 256 kb internet feed. "Your cell phone is your home phone" was a part of the advertising. They were testing it in Colorado if I remember right... Anyone else remember this?
Seriously, can you really expect companies to even focus on provide high bandwidth solutions for even small towns? The cost is too staggering and for them not to make that money back. Rural support would almost be out of the question. Just thank God for your ISDN line (if you have that much).
Hell, they (Telco) don't even have the big cities rolled out yet. I cannot get SDSL to my apartment as of yet. Luckily I have Cable Modem but that still prevents me from running web/ftp servers from my home.
ChozSun [e-mail]
ChozSun
ChozSun.com
In fact to make an egg stand upright, you don't have to crach the bottom at all!!
Put the (uncooked) egg on its large base, hold it for some time (warning it can take some time!) and release the egg: it will stand still because the yellow part of the egg is heavier than the white part... Of course, it isn't very stable, but it works!!
I wonder.. if this post will be marked as interesting or off-topic ??
Isn't this essentially what phase shift keying modulation is? Bi-phase shift keying recognizes phase shifts of 0 and 180 degrees; Quad-phase shift keying recognizes phase shifts of 0, 90, 180, and 270 degrees; either of the above can also be "shifted" by a few degrees as well... and I'm told Harris Corp. also has modems that can recognize up to sixteen distinct phases. That gives you freedom to send data in binary, quaternary, or hexadecimal formats... thus sending (effectively) more than one traditional binary "bit" per wavelength.
You should read the Cisco documentation : http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/cc/cisco/mkt/serv prod/wt2700/nwwbb_sd.htm Security Information that requires a high level of security such as financial institutions and medical facilities will also benefit from fixed wireless links where the integrity of the data is of the utmost importance. Security of the information is provided through a high level of Data Encryption Standard (DES) encoding.
I live in a fairly large city. I already get cable TV in my house. In 1998, my cable company said to wait for next year. They are still saying the same thing this year. This is all while I have read numerous press releases about my cable company (Comcast) signing a contract with @Home.
DSL? Naw... I have checked all the DSL providers I could think of, and then I looked some more up and checked those. None of them offer DSL service in my area.
Am I the only one that's in a situation like this? I can imagine that if this is happening in a fairly large city (Philadelphia, for the curious) that the situation is even worse elsewhere. (No, I'm not saying that Philadelphia is the center of the world, but it is a fairly large and known city.)
The nerve! How dare these guys force you to sit and read Slashdot stories when you obviously have better things to do! I mean please, your life of childish name-calling and corrections of minor character misuse is a demanding one, you can't be forced to sit and read sites like this one with your on-the-go lifestyle. I for one say that you should write your congressman and make them do something about this injustice!
There are a few issues with high speed wireless data that Cisco has failed to mention in their press release.. The first and most important issue is the fact that they don't mention spectrum and/or frequency range per channel... These are so important due to the fact that if you have a system that uses frequencies that are expensive/impossible to license you have a dead product... The spectrum of that frequency that is used per base station, user etc.. Is important because if you purchase a 100mhz block and have to use 20mhz for each "node" on the cell site, and the fcc only allows that portion of the spectrum to be overlapped in an oh so finite way.. It could become impossible to make money of this thing becuase you can't deploy it. This product has to use a high frequency, (+2ghz) and use a large portion of the spectrum to achieve it's data rates.. (20mhz or more) At least to achieve those data rates consistently at long distances. The problem with a small spectrum lotsa signalling (datarate) and long distances is that it will become harder to filter out what is data and what is noise. You can only fit so many oscillations in the wavepath before even minute changes make it impossible to reliably communicate a signal. Your only options then are to make the wavelength longer in the same space of time (more spectrum) or to get really fast, and accurate chips to decode those wavelengths reliably. Then the question is raised.. Just use a really long wavelength!.. Problem with that is that you have then a signal degeneration issue due to the fact that different frequencies travel ever so slightly differently through the air. And when they get to the destination, can be just as impossible to determine if that wavelength was signalled in the same slot or the next slot.. Slow down the slots and now you have a inherently lagged to hell system... Bottom line on this cisco thing is that you get 44mbps directly below the tower, but the reliable data rate actually ends up being 20mbps 5 miles out... 10mbps 10miles out, and 5 at 15miles, etc.. etc.. If that.... (don't count on it due to the fact that theoretically you could do this on paper, but factor in environmentals and you go to hell)... Oh yes, did I mention that these are probably FULL duplex rates? Realization on a download or upload will only be half of the above advertised value in the press release.. (unless of course you are doing both u/ling and d/ling at the same time OF COURSE assuming that your modems are not asymmetrical... Bottom line, it's cisco's hype to try and capture a market before it actually gets a product... Benchmarketing has been around for a long time... Wait until real world trials and test data come back from this whizbang technology...
Of course encrypted tunneling to a server solves the on-the-air-in-the-clear problem, too. (But it also provides a fixed central location for a physical tap.)
Perhaps a plurality of encrypted-tunnel servers? B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Cheaper and *Faster*: http://www.spectrumwireless.net Check out the 2011DS units. With this system, you can get upwards of 150Mbps of aggregate bandwidth per tower/building. The 'trancievers' are more expensive, but are full-fledged routers, with a big feature set, and great throughput. The base station cost is less than 1/3 for a maxxed out rooftop.
The use of ghosting is to get around things that block line-of-sight. In rural areas you don't have a forest of buildings. If it's flat, you have line of sight. If it's hilly, treat the hills as "buildings" and pick up a ghost.
If it's a forest of trees you might have a problem.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
problem A: If you use a non directional antenna (easiest to set up, no alignment issues) you are then presented with the amount of processing needed to weed out signal from reflections - it is enormous.
Your antenna also has no gain - a big problem with lossy low power MMDS or LMDS systems. No signal = lots of noise = low bandwidth or high error rate.
Why not use a vaguely-directional antenna (no serious alignment problems, picks up primary and/or several major ghosts), then pick the strongest handful of unmoving signals, delay them into sync, and add them? (I thought the latter was what Metricom was already doing with their non-directional antenna.)
The box might take a minute or so to train itself on startup. But with the base and remote fixed the training wouldn't have to be tweaked in real-time after that.
Is there something I've missed?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
To me this sounds more like something that an ISP would be using to link large buisnesses and "remote" links that are within 30 miles of them in situations where it not be economical to use underground/overground wiring; where existing fiber/HS telco lines are already hoarded/owned by others that realized its value and got it "cheap"... The difference between this and microwave technology used by ISPs is (1) speed, and (2) the (non) line of sight capability.
--
Time is on my side
Check this out
There's a nice article on LMDS service in this month's Wired. It focuses on WinStar, but mentions other players. The article mentions that MMDS (multichannel multipoint distribution) suffers a performance hit similar to cable-modem users since "it's a system where all users share the same signal". Also mentioned is that MCI WorldCom has been buying into a number of companies that own 2-3 GHz spectrum.
Anyone else see the link to Slashdot: The Broadband Wars on the sidebar that called /. an "informative forum"? They must have their threshold really high.
--
E_NOSIG
I wish I would've bought Cisco stock when they went public years ago. I'd be a millionare today. :-)
Its basically the same reason people once made the clock a portable unit... because sometimes want to bring the source of some info with you. Imagine a world where the only clocks are water driven monsters weighing a quarter ton, or if there were no pencils and pens, only 200lb typewriters. As far as a user is concerned, the internet is NOT everywhere, it is only at the places where it can be accessed. Well dammit, I don't want to have to drive across town just to surf slashdot! remainder is semi off topic: FYI there's a term for what mobile connections will bring about: "Ubiquitous Computing". The sweet thing there is that you carry around your palmtop (by then, wristtop? braintop?) and use it from wherever you are to access powerful facilities, like yonder supercomputer or your home machine. With ubiquitous computation comes a world-shaker unto itself, ubiquitous telecommunication; This will probably make or break whether a country is considered "first world" in the next century, much as literacy and industralization did in the past. A thought: Imagine yourself in 2099; you buy a new watch, load BSD on it and register with a local data commune. You now enjoy a highband, low latency link to a nearby urban work cluster; If latency is low enough and bandwidth marginally high enough, you can use the watch like those rinky dink old terminals you sometimes see. Your session will be served by the machines you log in to and all the number crunching will be done remotely; also if you download an MP3 from somewhere, it gets shoved onto your host in like .0001 sec, from where it can be streamed to your ears instantly. Call Tokyo from Greenland for no charge (above your flat connectiont fee). Sell all your shares of M$ in the blink of a gavel. Tell your wife you love her in the middle of the workday. All these things and more may sound pie in the sky right now, but our grandkids are going to wonder how we lived without it the way we take things like electricity, telephony and indoor plumbing for granted (the toilet is a recent invention compared to a lot of things!!!). As far as having a powerful computer on your person, instead of just a remote link to one, that's not (imho) going to be an issue until power users start needing to do mobile, real time processing of local data. E.g, using your watch to detect and filter multiple nearby conversations, doing realtime visual ID, running version X.3 of your personal AI autosecretary.... The question isn't whether it's possible to sell it affordably and soon to the consumer... it's whether the telcos and governments and such are willing to let "the masses" (namely you and me) have these things. The totally gutless, and completely anonymous -Coward A witty saying proves nothing. -Voltaire
There is NO REASON why traffic control /needs/ to run off a centralized computer*... though the gov't would hardly have it any other way. Simply put, if each car is constantly relaying its environ data to some master server, not only is there latency issues (like, cause i'm going 110 mph and a 900ms response time can be the difference between swerving and smacking head on) but theres TONS of ethics here! First, consider yourself tracked. The man WILL know where your car is at all times. Further, if this is REAL computer traffic control, that means the system is driving, not you. Hybrid control is a foolish idea because human drivers are unpredictable in the extreme. So lets say the DOJ decides to arrest me. Instead of searching for me, they just wait until my car requests an IP (or whatever we have then), then as soon as they see me start to move they lock the doors and MY CAR DRIVES ME TO THE JAIL!!!! Those of you who read Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" know exactly what I mean. If traffic control is EVER implemented in a centralized fashion, god help us all... which basically leaves us screwed *Case in point: right now traffic control is performed by distributed decision making devices i.e. the driver of the car --- Ray... when someone asks you... if you're a god... you..say.. YES!
Seems to me that both LMDS and MMDS were the subject of FCC auctions and that you can run a site unless you own the licence. and their are only one or two licences per goegraphic "cell" just like cellular licences, can anyone confirm this?
Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming. -Brian Kernigan
This is old news. Making multipath interference work for you instead of against you has been done in digital communications for quite a while now. In consumer electronics, it's an integral feature of the CDMA cellular/pcs technology.
(Insert blatant Qualcomm plug here.)
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WHOA!! Ken and Barbie are having TOO MUCH FUN!! It must be the NEGATIVE IONS!!
If this is using the technology I think it is(the article wasn't very specific) interference actually helps. The reciever uses the signal reflections, caused by the obstructions, as a type of error checking. Basicly the reciever recieves 10-20 copies of the transmission because of signal reflections. Most other applications try to filter this out, but this technology uses it as error checking.
At least if this is the same technology I am thinking of. I think it is, because they made such a large point out of obstructions.
If I want to read e-mail as I carpool, Metricom is the way to go. A cell phone or a Ricochet is the right thing(TM) because it's *portable*. No contest--Metricom wins. Their cellular technology is robust and flexible. Just like the Internet. You'll love it. Just 'cause you didn't buy Metricom stock at $6 this year, you don't have to be bitter. Besides, Paul Allen likes Metricom.
How can you compare a mobile 128kbps system to a fixed 44Mbps link?
And why is everyone against Cisco, saying "oh, this is not new" or "it's just marketing BS".
Well, for your information it IS new. There is no other comparable solution in the market for fixed long-range high speed non-line-of-sight communication.
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Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
The article does not say if this is a two way service or how it works. The transmit bases I am assuming is high powered so the 'bouncing' off buildings and such will work well but for the low power return path this might not work so well. Also, it seems that doing this method of transmitting might reduce your ability of doing cellularization with MMDS.. Comments?
not to be technical, but actually it's Sysco - they have a warehouse on I79 outside of Pittsburgh...
The press articles are leaving out a lot of details. This is about MMDS, a spectrum originally raffled off as "wireless cable". That didn't fly in many cases and the companies largely went bankrupt. Within the past year, Worldcom has bought most of them up, with Sprint picking up most of the others. One per city, so that's it -- other ISPs Need Not Apply.
Cisco's contribution is, per some articles I've read, Vector Orthoganal Frequency Division Multiplexing. It's a way of surviving multipath. It's not a panacaea for line of sight problems; rather, it means that if you can get the signal via one or more paths (vs. "just one" using some other codes), the multipath won't clobber it.
NYNEX was going to use MMDS here in Boston, but they discovered that the licensee's network didn't reach more than 2/3 of households. You do need something resembling line of sight at 2.5 GHz. Although VOFDM might make do with a more indirect path than plain old TV did.
Cisco should donate a pair to Australia, one on Black mountain tower, Canberra, and one on Centrepoint, Sydney.
It's an MMDS Internet Access service in the San Francisco Bay Area. Multiple ISP's are available. It's been operating for almost two years now. It's Ok if you can't get DSL but it's hardly the new age of Internet. Our servive at my previous company was actually a bit flakey. The "modem" kept freezing up and needed to be power cycled once or twice per day.
GPRS extends the existing GSM protocol to give circa 140kbps "always on" data links. This arrives next year in Europe (about 2033 in the US).
;)
UMTS will offer bucket loads of bandwidth - I forget how much..somewhere between 2MB and 9MB I think. This will take a bit longer to appear as it requires a completely new network infrastructure and set of frequencies.
Unfortunately our friends in the US don't seem to like these technologies.... A strong attack of NIH syndrome I should say.
BTW, for Europe in the previous comment read Rest-of-the-World-except-USA.
MMDS (and LMDS) technology is far from new. There were many companies that tried to make 'consumer internet over wireless' work in the real world. All of them are not doing so well.
List of companies include:
www.caiwireless.com (recovering from chapter 11 about a year ago)
http://www.harmonicdata.com/
http://www.speedus.com (almost went bankrupt, sold 90% of their spectrum allocation, restarting with a different technology)
Winstar and ART Telecom are using MMDS as well, and doing well, but their business model is completely different. They aim at businesses, and
they price it accordingly.
MMDS and LMDS does not work well if you do not have line-of-sight, no matter what the vendors tell you. Not-LOS span is about 1 mile, not 30.
LMDS and MMDS will work reasonably well in a rural or suburban areas, where LOS is not a major problem. But even there, the effective coverage ranger will be probably 2-3 miles per transmitter, not 30.
You must also consider that LMDS and MMDS are affected by rain and sleet. Company that decides to provide service in an area must license the spectrum from FCC. There can only be 2 licensors per area, one of them having 10x more bandwidth than the other. Licenses for a metropolitan area were going for 50-100M$. So, as result of all that , do not expect your neighbourhood ISP to offer MMDS service anytime soon...
Could this be an implementation of the Bell Labs BLAST system that also takes advantage of multipath for faster data rates using mulitple antennae? The Economist had a writeup of this in their tech section a couple of weeks ago.
e l-overview.html
2 .html
http://www.bell-labs.com/project/blast/high-lev
http://www.bell-labs.com/news/1998/september/9/
"Under the widely used theoretical assumption of independent Rayleigh scattering, the theoretical capacity of the BLAST architecture grows roughly linearly with the number of antennas, even when the total transmitted power is held constant. In the real world of course, scattering will be less favorable than the independent Rayleigh distributed assumption, and it remains to be seen how much capacity is actually available in various propagation environments. Nevertheless, even in relatively poor scattering environments, BLAST should be able to provide significantly higher capacities than conventional architectures. A laboratory prototype has already demonstrated spectral efficiencies of 20 to 40 bits per second per Hertz of bandwidth, numbers that are simply unattainable using standard techniques."
FCC has been holding hearings on this subject, here is their web page:
http://www.fcc.gov/bandwidth/
http://www.fcc.gov/broadband/
some of the hearings are in real player format.
great minds often encounter violent opposition from medocre minds. -albert einstein