[Cu-wireless] HSLS?

[David Young]

On Tue, Mar 09, 2004 at 01:35:11PM -0800, Todd Boyle wrote:
> My question is, what will be the latency, jitter and thruput
> when 50% of the users are online in the evening, at a moment
> when 50% of those users click DOWNLOAD for something?

The answer is 2, 3, and 5, for a suitable choice of units.  You don't
really think that we can answer this question, do you? =)

> (So the question becomes is it even worth it to have
> a mesh that transmits ONE extra hop? i.e. a repeater?
> Of course it's worth it!  I'm sure it is.. )

Yes, of course. We have already demonstrated this on the network we've
built now.

> But I don't know what the performance picture to
> tell the users, when I try to convince them to layout
> $400 for these devices.

We don't intend to persuade everybody to pay $400 for the devices,
forever. The high price tag is something that we are going to have to
deal with in another phase of the project.

> I have been told by numerous
> people that the performance with a sinlge omni
> would suck, in these circumstances without bigtime
> (proprietary) engineering at the physical layer
> (the firmware in the radios) to schedule transmissions,
> dynamically change routing costs at milliseconds
> intervals, negotiate contention, downshift the power
> levels opportunistically, all that stuff.

Some of this sounds like hyperbole ("change routing costs at milliseconds
intervals"), but the gist of it I agree with: 802.11 is not the
best technology for multihop networks. 802.11 is the most affordable
technology, however. Everything else is either vaporware, or priced out
of our reach, or both. =)

Dave

-- 
David Young             OJC Technologies
dyoung at ojctech.com      Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933