e-fro - The Welsh Wireless Broadband project A project to flood Wales with broadband access via community run WiFi nodes.

[from: JB Wifi]

Voyager2000 No word on delivery yet, but they've set a price of £199. It appears to be a combined ADSL modem, firewall, router and WiFi access point. They've also got WiFi PCMCIA and USB cards for £79.99 [from: JB Wifi]

BW Online | November 21, 2002 | Europe's Clueless Wireless Operators

Well who wouldn't bite on a headline like that!

I have to say I really hate the cellphone industry. Both my kids managed to break their cellphones this month. Trying to choose a handset, plan and facilities was a complete nightmare. It's refreshing to hear that the latest GPRS, 3G and other internet access is equally hard to understand, over-priced and ineffective. Not! What's wrong with these people? Have they grown so big and owe so much debt that they can't create and sell a simple product that the customer (remember them) might want to use? [from: JB Wifi]

Comdex Puts Wi-Fi Weaknesses on Display

WiFi was huge at Comdex this year. And yet almost none of the Las Vegas hotels had WiFi support and allegedly WiFi access was pretty thin on the convention floors as well. Doh! Looks like the industry missed a trick there. [from: JB Wifi]

I keep seeing the same idea being promoted that HotSpot providers (such as BT Openzone) intend to, or should, provide managed VPNs so that corporate customers can feel safe about using WiFi. I have to say I just don't get this. Here's why:-
- The first concern is email and email security can be assured without going to a full VPN simply by using SSL and SMTP Auth.
- Any company that is exposing internal systems to home workers will already have a VPN in place. Just because the final 100m is via WiFi makes no never mind.
- Providing a managed VPN means the third part will need access to the company's firewall. Unless this third party is managing the organization's entire security infrastructure, why would anyone ever allow this?

So given that this comment is so common, I must be missing something. What is it? [from: JB Wifi]

An open letter on BAWUG prompted a warning on terminology. Just because it involves the Internet, data comms and it's wireless doesn't mean it's WiFi. WiFi refers specifically to the 802.11a/b/g standards at 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz. There are several companies and experiments being done with things like very long distance links or wireless broadband provision that are not WiFi even if they are in the same general area of spectrum. So for instance the recent 72Km link off San Diego is not using WiFi due to timing constraints in the protocol (although in this case they were using hacked WiFi hardware). Similarly there are several companies producing hardware and systems for remote broadband provision that use 2.4Ghz, 3.6Ghz and 5 Ghz for point to point links. Again this is not WiFi.

But it's all wireless TCP/IP so we can talk about it here! [from: JB Wifi]

IOL: O2 to launch public wireless services : Following trials, O2 Ireland has announced the commercial availability of public WLAN services for business customers from January 2003.

More strange cross over. O2 Ireland is of course part of mmO2, the cellphone service that was spun off from BT. And of course BT run BT Openzone in the UK. With Vodaphone in Germany and T-Mobile all over the place are the cellphone companies a natural fit to manage a network of WiFi hotspots? Can we expect to see SIMs in WiFi cards soon so that they can identify us and charge us for usage? [from: JB Wifi]

Glenn and Kevin both raise the issues of the proliferation of standards in WiFi and the dangers of manufacturers shipping hardware before the standard is finalised. thiis refers to the current status where we have 802.11b selling in big quantities; the incompatible but faster 802.11a hardware dropping in price rapidly, and the unfinished 802.11g. Now G is intended to be backwards compatible with B, uses the same spectrum so all the same antennas work, and looks like being the likely winner. The chip manufacturers are right on the verge of shipping. The manufacturers are announcing boxes and for Dec-Jan delivery. There's just one problem, the standard is not expected to be ratified until Mar-April at the earliest and so there's no third party certification that all this stuff works together and between manufacturers. This could seriously upset the applecart if the consumers (remember them?) spend their money only to find that nothing works.

This actually reminds me of the early days of the 56Kb modem. There were two or three designs each of which only worked sometimes with the providers modem banks. But we got through that one with a mix of free upgrades and firmware replacements OK. I think there's sufficient reward for playing fair and penalty for stepping too far out of line that the manufacturers will help us get through this without too much pain. What makes this more likely is that there's a very limited number of chipsets that all the manufacturers are using. which in turn limits how far off the group standard they can go. They don't like this very much as it's hard to differentiate products via the feature set if you're using the same silicon as the next company.

Which brings me to the real danger. I'm much more worried by things like D-Link's Turbo 802.11b that works at 22Mhz but only with Dlink equipment. It's really important that they have good compatibility with other people's devices are normal speeds. What we don't need is a D-Link owned standard that gets too much traction. Having one company have a monopoly on the design is bad for everyone in the long run.

So my bet is that 802.11a will disappear and 802.11g will win out. And it will all happen sooner than you think. And as long as all the G equipment still works with the installed base of B access points, it really doesn't matter.

[Edited to add]. See also Wired. [from: JB Wifi]

The Times in it's Business Travel section today has a piece on Internet access in Hotels : Derek Wood, an IT consultant within the hospitality industry, says that, of the business hotels that have installed high-speed access, up to 10 per cent of all guests use the service. "Nearly everyone has high-speed access at work and an increasing number of people have it at home so they have come to expect it."

But he says that what business travellers really want is access to their own e-mail. Most technology providers to hotels can provide high-speed access to the web but access to corporate e-mail relies on setting up a virtual private network with each company, which is technically difficult and costly.

So here we have confirmation. Business travellers need internet access on the road. And they need access to email. But the last conclusion is wrong. If your ISP or company provided SSL POP3 and SMTP you wouldn't need a "technically difficult or costly" solution you'd just need to configure your email client.

The connection here with WiFi is the trend towards providing it in hotels with coverage of the rooms as well as the conference centre. [from: JB Wifi]

Can Chips Revive the Internet Economy? Impressively optimistic Comdex keynote speech from Brian Halla, CEO of National Semiconductor "A glut followed the railroad boom, but it was followed by another wave of unprecedented growth as people began to come up with new ideas to make use of the foundation that had been laid, he explained. "We overbuild; we have a glut. That's where we are today. The period that follows after the glut is when the new ideas get incubated," he said."

So what do you get when you combine IPv6, with pervasive WiFi, with all the bandwidth and dark fibre that was laid during the boom years. The IPv6 makes every device addressable and reduces the need for NAT firewalls. The WiFi means all those little devices are part of the net. And if we can just find a way of coping with the debt, the bandwidth infrastructure brings connectivity costs down to the floor. Sounds like a great environment for innovation to me. [from: JB Wifi]

Rather interesting little article in El Reg about why the US doesn't get SMS TXT unlike the whole of the rest of the world. It's also an interview with Howard Rheingold who's done extensive personal and international research on the subject. The short answer is that it's the combination of a Monopoly (Qualcomm) and a Pigopoly (The Telcos) rejecting the godless and commie GSM in favour of their own home grown standard CDMA. It's the same answer you can give when asking why US Cellphones don't have Bluetooth. Or MMS. Or why you can't roam everywhere with one phone and one service provider. And why analog cellphone service won't die in the US. And so on. And on.

But then the US still uses NTSC (Never Twice the Same Color) for it's TV standard. ;)

DonchaJusLove free markets! [from: JB Ecademy]

NY has a project to Unwire Schools by installing WiFi in every classroom. With Blair announcing £1bn for broadband deployment in UK Government sites over the next 3 years and £6Bn for IT spend, maybe some of that money should be spent on deplying WiFi on the end of every line. [from: JB Wifi]

BBC NEWS | Technology | Blair pledges to kick-start broadband : UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has promised to give every school, university, hospital and doctors' surgery a high-speed link to the internet. At present many public services connect to the web through a telephone line, but the government wants more access to the broadband connections. The government is spending more than £1bn on broadband for key public services over the next three years as part of a £6bn investment in information communication technology.

Now how about putting a little of that money into siteing a free WiFi access point on the end of each one of those lines?

There's also talk about a 128Kb always on service over existing telephone lines, except that the BBC says it "will not offer the always-on advantage of true broadband." which I assume is a mistake. [from: JB Ecademy]

A report on 802.11g devices announced at Comdex. Comdex: New flavor of wireless LAN starts to emerge : For one thing, 802.11g products will have a much smaller price premium over 802.11b -- about 25 percent to 35 percent when products first arrive, as compared with about 300 percent for 802.11a products, he said. Longer reach and a greater ability to transmit through walls also are benefits of 802.11g over the other high-speed standard.

I can see a number of reasons why 802.11g will win out. It's backwards compatible with B. It uses a part of the spectrum that is already de-regulated. That's aprticularly important when Europe is dragging it's heels releasing the 5Ghz spectrum needed for 802.11a. But surely the biggest reason is price. No wonder then that the manufacturers are pushing the curve by releasing product before the standard is even cast in stone. Buffalo in particular is aiming for $99 cards and $199 access points for Dec delivery. And they're trying to satisfy consumers worries by offering to replace the hardware if standard changes can't be satisfied by firmware changes. All the other manufacturers (Linksys, Dlink, SMC, etc ) are playing the same game.

This really is an extraordinary market. Having 4 hardware manufacturers with equal market share is pushing it forwards incredibly fast. New products and price cuts are coming faster than in any other sector I can think of. And all driven by what is clearly a huge demand.

WiFi has proved to be extremely disruptive so far because it's largely a bottom up technology. And it threatens a whole range of established industries in the process. If the industry can work out how to seamlessly hand off between 3G, GPRS, and multiple WiFi sites, it will threaten a whole new set of industries. [from: JB Wifi]

lots of WiFi info from Comdex at DailyWireless [from: JB Wifi]

BuffaloTech announces December '54g' products

This is getting daft! The 802.11g (54Mbps in the same 2.4Ghz spectrum as 802.11b) standard is not due to be ratified until May 2003. And certification against the standard is not expected until well after May. But the market can't wait and is already producing chip designs and announcing products with Buffalo leading the pack by predicting Dec 2002 deliveries. This all reminds me of the modem manufacturer wars around 1990. This also sounds the death nell for 802.11a products doesn't it?

The other hazard with this is that the pent up demand will mean a very rapid price fall curve. I fully expect commodity pricing and hence the near disappearance of 802.11b designs by late next year. Which is not pretty if you're planning on spending money on hardware now. And it's particularly unpleasant if you're in the middle of rolling out a WISP hotspot solution. Can we expect T-Mobile, BT Openzone, Megabeam and others to throw out all the hardware they've just installed to repalce it with .11a or .11g hardware immediately?

And just to confuse all this further, Toshiba are planning 802.11a pre-installed in laptops in Dec. [from: JB Wifi]

Vodafone, Lufthansa Do WLAN Which says it all really. 55 airport lounges in Germany but with Vodaphones presence throughout Europe there's surely more to follow. [from: JB Wifi]

John Markoff's piece about WiFi in the NYTimes has been reported all over the place. But I particularly liked this tidbit. "In their candid moments everybody at the F.C.C. will tell you they are being pressured quite severely by various forces that are quite concerned about Wi-Fi," said Reed E. Hundt, a former chairman of the F.C.C. "They're worried that it is really a trenching machine that will uproot the entrenched forces." [from: JB Wifi]

Further to my rant this morning about email security and authentication, there's another catch. Lots of people use Norton Anti-virus. Unfortunately NAV doesn't understand the SMTP STARTTLS command. So if you're trying to connect to an SMTP server via SSL it kills the connection. The solution is to turn off NAV Email checking on sending email.

This is not great, because if you catch an Outlook Virus that uses Outlook's email sending code, it will still send. [from: JB Wifi]

In today's Times, that old fogey William Rees-Mogg argues with impeccable logic that if the UK became a Republic and elected a President the candidates would be The Queen, Richard Branson and Paddy Ashdown. :) By examining the question of who would stand, he pours scorn on the whole idea of the UK becoming a republic.

But I have a better question. If, as some believe, we have a Prime Minister who is playing the role of President, which Minister is playing the role of Prime Minister? [from: JB Ecademy]