wireless

why will wireless internet never take off? someone got a layman explanation on why tv channels can be beamed in but not the interweb?

Because responses have to be beamed back. Wireless internet does not seem to be entirely reliable from what I have heard from people as well.

It has taken off to an extent with mobile phones though. All the newish phones have fully functional browsers etc.

Back in the day when it first came out I had Ihug satellite. That was fairly good for then. Requests go out via phone line, responses come back at high speed via satellite.

cool thanks. so the technology to send signal back is infeasible/too expensive?

inconsistent and patchy more to the point. WiMax didnt do so well as expected - wikipedia it.

Also, what's the point? Got hotspots for mobile devices, but the infrastructure already exists for lines to the home. From there just set up a wireless access point.

I can't see a reason why that model needs to be changed, especially not one that would increase returns for anyone?

Having had a quick look through that wiki page it doesn't really claim significat problems - just common misperceptions about speed over distance. What are the problems you're referring to out of interest?

Try google then:
http://www.google.co.nz/search?q=wimax+failure

Also the fact that people can have localised wireless internet at home simply by purchasing an appliance probably takes a huge share out of the market for real wireless.

Unless you were cool enough to have DSL upstream like some lucky suckers. We had conventional SatNet at work tho as we couldn't get DSL at the time, and even with 33k upstream, I managed to peak it out at 11mbit down a couple of times.


Wireless tech will eventually take off, but spectrum management is the key. Wired Country is a perfect example of when it works well. Capable of 10mbit or so, using licensed spectrum, point to point. Anything using public frequencies (eg 2.4ghz) is doomed to failure.

Mesh networks will get there eventually, but the big question is if cellular based tech will take over first. Sure, expensive as hell here, but there are unlimited plans available in the US.

Woosh sucks because it has patchy coverage and is slow as balls because of it and underprovisioned.

Coverage will forever be an issue. Sadly you can't beat radio wave prorogation physics. Geography always wins until you throw more and more access points at it.

The only problem with those speeds back then was it was too expensive for mountains of HD space to store all the stuff you could download. ...at least too expensive for me since I had only just finished Uni and didn't really have much money.

heh i went to the flat you are referring to kris and got 18Mb down and 7Mb up. That was 5 or more years ago.

Mind you, before that, soundie had a direct connection to the ihug core for his flat.

Course it helped that TV and movies weren't really the focus back then, it was all about raping Napster and then Audiogalaxy for sweet sweet 128k MP3 loot!

Heh yeah. I'm also think of the Huntly St joint, when heresy had the 10mbit unmetered WC link and what, a /24 or something just for the flat?

The go then was downloading to a colo box, then the media player was a Myth TV install running on a M-ITX system, which mounted the download store on the colo box over HTTP. It was like living in the future!

Yeah thats why i used to take my comp there. Cleared 3 pages (300) tracks mixes and albums in about 3 minutes.