802.11[bag], Re: [OT-ish] How big is the UK 'net?

[Matthew Astley]

(I make an attempt at rejoining "topic" below (-8 )

On Tue, Jun 25, 2002 at 12:44:19PM +0100, Ian G Batten wrote:

> [snip] Remember, a trailblazer modem circa 1990 cost a grand and got
> about 16Kbps out of a phone line: you're getting a fortyfold down,
> twentyfold up improvement and you're still whining?

Sorry, I've nuked the context, but basically on the line of "how are
lots of people going to shovel 100meg/day"...

> What technology capable of wide-spread deployment do you have
> available at 25 quid a month?

Wavelan looks good, at a practical top-whack of 40GB/day per
channel(?), and perhaps £2/month over five years. Of course throughput
drops sharply if stations have to repeat the data across a distance,
but that isn't necessarily the case here.

The problems are the capital cost (similar to ADSL setup, I suppose),
the need for tech knowledge at or near each node (could be fixed to
some extent) and great difficulty in getting sufficiently organised to
run anything resembling a backbone, given the gaps between users.


The questions that come to mind which might be closer to crypto
policy are,

how is the likely proliferation of cheap, short range, high bandwidth
radio going to impact RIP's interception and retention requirements,

and what is the government going to do to keep control? (Bearing in
mind the large telcos will be on their side for this one.)

Bonus points on the black-helicopter question: how does this relate to
the recent licensing of the ISM band for commercial use, and the
likely knock-on effect that could have on the impetus to form a good
grass-roots organisation?


Maybe if I'd found the time to catch up on the 'consume' mailing list
recently, I'd be able to answer these.

Matthew  #8-)
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