Broadband Wireless Internet Access Weblog
Steve Stroh's commentary on significant developments in the BWIA industry
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- BWIA Weblog Has Moved!
The BWIA Weblog Has Moved!
If you're reading this, you're accessing it via a URL of http://radio.weblogs.com/0101936/
That address will soon be invalid. The Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) Weblog is now found (and has, since its inception, with a redirect to Radio Userland) is found at http://www.strohpub.com/weblog.
Updates should be more frequent because I'm no longer dealing with the vagaries of Radio Userland.
Thanks,
Steve Stroh
Editor, BWIA Weblog
Fri, 28 Mar 2003 22:36:31 GMT BWIA Weblog
December 17, 2002
Written by Steve Stroh (mailto:steve@strohpub.com)
= = = 12/16/2002 - Vivato Obtains FCC Certification For Phased Array Antenna 802.11b Base Station = = =
* There were some that didn’t believe that Vivato’s (http:www.vivato.net) system could in fact receive FCC Part 15 (license-exempt) certification, that the spot beams generated would be exceed Part 15 limits. Guess not! This topic will be discussed in-depth in FOCUS On Broadband Wireless Internet Access – http://www.strohpub.com/focus.= = = 12/16/2002 - DragonWave Improves 24 GHz License-exempt AirPair System = = =
* To me, DragonWave’s (http://www.dragonwaveinc.com) announcement of improvements in manageability of their AirPair license-exempt 24 GHz system… but rather that there, in fact, exists a 24 GHz license-exempt band!= = = 12/16/2002 – Two BWIA Companies Garner $49M In Additional Venture Investment = = =
* Aperto Networks (http://www.apertonet.com) - $22M; IP Wireless (http://www.ipwireless.com) - $27M. Impressive!= = = 12/1-15/2002 - Significant BWIA Developments = = =
Since I lost a very significant, detailed entry to the foibles of Radio Userland (see below), all I can offer is short shrift on the significant developments in the BWIA industry to date.* 12/13/2002 – The FCC (http://www.fcc.gov) invites comment on allowing license-exempt broadband communications usage of television broadcast spectrum on a non-interference basis. I proposed exactly this idea one year ago in my last column in Boardwatch Magazine (see http://www.ispworld.com/boardwatchonline/2002/jan02/technology-wireless.htm), as well as a submitted proposal for the Wireless Communications Association International’s (WCA) 2002 Technical Symposium (the proposal wasn’t given a presentation slot). This topic will be discussed in-depth in FOCUS On Broadband Wireless Internet Access – http://www.strohpub.com/focus.
* 12/13/2002 – Stratex Networks (http://www.stratexnet.com) branches out of their licensed-spectrum-only mindset to offer their first products for license-exempt spectrum, a pair of radios for 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz which provide 4x E-1 or 4x T-1 circuits.
* 12/5/2002 – Cometa Networks (http://www.cometanetworks.com/pr.html) uncloaks as a partnership by IBM, AT&T, and Intel to deploy Wi-Fi HotSpots in the top 50 US Metropolitan Areas.
* 12/4/2002 – Boingo Wireless (http://www.boingo.com) is now certifying Wi-Fi access points as “Boingo Ready” for easy integration with Boingo’s roaming systems. (Of more significance, on its web page, Boingo now advertises “Be a Hot Spot Operator. Everything you need to set up your own commercial Hot Spot! Cash in on the wireless Internet revolution for as little as $695.”)
* 12/3/2002 – Proxim (http://www.proxim.com) has added “Active Interference Rejection” to its Tsunami Multipoint product line.
= = = Radio Userland Woes Cause More Changes To BWIA Weblog = = =Several truisms have haunted me of late with the BWIA Weblog and the software that it’s running on.
The first is “It’s a poor craftsman that blames his tools for poor work”.
The second is “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
A third is “One definition of insanity is to keep doing something that doesn’t work, and expecting a different result.”
All are applicable in the case of my use of Radio Userland software for the BWIA Weblog. In the first few days of December, 2002, after a weeks-long hiatus, I posted a long, thoughtful entry to the BWIA Weblog. A few days later, I received a note from a regular reader inquiring if I was ever going to update the BWIA Weblog… to which I replied that I had. Then I went to look. To my horror, my long, thoughtful entry was no longer the most recent post. The December entry was completely gone, in both the Radio Userland server, and the local (running on my PC) server. I hoped to restore that entry from backups, but my daily backups, at the time, were not backing up the Radio Userland directory (under c:program files). The entry was gone, almost as if it had not existed. I was relieved (that it wasn’t my imagination) when one regular reader told me that they had read the update online. Needless to say, this was disheartening.
But, this most recent incident isn’t the first time I’ve lost data in Radio Userland. Others I’ve corresponded with have told me that data loss is a common occurrence with other Userland products, not just Radio Userland.
I thought I had worked out a solution to this issue in Radio Userland, where I “Save and Post” after entering paragraph of text into Radio Userland’s browser-based editor (which includes What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) features. This approach had worked well to insulate me from data loss resulting from “browser glitches” – for example, another browser window becoming locked up on a problematic web page, causing all the instances of the browser to lock up.
But for text that had been entered, posted, read by others, then simply vanish from both a host and a local system calls into question my continued usage of Radio Userland. As a result of this latest “experience” with Radio Userland, I’ve permanently altered my routine for the BWIA Weblog.
* All my initial text creation, saving, and updates will be done with familiar, stable tools, like Microsoft Word so that text won’t be lost.
* Any updates to existing BWIA Weblog entries will be “full postings”, with the entry being updated deleted after successful posting of the revised entry.
* Any postings done with Radio Userland will simply be “text dumps” into RU from the Microsoft Word file, so that if/when I encounter another data loss with Radio Userland, I can restore it with little trouble.
* I won’t attempt any formatting – bold, italics, etc.; “just text” will be extracted from the entries and posted into Radio Userland. Ease of HTML formatting was the prime reason I was using the Radio Userland browser-based WYSIWYG editor.
* Likely my weblog format / software / hosting will change in 2003. Depending on when my annual contract for Radio Userland is up, I may or may not renew. Once I renounce Radio Userland, the BWIA Weblog’s “static” address (the address I’ve always given out and encouraged to be used for links): www.strohpub.com/weblog will be changed from a redirect to my partition on the Radio Userland servers to content hosted directly on a hosted server (as www.strohpub.com is now) or “directly” on a local server directly under my control. As for format / software of a future weblog… “Plain HTML”, perhaps with frames, is an option. Thanks to the evangelistic efforts of Bill Vodall, I’ve come to realize the considerable benefits of local control of a server running free, open source Wiki, easily edited in any browser window. That solution, though tempting, will have to wait for a better Internet connection that expressly permits servers, which will likely happen in early 2003.
Tue, 17 Dec 2002 21:37:41 GMT- SPTF Report - Finally Some Specifics
I'm so proud.
I was hesitant to analyze too deeply from the reports of others - what I saw looked really encouraging, but I wanted to see the actual report or official summaries from the FCC before I said too much about it.
In the comments below, I'll be commenting from the FCC's News Release (Adobe Acrobat PDF version) on the release of the SPTF Report. In his comments (Adobe Acrobat PDF version), Chairman Powell carries on about interference and how it's the bane of the wireless experience, and that policies crafted as a result of the SPTF Report will eliminate interference. Commissioner Copps also had some comments (Adobe Acrobat PDF version) about the SPTF Report.
At least a few of the points I made in my filing in the SPTF and my panel discussion on Spectrum Rights and Responsibilities (search for Stroh).
Sorry... have to shut down the computer with this only half-done, so I'll post it as is and fix it later.
Sat, 09 Nov 2002 01:45:16 GMT - Spectrum Policy Task Force Report Discussed on 11/7/2002
At the FCC's Open Meeting, the Spectrum Policy Task Force Report was discussed with the Commissioners, with the actual report to be publicly released next week.
An excellent article on the conclusions of the SPTF by Roy Mark is at www.atnewyork.com/news/article.php/1496331.
This is a first step... now the hard work begins of not so much advocating for increased use of license-exempt techniques... but rather to defend against the agressive posturing by the incumbent spectrum holders.
The ISPCON Keynote Panel - WISPs: Alive and Kicking, was very well received by an attentive audience.
Thu, 07 Nov 2002 20:08:29 GMT
