I'm someone who is to old and I really like a lot of the new music I hear today. The problem for RIAA is that none of it is published by them. There are so many alternative sources for music these days that I haven't purchased any RIAA stuff in years. I have purchased cd's from bands at live shows, streamed Internet radio, purchased music from magnatunes.com, downloaded from bands websites, downloaded live shows from sites like etree.org. All legal alternative ways to get quality music these days. RIAA just needs to wise up.
It also seems to me that RIAA is activly narrowing it's target audience. When I was in college, record companies were marketing bands to this age group. Alternative bands like REM were huge sellers. These days, REM has problems just trying to get support from their record company.
These days, RIAA markets to the 9 to 15 age group and that's tough if you don't like boy bands/Brittany/Jessica/Eminen.
Yeah, free for home users. Both still cost $ for business users. At home I use Linux and know how viruii spread so I'm at very low risk for infection.
It's all my clients who run Windows that I'm worried about. Being a software developer myself, I really cant say don't worry about paying the license fees. I also try to make all my clients aware of software licensing and liability issues. When you find antivirus software that truely is free, let me know. My guess is it wont be that good because software developers do need to eat.
snoig
One person who happens to be President/CEO of Palmer Advanced Media and Chairman of the Advanced Media Committee for NATAS. Seems to me from his resume that he knows what he is doing.
I think the issue here goes deeper than security. When software is created to enforce laws, they become the law. So the issue boils down to should we have laws that we can't review. If we have no way to check up on a law, then we really don't know what that law is and there is no way that we can allow this to happen in a democracy.
Having used Karlnet quite a bit, I can say that they do offer products that work well for this application. I worked for a wireless ISP and we used Karlnet exclusivly.
Having already gone through what you are attempting to do, here are a few tips.
1. Use a DHCP server. Otherwise, you will be getting calls all the time about how to set up DNS, IP's etc. It's a nightmare.
2. Line of site through a window doesn't always work well. The glass tends to refract some of the signal. If you can align the antenna parallel to the window it will work. Also, it doesn't necessarly have to go through a window. 2.4 GHz will also go through wood and sheetrock to a certian degree.
3. It works best when you can mount the antenna outside and point it straight at the tower. People are less likely to mess with it then.
4. You may think that you have three clear channels but many companies are using this spectrum now. If you are in an urban area, you will probably find that someone is already using some or all of these channels. Check before you spend a lot of money on equipment.
5. Keep your signal levels high. When we started, we would hook up customers with an 8 dB signal to noise ratio. As time went on, the noise floor came up and we had to devise new methods to keep customers online. If you can't get at least a 15 dB S/N ratio, don't even bother hooking them up.
6. Keep your antenna cables short (usually LMR-400). This is usually your bigest sorce of signal loss.
The company I worked for eventually came up with a design where the radio card was mounted on the back of the antenna outside the building. Cat 5 cable was run to the antenna with power injected onto the unused pairs. This design works well because the signal is converted directly to 10-BT at the antenna with minimal signal loss. Since the entire unit is outside the building, there is much less interference from microwave ovens and cordless phones.
This is a good strategy but as you increase the number of transmitters, you do have problems with overlaping frequencies so there is a limit to how much you can do this.
Thanks for the 2 cents, but just so you know, the company I work for has/had towers in Nebraska and Montana among others.
Your points are well taken and terrian features are much less of a problem there than where I am (Colorado mountians) but your points about FM and CB's are comparing apples to oranges.
I'm not sure what the FCC FM power limits are in the Dakotas but they are several orders of magnitude larger than what can be broadcast from a pcmcia device and power is proportional to distance.
Remember, we are talking about digital packet switching here, not analog transmission. As I said before, people trying to communicate from fringe areas will generate packet retransmits which can flood the network bringing it to it's knees. Also, most of my points have to do with the mobile aspect of the service, well designed fixed wireless networks will work great in that part of the country.
Hopefully, they have found ways to combat these problems but when I was testing all this stuff, the basic conclusion was that it worked great when you had just a few subscribers but as you added nodes, things degraded.
As someone who has worked for a struggling fixed wireless company for the last two years, I can see that this company is extremely optimistic about what this technology can do. A quick check at Mapquest shows that their coverage area is about 4 miles radius. I assume that they are using the 2.4 GHz frequency since these are the most widely available pcmcia cards. The problems we have found on a fixed wireless network is that there is no way 2.4 GHz will transmit these kinds of distances without external directional antennas. Add to that shadows from buildings, terrian features and trees and you're going to see many lost packets and retransmits which will bring the network to it's knees. Plus, as you add more customers, you will see the ambient signal levels rise due to scattering from all those antennas which will lower the signal to noise ratios.
Hopefully they have found ways to combat these problems and I'm wrong but it sure looks like deja-vu to me.
snoig
Slashdot Mirror
I'm someone who is to old and I really like a lot of the new music I hear today. The problem for RIAA is that none of it is published by them. There are so many alternative sources for music these days that I haven't purchased any RIAA stuff in years. I have purchased cd's from bands at live shows, streamed Internet radio, purchased music from magnatunes.com, downloaded from bands websites, downloaded live shows from sites like etree.org. All legal alternative ways to get quality music these days. RIAA just needs to wise up.
It also seems to me that RIAA is activly narrowing it's target audience. When I was in college, record companies were marketing bands to this age group. Alternative bands like REM were huge sellers. These days, REM has problems just trying to get support from their record company.
These days, RIAA markets to the 9 to 15 age group and that's tough if you don't like boy bands/Brittany/Jessica/Eminen.
Yeah, free for home users. Both still cost $ for business users. At home I use Linux and know how viruii spread so I'm at very low risk for infection. It's all my clients who run Windows that I'm worried about. Being a software developer myself, I really cant say don't worry about paying the license fees. I also try to make all my clients aware of software licensing and liability issues. When you find antivirus software that truely is free, let me know. My guess is it wont be that good because software developers do need to eat. snoig
And another $50/year for antivirus/spyware software to actually keep it running.
And lets not forget the additional yearly costs to companies like MacAfee and Symantec if you actually want to keep your system working.
One person who happens to be President/CEO of Palmer Advanced Media and Chairman of the Advanced Media Committee for NATAS. Seems to me from his resume that he knows what he is doing.
I think the issue here goes deeper than security. When software is created to enforce laws, they become the law. So the issue boils down to should we have laws that we can't review. If we have no way to check up on a law, then we really don't know what that law is and there is no way that we can allow this to happen in a democracy.
Having used Karlnet quite a bit, I can say that they do offer products that work well for this application. I worked for a wireless ISP and we used Karlnet exclusivly.
Having already gone through what you are attempting to do, here are a few tips.
1. Use a DHCP server. Otherwise, you will be getting calls all the time about how to set up DNS, IP's etc. It's a nightmare.
2. Line of site through a window doesn't always work well. The glass tends to refract some of the signal. If you can align the antenna parallel to the window it will work. Also, it doesn't necessarly have to go through a window. 2.4 GHz will also go through wood and sheetrock to a certian degree.
3. It works best when you can mount the antenna outside and point it straight at the tower. People are less likely to mess with it then.
4. You may think that you have three clear channels but many companies are using this spectrum now. If you are in an urban area, you will probably find that someone is already using some or all of these channels. Check before you spend a lot of money on equipment.
5. Keep your signal levels high. When we started, we would hook up customers with an 8 dB signal to noise ratio. As time went on, the noise floor came up and we had to devise new methods to keep customers online. If you can't get at least a 15 dB S/N ratio, don't even bother hooking them up.
6. Keep your antenna cables short (usually LMR-400). This is usually your bigest sorce of signal loss.
The company I worked for eventually came up with a design where the radio card was mounted on the back of the antenna outside the building. Cat 5 cable was run to the antenna with power injected onto the unused pairs. This design works well because the signal is converted directly to 10-BT at the antenna with minimal signal loss. Since the entire unit is outside the building, there is much less interference from microwave ovens and cordless phones.
Good luck.
http://www.netbeam.net
Thanks for the url, I looked all over thier site before I posted but couldn't find it.
Obviously cdma will work better than 802.11 for mobile use but it will still have the problems that cell phone users experience.
This is a good strategy but as you increase the number of transmitters, you do have problems with overlaping frequencies so there is a limit to how much you can do this.
Thanks for the 2 cents, but just so you know, the company I work for has/had towers in Nebraska and Montana among others. Your points are well taken and terrian features are much less of a problem there than where I am (Colorado mountians) but your points about FM and CB's are comparing apples to oranges. I'm not sure what the FCC FM power limits are in the Dakotas but they are several orders of magnitude larger than what can be broadcast from a pcmcia device and power is proportional to distance. Remember, we are talking about digital packet switching here, not analog transmission. As I said before, people trying to communicate from fringe areas will generate packet retransmits which can flood the network bringing it to it's knees. Also, most of my points have to do with the mobile aspect of the service, well designed fixed wireless networks will work great in that part of the country. Hopefully, they have found ways to combat these problems but when I was testing all this stuff, the basic conclusion was that it worked great when you had just a few subscribers but as you added nodes, things degraded.
As someone who has worked for a struggling fixed wireless company for the last two years, I can see that this company is extremely optimistic about what this technology can do. A quick check at Mapquest shows that their coverage area is about 4 miles radius. I assume that they are using the 2.4 GHz frequency since these are the most widely available pcmcia cards. The problems we have found on a fixed wireless network is that there is no way 2.4 GHz will transmit these kinds of distances without external directional antennas. Add to that shadows from buildings, terrian features and trees and you're going to see many lost packets and retransmits which will bring the network to it's knees. Plus, as you add more customers, you will see the ambient signal levels rise due to scattering from all those antennas which will lower the signal to noise ratios. Hopefully they have found ways to combat these problems and I'm wrong but it sure looks like deja-vu to me. snoig