[CUWiN] wimax mesh / misc questions

[David Young]

On Sat, Jul 22, 2006 at 11:31:57AM -0500, Thomas S. Crum wrote:
> Hi Guys,
> 
> I've been following your project for a few years now and would like to
> congratulate you on the recent grant.  I have a few questions, also.
> 
> What are your opinions on the Wimax Mesh standard that is being
> developed?  Do you see this as a superior / inferior standard to what
> you are working on?  Why? Do you see yourselves moving to / towards it
> once its ratified?

I have not paid a lot of attention, myself.  The WiFi price/performance
ratio is favorable to community wireless.  I don't think we know, yet,
whether WiMax will have such a favorable ratio, but early indications
are that the volume of WiFi sales will always be orders of magnitude
larger than WiMax.  I believe WiFi's price/performance ratio owes a lot
to that volume.

One advantage WiMax may have over WiFi is that it is designed
for the kind of multipath events and propagation delays that one
sees outdoors.

WiMax is a layer-2 standard.  CUWiN has done scarcely any work at layer 2.

> Also, have you developed / added any type of polling mechanism for
> timing RF contention?

I have the feeling that with polling, we would pay with some throughput
(due to polling overhead) for a benefit in medium-access fairness.
I don't know whether we need that on any operational CUWiN network.

Dave

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