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Garage Tinkerers Claim Wireless Last-Mile Solution
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Jun 10, 2002 08:12 AM
from the believe-when-it's-under-the-tree dept.
from the believe-when-it's-under-the-tree dept.
BrianWCarver writes: "The NYTimes is reporting that two guys in their garage have designed a low-cost wireless broadband solution that can transmit up to 20 miles. (A previous story described a 7km achievement in Australia.) Their company is called Etherlinx and they use the Wi-Fi 802.11b standard in a repeater antenna that people can attach to the outside of their homes. The technology, which apparently costs under $100, has been operating in a small for-pay trial in Oakland, CA for a year. Is this a solution to the 'last-mile' problem, hope for rural areas, and the death of cable/DSL? Read and be the judge."
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Garage Tinkerers Claim Wireless Last-Mile Solution
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So the real questions now... (Score:4, Funny)
But what kind of data connection do they get 250? (Score:1)
Re:But what kind of data connection do they get 25 (Score:5, Informative)
density, the Telco is in no rush to get DSL setup for us!
But there is something similar to this article already offered in Alberta (Canada eh?) :
http://www.oagroup.com/airlink/forbus_Overview.
Don't know if it's the same technology as they haven't (yet) responded to my requests for more
detail
truly rural needs (Score:4, Interesting)
What would be *really* helpful would be some solar+battery powered WiFi repeaters located thruout the countryside (perhaps bolted on the side of analog cell towers?) to serve these areas.
Another Nodak Here (Score:4, Interesting)
There is an initiative to deliver wireless to all of North Dakota's rural areas, not just the 50% of our population that lives between I-29 and the Red River (of the North, for those of you Suthroners reading), but it's a long ways off and some of the people in charge aren't ambitious enough to pull it off.
Someone else mentioned the possibility of putting repeaters or transmitters on the cell phone antennas across the countryside. That would work great, IF said cell phone antennas were even capable with their much-greater-than-wireless-networking range of covering the entire state, but they're not. With a high-power bag phone, on a clear night, I can get enough 'service' to make a call, maybe understand the incoming side of it, etc. The nearest digital tower is circa 60 miles from me, in Williston, and is so weak that digital service doesn't become available until you come over Indian Hill about 10 miles from Williston. Granted that service in Minot, Grand Forks, Fargo, and Bismarck (and marginally so, Dickinson) is better, but there are still a lot of people, the real heart of North Dakota, that aren't included among those that live in our 'cities'.
There needs to be a statewide solution, and we've not had much luck finding one yet. Any ideas?
The Article (no free req req'd ;-) (Score:3, Informative)
By JOHN MARKOFF
UPERTINO, Calif., June 7 -- Anyone looking for the next big thing in Silicon Valley should stop here at Layne Holt's garage.
Mr. Holt and his business partner, John Furrier, both software engineers, have started a company with a shoestring budget and an ambitious target: the cable and phone companies that currently hold a near-monopoly on high-speed access for the "last mile" between the Internet and the home.
At the core of their plan is the inexpensive wireless data standard known as Wi-Fi or 802.11b, which is already shaking up the communications industry, threatening to undermine the business plans of cellular phone companies by offering a much cheaper method for mobile access to the Internet.
The pair's company, known as Etherlinx, has taken the 802.11b standard and used it to build a system that can transmit Internet data up to 20 miles at high speeds -- enough to blanket entire urban regions and make cable or D.S.L. connections obsolete.
Their secret weapon is a technology known as a "software-designed radio," which has permitted them to create an inexpensive repeater antenna that can be attached to the outside of a customer's home. The device, which the Etherlinx executives said they believe can be built in quantity for less than $150 each, would communicate with a central antenna and then convert the signals into the industry-standard Wi-Fi, or wireless fidelity, signal for reception inside the home.
Because of the staggering costs of wiring the nation's homes for high-speed networking, only 7 percent, or 7.5 million homes, now have high-speed Internet access, according to a February report from the Federal Communications Commission.
The two Etherlinx executives say they have a religious fervor to change that by making broadband available widely and cheaply.
"We're bandwidth junkies, and I can't imagine a world in which people don't have broadband," Mr. Furrier said. "That's our mission."
Without venture capital backing, in a garage just six blocks from the garage where Steven P. Jobs and Stephen Wozniak launched Apple Computer [slashdot.org] 26 years ago, Mr. Holt is making his clever and inexpensive radio repeater by modifying inexpensive Wi-Fi cards, the circuitry that sends and receives the signals.
Although he has partially broken with the Wi-Fi standard, he argues he is doing just what the unlicensed radio spectrum was originally set aside to encourage -- innovative wireless network designs.
Mr. Holt, a 54-year-old software designer and engineer who began his career at the Lockheed Corporation in Sunnyvale, Calif., replaces the software that supports the Wi-Fi 802.11b standard with his own code, thereby dramatically extending the range of the cheap, mass-produced hardware. Each repeater contains two cards -- one that Mr. Holt has enhanced and another that is able to speak the 802.11b standard to a home computer.
Today, while most of the Wi-Fi industry is working on a more complex technology known as "mesh routing," which involves lashing together hundreds or even thousands of short-range transceivers, the Etherlinx developers believe they have found a crude, cost-effective approach that is capable of leapfrogging the last-mile problem.
"A French engineer would say this isn't the most elegant solution," Mr. Furrier said, "but we didn't care about that. We took advantage of these cheap commodity chips and we just wanted to make it work."
In doing so, they say they believe they not only will be able to skate around the cable and phone companies but dodge the growing industry fears of congestion in the unlicensed Wi-Fi radio band, which is also supporting competing uses such as Bluetooth, an alternative, short-range wireless standard, as well as some wireless telephones.
"The Wi-Fi industry is heading for a train wreck," Mr. Furrier said.
The Etherlinx technology has been operating in a small for-pay trial in Oakland, Calif., for a year. The company began trials here last month using an antenna atop a high-rise building in neighboring Campbell, Calif., where the company has its corporate offices.
Etherlinx is already beginning to attract serious attention from both government officials who are interested in last-mile solutions and corporate executives who believe the lack of high-speed Internet connections is the biggest obstacle to growth in the computer industry.
"We have a huge incentive to see the last mile open up," said Graham Wallace, chief executive of Cable and Wireless P.L.C. [slashdot.org], one of the world's largest Internet backbone companies.
To attract industry attention, Etherlinx cobbled together a demonstration antenna on the back of a Jeep Cherokee and took it to an industry conference in Southern California last month. Parked in front of the conference hotel, the founders were able to show Intel's [slashdot.org] chief executive, Craig R. Barrett, that their technology was capable of offering Internet access to the entire hotel as well as to the homes on a ridge behind the conference center.
"I don't think there is a method that has emerged yet as a winner," said Leslie Vadasz, a veteran Intel executive who heads the company's venture arm, "but we are talking to these guys. What they have done is a very smart way of reusing engineering that has been done for other purposes."
Etherlinx began the for-pay trial in Oakland last year after the company failed to get venture capital in Silicon Valley. The company is now selling Internet service commercially to about a dozen customers.
"The V.C.'s are licking their wounds and they don't believe us," said Mr. Furrier, a 36-year-old networking engineer. "That's why we have taken a go-to-market approach."
So far, the company has been run on about $200,000 in private investment -- far less than the tens of millions of dollars that have been poured into other Wi-Fi startups.
Etherlinx is not the only company taking new approaches to sending wireless data over longer distances in the unlicensed portion of the radio spectrum. The communications and computer industry is now at work on a second-generation standard known as 802.16, which is intended to address longer-distance communications challenges.
The latest efforts follow the collapse of an earlier attempt to establish a commercial wireless industry based on line-of-sight technology known as the Multipoint Microwave Distribution System, or M.M.D.S. Giant companies like A T & T, Sprint [slashdot.org] and WorldCom [slashdot.org] and startups like Winstar and Teligent all developed M.M.D.S. service, but they have either halted development on their systems or declared bankruptcy.
Industry experts said the M.M.D.S. technology failed in part because it required the receiver to be within sight of the transmitter, but also because it required expensive installation and a huge upfront investment to license the spectrum from the government.
"The cost of the license for the spectrum killed them," Mr. Holt said.
Etherlinx is by no means alone in its approach.
Several other companies are also beginning to explore alternatives not requiring line-of-sight that they believe will be more resistant to interference and will be easy for customers to install without expensive on-site help.
Nokia [slashdot.org] has a research group in Silicon Valley that has been trying to develop such technologies, and Iospan Wireless Inc. of San Jose, Calif., and Navini Networks in Richardson, Tex., are selling products that are along the lines of the Etherlinx approach.
However, Mr. Furrier said he hoped that speed would outweigh size or capital in determining the success of a business in the market. In addition to the company's Oakland trial, Etherlinx is planning to offer commercial service in Campbell, which is not currently served with D.S.L., and in wealthy surrounding suburbs such as Los Gatos and Saratoga.
He argues that the absence of venture funding has actually been an advantage for his company.
"What we've hit on is a low-cost design point and used our fast design to get to market first," he said.
Speed... (Score:2, Interesting)
Great (Score:2, Informative)
Satellites? (Score:1)
So they've been testing it for a year? How come in our dot-com-future that this took so long to hit the streets (or better the rural farmways)?
Re:Satellites? (Score:4, Insightful)
Satellites SUCK. For broadband, they are the only option I have besides dialup so I am sticking with dialup. Satellites are EXPENSIVE. To get more than 3 TV channels, I've had to go satellite TV. That costs ~$40/month and isn't worth it so it turns out. 155 channels and STILL nothing on worth watching (all the history channel ever shows is WWII crap over and over and over...but that's another story). Anyway, I am already shelling out ~$40/month on sat-TV. For sat-internet, it costs ~$70/month! Bullsh*t I'll EVER pay that much for high-latency, sub-DSL quality internet connectivity. If you have to choose between satellite or dialup, as I do, it is better to stick with dialup. Really.
Re:Satellites? (Score:4, Informative)
This will change soon. Star Choice [starchoice.ca] in Canada is sending up a new satellite that will allow both upstream and downstream through the dish.
Plus, since their satellite TV sercvice was launched with elliptical as opposed to round [expressvu.ca] dishes, it is possible for the dish to receive signals for 2 satellites at once.
Nice but what about interference? (Score:4, Insightful)
And in other news.... (Score:5, Funny)
probably out of jurisdiction (Score:4, Funny)
Useful in the UK (Score:1)
Long on hype, short on details (Score:4, Insightful)
No patents mentioned, for example, which kind of implies that even if this does play nicely in the contended 2.4Ghz band, it will be assimilated by an incumbent. Perhaps (being cynical or realistic as you prefer) that's the idea though: hype a "new" technology, then sell out to whichever Big Business offers you a cheque to go away and stop generating awkward questions from their customer base.
Kudos for providing a good laugh though:
I take it that's "unhackable" in the Oracle "unbreakable" sense of (soto voce) "Claim is for advertising purposes only, has no basis in reality and should not be inferred to imply a warranty of unhackability or fitness for any particular purpose."
Hey ho. As they themselves say, seeing is believing. I'll believe it when I can either buy it or replicate it.
Almost certainly illegal in Europe (Score:4, Informative)
[1] 100mW EIRP.
[2] Seems to be under review at the moment.
Cheaper? (Score:1)
Well, at Summercon... (Score:4, Interesting)
built in quantity for less than $150 each, would communicate with a central antenna and then convert the signals into the industry-standard Wi-Fi, or wireless fidelity, signal for reception
inside the home."
Alan Clegg [clegg.com] described pretty much the same thing with off the shelf hardware at Summercon [slashdot.org] recently. Except his solution was staying inside 802.11b and using a 2.4Ghz amplifier [fab-corp.com].
Granted, his objective was different and the "new" solution is a couple of bucks cheaper, but there are already off-the-shelf solutions that are there for the picking, without adding another licensing layer to the solution.
Just a firmware for 802.11 cards (Score:1)
"We have operationally "lit up" the South Bay and Oakland areas with 2MB Ethernet"
Not so hot.
Second Hand Broadband! (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe if they just ban the waves from public places....
No technical details (Score:4, Interesting)
They claim 20 mile connections: OK, I can believe that, since I have some running at 26 miles. A guy in British Columbia has some connections running nearly 50 miles. Nothing new here.
Their product acts as a "repeater" from the customer premise: Again, nothing new here. Nokia has a reasonably well designed product called RoofTop that also works at 2mbps.
I would be curious to see how they are addressing the issue of spectrum re-use, since 802.11b only has 3 clear channels to operate on. In a haphazard deployment using customer premise equipment to repeat, RF collision is terrible. What happens during a power outage in a neighborhood? Does the whole area drop out, or is the homeowner required to provide UPS? What happens when the unthinkable happens, and a key repeater/customer terminates his service, and that repeater has to come off the house?
So many questions, so few answers
limitations (Score:5, Informative)
1) Outside, you are pretty much limited to line-of-site. Bodys containing water do a great job of blocking the signal. This includes people, trees, cacti, etc.
2) The problem with repeaters is that, if an early one goes down, the rest of the chain looses the connection. When hoping to span great distances, this is a problem.
3) hopping via repeators will cut down on bandwidth, and you are limited to very few hops before you get some severe latency
4) There are limitations to the amount of power you are allowed to use to boost a signal, from the spec:
---- begin copy & paste ----
(3) Except as shown in paragraphs (b)(3) (i), (ii) and (iii) of this section, if transmitting antennas of directional gain greater than 6 dBi are used the peak output power from the intentional radiator shall be reduced below the stated values in paragraphs (b)(1) or (b)(2) of this section, as appropriate, by the amount in dB that the directional gain of the antenna exceeds 6 dBi.
(i) Systems operating in the 2400-2483.5 MHz band that are used exclusively for fixed, point-to-point operations may employ transmitting antennas with directional gain greater than 6 dBi provided the maximum peak output power of the intentional radiator is reduced by 1 dB for every 3 dB that the directional gain of the antenna exceeds 6 dBi."
---- end copy & paste ----
So, while their plan sounds interesting, they have some serious issues to overcome, and I don't see how they are going to do it with off the shelf parts. I'll wait till I see a working prototype before I shell out my VC
Just what I need for my (other) home in th country (Score:2)
No hassle false NYTimes account setup (Score:2)
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/10/technology/10WI
Then just press submit. It'll create you an account and log you right in. Nice and simple!!!!
be the judge? (Score:2)
In a related story (Score:3, Funny)
radiation pollution? (Score:2, Interesting)
The nice thing about wires is, you can always make more. You can have two different wires next to each other. Not so with wireless. You want a new link? Add another frequency. And once all the frequencies are used up, well, that's all we got.
I don't want to stand in the way of progress, but IMO we wasted a whole lot of the spectrum on commercial radio and microwave ovens. Do we really need to use up more of it so people can get faster pron?
802.11b vs 802.11a (Score:3, Troll)
The better solution is the 802.11a protocol, a new technology that is just being released. You can see a white paper here [proxim.com].
Bottom line is that 802.11a operates in the 5 to 6 gigahz range, and so avoids the conflict issues that are sometimes seen with 802.11b
There are issues having to do with band allocation both in Europe and Japan.
WTF they talking its, its just 802.11 (Score:4, Informative)
All the News that's Fit to Print? (Score:3, Insightful)
This piece shows the hazards of relying on journalism vs. engineering journals for assessing the potential of a company. I had to wonder, why was this company able to get the attention of the NY Times, when it seems as though there are better funded companies using comparable technology.
Details like Etherlinx's garage being a scant six blocks from Jobs' and Wozniak's first garage are cute, but they tell us less than nothing about the company's potential. I couldn't help wondering if Etherlinx hired some media-savvy marketing person, whose job it was to unearth cute little details like that in order to get journalists' attention.
Finishing that article, my main feeling wasn't "Gee...it sounds like these guys have some great technology that might overcome the last mile issue." Instead, I came away thinking, "How was it that these guys got the attention of the NY Times without demonstrating anything substantially new?"
Unanswered questions (Score:4, Insightful)
First: It says they used 'software' to extend the range of the system. I don't see how that's possible unless there's some software tweak that increases the transmitter's output power beyond legal limits. Even then, I question whether the transmitter could handle such overdrive for extended periods as a device designed under FCC Part 15.
Now, with that said: It -is- possible to enhance existing WiFi hardware with a better antenna, but the transceiver in question would have to have a connector for an external antenna designed right in. You can't just attach something with a clip-lead, and hope it'll work; Not at 2.4 GHz!
Next up: I've checked Etherlinx's web site as well. It is, if possible, even less detail-rich than the article. I plan to send an E-mail query to try and dig some details out of them.
Another point: Something that the WiFi peddlers are all neglecting to mention is that 2.4 GHz is (among other things) an amateur ('ham') radio band, and that ATV (Amateur Television) on that band is getting to be mighty popular, especially in the Bay Area. Slashdot has already run an article [slashdot.org] on the issue of low-power interference on 2.4 gigs... I can't help but wonder how well a big WiFi network would deal with the output signal from an ATV repeater when said signal could range anywhere from a couple of watts to the amateur max limit of a thousand watts.
And no, there is no regulation protecting Part 15 devices from interference. Quite the opposite. Read the label on any such device, and you will find that it is 'required to accept any interference, including that which may cause undesired operation.'
Just as one example, Carnegie Mellon University has, apparently, already taken this problem into account. Note this article [cmu.edu] from their Computing Services folk. They don't even want other 2.4 gig devices in operation on campus because of their own WiFi network.
Finally, the issue of security on WiFi has already been beat to death, but I'll mention it again anyway. I don't believe it's possible right now, outside of using some heavy-hitting 3rd party encryption hardware at each end of a link, to get security that's as good as that available on hardwire networks (One word: AirSnort). If anyone can prove me wrong on that point, please do so and I will cheerfully shut up about it!
The 'death' of cable or DSL? Not bloody likely. Not until it can offer the same security as hardwire, be interference-free in both transmission and reception, offer the same SPEED as you can get from hardwire, and can do so for a price that won't run us all into the poorhouse.
www.speednetllc.com (Score:3, Informative)
Large infrastructure companies the problem (Score:1, Offtopic)
And as long as that is the case, they are going to purposely keep supply short so bandwidth prices remain high which renders broadband-to-the-home just about as useless or expensive as it is today.
If these companies would open up their pipes, or at least 10% of the bandwidth they're holding back, the prices would plummit and having a 10mbps 2-way connection to the house would be cheap.
These companies are actively resisting commoditizing bandwidth. That's the major reason Enron collapsed. Enron was known for commoditizing non-traditional markets. They bet the whole company on trading bandwidth as a commodity and all the big telcos shut them down.
Apparently AT&T and the like prefer colluding with their "competitors" to reduce supply and keep prices rediculously high.
Commercial services like this exist (Score:2, Interesting)
--derek
gambitwireless.com
Silly rabbit, broadband is for cable and telco's! (Score:2, Interesting)
Software Engineering? (Score:1)
Until they hire a guy who knows how to use a spectrum analyzer, I can guarentee you they won't pass any certifications and are probably interfering with aircraft and satellite users...
... and the death of cable/DSL? (Score:1)
700 mhz (Score:2, Interesting)
Down with the broadband monopolies. (Score:1)
One question: Are there any hidden cables? (Score:1)
How are they going to eat all those chips? (Score:1)
Same ol' same ol' (Score:1)
20 mile range? Too bad they're breaking the law! (Score:1)
How do I know? I worked for a wireless ISP that did this 2 years ago. Old news.
Too bad that these for profit networks must accept all interference with no legal recourse or rememdy since they operate under Part 15 guidlines. Or that I could fire up an amatuer radio transmitter in that band (with much higher power output levels), put the smack down on their throughput and I would have priority; the company would have to take it where the sun don't shine.
The exact scenerio happened where I worked and the clueless Prez of engineering told the amateur to buzz off. Then said amateur brought the FCC and ARRL down on his has with much speed and voracity.
Read the fine print of the FCC code. The info's buried in there.
Does it scale? (Score:2)
And what's the recent Slashdot fascination with New York Times articles? Is VA Whatever planning to sell Slashdot to the NYT, or what?
don't forget Cringely's warning (Score:4, Informative)
RealNames guy involved (Score:2)
Standards are made to be broken (Score:1)
BFD (Score:1)
I helped to found an ISP that offers 802.11 broadband. We have "towers" around the city that are basically repeaters aiming back to the CO. I believe our longest hop from a tower to the CO is 6 miles (not KM). And then our futhest customer is at least that far away from the tower - you do the math.
One problem we have had is that over 10 miles or more than one repeater you start to have latency issues on that link. Nothing like Satellite, but it's there.
Lots of tricks in the interference and power limit areas. This is where our "trade secrets" reside and keep us the #1 provider in our area. My advice - talk to an actual RF engineer or at least a ham that plays with sattelite and microwave modes...
Garage? (Score:2)
oh... wait...
Last-Mile Wireless Solution Claims Garage Thinkers (Score:2)
Warning: Contents of Garage may be hot!
Re:NY Times Login (Score:1, Informative)
username: privatenospam0
passwd: privatenospam
Re:Damn (Score:5, Informative)
Re:But what about the health effects (Score:1)
I'm really surprised (Score:1)
Re:Sad (Score:1)