Wireless Technologies for ISPs? 32
"I am also thinking about providing hotspot access in some of the neighbouring towns so the locals can hang out in the parks or their backyards with a laptop and get some decent bandwidth. We could use PPPoE to offer a paid service (cheap!) for anyone to roam around the town and be online outside (hopefully 100% coverage). Some of the towns here are only 2-4 square miles so we could put up a couple of towers and cover everyone using technologies like ADC's Loopstar. Basically there are a lot of Wireless companies starting up and it seems like a fierce market - I would like some recommendations on companies that have been around for awhile and that you think will still be around in a couple of years - It seems I get a lot of PR and little substance from the ones I have been dealing with thus far."
Cellular Interference? (Score:3, Informative)
But down the pipe there is ultrawideband and 20km WAP devices on their way.. might want to look for them.
900mhz equip (Score:1)
802.11b (Score:2)
I guess the lesson I took from this is,
In a similar situation (Score:2, Funny)
Our experience providing wireless Internet service (Score:5, Informative)
We use mostly Alvarion equipment and find it very satisfactory.
Two POPs are in wooded small towns, Crandall, TX, and Combine, TX. There we installed 900 MHz APs. I believe these are CXs. You can get CXs that go from one frequency range to another--e.g., input 2.4 GHz, output 900 MHz. However, for the one in Combine and a new, not yet functional AP in Rosser, TX, we use a set of 5.8 GHz Trango units for backhaul.
Speeds for the 900 MHz subscribers are comparable to the speeds the 2.4 GHz customers are getting--very fast!
A company associated with us, AEIWireless.Net [aeiwireless.net], in Lakeside, TX, uses 5.8 Alvarion gear with OFDM capability. They are just getting started, so I can't report on their experience yet.
You can see maps of Wiacomm and AEIWireless coverage at the sites linked above. The maps do not indicate frequency range. Especially note the "detail map" of the Covered Bridge Canyon area. This clearly reveals the biggest drawback of line-of-sight frequencies such as 2.4 GHz of any sort. Hilly topography cuts your service area way down!
The downside of Alvarion equipment is price, but we think it's worth it. Keep in mind what you aren't paying in maintenance and support.
Security is also better with frequency-hopping systems. And, nobody's going to buy a $500 SU (subscriber unit) to go wardriving in the hopes that someone, somewhere, is set up with Alvarion.
Re:Our experience providing wireless Internet serv (Score:2)
How well do the client side of things work? Is it platform independant (ie, does a small wireless modem handles all things wireless and connects to the internal network via Ethernet?)?
Re:Our experience providing wireless Internet serv (Score:1)
How does wireless broadband work? (Score:2, Insightful)
Is there some device-specific authentication (based on MAC address or something)? If so, does that mean that each computer in a customer's house needs to be subscribed separately?
Or is there a receiver box (maybe with a router) located in the customer's house which is authenticated by the ISP? Wouldn't this preclude roaming?
How many wireless ISP schemes are there? How do they let customers in an
Re:How does wireless broadband work? (Score:1)
Re:How does wireless broadband work? (Score:1)
Am I missing the point of wireless broadband access? Is it more akin to normal the standard wired broadband where you have a modem/router sitting in the house picking up the broadband signal over the air instead of through the telephone/cable lines?
I would have thought th
Re:How does wireless broadband work? (Score:2)
With wireless, you can blast the signal out to a >10km range for very little cost.
Re:How does wireless broadband work? (Score:2)
Re:How does wireless broadband work? (Score:4, Informative)
- We use proprietary Alvarion equipment which only talks to its own brand. The CPEs (customer premise units or subscriber units, SUs) are expensive and not readily available to consumers. As ObviousGuy speculated, the Alvarion system does have a receiver radio at the customer's house, which is authenticated by the AP, the central radio (in our setup). This does prevent roaming in the usual sense of the word. The technology is sometimes called fixed wireless for that reason. You can get a mobile unit, but for it to work the area has to be pretty saturated with coverage, more than is necessary to provide connectivity to most residences and businesses.
"Is there some device-specific authentication (based on MAC address or something)?"
- This is also possible.
"If so, does that mean that each computer in a customer's house needs to be subscribed separately?"
No, because the mac address of the router would work. Our subscribers (Wiacomm, Inc. [wiacomm.net]--see post above) live for the most part in widely spaced exurban houses on 1 to 5 acre lots. It's possible that someone might piggyback on a subscriber's wireless router, but we do encourage them to change the password and use normal security precautions.
"How many wireless ISP schemes are there?"
- As many as you'd like to count! Read the mailing list archives at isp-wireless.com [isp-wireless.com] or Part 15 [part-15.org] for more information on all aspects of the WISP industry.
"How do they let customers in and non-customers out?"
This is the big question. It's one reason we went with proprietary equipment instead of 802.11b.
Re:How does wireless broadband work? (Score:1)
Is there some device-specific authentication (based on MAC address or something)? If so, does that mean that each computer in a customer's house needs to be subscribed separately?
Wireless companies do this differently. Some have a WEP key, some do MAC address authentication, some have a proprietary authentication system, some have a service ID (like an ESSID for a cellphone) etc. or a combination
Canopy (Score:2, Informative)
Try Alvarion VL (Score:2)
Re:Canopy (Score:1)
Deployed Technologies (Score:1)
canopy vs turango (Score:2)
our tests today gave us 8 meg at 10 miles with no reflectors dead on, with degredation to 3 down / 1 up at the edges of the WAP coverage angle.
Re:canopy vs turango (Score:1)
Re:canopy vs turango (Score:2)
spelled trango [trangobroadband.com], it's not as impossible to find.
Take a lesson from Storm.ca (Score:1)
My parents bought a Storm [storm.ca] line-of-site system up in the Ottawa Valley area and it's been nothing but trouble. They were having sporadic access with their dish and the help-desk personnel told them to turn off their 802.11b router because the dish was randomly selecting the same channel ID as their router and it was 'confusing' their dish.
My advice to you: get in touch with the Storm.ca people. Find out what they use. And avoid it. IRC
WAND (Score:2)
The first link (13.4km in length at a nominal bandwidth of 11Mbps) has been operational since December 2001. Since this time we have installed a further 8 links ranging from 2.5km to 17km in length.
Here too (Score:2)
Re:Here too (Score:1)
Keyon (Score:1)
How it's done in SE Asia... (Score:1)