Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: Re: The Broadband Economy
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2001 18:21:25 -0500
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2001 15:17:23 -0800 Subject: Re: IP: Re: The Broadband Economy From: Faisal Jawdat <faisal () faisal com> To: farber () cis upenn eduThis "user pays" theory isn't even discussed enough to be dismissed. Neither is 802.11, another technology well-known to this list. Its latest iteration, 802.11g, supports speeds to 11 Mbps. There's also an adjunct, 802.1x, which with a simple firmware upgrades supports authentication and security.The latest shipping iteration is 802.11b, wireless ethernet, which supports speeds up to 11 Mbps in theory (in practice I believe it's 7 Mbps max). This is the protocol which "everyone" is using. A friend of mine claims that the cost of building out national 802.11b coverage is lower than some of the winning 3G frequency license bids. There's an 802.11a spec ("wireless ATM"), which operates in frequencies over 5ghz, and can do 50 to 70 Mbps max. Chipsets started shipping earlier this year. There's another spec, 802.11g, which is a successor to 802.11b, and like 802.11b operates in the 2.4 Ghz band. It was originally meant to hit 22 Mbps max, but the latest revision goes to over 50 Mbps and requires an 802.11b compatibility mode, which should guarantee adoption if 802.11a does not suddenly take over the world in the year it will take the 802.11g spec to finish being standardized. All these speeds are somewhat immaterial for home networking, since even the 802.11b setup can saturate a T1, but they may be relevant if being deployed as the first/last mile. Some people in San Francisco put up a pair of good line of sight antennae and were bouncing 802.11b over the San Francisco bay. Then someone else pointed an antenna from Oakland into the heart of San Francisco and was picking up open office LANs at companies which had not locked down their wireless networks. -faisal
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