For this technology, every "Mom and Pop" will have to want to get involved and then actually GET involved (read: get educated on this technology). Right now, people have a reliable, relatively cheap, guaranteed service (PSTN). For a long time to come, everyone will have to have a local telco service as well as a VoIP service as they wait for the others around them to adopt (think migrating to IPv6 from IPv4). People that live around parks, or downtown cores etc will have their internet connections milked constantly while other peoples connections will barely be used. People in rural areas are out of luck unless local municipal/county governments fund WiFi towers to connect highway runs and even the people that live a country block from eachother (farm country - you people still want cell coverage out in the boonies don't you?). There will still have to be some large corporation doing all the addressing on the routers and at least some network monitoring -- maybe this is where IPv6 will make its debut. Again, people in core area's will need more than a small router to handle all of the traffic. These area's will all have to have UPS/lightning arrestors installed either in the basement of the apartments or in the apartments themselves because you can't have a whole sector dropping because the power goes down for 2 minutes. You will still need a local ISP or Telco to carry all of the internet (long distance) traffic - the rates will rise on data if voice disappears. The ISP and the telco will be merged so if a large sector of people in a downtown area are all on Verizon DSL service and they have a network problem, now you have phone as well as internet outages. DoS'ing a router from the internet will take out phone service now as well.
Hmm... thats all I can think of right now, but I'm sure there are many other issues that should be rectified before this technology even has a chance.
This kind of story makes me sick. I remember reading about this case awhile back. An old farmer who has had the same land for many many years and grows ORGANIC CANOLA gets flanked by his neighbours growing Monsanto seeds. One day he notices some strange looking Canola growing in a ditch, he sprays it with Roundup (which he just coincidentally happens to use) and the plant doesn't die. He does some research and finds that the Rounup is a Monsanto product specifically designed not to harm Monsanto produce. He realizes that some Monstanto product has floated over to his farm from one of his neighbours (very possible seeing as 5 people around him grow Monsanto Canola) so he starts spraying futher and further into his field and sees more and more of his Canola perish. This seems obvious: The Monsanto product was being blown in by the wind and the further away from the host field it flew, the less dense the infection. One of his neighbours (obviously not too neighbourly) tips off Monsanto that this guy is illegally growing the seeds without purchasing the license. One day in the near future, a plane flys low over his field and dumps a bunch of Roundup (or a similar product) on his field to test for Monsanto product. Monsanto says they didn't do it (I'm sure some random guy felt like renting a plane and buying a bunch of herbicide to spread on a random field). Now Monsanto sues the old farmer for scamming them - enough to put this guy out of business and leave the farm. The guy grows ORGANIC FUCKING CANOLA. The Monsanto strain NEGATES THE ABILITY TO SELL THE CANOLA AS A STRAIGHT ORGANIC PRODUCT. His field was not entirely Monsanto. There is no reason for this guy to use Monsanto - he makes a good living selling organic products. The Monsanto product not only fucks him over legally but now he can't sell his organic product - Monsanto has INFECTED his field and now he has to pay them?! They should be sued for infecting his organic field with their genetically modified garbage. Famers like this guy take the seeds from this years harvest and use them again next year - no need to purchase a Monsanto license every year because he ALREADY HAS THE SEEDS. This is corporate trash at its lowest. It seriously does make me sick - I hope this can be turned around.
I support this kind of thing every day at work with the odd internet customer/staff member. Spybot has really helped out a lot - its free, small, and works great. I can believe the 12% figure, but here at the ISP I work for, its more like 60% of calls, only the customer doesn't know they are calling for this particular problem. For them, the internet and their computer has just bogged right down so they think something is wrong with the internet.
Doesn't April Fools end at Noon, or is that just a Canadian thing? This post is at 12:30 so I take this to be a legitimate idiot wanting to ruin his kids life forever;)
I would have said "Screw you, I'm sitting on my roof and watching your game if I want to. If you don't want me to, build higher walls. If you build me a seat on my roof like the ones in your stadium and send a guy up here every 15 minutes to bring me snacks and beer, THEN i'll pay the $10 for a ticket - if not, get off my property." If this didn't work I would have said "Before your stadium was here, I was allowed to come up on the roof and relax. Now you've placed something in my DIRECT VISION which I cannot look away from and you force me to pay for looking. I am in turn going to charge you a fee for disturbing my view every night and limiting my freedom (STEALING my freedom and a favourite passtime). The charge will be equal to the cost of a ticket price every evening."
Yeah and what if you upgrade the harddrive.. can you access that "protected partition" to copy the backup that you paid for to the new drive or do you now have to purchase the software again - so fujitsu could save $0.30 to send you that restore disc. This obviously seems like more limitations as opposed to more freedoms.
I administer a large DSL/dialup userbase and I monitor upstream bandwidth as much as I can. If I notice a DSL customer that has 100% of their upstream bandwidth used I usually check the traffic to see if its email. I will notify the customer and give them a day or two to rectify the problem. If the problem is not fixed within 48 hours I will disable that PVC which will effectively drop sync from the users modem. When the customer comes home, they are now forced to fix the problem. I try to explain to them as politely as possible that they are contributing to the junk mail problem that they are always complaining about and that we had to disable their connection to prevent this. Most people understand and the lack of internet connection gives them the initiative to get up and go purchase some AV software and to run Spybot or some similar program. They phone back once their computer is clean and I turn the circuit back on.
I have a cousin who has acted in very similar ways. The only thing different is that he played competitive sports his whole life. His parents divorced at a young age but he was still very close with both of them. The kicker is that the kid ALWAYS got what he wanted (rich parents competing for love by buying it), when he wanted. When things didn't go his way, he would whine and cry and act like a small child. Ofcourse, one of his parents would make it all better by telling him how good he was and getting him more of what he wanted. So I don't think its necessarily a lack of competitiveness, but more like he's been babied his whole life and now is a baby. He probably whined and bitched and complained to get what he wanted, and now that he's growing up, he thinks he can whine/bitch/complain to schools for admission. Too bad.
A previous ISP that I worked for in a rural location in Canada did this with the local town to split the costs. Its not that interesting, but I thought i'd try for first post:)
For example, it is assumed that this dark energy exhibits a repulsive force similar to gravity but opposite to it in direction. If we truly understand how this works then we might be able to apply that knowledge toward "anti-gravity" spacecraft, etc.
I am not a physicist, so I have a simple question:
Dark energy apparently exhibits a repulsive force similar to gravity but opposite to it in direction... what direction does Gravity work in? I mean, it "pulls towards" something, correct? So this "Dark Energy" repels away from something? So is it similar to magnetic attraction/repulsion - aside from the fact that it "attracts" everything, not just metallic objects? If it is repelling away from something, what is the something that it is pushing away from? What's the source, or is this fundamental question that everyone is trying to figure out?
I personally don't enjoy devices that attempt to be other devices when its obvious that they won't come close. If I want a camera, I will purchase a camera. If I want a phone, I will purchase a phone. If I want a PDA....
If manufacturers can integrate all of these features into one device without making it large, annoying to use, or mad expensive, then thats fine with me, but once you start losing a bunch of the (essential) features of each individual device by throwing it together into one "convenient" package, I get annoyed.
Currently I use an AudioVox CDM8600. It was free so I gladly use it but there are features that lack and features that make it just plain annoying. I enjoy the colour screen (but definately do not require it).. I'm not partial to the pictures I have to choose from (like the little clown that pops on the screen when it starts up), and there are no normal ringers. There are annoying tones or stupid songs... no decent ringers like on my Kyocera 2255 or Qualcom 26XX series phones - you know, ringers that sound like a PHONE is ringing. I imagine I can "download" great ringtones but over the web there is a "Buy" button instead of "Download" when I attempt to. I don't even think you can listen to them before buying them. I can also "download" screensavers and background images but I imagine that those are for sale as well. I think the strategy here was "hey lets sell screensavers/pictures and ringtones over the internet, but wait, the only way people will buy them is if we include sub-standard ones in our stock phones, so lets provide really stupid pictures and make people buy to be less annoyed."
At one time, I thought new features were great on cell phones.. I have never been interested in the games that come with phones (a plus in this case.. my phone didn't ship with any.. but I can DOWNLOAD them), or the crazy songs that go with them. I did, however, like the idea of next-gen phones with more bandwidth for surfing. Finally I realized that this was also a waste. I have no need to surf the web on my phone. I say KEEP VANILLA PHONES AROUND!
A Lot of people use phones for business and half these things are like little kiddie game machines that definately don't scream professional with a picture of a clown bouncing around while some sports song is playing for the ringer. On top of that, older people especially, but younger as well, just want to purchase a TELEPHONE. A simple device that stores names, numbers and makes/receives phonecalls. A Vanilla phone should definately come free with any cell service or atleast be GREATLY reduced in price. I'm sure there is still a market for such a phone.
What I propose:
A Modular cellphone. Some open cellphone (perhaps based on linux), with modules that can be purchased from your provider or as a download over the internet via your phone or computer. Cellphones with USB (!!!!) access instead of proprietary connectors/data cables. Your phone has a finite amount of memory in it.. you could download a module that lets you use up the majority of space with an address book. If you don't like address books, you could fill it all up with games or sounds or pictures or integrated voice mail capability (which my phone has). Any feature that you don't want is deleted from your phone until you choose to download that module. No skipping through menu after menu of features you don't want. New specialized modules could be created for the phones (like apps for palmOS) in the future. For example, in my address book, I may only want to store 3 pieces of info for each person, maybe I don't want AIM/ICQ numbers etc.. I could create a module that only has the features I want. If I want a grocery list module, I could code it up to add my total at the bottom, or download new layout modules to give my cell a new look and feel etc etc etc.. It would also be cool to have network-enabled phones that could reference an address book/date book in some format over the internet. I could
You don't really have to worry about weather if you go with 900MHz solutions. If you have a small area like the one you are describing, you could probably get away with an NLOS (Non line of sight) solution. This means LOWER cost for your SUs. No outdoor equipment that has to handle the elements, and less installation cost/time - this means faster ROI (Return On Investment). You might be able to have your customers sign a 12 month contract and supply them the SU equipment for free, or for a reduced rate. If they are happy with the service they will probably stick around.
Remember... the lower the frequency, the better penetration rate. 900MHz will go through objects a LOT better than 5.8Ghz will. 5.8Ghz will start to do poorly in an area that is heavily saturated with moisture - hence tree leaves etc killing the signal. 900Mhz will go right through them (unless they are a certain type of pine tree, then 900Mhz dies right away).
I was wondering how you keep people from hooking into the wireless system without paying for a subscription?
Is there some device-specific authentication (based on MAC address or something)? If so, does that mean that each computer in a customer's house needs to be subscribed separately?
Wireless companies do this differently. Some have a WEP key, some do MAC address authentication, some have a proprietary authentication system, some have a service ID (like an ESSID for a cellphone) etc. or a combination of several of these.
Or is there a receiver box (maybe with a router) located in the customer's house which is authenticated by the ISP? Wouldn't this preclude roaming?
At the customers residence, there will be a CPE Radio with an RJ45 (ethernet) jack that plugs into your PC or router. This radio will be connected to the antenna located in or outside your house. The radio will have a MAC address that is usually used for authentication or will be programmed with the ESSID of the tower, the WEP key etc. The system usually doesn't care what MAC address your PC or Router is using... it just allows anything from an authenticated radio. This is not 802.11b/g so it is highly unlikely that someone could piggyback onto your connection. They would need the ESSID and probably have to spoof the MAC address at a bare minimum to gain access. Some solutions that I have seen have a master database that has every radios mac address entered which is associated with a customers name/number or some customer ID that you could use. This prevents someone from looking at what kind of equipment you use, then going out and purchasing that equipment with the intent of free access. If they aren't in the database, the Access Points will not allow the CPE radio to talk to them. If you want to add another layer, you could simply run PPPoE to authenticate any PC or Router.
Basically there are a bunch of different security measures that can be used, so you can feel pretty safe that nobody thieving your bandwidth.
Hey macdaddy, we are also the telco for our area and right now we run AFC/Copper Mountain equipment for the DSLAMs. I agree, they are pricey, but Copper Mountain is mad cheap compared to AFC. We are also a cooperative company, so we will probably just supply the subscriber units free of charge to our customers instead of making them pay a huge fee up front. We thought about doing 802.11b/g for the hotspot idea (which we probably will do), but we are looking at a fixed-wireless system that will do several miles for the rest of the coverage. The hotspot will probably be supplied by ADCs Loopstar system, which you should definately check out. Right now Motorola's Canopy has our attention because of the way they package their service. You do not need to pay for service contracts, their startup costs are not too high, the antennas they use are TINY compared to other products that I have looked at thus far, the range/bandwidth is pretty decent (which will be doubled in the spring) for what we need and the dealers we have been speaking with have awesome customer service. So far they are definately in the lead. Other companies I have been comparing are WaveRider, Airspan and a few others. I am going through the comments on this forum because I have heard some recommendations for companies that I have not heard of before. I will post an update when we get closer to our decision but right now its all about Motorola.
Cyberop5, I was actually at a Motorola Canopy meeting yesterday and we are definately swaying in that direction right now. They have free software upgrades twice a year that add huge features to their exisiting hardware base. They are coming out with a new board model for all of their hardware this spring that will effectively double their bandwidth and distance so I think I am going to wait until then. Very promising technology. Thanks!
My buddy had the job of going into sewage treatment plants after they were drained for the anual cleaning. All the sediments and other heavy 'objects' (read: the odd animal, or bird that had fallen in the tanks, condoms, etc etc) that wouldn't fit through the filter grates had to be shovelled out or picked out by hand. Basically he climbed down into the large tanks that usually store huge volumes of raw sewage and anything else that gets flushed down the sh*tter and scrubbed 'em clean.
I'd say this probably isn't the worst job out there, but its pretty shitty. Tee hee.
I don't see how it could automatically be considered that he registered the domain out of bad faith. If MS offered the kid $10, and he says "no way, I just spent a sh*tload of time building this up - pay me $10,000 because its a pain in the ass to redo everything." It doesn't seem like bad faith to me... it seems more like the attitude of "Fine, I will give up the domain because you people are bloody annoying, but I'm not giving it up unless you pay me for my wasted time." This is probably what a lot of people would do. He probably had no intention of puting MS-related content on his page and drawing parallels between him and MS, he just happens to have a catchy name. I hope MS gets a lot of bad press about this so they can smarten up... they are acting like a bunch of little kids.
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For this technology, every "Mom and Pop" will have to want to get involved and then actually GET involved (read: get educated on this technology). Right now, people have a reliable, relatively cheap, guaranteed service (PSTN). For a long time to come, everyone will have to have a local telco service as well as a VoIP service as they wait for the others around them to adopt (think migrating to IPv6 from IPv4). People that live around parks, or downtown cores etc will have their internet connections milked constantly while other peoples connections will barely be used. People in rural areas are out of luck unless local municipal/county governments fund WiFi towers to connect highway runs and even the people that live a country block from eachother (farm country - you people still want cell coverage out in the boonies don't you?). There will still have to be some large corporation doing all the addressing on the routers and at least some network monitoring -- maybe this is where IPv6 will make its debut. Again, people in core area's will need more than a small router to handle all of the traffic. These area's will all have to have UPS/lightning arrestors installed either in the basement of the apartments or in the apartments themselves because you can't have a whole sector dropping because the power goes down for 2 minutes. You will still need a local ISP or Telco to carry all of the internet (long distance) traffic - the rates will rise on data if voice disappears. The ISP and the telco will be merged so if a large sector of people in a downtown area are all on Verizon DSL service and they have a network problem, now you have phone as well as internet outages. DoS'ing a router from the internet will take out phone service now as well.
Hmm... thats all I can think of right now, but I'm sure there are many other issues that should be rectified before this technology even has a chance.
This kind of story makes me sick. I remember reading about this case awhile back. An old farmer who has had the same land for many many years and grows ORGANIC CANOLA gets flanked by his neighbours growing Monsanto seeds. One day he notices some strange looking Canola growing in a ditch, he sprays it with Roundup (which he just coincidentally happens to use) and the plant doesn't die. He does some research and finds that the Rounup is a Monsanto product specifically designed not to harm Monsanto produce. He realizes that some Monstanto product has floated over to his farm from one of his neighbours (very possible seeing as 5 people around him grow Monsanto Canola) so he starts spraying futher and further into his field and sees more and more of his Canola perish. This seems obvious: The Monsanto product was being blown in by the wind and the further away from the host field it flew, the less dense the infection. One of his neighbours (obviously not too neighbourly) tips off Monsanto that this guy is illegally growing the seeds without purchasing the license. One day in the near future, a plane flys low over his field and dumps a bunch of Roundup (or a similar product) on his field to test for Monsanto product. Monsanto says they didn't do it (I'm sure some random guy felt like renting a plane and buying a bunch of herbicide to spread on a random field). Now Monsanto sues the old farmer for scamming them - enough to put this guy out of business and leave the farm. The guy grows ORGANIC FUCKING CANOLA. The Monsanto strain NEGATES THE ABILITY TO SELL THE CANOLA AS A STRAIGHT ORGANIC PRODUCT. His field was not entirely Monsanto. There is no reason for this guy to use Monsanto - he makes a good living selling organic products. The Monsanto product not only fucks him over legally but now he can't sell his organic product - Monsanto has INFECTED his field and now he has to pay them?! They should be sued for infecting his organic field with their genetically modified garbage. Famers like this guy take the seeds from this years harvest and use them again next year - no need to purchase a Monsanto license every year because he ALREADY HAS THE SEEDS. This is corporate trash at its lowest. It seriously does make me sick - I hope this can be turned around.
I support this kind of thing every day at work with the odd internet customer/staff member. Spybot has really helped out a lot - its free, small, and works great. I can believe the 12% figure, but here at the ISP I work for, its more like 60% of calls, only the customer doesn't know they are calling for this particular problem. For them, the internet and their computer has just bogged right down so they think something is wrong with the internet.
Dude, farm it out to India. Duh.
Doesn't April Fools end at Noon, or is that just a Canadian thing? This post is at 12:30 so I take this to be a legitimate idiot wanting to ruin his kids life forever ;)
I would have said "Screw you, I'm sitting on my roof and watching your game if I want to. If you don't want me to, build higher walls. If you build me a seat on my roof like the ones in your stadium and send a guy up here every 15 minutes to bring me snacks and beer, THEN i'll pay the $10 for a ticket - if not, get off my property." If this didn't work I would have said "Before your stadium was here, I was allowed to come up on the roof and relax. Now you've placed something in my DIRECT VISION which I cannot look away from and you force me to pay for looking. I am in turn going to charge you a fee for disturbing my view every night and limiting my freedom (STEALING my freedom and a favourite passtime). The charge will be equal to the cost of a ticket price every evening."
Yeah, did you notice her license plate said KIA? :0
Unless the shit came from someone in the marketing department.
zing!
Yeah and what if you upgrade the harddrive.. can you access that "protected partition" to copy the backup that you paid for to the new drive or do you now have to purchase the software again - so fujitsu could save $0.30 to send you that restore disc. This obviously seems like more limitations as opposed to more freedoms.
I administer a large DSL/dialup userbase and I monitor upstream bandwidth as much as I can. If I notice a DSL customer that has 100% of their upstream bandwidth used I usually check the traffic to see if its email. I will notify the customer and give them a day or two to rectify the problem. If the problem is not fixed within 48 hours I will disable that PVC which will effectively drop sync from the users modem. When the customer comes home, they are now forced to fix the problem. I try to explain to them as politely as possible that they are contributing to the junk mail problem that they are always complaining about and that we had to disable their connection to prevent this. Most people understand and the lack of internet connection gives them the initiative to get up and go purchase some AV software and to run Spybot or some similar program. They phone back once their computer is clean and I turn the circuit back on.
I have a cousin who has acted in very similar ways. The only thing different is that he played competitive sports his whole life. His parents divorced at a young age but he was still very close with both of them. The kicker is that the kid ALWAYS got what he wanted (rich parents competing for love by buying it), when he wanted. When things didn't go his way, he would whine and cry and act like a small child. Ofcourse, one of his parents would make it all better by telling him how good he was and getting him more of what he wanted. So I don't think its necessarily a lack of competitiveness, but more like he's been babied his whole life and now is a baby. He probably whined and bitched and complained to get what he wanted, and now that he's growing up, he thinks he can whine/bitch/complain to schools for admission. Too bad.
The ISP that I work for is the only one around here too. We charge $39.95 CDN for 1.5Mb/256Kb. I guess we aren't scammers like your ISP ;)
A previous ISP that I worked for in a rural location in Canada did this with the local town to split the costs. Its not that interesting, but I thought i'd try for first post :)
Yeah and a document that lists internal and external FTP servers (which are probably dead now) with such cryptic accounts as:
username: South
password: Park
Seriously.
Finally! The source code to Solitaire!
For example, it is assumed that this dark energy exhibits a repulsive force similar to gravity but opposite to it in direction. If we truly understand how this works then we might be able to apply that knowledge toward "anti-gravity" spacecraft, etc.
I am not a physicist, so I have a simple question:
Dark energy apparently exhibits a repulsive force similar to gravity but opposite to it in direction... what direction does Gravity work in? I mean, it "pulls towards" something, correct? So this "Dark Energy" repels away from something? So is it similar to magnetic attraction/repulsion - aside from the fact that it "attracts" everything, not just metallic objects? If it is repelling away from something, what is the something that it is pushing away from? What's the source, or is this fundamental question that everyone is trying to figure out?
I personally don't enjoy devices that attempt to be other devices when its obvious that they won't come close. If I want a camera, I will purchase a camera. If I want a phone, I will purchase a phone. If I want a PDA....
If manufacturers can integrate all of these features into one device without making it large, annoying to use, or mad expensive, then thats fine with me, but once you start losing a bunch of the (essential) features of each individual device by throwing it together into one "convenient" package, I get annoyed.
Currently I use an AudioVox CDM8600. It was free so I gladly use it but there are features that lack and features that make it just plain annoying. I enjoy the colour screen (but definately do not require it).. I'm not partial to the pictures I have to choose from (like the little clown that pops on the screen when it starts up), and there are no normal ringers. There are annoying tones or stupid songs... no decent ringers like on my Kyocera 2255 or Qualcom 26XX series phones - you know, ringers that sound like a PHONE is ringing. I imagine I can "download" great ringtones but over the web there is a "Buy" button instead of "Download" when I attempt to. I don't even think you can listen to them before buying them. I can also "download" screensavers and background images but I imagine that those are for sale as well. I think the strategy here was "hey lets sell screensavers/pictures and ringtones over the internet, but wait, the only way people will buy them is if we include sub-standard ones in our stock phones, so lets provide really stupid pictures and make people buy to be less annoyed."
At one time, I thought new features were great on cell phones.. I have never been interested in the games that come with phones (a plus in this case.. my phone didn't ship with any.. but I can DOWNLOAD them), or the crazy songs that go with them. I did, however, like the idea of next-gen phones with more bandwidth for surfing. Finally I realized that this was also a waste. I have no need to surf the web on my phone. I say KEEP VANILLA PHONES AROUND!
A Lot of people use phones for business and half these things are like little kiddie game machines that definately don't scream professional with a picture of a clown bouncing around while some sports song is playing for the ringer. On top of that, older people especially, but younger as well, just want to purchase a TELEPHONE. A simple device that stores names, numbers and makes/receives phonecalls. A Vanilla phone should definately come free with any cell service or atleast be GREATLY reduced in price. I'm sure there is still a market for such a phone.
What I propose:
A Modular cellphone. Some open cellphone (perhaps based on linux), with modules that can be purchased from your provider or as a download over the internet via your phone or computer. Cellphones with USB (!!!!) access instead of proprietary connectors/data cables. Your phone has a finite amount of memory in it.. you could download a module that lets you use up the majority of space with an address book. If you don't like address books, you could fill it all up with games or sounds or pictures or integrated voice mail capability (which my phone has). Any feature that you don't want is deleted from your phone until you choose to download that module. No skipping through menu after menu of features you don't want. New specialized modules could be created for the phones (like apps for palmOS) in the future. For example, in my address book, I may only want to store 3 pieces of info for each person, maybe I don't want AIM/ICQ numbers etc.. I could create a module that only has the features I want. If I want a grocery list module, I could code it up to add my total at the bottom, or download new layout modules to give my cell a new look and feel etc etc etc.. It would also be cool to have network-enabled phones that could reference an address book/date book in some format over the internet. I could
Hey there editors, nudge nudge, wink wink, its HardOCP, not HardCOP.
You don't really have to worry about weather if you go with 900MHz solutions. If you have a small area like the one you are describing, you could probably get away with an NLOS (Non line of sight) solution. This means LOWER cost for your SUs. No outdoor equipment that has to handle the elements, and less installation cost/time - this means faster ROI (Return On Investment). You might be able to have your customers sign a 12 month contract and supply them the SU equipment for free, or for a reduced rate. If they are happy with the service they will probably stick around.
Remember... the lower the frequency, the better penetration rate. 900MHz will go through objects a LOT better than 5.8Ghz will. 5.8Ghz will start to do poorly in an area that is heavily saturated with moisture - hence tree leaves etc killing the signal. 900Mhz will go right through them (unless they are a certain type of pine tree, then 900Mhz dies right away).
I was wondering how you keep people from hooking into the wireless system without paying for a subscription?
Is there some device-specific authentication (based on MAC address or something)? If so, does that mean that each computer in a customer's house needs to be subscribed separately?
Wireless companies do this differently. Some have a WEP key, some do MAC address authentication, some have a proprietary authentication system, some have a service ID (like an ESSID for a cellphone) etc. or a combination of several of these.
Or is there a receiver box (maybe with a router) located in the customer's house which is authenticated by the ISP? Wouldn't this preclude roaming?
At the customers residence, there will be a CPE Radio with an RJ45 (ethernet) jack that plugs into your PC or router. This radio will be connected to the antenna located in or outside your house. The radio will have a MAC address that is usually used for authentication or will be programmed with the ESSID of the tower, the WEP key etc. The system usually doesn't care what MAC address your PC or Router is using... it just allows anything from an authenticated radio. This is not 802.11b/g so it is highly unlikely that someone could piggyback onto your connection. They would need the ESSID and probably have to spoof the MAC address at a bare minimum to gain access. Some solutions that I have seen have a master database that has every radios mac address entered which is associated with a customers name/number or some customer ID that you could use. This prevents someone from looking at what kind of equipment you use, then going out and purchasing that equipment with the intent of free access. If they aren't in the database, the Access Points will not allow the CPE radio to talk to them. If you want to add another layer, you could simply run PPPoE to authenticate any PC or Router.
Basically there are a bunch of different security measures that can be used, so you can feel pretty safe that nobody thieving your bandwidth.
Sounds impressive, could you provide a link to the 'Turango' product? I used google but came up with nothing relevant. Thanks!
Hey macdaddy, we are also the telco for our area and right now we run AFC/Copper Mountain equipment for the DSLAMs. I agree, they are pricey, but Copper Mountain is mad cheap compared to AFC. We are also a cooperative company, so we will probably just supply the subscriber units free of charge to our customers instead of making them pay a huge fee up front. We thought about doing 802.11b/g for the hotspot idea (which we probably will do), but we are looking at a fixed-wireless system that will do several miles for the rest of the coverage. The hotspot will probably be supplied by ADCs Loopstar system, which you should definately check out. Right now Motorola's Canopy has our attention because of the way they package their service. You do not need to pay for service contracts, their startup costs are not too high, the antennas they use are TINY compared to other products that I have looked at thus far, the range/bandwidth is pretty decent (which will be doubled in the spring) for what we need and the dealers we have been speaking with have awesome customer service. So far they are definately in the lead. Other companies I have been comparing are WaveRider, Airspan and a few others. I am going through the comments on this forum because I have heard some recommendations for companies that I have not heard of before. I will post an update when we get closer to our decision but right now its all about Motorola.
Cyberop5, I was actually at a Motorola Canopy meeting yesterday and we are definately swaying in that direction right now. They have free software upgrades twice a year that add huge features to their exisiting hardware base. They are coming out with a new board model for all of their hardware this spring that will effectively double their bandwidth and distance so I think I am going to wait until then. Very promising technology. Thanks!
My buddy had the job of going into sewage treatment plants after they were drained for the anual cleaning. All the sediments and other heavy 'objects' (read: the odd animal, or bird that had fallen in the tanks, condoms, etc etc) that wouldn't fit through the filter grates had to be shovelled out or picked out by hand. Basically he climbed down into the large tanks that usually store huge volumes of raw sewage and anything else that gets flushed down the sh*tter and scrubbed 'em clean.
I'd say this probably isn't the worst job out there, but its pretty shitty. Tee hee.
I don't see how it could automatically be considered that he registered the domain out of bad faith. If MS offered the kid $10, and he says "no way, I just spent a sh*tload of time building this up - pay me $10,000 because its a pain in the ass to redo everything." It doesn't seem like bad faith to me... it seems more like the attitude of "Fine, I will give up the domain because you people are bloody annoying, but I'm not giving it up unless you pay me for my wasted time." This is probably what a lot of people would do. He probably had no intention of puting MS-related content on his page and drawing parallels between him and MS, he just happens to have a catchy name. I hope MS gets a lot of bad press about this so they can smarten up... they are acting like a bunch of little kids.