So, there's been a lot of revisiting on the list nowadays. I
just wanted to revisit Munchkins. Something in COTD (below) sparked
my memory: Rafe's writing on Mesh Networks talking about
end-user radio doing local repeating. Also, I stumbled
across this thing with prototyping them using
Palm V/VIIs on FoRK. [1] Part of this re-interest
comes from a conversation I had with RDHC (Rimer Drive Media)
at the Digital Hollywood conference up in San Jose
this past week. They are doing some really odd radio
stuff on the 5.x gigahertz range. To date, they
don't have a web page, nobody's selling licenses
in that spectrum, and they do some really interesting
mobile stuff. The only similar product I found here.
I am thinking about buying a couple of these so I can
take advantage of a DSL connection 3 miles away at
my wife's parent's house since stupid Pac Bell and
stupider Adelphia cable don't offer broadband to
our little neighborhood. They don't include
prices for the 8Mbs ones, but the 100Mbs ones were going for $19K.
Greg
[1] http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/april00/0601.html
[2] http://www.mpxnet.com/pdf/Data%208%20mpbs%20ethernet.pdf
> At our 1999 Venture Market South conference,
> I was introduced to a company I still carry a
> torch for: Alabama-based Time Domain. It
> makes super-efficient radio technology
> ("time-modulated ultra-wideband"), but its
> model isn't exactly FCC-friendly, and it's also
> too different to be incorporated into existing
> infrastructure or products.
>
> Weird radio must be a Southern thing. At this
> year's VMS, I met Masood Garahi, CEO of
> Florida's Mesh Networks, which has a fascinating
> concept for wireless networking: a
> military-derived technology that makes each
> end-user radio (cell phone, PDA, you name it)
> into a local wireless router/repeater. Mesh's
> marketable technology is the algorithms that
> handle routing, security, and power
> management.
>
> A mesh-based, self-building, self-healing
> wireless system, in which one or all of the
> handsets can act as a shared link to the
> Internet, has enormous ramifications. Like the
> Internet, it gets more robust as users are
> added, which is the opposite of traditional
> cellular. On the other hand, billing becomes
> problematic, and with cellular infrastructure
> getting better all the time (see ArrayComm and
> RadioFrame), one wonders if the economics of a
> mesh network will outweigh the development
> costs.
>
> Mesh Networks has raised $27.5 million. A key
> backer is Milcom, which specializes in
> military-to-commercial technology transfer.
>
> -Rafe Needleman
-- Gregory Alan Bolcer | gbolcer@endtech.com | work: 949.833.2800 Chief Technology Officer | http://www.endtech.com | cell: 714.928.5476 Endeavors Technology, Inc. | efax: 603.994.0516 | wap: 949.278.2805
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