On Tue, 26 Feb 2002, Tony Barry wrote:
> >Budde said the Minister should address the main broadband issues, including
> >digital TV and datacasting before giving consideration to the more "exotic"
> >possibilities of 802.11.
>
> Ha! exotic! I've got 802.11 in my home now (Apple Airport technology)
> and have had it for a year. I don't see digital TV or datacasting
> being useful for some time yet. For me they are exotic.
Hi Tony,
802.11 as a last mile is "exotic" technology in the sense that
it isn't designed for dense applications.
Once you have four 802.11b devices in an area adding more
basestations simply interferes with the other basestations.
As a practical example, AARNet bans 802.11 basestations
from its conferences. That then allows us to install
four well-positioned basestations (usually in the rafters
above the stage) and gain the best possible coverage.
If a displaying vendor installs their own basestation then
they will use channels used by the four basestations with
the better coverage. Not good.
As you can see by now, a city-wide deployment of 802.11
would be tough and unreliable. Your neighbour could lose
their connectivity when you tourn on your AirPort.
Adding a second competing network would be near-impossible.
I'm sure all this will be fixed, and R&D, standards setting,
and chipset design and manufacture will eventually occur to
802.11 to improve density and add roaming.
But this isn't a process that you would want to couple
a timetabled rollout to. In that sense 802.11 is 'exotic'
telco technology.
Regards,
Glen
-- Glen Turner Network Engineer (08) 8303 3936 Australian Academic and Research Network glen.turner@aarnet.edu.au http://www.aarnet.edu.au/ -- The revolution will not be televised, it will be digitised
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