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Technology

Microwave T1 Service 212

Posted by Hemos from the please-momma-i-want-it dept.
opal_seven writes "Initially I was skeptical of the claims in the press release. But after witnessing the setup in operation, I'm still trying to pick my jaw up off the floor. Read it and (if your not living in Tucson) weep. "
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Microwave T1 Service More

Microwave T1 Service

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  • Been there, done that... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I used to work for a wireless ISP, and I've got news for you, this technology isn't new. It's been around for a couple of years now. They are using 2.4 ghz radios that give you 1.6 Mbps throughput. The thing they don't tell you is that you can't get the full bandwidth unless you're within a couple miles of the transmit site. Not only that, the ISPs that are doing this (believe me, there are a lot now) are reselling service at about a 10 to 1 ratio, so even though a customer has a radio on site, they are "sharing" a radio at the head end with many other customers. In my experience you can't get decent upload bandwidth without expensive amplifiers either. Our average customer about 2-5 miles from the POP could only get 256k, and packet loss is terrible (about 5-10% on average). You are also subject to interference because the 2.4ghz spectrum is licensed as ISM (Industry Science and Medical), which means it's public bandwidth. Any other ISP that wants to can come step all over your signal. In my opinion, nothing beats a real T1 if you need T1 type bandwidth. Remember, a T1 is bidirectional, so you really get over 3 Mbps. These radios are not full duplex. Check out http://www.breezecom.com if you want to "roll yer own" ISP... Anyone with a T1, a tall building, and a couple thousand dollars for radios and antennas could do this, but if you want "real" internet service for mission critical apps, landline is the way to go.
  • While we are at it, realize, not realise. Glass houses and all ya know....
  • Those are called radomes. Their main purpose is to provide some amount of weather protection for the connection between the antenna element and the transmission line, and to prevent ice buildup on the antenna itself. Ice buildup leads to power being reflected back into the transmitter, meaning less power is radiated. If the reflections are sufficient, they can fry a transmitter, although most modern xmitters have built-in VSWR protection, which automatically decreases their power output to a safe level.

    Snow or rain attenuation won't be improved by a radome, since that is an issue of the snow or rain currently in the air between the transmit and receive antennas. To eliminate that, you'd have to have big tube connecting the two antennas, and then you've suddenly gone from wireless to a coaxial cable connection... :)

  • I bet they aren't 100 Mw. I'm sure they're very hot, but 100,000,000 watts is a gawdawful lot of power. Even if they are 100Mw, the primary effect would be internal burns. I've (thank goodness) never been exposed to anything like that. I'm sure it hits like a physical blow, and the muscles would probably convulse in response to the sudden stimulus of, oh, most of the nerves in the body. If they moved quickly away or the radar was only on for a very short time, I'm sure there were few long term effects. I was trying to get at the inverse square law here. The power exposure decreases with the square of the distance, so if you get belted and run a few feet away, you won't get belted anymore.

    The other folks here were also quite right in pointing out that a microwave oven is designed to be a high Q, and at a frequency that couples well with water molecules. Your body has host of different compounds, tissues, and organs, all with various whole body resonance lengths. Not all of the power from any source will directly interact with your body.

    I was just trying to point out that the setup suggested here was probably around 10 watts, and almost certainly less than 200 watts; if the power is down around that level, then you would feel hardly any effects from the radiation even a foot away from the antenna. At a foot or more, you get far less radiation from that antenna than you get from the sun.

    A few more numbers for you to use as a yarstick when someone hands you a metal rod and says "Here, hold this:"

    Your typical microwave oven radiates between 500 and 1500 watts (in its cavity). As I said, the sun gives you about 1000 watts (that's whole spectrum -- I'm not really sure how much of it is in the 1.5+ Gig up to infrared range; all of which may fairly be called "microwave").

    I've seen a guy burn his finger in a waveguide. He wasn't killed. He didn't grow two heads. The main effect of this stuff is heat (I suppose there could be some chance ionization effects, but not much).

    Anyways, I certainly don't lay claim to more than a ham's knowledge of radio. Get an EE or a physicist to come in and give the actual lecture.

    My main point is that it helps to throw some "sanity boundaries" up. If the exposure numbers are orders of magnitude lower than you get standing in sunlight, then this system will almost certainly not be dropping people, birds, and fuzzy little bunnies in their tracks.

    Whenever someone starts talking about hazards, I try to take my limited knowledge and see if I can come within a factor of ten of the claimed danger. If something I know to be (almost) harmless (like standing in sunlight) is at least a factor of ten more dangerous than the worst possible case for the stated "danger," then I think one can safely conclude that the threat is overstated.

    I don't think I'd recommend making a habit of standing a foot in front of, say, fighter plane threat radars, just the same. I promise you they can kill you, and while I don't know how long it would take, I'd like to experiment with non-human subjects to find out... ;)

    Parting thought: Think how much power the sun must be putting out given the inverse square law and that the energy at the Earth's surface is 1,000 watts per square meter at a distance of 93,000,000 miles!

  • I remember that a similar service was available in Houston, TX. (I just moved away from there to Chicago). It offered $100/mo for non-dedicated SOHO access (Off-peak hours), and something around $600-$700/mo for 100% dedicated. And yes, it too was wireless. NO, I do not rememebr the name of the service. Sorry. But it does exist in other (major) cities

    (If anyone knows of a service like this in Chicago, let me know)
  • We had a local ISP stick a transmitter tower on one of our mountians a few years back.. How does a dedicated 2 megabit connection with grab you?

    Here is the URL.. http://www.cyberhighway.net/news/wir eless.html [cyberhighway.net]

    Lotek---

  • Ignorant and alarmist (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is the most moronic post I've seen in a long time. Communication systems operating at microwave frequencies are transmitting all over the world, all the time. You are pretty much constantly exposed to the transmissions at varying power levels. The FAA and the military operate kilowatt and megawatt radars all the time, whose sidelobes hit us from time to time with much more microwave energy than you'll ever be exposed to from a battery powered wearable transmitter. I know a lot of people who have spent their entire careers working in antenna and radar test chambers being exposed almost constantly to microwave frequencies at higher power levels than a wearable transmitter would produce, with no ill effects.

    A microwave oven works because it concentrates all of it's radiation at a very specific frequency, one that couples with the bonds in the water molecule. It also confines the radiation to an enclosed, high Q chamber, so the power density in the oven is very high.

    Microwave communication systems are not a threat because: 1) they try to avoid frequencies that are in the strongest absorbtion bands (like where the oven operates) to reduce atmospheric attenuation, 2) transmitting information on a channel spreads the radiation around the carrier(s), so you'd never see the kind of concentration of energy at one frequency like in the oven, and 3) even huge aircraft tracking radars don't produce the kind of power densities you'll find in an oven unless you are standing right in front of the antenna.
  • Correct me if I'm wrong, but spread spectrum technology was devoloped by the military in WWII for the sole purpose as to have secure tranmissions. If the service is as it says, then it would in fact be pretty secure. Spread spectrum has signals bounced rapidly across differnt frequencies in a set pattern. The only way to intercept a transmission or message would be if you knew and could follow the frequency hops. The way I understand it, the constantly changing hops would allow a pretty secure means for any sort of transaction.
  • I've been using the wavepath service for almost a year now. I think I was one of their very first paying customers. I have 512Kb symmetric service (you can get up to 1Mb), and I love it. It does not seem any less reliable than the wired T1 we have at work, and wavepath seems to be very responsive. I had it stop working last week, and within 2 hours there was a guy crawling on my roof. I went with wireless because I live in the hills and could not get either cable or DSL. If you are in the bay area and can't get DSL or cable modem, then I suggest you check out wavepath.

    I, too, have been a customer almost since the beginning, with 384k upstream and downstream.

    The downstream screams but the upstream sucks. It hasn't always been that way but it has gradually gotten worse over time. I now get at most 10K/sec upstream, but it's typically a lot less for anything but TCP.

    But worst of all, when my outbound is close to saturated (which doesn't take much anymore), the ping times go through the roof: I've seen as much as 1000ms round-trip time consistently when my outbound is saturated. Normally I see 60ms. I've verified that it's the wireless connection itself. I can easily make the ping times go to 500ms by using mtr with 0.1 sec intervals to a site 8 hops away. At 64 bytes/packet, that should put a load of only 5K/sec on my outbound connection, but it's enough to make my pings go to 400-600ms and the packet loss to go to 30-40%.

    This means that I can't play Quake on the 'net because the outbound gets saturated too easily with datagram packets and the ping times skyrocket. I'd be better off with a modem for Quake. :-(

    Their customer service is top-notch but it looks to me like they're way oversubscribed in my region. That's no surprise: I'm in the heart of Silicon Valley (Santa Clara) and neither DSL nor cablemodems are available here.

    Supposedly cablemodems will become available here at the end of September (yeah, right...I'll believe it when I see it). When they do, I'm going to take a very hard look at them.


    --
  • I'm in San Jose and I've been using Microwave for about 1/2 a year now. The fastest I've seen it go is 800K/sec (that's K as in Kilobytes not Kilobits). Not too bad. I had to put a 30ft pole on my house to get line of site to the transmitters. DSL is cheaper ($50 versus $150/month), but it's not available in my area.

    I had a problem last month because someone was trasmitting in the same frequency band (which is licensed) and screwing up communication. It took almost a week before FCC tracked them down and shut 'em up.

  • Do you think that Nortel or SaskTel would build me a link to them? Could you imagine downloading Debian on that with this Network in Tuscon? It would take only an hour or so. Damnit! The "future" never arrives soon enough. I still cannot get ADSL on my street yet.
  • In the San Francisco Bay Area. It's not as reliable as I'd like, expensive too. ($199/month for 384Kbps symmetric.) Still, until DSL is available (cable modem just got here in El Cerrito) it's the only choice besides leased-line.

    Check out:

    http://www.wavepath.com/
  • I work for an ISP that is currently experimenting this technology. And if we can use it in France, you can bet that this is not cutting edge (the Internet community lags over here).

    As for reliability, We experienced some problems with one of our clients last month, but it seems to work very well now.

    Incidently isn't BreezeCom the provider of the technology?
  • As an Internet service provider ... we got tired of waiting on a high-speed, low cost connectivity solution to arrive and decided instead to develop the service ourselves

    Yeah! Sure wish SOMEONE - wish *I* could - take the initiative and build a fire under the monople-sloths, steal their thunder and deliver a service like this. Cheers for innovative, indie inventors...

    Chuck
  • Realise is the perfectly acceptable British spelling. Most American English "ize"s are British English "ise"s.
  • Like most good internet tech these days, it's been implemented in Canada already. :-)

    Check out www.internet.look.ca/package.html [internet.look.ca] for more info.

    Look is interesting -- they're trying to sell digital video via microwave instead of cable. Note that you only get the $29.95*** price if you are a video subscriber as well as a data subscriber. Their video home page is www.look.ca [www.look.ca]

    The bad news is in the fine print:

    Can I stay logged on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week?

    While our service provides unlimited use, to prevent abuse of the system and potential bottlenecks, if a user has been logged on for 6 consecutive hours or the computer has sat idle for over 30 minutes we will disconnect the user. If you are disconnected you can log on immediately afterwards.

    Feh.

    *** Keep in mind, those are *Candian* dollars; multiply by 2/3 to get $US [i.e., it's about $20]

  • All we need now for ultimate mobile experience, is a cheap, low power uplink technology. We are almost at a stage where wearable computing would actually become practical...

    --

  • Ohhh it's a dry heat for sure. The doubters in the crowd can stuff it, I for one am eagerly awaiting the home offering.

    Tired of my rusty old DSL line.

    =)
  • How reliable is this going to be? I know spread-spectrum has worked in cloudy places before, but...

    Anyone know if they're willing to license the technology to other ISPs yet?
  • Sounds like they're just using a high-frequency section of the spectrum to do something like what they boys at Ricochet [metricom.com] have been doing for a couple of years now except with more bandwidth.

    I might, however, be skeptical of the "highly secure" claim unless they're layering on some sort of encryption, which is doubtful.

    -=-=-=-=-

  • This is it, guys. It sounds like your huge opportunity to dominate the ISP business is about to start slipping away.

    The RBOC's would rather enjoy their monopolies than expand into this strange "new" market. I guess they would rather sell extra phone lines at the local ISP's than do it themselves... ;)

  • Well, I'm hope you're happy. Thanks to this story, I am feeling . . . Avarice--for the supreme gadget Lust-----for new toys Envy-----for all the bastards in Tuscon Wrath----for abovementioned bastards Sloth----I'm too lazy to move. Vanity---I deserve wireless T1. Gluttony-I need more bandwith! More! Thanks to you, I'm going to hell.
  • DNAI and WavePath do this in the SF bay area. I live in an area that doesn't have cable modems or land line DSL. I've had something a lot like this for about 8 months now.

    They came out and installed a directional 2.4GHz antenna on my roof, connected to an ethernet-based cable modem. This cost $1K. I have 384Kbps symmetric, but you can go up to 1.5/512 if you want. That's about $450 a month, mine is $150.

    There are apparently two receiving towers in the area, one in the north and one in the south. You have to be line of sight to one of them.

    It's been really great. The service is very reliable, though they have been having a bit of trouble with someone else in the (crowded) area using their frequencies occaisionally.

    It's fixed IP, they gave me 6 addresses. Other than being wireless, it's just a nice, clean normal net link. The dnai web site is here [dnai.com]

  • No doubt this is a wake up call for phone companies. These guys need to get busy and start deploying this nationwide. Maybe then USWest would deem it necessary to replace the ancient switch between my house and them keeping me from getting DSL.
  • See my previous comment. There is something like this in the bay area. Answers to your questions:

    Yes
    Static
    6
    No, but there is a 2.4Gb a month limit, which I haven't hit. I think you can pay for more.
    I don't know.
    Ditto
    Unix. FreeBSD, I think
    Harsh
    I don't know
    Harsh, but I think fair
    They give you a cable modem. I run mine on a 100BaseT net that has Mac, LinuxPPC and NT boxen on it.
  • Whew! I need to get me one of these! Seriously. If other smallish ISP's can get together and exploit this, mabye they can give cable companies a run for their money. A meg.5 upstream will crush those mamby-pamby 'upload bandwidth' restrictions you inevitably run into with cable service, and even at the best of times you're not getting that much downstream pull. Plus it 'sounds' portable. I'm a DC-inverter and a roll of copper tape away from a Camaro that'll do 10Mb in less than my 0-60.
  • "You're" is a valid contraction and can probably legally be pronounced identically to "Your"

    IMHO,

    "You're" should sound more like "yUr" and
    "Your" should sound more like "yOr",

    although I haven't thought about it until just now. I think in practice they both come out sounding like "yOr" (at least here in the US).

  • So, like did you plug an ethernet card coax into a CB linear or what?


    I may be behind on what can be done in Amateur radio these days - last I recall was, haha, packet radio up to, haha, 9600 haha baud.

    Chuck
  • What in the heck are you talking about??? I've worked wireless point to point comm gear and satellite comm gear for years. There is *NO* reason why a point to point wireless link can't get you the *exact same* latency as a wire-bound link. RF doesn't go noticeably slower through air than through that copper wire.

    The only place you get really big latencies is when you take a satellite hop. *Especially* if you take a satellite hop through one or more geostationary satellites (the ones that are 36,000 km up) If you go through one of those, you get 1/4 sec delay for each satellite you go through. (Try TCP/IP from Egypt to the west coast, going through four different satellites, you get 5-10 second round trip times. Have you done this? I didn't think so. I have.) On the other hand, I've done multiple 30 mile line-of-sight connections in series (90 miles total), with 10ms latency.

    In the instance of a terrestrial microwave point-to-point connection, you will get roughly equivalent latencies as with a wire-link. Then you get down to factors such as how well connected is your provider, how multihomed is their datacenter, and such.

    Go read a basic science textbook before you go spouting off outrageous claims about something you know *nothing* about, and have no experience with.

    If you are going to slag wireless links, do it for some other reason than the false claim that they are slow. Mention things like rain fade, or keeping antennas or dishes aligned. But don't say it's slow, cause it is simply not true.
  • >Wireless net access over point-to-point microwave links is nothing new

    Ah, but the headline for this article seems misleading. Looking over the actual pressrelease and other information on their website indicates that this is a spread-spectrun *broadcast* technology, rather than PtoP. Yes, the receiver must be fixed, but the cost of deploying antenna for broadcast-type access is far less than traditional microwave point-to-point links.

    I did not see the term microwave anywhere other than on /.

    Someone please correct me if this service requires setting up dedicated towers and dishes at the customer premise. I saw that 2 hour installation was promised and the picture on the web site looked more like a DBS-type receiver than it did a PtP link terminator.
  • More answers

    It's pretty unobtrusive, a 2 foot square, about 4 inches thick, on whatever tower you need to see the antenna.
    Yes
    I don't know about that level, but at my level, it never seems to slow down. They claim weather is irrelevant.
    I think I am about 10-15 miles out. I don't think range has much of an effect.
    I asked them this. The (big) tower can handle something like a 6 GB a second, by the numbers they gave me.
    It's virtual point to point. No one else is on it, you have a private (I think) channel to the tower. You are on your own private net.

  • But a similar T1-speed service has been in place in Bend, OR. for over a year now. I wish I could remember their URL. Oh, yeah... it's $500/month plus equipment and set-up.

  • Out of curiousity, why four satellites? From what I remember of orbital mechanics, you can have an equilateral triangle of satellites in Clarke orbits, giving global (equatorial) coverage. The reindeer in Siberia and Northern Canadia get left out (that's a joke, people), but doesn't somebody operate birds in Molniya orbits over the north pole?
  • I'd have to look into it to be sure, but isn't there a blazing-fast hardware cracker for RC4 that could do 64bit very quickly for less than $50K?
  • That was a perfectly legitimate comment.
    ...
  • It would seem strange that you would have this attitude. I read in Business Week about six months ago that US West would be the main telco pursuing wireless since it doesn't have too many concentrated populaces.

    Is DSL practical *anywhere* in Wyoming or Montana?

    Is it practical in Colorado outside or Denver or Washington outside of Seattle?

    If USWest wants to service these areas w/ high speed connectivity (Believe me, they do!), they will have to explore wireless or satellite as the only options.

    Even cable modems aren't practical for much of the West. The population (read: profit) density just isn't there. However, those folks deserve high bandwidth, too. Hopefully, wireless will be right around the corner for them as well.

    -Alf
  • Actually "sometime in the next year" is really in the last two months. I have a friend who upgraded to the two-way. He also got the digital TV package (150+ channels). He pays about $75/mo for the service. His service is spotty at best. They (SpeedChoice) have yet to work out all the bugs. Their problems seem more hardware related.

    They had to bring out a larger antenna to correct some reception problems he was having for a few weeks. Gave him 2 mo credit tho.

  • Am I just a raving loon, or is there a cabal out there trying to limit and control our freedoms?

    Limiting servers does two things, one of them specifically for cable, the other more nefarious.
    Since cable connections are shared anyone hogging the bandwidth (say an MP3 server) makes everyone elses service slower than dial-up (BTW, sharing cable is why I have DSL),so there is a practical reason to keep you from doing it. The "nefarious" angle is about controlling content. If "they" can control who runs servers, it makes it much harder to do activity that is illegal and makes everyone subservient to their ISP's content controls, unless of course you want to shell out the extra bucks for a business account and run a server out of your house. By limiting the usefulness of normal account, business accounts without the restrictions are "worth" more and therefore cost more, even if they are used less than a regular one, and have no other appreciable difference. It's called capitalism.
  • We've had something like this in Cincinnati for a year or longer. I remember seeing the fax come across the desk of the network manager at the firm at which I was working at the time.

    Our service was called something like ViperLink, though I can't find the web pages today. It was strictly line of sight. Your transceiver was placed in a window. If you needed access and couldn't see one of the tall buildings where the base station was set up, a few repeaters had been set up downtown. Additionally, another base station was set up in a nearby business-oriented community (Blue Ash).

    If I remember correctly, you got some segment from a class C, with burstable bandwidth. Pricing was very competitive with IDSN and the local ADSL offering (which came out a few months later).

    I would use this wireless service for the IP stability it offers if it was available in more areas. It does, however, give a new meaning to "man in the middle" attacks.

    Today, I just wish they offered residental ADSL with fixed IPs and no need to log in (or let the router log in) in this area. It's a real drag to have the ADSL log in time out while actively browsing. (Grrr...Cincinnati Bell is so very slowly getting a clue...)

    I'm looking forward to reusing analog cellular equipment for an IP network in every city. Wouldn't THAT be great? They've got all those old towers and older equipment as digital rolls out...true roaming IP and just reuse all the equipment that's already been paid for and depreciated.

    Chris
  • Addressed to all and not just the poster I'm responding to...

    I see this "Who really cares?" attitude all the time and I have to ask myself if the people who share it are really that nonchalant about appearing ignorant.

    Yes, it's about communication -- but you will not be taken seriously if your communication indicates that you have only a passing acquaintance with the language you use. Clarity of language and clarity of thought are intimate companions. Sloppy writing reveals poor education, sloppy thinking, or more commonly, both. There is no idea so time-critical that its communication cannot wait for the communicator to order his thoughts and write clearly and correctly.

    Even setting the above aside, as for who cares...why don't _you_ care? Given that certain grammatical forms are right and others are wrong, why on Earth are you not appalled at the possibility that millions of people are reading your message in which you have confused "lose" and "loose" and that these millions are snickering at the fact that you write like a child? Doesn't it bother you to think that the very audience that you are trying to communicate with may at this very moment be chortling to themselves thinking "I bet this guy uses those big pencils and writes the letter 'e' backwards"? Don't you blush when you read about Constitutional amendments touching on free speech and you realize that you've been writing "ammendments" and "speach" for years? In short, how can you have so little self-respect that the knowledge that your writing is riddled with errors provokes no response more severe than a shoulder-shrug and a dismissive "they'll know what I mean"?
  • Boy, do I have to agree with you here. I got the @Home cablemodem about a year ago, and it's only gone downhill since then

    At first, they didn't care about servers. They just didn't guarantee any availability or connectivity (read: no SLA).

    A few months later, as they grew their subscriber base, they suddenly came out with a rabid "no servers" subscriber agreement.

    Now, @Home users have to deal with the latest shaft up the sphincter, the "OnVantage" program -- or whatever the hell they call it. All users, no matter if you've purchased multiple IPs or not, are limited to 128 Kbits/sec upstream.

    Apparently, it's been effective for quashing warez servers and other 'pirate sites', but it sure kills my NetMeeting connections! :-P So much for getting files when I need them.

    I used to be able to get 400 KBytes/sec upstream. Oh, well... At $130/month for a T1, I'd kick @Home out the door so fast they wouldn't know what hit them! You can barely get xDSL here for that price, and it's nowhere near these speeds!

    That's it... I'm movin' to Tucson.

  • Although I was able to get 640k/256k DSL when I moved, i've been wanting more after the much bigger connection at UofA. Well, we're getting this service at work, and as soon as personal comes out, and I try it out at work, then i'll probably get this at home. MMMmmmmm 1.5m/sec. yes. Anyways. I'm sorry, i had to brag. I've always been in the town that gets EVERYTHING last. so thbbbbbbbbbbbttttttt

    Nicodemus
  • speechoice is fast downstream, but only modem speeds upstream. And you have to pay for a second line/modem if you don't want to take up your first line. The Gain wireless here in tucson is 1.5m/sec up AND down. Shop around and find a better deal if you can, but that beats the $50/month i pay for 256k DSL. Almost 6 times more bandwidth for only 2 times the price. Although i almost always get all the bandwidth i pay for with my dsl. When i get it here in the next couple weeks, i'll let ya know how much ass it kicks.

    Nicodemus
  • Well, you could, except that microwave radio is point-to-point, line of sight. so you'd have to spend a lot of time re-adjusting your drum antenna not to mention all the time you'd have to spend outside. Oh, well, it's Arizona, right? It never rains in Arizona!

    I think that IEEE 802.11 is a much more feasible option for the kind of networking you envision.

  • Wrongo,

    Your == You are

    Your wrong, look it up in any dictionary, your totally out of line.
  • I must agree with a few others here: this is not a big deal. I am surprised more /. readers are not familiar with the multitude of vendors of 802.11 (wireless ethernet), both DSSS and FHSS; and with the rapid adoption of this technology by forward-looking ISPs. I work for a small ISP in Maine, and this is one of the main services we offer.

    Our vendor, Breezecom [breezecom.com], offers modest security and increased reliability through frequency hopping, performs extremely well in most all conditions, and makes relatively cheap (compared to the monthly cost of a T-1) hardware. They make many different antennas, depending upon the user's gain needs, from pizza-box sized to PCMCIA-sized (bringing wearable wireless ether one step closer to commodity level).

    To refute an earlier post, though we do not charge anywhere near the fee mentioned in the article, we do not lose money on this service. The reality of [multi-]community-wide wireless ether is that rarely does any one customer come close to saturating his bandwidth. When an access point becomes overused, it is a simple matter to set up another on a different network and provide more bandwidth.

  • Ok where to start...

    Damn near all ISPs do this. What I want to know is WHY??!!!

    Namely it's called CYA. Cover your ass. They are protecting their interests.

    So what if I sell some shell accouts or set up a personal web/ftp server?

    Well if you aren't a registered businness decalring the income and such it can be illegal. Also there are usually accounts ISP's have for businnesses and resellers. That is how they actually make any money. Dial-up is a no money situation unless you happen to have millions of subscribers. You are in essence taking away business from them. Most ISP's are not highly profitable

    Why is it okay for Zeke to run MS Net meeting (two-way live video) and suck up 10GB of data transfers while my web/ftp/telnet/irc servers consume maybe 4GB/month.

    Again it's because they, the ISP, needs to make money. Also they do not want to be responsible if you happen to be running a warez site, porn site(might violate terms and conditions), or something that can leave them open security wise. If someone hacks your server then that opens up the ISP potentially.

    Neither me not Zeke cause the ISP grief by mailing out spam or anything like that. Why does the word 'server' get IPSs panties so wound up? Sprint ADSL and @Home cable both do this in my area.

    This is apart of the reason above. @home is oke btw as long as you don;t do anything obvious or stupid like running a major warez site or start eating bandwith enough to make hteir alarms go off.

    Yeah, MAYBE thay' won't notice servers or care. And yes, there's probably no way they can know if you're IP masquerading.

    @home's terms allow for 3 computers per IP if you setup dhcp. They don't care if you proxy that much. Most calbe outfits are similar.

    But that's not the point. I wanna buy bandwidth. What I do with it should be my choice. Period. Am I just a raving loon, or is there a cabal out there trying to limit and control our freedoms?

    If you want to buy bandwith with no one to bother you every then get a co-lo'd server somewhere and pay for that. If your going to gripe about an ISP not wanting you to run a server then don't use an ISP for that, get a co-located server somewhere. They are trying to stay in business, and they don;t want to worry about someone that might think they know something but in fact leave them wide open for something. If you have an account with an ISP you agree to abide by their rules, if you break em and get caught face the consequences. As I said if you want to do whatever you want (within reason) get a server hosted.

  • We, in Tucson, accept your wrath. (Gain Tech is a pretty big name around here, in terms of technology (amoungst others)). And they are probably working with some Microwave Astronomers at the Universtiy of Arizona (who have a corner market on "piping" Mircowaves. But it will not be long before this lecks out to the rest of the planet.


    But now I know it was a good move to reside in the Sonoran Desert.
    *Carlos: Exit Stage Right*

    "Geeks, Where would you be without them?"

  • I just got back from Gain's main office (they have a new office down on 6th st and 6th ave), it's very nice. But right now they are giving access to only small bizs and cooperate accounts. They cover more area in Tucson than DSL does. I have DSL.

    Some things about DSL (USWEST). I've had DSL since November of last year, I was given a Cisco 675 router (or DSL modem if you like to call it that). It was intially in bridged mode and my IP was mapped directly to the NIC in my puter. I had no problems with this. But, recently (When I moved to a new apartment), I found out that US west is no longer giving birdged access. Instead, their DSL is sent through a PPP like mode with NAT. This is consistant throughout all their installations in every state US west servers, if you have USwest as your ISP.

    What does that mean? Well it's pretty crappy, now your router gets the ip and you get 10.0.0.x addresss. On top of that you have a NAT in the router to deal with. That is extreemly bad for a Linux user (I cant even send anything with DCC in IRC) or anyone who gets a random port on ip connects.. Things that wont work are netmeeting, cuseeme and any game products (including quake.. blah). This is extremly bad, you're getting a limited service, when in fact they claimed to be giving full access. I had to use my modem to play quake. Right now I'm switiching over to starnet (which has bridged access). So if your getting DSL with USWESt and have them as your ISP make sure you ask if your getting PPP DSL or Bridged DSL. If it's PPP, shop around for a local ISP that does DSL through USWEST.

    Enjoy.

    PS: I might do wireless when they go residental.
    --
  • I found a rather nice company based out of Seattle Washington that provides DSL service to locations around the country.

    For $80 a month I get 768kbps downstream and 384kbps upstream. Up to 8 static IP addresses. They promote running services, will assist you with DNS, and will let you use any operating system out there.

    Their servers are actually linux machines.

    The only problem with them that I found is that all of the packets travel to Seattle over an ATM link to the machines gateways, and travel out from there. Not too bad if you live near seattle, but a pain in the ass when you live in Boston like I do.

    200ms ping times to get from my machine at home, to my machine at work. Crosses over about 3-4 different ISPs. GAH.

    I'm sticking with it though because I don't know where else I'd find a place that will provide that many static IPs for that low of a price.

  • Just mainline that bandwidth please.

    Chicago, ah chicago, well, the north burbs at least. Ameritech you... don't serve... us well. DSL is just poking it's head. Forget about cable, TCI, Ameritech, whoever, have us in a head-lock.

    Good may come. AT&T bought TCI, TCI bought US Cable long ago. Mindspring is airing commericials around the clock hyping DSL rollout in the chicago area. Billboards are going up. And the phone/cable grid is being worked extensively by technicians.

    TCI tested the waters of "more than TV" a little while back, rolling out it's digital cable plan. For anyone who has it, basically satellite similar TV, 900 channels, 10 bucks a month extra, and a really big box.

    What it'd do to have a pipe like that. I'd download to the point of explosion. Hell, I'd need to set up a farm of massive disks just to fill with all the crap I'd cram into it. Maybe I'd take online gaming a bit more serious, as stuttering pauses and dropped connections are nobody's favorite thing.

    Then again, that might be just this winmodem . Better yet... I'd like... Yes... a huge data pipe, yeah, an OC-192 (I think that's as high as it goes) and I'll have it hooked up real close to the chicago (ameritech) midwest NAP. Then I'll have a a 20 or so terabyte disk farm. Ooh, and say, 149 or so SGI beasts beowulfing their way to greatness. And a SGI immersion room... And a hi-fi surround sound system with outstanding and vomit inducing bass... and 50gb RAM.... A power station at my dispostal... A farm of state of the art DVD drives....

    Hardware lust. Better yet... A quantum computer that utilizes spherical gallium arsenide support ICs with optical circutry, and that paints images onto your retina. Yeah, oh yeah.

    By the way, the number 149 didn't come out of thin air, it's the number of networked SGI boxes in the supercomputer "Blue mountain" in Los Alamos. Damnit... all that hot technology just has to be south of the border....

    On the other hand... It's hard enough to pry myself away from this box with my dinky 56k connection. If I had a T-x, my face would fuse with the screen and my rear would become solid oak wood as it merged with the chair. But oh the bits would fly.

    Nothing said, go broadband, The wait will be interminable, but one day...

  • this is NOT MICROWAVE
    Says who? You? What's your authority? How much have you studied it?
    Microwave would be horrifically hard to implement for something like this. Microwave is directional. So the ISP would have to have a dish pointing at every single customer's house.
    PCS uses microwave frequencies (2.4 GHz, I believe). Ever look at a PCS tower? It has no dishes. It has an array of flat-plate antennas, and each one covers a little slice of the horizon. Some towers even have multiple tiers at different angles from the vertical; the lower ones obviously handle nearer connections, and the upper ones (which are angled more toward vertical) handle the farther connections.

    Directionality is all a matter of antenna size divided by wavelength; beamwidth in radians is roughly equal to D/lambda (1.3 D/lambda for a circular plane radiator). With the proper antenna design you can be as directional... or not... as you want. As long as you can get enough power from the transmitter to the receiver to satisfy your signal/noise ratio requirements, you're all set.

    I'd expect the towers for these babies to look like PCS towers: many tall, skinny rectangles (very narrow vertical beamwidth, much wider horizontal beamwidth) arrayed around a pole. The subscriber dishes only have to point at a server tower. If a server tower starts getting overloaded, it's not that difficult to further subdivide the horizon by using more and wider (smaller horizontal beamwidth) antennas; this lets you distinguish between subscribers separated by smaller and smaller angles. Eventually you have so many connections it pays to put in fiber and use the RF spectrum for land mobile.

  • They helped us do a live net broadcast of Seattle Hempfest one year. It took forever to get the dishes aligned but after that, it flew even through some of the heaviest rain I've seen in seattle.

    http://www.queenanne.net/
  • It would seem that a company marketing those little fiberglass geodome half-globes to cover your antenea would make a killing here...

    Nope. It doesn't do anything for the rain or snow -- and actually, snow and ice piling up on the dome would worsen the situation.

  • I think the deal is this:

    The quality and quantity of bandwidth in different parts of the world vary. The price varies as well.

    For myself, DSL is a much better and cost effective choice when compared to what cable modems would offer me in the same area.

    Where I live, cable modems usually have a 128kb cap on the upstream. IP's are assigned via DHCP. Connections with server processes detected are killed automatically. Users have a usage limit of XXGB of data per month.

    The DSL service, on the other hand, uses static IP addresses, has a guaranteed bandwidth of 384kb/128kb, but the download can go as high as 1.5mb, depending on line quality. Mine is 1.1mb. We have no caps on the amount of data transferred. We have no limits on what server processes we run on our end of the line.

    But what you eventually pay for is what you are looking for. I went with the DSL because it was the best choice in my area. Cablemodems are great for people outside of california. But I'll offer this warning now: Cable modems are only good so long as everyone in your cluster behaves. Or you'll be seeing your ping times go up and your bandwidth go down. My own ping times are in the 50ms-120ms range from home to most places on the net.

    But it's buyer beware, so to most people outside of the California area, Cable modem is great. As are Radio/Microwave broadcast solutions. But something like what they are doing in Tucson for that price would score big business in California where bandwidth is being used up very quickly, making high bandwidth connections expensive and wireless hight bandwidth options desirable.

    Just my two cents


    - Wing
    - Reap the fires of the soul.
    - Harvest the passion of life.
  • SpeedChoice [speedchoice.com] offers this same type of service (in Phoenix area). Once asynchronous (so I can't spell it), they are now rolling out their bi-directional service. Their service offers 1.5 mbit upload and download, 1 static IP, always connected, and the best part is the cost. ~$150 US installtion and ~$55 US per month. This isn't new stuff.
  • Check out USRF- Another Microwave-based Broadband technology provider...
    The use wireless modems (I think they are 900 Mhz) which offer up to T-1 speeds at approx. 50% of the cost of conventional T-1's....
    They are licensing their technology to ISP's, and own an ISP called Cyberhighway.....
    (And a portal called USURF.com)...
    links:
    www.usrf.com [usrf.com]
    www.cyberhighway.com [cyberhighway.com]
    www.usurf.com [usurf.com]
  • Look at SOHO Wireless. It's an ISP out of San Jose, and they set up wireless LANs for small businesses. I almost got a job there!! *gripe*

  • Cool!

    For my given area and considering that Pacbell is the only one which could provide me with the service and still remain within my ability to pay for the line, it was a good choice for me. The reliability and quality of service has also proven to be quite good.

    Though admittedly, their service and deal will probably be eclipsed by something bigger and better by the time my one year term of service is over. ;)

    Thanks for the two cents. I'll be sure to seek out the other line providers in the future as my ability to pay increases. :)


    - Wing
    - Reap the fires of the soul.
    - Harvest the passion of life.
  • Uhh..
    Doing 1.5Mbps over spread spectrum ISM bands (or other bands) is not new technology.
  • Okay.. I talked to a friend that has SpeedChoice and found out the following:

    o Downlink is supposed to be between 1 and 3Mbs. Apparently this is spotty lately, though
    o Uplink is 256K. This seems pretty stable.
    o Connection is always on (dedicated)
    o static IP
    o Allow servers (maybe.. he's going to check his terms of agreement to make sure)
    o $200 setup + $55/month

    All in all, this deal walks all over the Tucson deal. So I'm still wondering what I'm missing here...
  • The isp I used to work for is using this stuff in Staunton VA, it works quite nicly. It can accualy be faster than a real T1, as humidity speeds it up quite a bit. In the rain it realy screems. I have one in my appartment as well. The equipment can be bought for as low as $250 for the entire package of stuff ya need. Oh, if any ISPS out there want to impliment this and want to hire someone who's expirienced with it, email me! (shameless self plug). Oh and if you live in Staunton VA, www.vaix.net is that isp, I dunno what their rates are these days though.
  • If you read the press release, it doesn't say a word about microwave. It just talks about it being radio based. Rather a bit of difference between radio, and microwave.
  • First of all, you need to check the web site. It says (in their 'more info' PDF file) they are using RC4 encryption with 64 bit keys. This is pretty secure, not great, but not bad. Further, spread spectrum is quite hard to tap into with a general receiver. And even if you manage to get one of their receivers, you have to know the spreading code. If you don't use the same sequence, you can't listen in.


    ...phil
  • RF doesn't go noticeably slower through air than through that copper wire.

    Signal propagation through copper is not as an electromagnetic wave, so the speed of light is not relevant. In fact, the signal is a surge of electrons, and is always slower than the speed of light. Depending on the particular cable involved, the signal can be as much as 60% of the speed of light.

    That said, when considering the distances we're looking at here, the latencies are almost entirely going to be introduced by the routers, not the links.


    ...phil
  • I got my @Home Cable Modem about two weeks ago, and it was down this entire weekend. It took THREE calls to their number for them to actually treat it as a problem with their system, and for them to realize I wasn't a complete idiot. If anyone does know what "Node problems" are, I'd be grateful if you told me, since apparently no one at AT&T does, they just know it's bad.

    Call #1:

    Me: My cable modem is down, the light marked cable is blinking, which the tech. who installed it told me means it's down. I've reset it, reset my computer, unplugged it, and cycled the power. It doesn't work.

    Them: Have you tried resetting it?

    Me: Yes, I just said that.
    Them: Uh, you're having "node problems" we'll get someone on it.

    Call #2: 12 hours later

    Me: I called yesterday, my cable modem is STILL down, they said I could get part of my bill refunded if it was down this long. (I explain again about the flashing cable light) It worked for about an hour around 2:00 a.m. then it died again. They told me yesterday that there were "node problems".
    Them: Hmm, reset the cable modem.

    Me: I did that. Many times. It doesn't work. The problem does not exist within my house.

    Them: It looks like you're having "node problems" we've got a crew working on it, it should be up by this evening.


    Call #3: 15 hours after call #2

    Me: My service has been out since Friday. They've told me I'm having "node problems", the problem is not with my computer.

    Them: We'll have to transfer you to a senior tech to analyze your problem.

    Me: I'm having "node problems" apparently, whatever those are. I've had no service since Friday, other than a couple hour long periods. I've reset my cable modem and my computer many times, just in case, but the cable light is blinking, suggesting that the problem isn't here.

    Them-Senior Tech: You're the third person who's called, which means we can now declare this to be an "outage" we'll call someone in to work on it, please hold.

    I Hold.

    Them (super-senior tech): Could you try resetting your cable modem?

    Me: It is NOT my cable modem or my computer. I am a support specialist. Fix your network.

    Them: Oh, so you probably know what you're doing, that's great! Since this is now an "outage" we'll get a crew working on it right away. However, I'm still going to have to schedule an appointment for a tech to come to your house to verify it's nothing on your end.

    Me: Why, if you know your network is down?

    Them: Because it's procedure.

    Me: Uh, okay then.
    Them: Howabout.....8:00 a.m. on the 11th?

    Me: So you're sending a tech two weeks from now to determine whether or not the problem is on my end? Why don't you fix your network first?

    Them: I'm pretty sure the problem is with our network, but we've still got to check out your place.

    Me: I'm going to go dig my analog modem out of my closet now so I can check my e-mail.

    Them: Is there anything else we can do for you?

    Me: You could fix your network problem, and believe me when I call, the FIRST time.



    My cable modem is now on, Monday afternoon, it went out Friday night. I had to resort to dialing into a free AOL account for two days to check my mail!
  • Hey ops, I suppose it's a minor nit. But could you try and do a better job labeling stories. As far as everything seems to indicate, this is NOT MICROWAVE.

    Even before I read the actual press release, I was pretty sure that it wasn't tho. Microwave would be horrifically hard to implement for something like this. Microwave is directional. So the ISP would have to have a dish pointing at every single customer's house.

  • It isn't so much as "who" to go to for setting up a server. But rather, it is "what" is written in the contract between yourself and the group providing you with service.

    For instance, one possibility would be to check out pacbell for their ADSL service. *Shrugs* Some people believe that pacbell service is flakey. Some believe otherwise. My use so far has been without problems. So your milage may vary.

    But then again, it depends on what part of the world you are in. California is expensive no matter how you look at it. ^_^;

    It also depends on what kind of server you are hoping to setup. If you need a server with a high upload bandwidth, it may still be feasible to go with DSL, but you will need to be quite close to the central office(s). Cable modems for high speed upload is near impossible within the californian area and is probably not a good choice to rely on in the long term for places outside of california.

    But it all depends on how you want to get things done and what you want to GET done. If you can split the cost for a T1 with some budies, hats off to ya. ;) But as far as californian dsl with pacbell goes, 1.5m/384k is as good as you can get. I think the cost for that would be about $199/month. (Check their site: www.pacbell.com)

    Btw, to conduct business,you don't need to rent out office space. You can conduct business at home so long as you have your city's approval and the house has been inspected for any violations of the fire code/etc. Check with your cityhall for the rules and regulations regarding running a business.

    For your own benefit, and YMMV, but it is probably better to get ISP service from the Telco directly. However, do this only if you know their ISP department/staff is knowledgable and competent. The reason for this suggestion is that if the ISP and telco service is from two different groups, you may get into support issues and finger pointing rather than getting problems fixed. But as noted above, YMMV(Your mileage may vary.).

    Good luck with your ISP/Telco search. :)


    - Wing
    - Reap the fires of the soul.
    - Harvest the passion of life.
  • And the difference between radio and microwave is what?

    Microwave is a subset of radio. They are both electromagnetic radiation (insert scary Greenpeace noise here).

  • If that's the case then they probably wont get far out of the "startup" phase. The cost of an upstream provider to give customers 10Mbit speeds to the internet would quickly run them out of business.
  • You're probably right. My experience is with traditional high-capacity tower-to-tower microwave links and with fixed wireless broadband. I know there is some talk of a W-CDMA high-speed data application for fixed wireless using the D-block PCS spectrum, but this is obviously not that.

    I would agree that what you've described is a point to point system. What I had inferred from the web site was indeed a (potentially) large number of receivers in a non-focused transission area.

    I guess this still leaves me with a question of how they can claim a 2-hour installation based on rolling a truck when my notion of a PtoP installation involves focusing setups at both ends of the trnsmission link. I also have trouble with how this would be any cheaper than the alternatves that exist.


  • I've been using the wavepath service for almost a year now. I think I was one of their very first paying customers. I have 512Kb symmetric service (you can get up to 1Mb), and I love it. It does not seem any less reliable than the wired T1 we have at work, and wavepath seems to be very responsive. I had it stop working last week, and within 2 hours there was a guy crawling on my roof. I went with wireless because I live in the hills and could not get either cable or DSL. If you are in the bay area and can't get DSL or cable modem, then I suggest you check out wavepath.
  • Let's see. It's wireless, it's aimed at businesses... Yes, spread-spectrum point-to-point tech is relatively secure, but radio is radio.

    Personally, I wouldn't feel comfortable using such a service without at least one level of encryption of the actual data-stream being involved. YMMV
  • So 2-way wireless 1.5Mbs for about $100 a month. Why so much? I'm clearly missing something here.

    In Phoenix, there is a wireless 'net service called SpeedChoice that offers 10Mbs downlink and not quite so fast uplink for about $40/month.

    What's the difference? Is the Tucson one 24x7 "instant/always on"? Is the upload also 1.5Mbs?

    If neither is the case, I don't see how they can justify the cost...
  • why not still use a small modem or isdn?
    i mean it is just bits and bytes, little characters that carry information. and covering 90% means that they want to go for more ...
  • Just because this is "spread spectrum" does not mean it is at all secure. If it is based on code-division multiple access (CDMA), it is only as secure as the code. To be immune to eavesdropping and spoofing attacks, there has to be another layer of encryption and authentication on top. The one-page PDF file mentions the use of a 64-bit RC4 encryption layer, but I'm not sure this is sufficient in this day and age. The document does not say if the key is unique to a given tower-to-user connection or if it is shared between all connections going to a particular tower, and it mentions nothing about key change intervals.

    The fact that US users routinely use 128-bit encryption on browser data going over a phone line, while Gain Wireless only uses 64-bit keys for data going over the air, gives me pause. All in all, I'd like to have more reason to have confidence before I laid out money for anything like this.

  • This sounds pretty nice, and I hope it or something like it makes it out to the SF Bay area before my ludicrously expensive DSL contract is up for renewal.

    I have a few obvious questions on what kind of service that $129 gets you:

    • Are you allowed to run a server?
    • Static IP or DHCP?
    • If static, how many IP numbers do you get?
    • Is there a payload cap (i.e. do you pay extra after the first 200 megs or so per day)?
    • How many hops away are they from a major backbone?
    • What's their upstream connection and bandwidth?
    • What are their local servers running (NT or UN*X variants)?
    • What's their policy on clients running spam sites or other hostile domains?
    • What, if any, is their content policy? (Restrictions against sexually explicit material or material "harmful to minors" (whatever the heck that means))
    • What is their policy toward accusations of copyright infringement or other legal wrongdoing? That is, will they yank the connection only upon presentation of a properly executed court order, or will they listen to any schmuck from the SPA?
    • Do they require you to use Windoze, or will they let you hook up your Mac/Linux/BeOS box?

    $129/month seems like a good deal, but I really want to see The Fine Print first.

    Schwab

  • DAMN (Score:1)

    by Pengveen ( 3320 )

    There was once NO reason for me to move back to Tucson.... Damn, when I was there there was NOTHING decent for local internet providers.
  • Okay, I realise that I'm being terribly picky but I've seen this so many times its just beginning to really wind me up.

    Your != You are

    The word is you're. Notice it contains an apostrophe and an e on the end. Not difficult really, but it seems to cause so many people on here a problem. Just because we are geeks/nerds doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to write correct English, does it?
  • Come to Delaware!!!! PLEASE!!!! I'LL PAY YOU!!!!
  • If you're not living in Tucson, cheer the fact that yet another of those transmitting devices is someone else's problem. Radiation affects materia, be it alive or dead, and I don't trust the effects to be good. Do you?
  • seriously, could you show me how you managed to do this? I was looking into doing something like this for a while, but I haven't found anything.
  • I want to take the opportunity to thank all of the loyal /. readers for the extensive commentary that was provided on our Wireless T1 service.

    I believe that it's very important for local ISP's to retain their ability to be competitive in today's marketplace. However, the regional telcos and cable providers have taken a strong stand against the liberation of their networks provided through the Telecom Act.

    At the same time, these same interests have paid hundreds of millions of dollars for radio spectrum that will not be used to improve our ability to communicate; rather, it will be used as another tool to limit competition in the Broadband marketplace. When competition is stifled, your choices as a consumer become limited.

    Gain Communications has developed this system to return some leverage to the small ISP. We are working feverishly to reduce the hardware costs and create a regional wireless Internet system with the features and functionality that our community needs to stay informed.

    As far as the debate over DSSS vs. FHSS and licensed vs. unlicensed spectrum goes, Gain Communications is engineering Quality of Service and encryption mechanisms to help ensure that our users' data stays secure while their system remains available and reliable.

    The T1 system is "Phase 1" of our regional wireless rollout. We plan on expanding our service areas rapidly, as resources permit. I believe that each of you will be pleased to see what "Phase 2" has to offer, including a bandwidth increase of over 20 times higher than what we offer now, as well as high speed "roaming" access to the Internet.

    One ./'er asked, "Does it run on Linux?" Of course! I have been a very strong local advocate of the Open Source movement, including the implementation of Linux wherever possible as a robust, enterprise class alternative to other NOS's. The Linux OS has, and will continue to be a core element of our Wireless systems from both a provider and client perspective. Does anyone out there want to brew up a few distributed apps? :)

    As I mentioned above, our goal is to provide a level of freedom and liberation from the repression of corporate bureaucracy. We have develped a neat set of tools to help empower our communities with higher bandwidth connectivity alternatives.

    We are a small company so your support is appreciated. All of the wonderful compliments that we've received from our community has truely warmed our hearts and helped us realize that we are "doing the right thing."

    You can help the cause by keeping the discussion flowing and above all, never stop fighting for your dreams.

    Warmest Regards,
    Christopher Wolff
    Director of R&D
    Gain Communications
    cwolff@gci-net.com


  • Frequency hopping is a form of spread spectrum. The other common variety is direct sequence.

    Both are used for military and civilian applications. Many data communications devices in the ISM (Industrial/Scientific/Medical) bands use frequency hopping or direct sequence spread spectrum. They both provide frequency reuse, resistance to interference and security against casual eavesdropping.

    Spread spectrum does not repeal Shannon's law. You don't get something for nothing.

  • Just as an aside, on the higher end WinStar [winstar.com] offers an OC-3 (155 MBPS) signal over line-of-sight wireless with a 2 mile range. They establish (rather, have established) hub sites in major cities and own good.net's dark fiber backbone. They avoid the costs of digging up the street and dealing with the local COs and pass the savings on. This way they can provide unified (or converged) voice, video, and data services to commercial clients and residential buildings at a very reasonable cost. One reason they can provide this service is because they own the rights to use a portion of the radio spectrum.
    In my opinion, WinStar's service offering is far more significant than Gain's.

    a_3
  • According to the "diagram" on their "technology" page (both look more like marketing material) the connection between the tower and the central office is "8 Megs" and each customer gets a "1.5 Megs" connection. So what, ~6 customers and the pipe is swamped? Or am I missing something?
  • Most of these questions could be answered by just taking a look at the page, but I'll indulge you.

    Q: Are you allowed to run a server?
    A: Yes, they do. The ISP provides for corporate business as well as home, so I think they would.

    Q: Static IP or DHCP
    A: Static, as the docs say. Even more than one, if I read their business offers correctly.

    Q: Payload cap?
    A: Beats me. Ask them?

    Q: Hops to backbone:
    A: A reverse traceroute to their service revealed them one hop away from sprintlink... (Three to bb3.ana.)

    Q: Upstream connection and bandwidth
    A: The system operates through the use of high spectrum, two way radio ("microwave"). In ideal condition, you get upstream=downstream. However, this all depends on a few facts I've not found yet; whether they use transponder sharing, and whether they do any form of compression ahead of transmission.

    I'll take this oppourtunity to tell a few bits more about the technology.
    Pros:
    No need for Line-of-Sight
    Lower cost than a permanant T1/*DSL
    Good stability and reliability.
    Good encryption (Read below)

    Cons:
    Can become "Under the weather"
    Fills the airwaves even more!
    Somewhat high-priced installation

    Later questions pertain to whether this antenna mars the eye when installed. I'd say not, it's no bigger than a sattelite dish.

    Q(s): Local servers? Spam? Content policy? Copyright accusations? (!!)
    A: These are questions you should ask them if you are seriously considering using their services.
    As for the "Copyright accusations", what have you to fear if you don't infringe?
    But rest easy, I doubt they monitor every single line 24 hours a day for warez, so go ahead and pirate all you want. Someone will get you sooner or later. :)

    Q: Do they require Windoze?
    A: No. They even support UNI*/Mac when they install the hardware.



    Now, about encryption.
    I don't know how far back you all can remember, but not long ago a 64Bit RC4 key was cracked by what is known as Distributed Computing. You ask then "How can this be secure?"
    Well, they used the collective computing force of thousands of computers spread around the world. It took them several weeks.
    So, if someone wants to brute force crack the communications, they'd better have a big mojo computer. And hope that the ISP leaves the same key in for at least a month...

    Hope this answers a few of your questions.
  • but what kind of latency do you expect? 1 or 2 ms like a regular t-1?
    And why not? RF in air travels 300 m/microsecond. This is quite a bit faster than light travels in fiber, and there are no bends or kinks in the path. If you are sending to a tower 5 miles (8 km) away, the round-trip time is only 53 microseconds.

    That's for the delay in the air. The delay in the equipment for buffering data, creating and checking the Trellis or Viterbi error-correction codes, and whatnot are what eat the time in short-range RF communications. This can all be cut with dedicated hardware; it's not intrinsic to the medium.

    Fiber is actually slower; the velocity factor of glass is something like 0.6. On the other hand, a 300 THz carrier has a lot more bandwidth potential than a 2.4 GHz one. Fiber is eventually going to displace RF for point-to-point users, but RF can help build the market for fiber. RF will then recycle the spectrum and go on to serve the mobile market.

    wireless, not unlike satellite is plauged with latency issues that will NEVER be resolved. the physical speed and distances limit just how much latency you see on the line. RF is slow.
    If that's what you think, go ahead and invest your retirement portfolio accordingly; take these microwave internet stocks and sell them short. Next year, tell us how many years longer you're going to have to work before you can retire. ;-)

  • One other thing . . (Score:3)

    by alhaz ( 11039 ) on Monday August 30, 1999 @12:28PM (#1716268) Homepage
    I hear rumors about a startup company in Utah that'll drop ethernet into your home for about $20, lets you run servers on your system for about $40. 10 megs both ways is pretty hard to beat.

  • What is the name of the company that you use? A company called Jato Communications is bringing DSL to Albuquerque and I'd like to see how their prices compare.
    Also, your URL in your info is "404 Not Found."
  • you can find the older waveLAN cards at www.wavelan.net [wavelan.net]

  • Information and Answers (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    About a year ago I worked for an ISP that deployed this type of connection. It's most likely using "microwave" in the 2.5ghz range using something like breezecom [breezecom.com] or airolan [aironet.com] equipment. They do use spread spectrum but in addition they also use frequency hopping, and the number of hops per second can be set in the radio.

    The antenna is normally a 24db antenna, which is aproximatily 24"x36" or somewhere in that range. It may fall under "eyesore" regulations in your community, but if you own your home or your landlord agrees to let you put it up, the eyesore regulations do not apply. The FCC has ruled that any antenna less then 1M (3ft) in size can not be restricted in such a manor. It's just a matter of whether or not you want to make those waves. ;=)

    For the connection, the transciever uses standard ethernet, most commonly 10baseT but the Airolan also has thinnet and thicknet connection on it. Depending on which transciever they use it can use a striaght through cable either directly into your machine or into a hub. (The breezecom, for example, has an SA-10, which allows only one machine connected to the radio (You can still use subnets or NAT, though) and a WB-10 which will bridge your network in) Since this is standard ethernet, you can use any OS you'd like.

    Basically, no matter which unit you use, they just act like an ethernet bridge. Unless you have your own anternna on their side, anyone who's on the same antenna can sniff each other's traffic. To make matters worse, (Or better, depending on your point of view) if the ISP doesn't have a switch on the hill, you'll be able to sniff everyone's traffic who uses the wireless connection.

    As for dhcp vs. static IP's, etc, that's all determined by your ISP, of course, of course.

    As others have stated, these aren't really new, just the first time they've been posted to slashdot. Still, the 1.5mbit/s is just theorectical, unless they've found some way to boost the power or they're using a really small radius, realistic speeds are somewhere in the 512K-768K. But it is bi-directional, which is a plus. Great for those who can't get DSL but want to be low ping bastards. ;=)

    As for those questioning why some ISP's don't allow their customers to run servers, it's mostly a bandwidth issue. Your average warez kiddie will setup a warez server and max out their bandwidth 24/7 (We actually had this happen to us). Normally mail servers are overlooked it's the ftp/http servers that ISP's are targetting. And from people I've talked to that have used ISP's that forbid servers, they don't check. It's just a legal out should someone start running an ftp server and utilizing bandwidth 24/7. As long as you're not abusive, they usually won't care.

    -skullY
  • Last time I knew Cox has two levels of tech support, level one and level 2.

    Level one (the ones that actually speak english) have a little manual in front of them which advises: reset the modem, check that it's turned on, check the cables... i dunno, lemmie transfer you to level 2.

    The trick is to call up and before they can say anything scream at them to transfer you to level 2. Otherwise you'll never get anywhere.

    Doug

  • Damn, just thought of a few more:

    • What kind of antenna is required at the subscriber's site? Is it unobtrusive, or might it violate local "eyesore" laws?
    • Is line-of-sight to a central repeater required?
    • Is 1.5Mbps guaranteed in all weather conditions?
    • What's the maximum range? 5 miles? 10 miles? Does greater range mean reduced bandwidth?
    • How well does this service scale? That is, if 10% of the local population subscribed, would local bandwidth contention be a problem?
    • Is this a virtual point-to-point connection, or more like a cable modem? That is, can I open my net card in promiscuous mode and sniff packets going out to the entire neighborhood?

    Schwab

  • Not like Ricochet at all (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ricochet is based on cellular telephone technology. The area is geographically divided into cells and each cell has one or more omni-directional antenna towers. The Ricochet modems also have omni-directional antennas. Ricochet operates at lower frequencies where non-directional transmission is feasible, which limits its bandwidth. However, you can use Ricochet anywhere in its coverage area.

    The "new" technology in question is simply point-to-point, line of sight microwave transmission. In each cell there is a tower with multiple antennas covering the various azimuthal sectors. Each client has a fixed antenna set up on their roof pointed at the tower. Similar setups have been used for communication links in the military since the 1960s. This isn't a portable, use anywhere system like Ricochet. The equipment on the client's end is just like DirectPC, the difference is that it is pointed right at your ISP's tower, which serves a lot fewer customers than a satellite so uplink & downlink traffic is feasible.
  • You do mean 100mw, I hope. While some very ignorant people (and that isn't a crime, folks; people just need the facts -- that's what the 'net is about -- the only cure for ignorance is confession) are shouting here about the "dangers" of microwaves (as if they were magically different from sunlight), being within a few dozen feet of a transmitter outputting 100 Megawatts would, indeed, be very deadly. Mw would be Megawatts, mw would be milliwatts.

    Folks, let's put this in a little perspective. You receive about 1000 watts per square meter of RF energy from sunlight. Standing in direct sunlight complaining about the RF energy from a microwave antenna on a rooftop is like calling your neighbor during a hurricane to complain that his cat is breathing on your tree! (I wish I could take credit for that comparison, but I read that in an article about low freq RF from power-lines).

    The amount of energy you receive from a point source of microwave energy is in inverse proportion to the square of the distance. I'd be very surprised if these systems are putting out more than 10 watts, and I assure you it would be illegal for them to put out more than 200 watts without special FCC dispensation. Let's be impossibly pessemistic. If, at one inch away from the antenna, you receive 100% of the radiated power, or 200 watts, then at 2 inchs you receive 1/4 of that, or 50 watts. At four inches you would receive 12.5 watts. At about a foot away we are getting into cat breath territory.

    evilpenguin, aka, Michael Schwarz, aka N0ZES
  • The flat plates you're refering to are phased arrays. I've used them in the 2.4ghz range.

    As for the directional quality of dishes, I can personally attest to dishes picking up signals strongly enough to report the mac address of a wireless network bridge when they're pointed an entire 30 degrees the wrong direction. This was with high quality Conifer dishes.

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