Re: New Wireless Technologies

• Messages sorted by: [ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ]
• Next message: Karen Coyle: "Re: Residential subsidy?"
• Previous message: calvin branche: "another view"

Be careful about the "promise" of wireless. If you look at the experience
of folks in the field, it is possible to run into severe interference
problems
reducing, and in some cases eliminating the useability of the equipment.
The equipment in the unlicensed bands is easy (bureaucratically, at least)
to set up because you don't need a reception survey and a license. When
your area becomes congested (such as parts of our urban setting), the only
recourse you have is others' good will. Spectrum IS limited, and unlike
copper & fiber, you don't have the option of pulling another span.

I also have a personal objection, in that I think it is unwise to plan for
long term usage of wireless links where both ends are fixed. It's a waste.
Furthermore, it's almost always slower than a cabled connection. Look at
wireless LANs: IEEE 802.11 specifies 1 and 2 Mb, with some proprietary
schemes going up to 3 or maybe 6 Mb; Compare this to the speeds of Ethernet
and Fast Ethernet.

Having said that, I can now sit back down and observe that wireless, when
it works (modulo topographic and weather impediments) is a marvelous way of
bootstrapping to reduce the deployment delays for getting buildings and
departments wired. And almost every bit of it you bought can be moved and
re-used elsewhere, unlike temporary wiring. Is just is not, and cannot be a
long term substitute for cabled infrastructure.

I see massive hysteria about wireless, which often seems to imply that if
we only had it, Education's networking problems would be solved. Perhaps
this hype is necessary to get the resources allocated, but I greatly fear
that this results in many people failing to understand that infrastructure
is not amenable to a quick fix, and in order to avoid getting bit in the
tail further down the road, a larger sense of "how it fits" is necessary.
This is particularly true if the infrastructure we're trying to foster is
the Internet (or something like it) where a major part of its value is for
it to go EVERYWHERE to EVERYONE, and not just be a large private network
for K12 (or medicine, or government, or business, or the United Way, ad
nauseam).


Gene Hastings

http://www.info-ren.org/projects/universal-service/registrants/840832142_12396.html

• Next message: Karen Coyle: "Re: Residential subsidy?"
• Previous message: calvin branche: "another view"