Thursday, June 13, 2002

May and June, 2002 - 802.11b Networking News Glenn Fleishman's 802.11b Networking News (http://80211b.weblogger.com) is probably most responsible for the final bit of motivation for me to get going on a blog of my own. Glenn's blog is a great source of news in the 802.11b hot spots (my name is Public Wireless Access Points - PWAPs) and a good pointer to the more important goings-on of the Commuity Wireless Networks crowd. Glenn also latched onto the story RF Lighting Story and did some good followup. Here are some links to Glenn's postings about RF Lighting and references to my article that have appeared in 802.11b Networking News. June 9, 2002: Illuminating RF Lighting (http://80211b.weblogger.com/2002/06/09) June 7, 2002: The Night the Lights Went Out in Wi-Fi (http://80211b.weblogger.com/2002/06/07) May 14, 2002: Hendricks: Licensed Users and Unlicensed's Future (http://80211b.weblogger.com/2002/05/14) This discussion doesn't directly relate to RF Lighting, but it touches on many of what I consider to be the critical issues of the sharing of ISM spectrum. May 8, 2002: Mehr Licht! RF lighting might beat out Wi-Fi? (http://80211b.weblogger.com/2002/05/08) March 18, 2002: Sirius Rejoinders / Stroh Feedback on Sirius Petition (http://80211b.weblogger.com/2002/03/18 9:46:54 PM

May 8, 2002 - DSL Reports Also Weighs In Also on May 8, 2002, DSL Reports (http://www.dslreports.com) weighed in on the RF Lighting story, keying off the Slashdot posting, and mentioning me as the author of the original article. (http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/17478) 4:42:57 PM

May 8, 2002 - My First Slashdotting On May 8th, 2002, I experienced my first "Slashdotting" (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/05/08/1432244&;mode=thread&tid=126). For the July/August, 2001 issue of Focus On Broadband Wireless Internet Access (http://www.strohpub.com/focus), I wrote an article titled Part 18 RF Lighting: A Potential “Extinction Level Event” For Communications Users Of The 2.4 GHz Band (http://www.strohpub.com/0701feat.htm). In the article I describe a potential clash between a new lighting system that uses Radio Frequency energy (in the 2.4 GHz band) to excite a material that in turn, produces light. The good news is that such RF Lighting may ultimately be far more energy efficient (electrical power in for a given amount of light output) than conventional lighting systems such as incandecent and flourescent lighting. The bad news is that the signals emitted by the RF lighting have the potential to significantly interfere with communications use of the 2.4 GHz band, such as Wi-Fi / 802.11b. To date, the threat is real - I've received antecdotal reports of severe interference in the presence of RF Lighting systems, but mostly theoretical as only a few RF lighting systems have actually been deployed. The comments on Slashdot in response to the posting were typical for Slashdot - some interesting, insightful comments, but most weren't that clueful because they (and in fairness, most) simply don't understand ALL the issues that are involved. I decided that there simply wasn't any upside in trying to educate the Slashdot audience; there was too much "educating" to be done on the relevant issues, and there were accusations that my article was designed to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Such an accusation was simply WAY past laughable... But, the Slashdot article triggered lots of other attention, to which I'll comment in turn in following postings. 3:42:26 PM

Let The Blog Begin! I've dithered and procrastinated on starting a Weblog for months. Color me a bit clueless, but (at the moment) I don't know how to make all the cool features that other Userland and Manilla weblogs do - links on the left and right, colums, etc. It is NOT obvious, and I've decided not to wait until I can make it "perfect". In my mind, the weblog will be for dynamic information, updated at least several times per week, and my main web pages - http://www.strohpub.com will be considerably more static (way TOO static at the moment.) The page for my newsletter, Focus On Broadband Wireless Internet Access is http://www.strohpub.com/focus. The main link for this weblog will be http://www.strohpub.com/weblog. The actual address is http://radio.weblogs.com/0101936/, but it's not a given that my weblog will forever remain on Radio Userland. I will periodically update this "intro" blurb or an equivalent link on the left column once I finally learn to do such things. What This Blog Will Be About In a phrase, Broadband Wireless Internet Access, in all its forms. When I have time and a patient listener, I describe the industry that I cover to be bordered on three sides. Mobile Internet / Mobile Data over wireless telephony. AKA "3G". I cover some of the more interesting developments, but don't cover it on a regular basis. Enterprise Wireless Local Area Networks - 802.11a/b/g. I cover the more interesting technological developments, but don't breathlessly cover every new product to squirt out of the WLAN vendors nor every big deployment in an enterprise. What I do attempt to cover in some depth is where WLANs touch Wireless Internet Access - Public Wireless Access Points (PWAPS), better known as wireless hot spots, and Wireless ISP use of Wireless LAN systems. Satellite-based broadband wireless Internet access. I don't breathlessly cover all things satellite (specifically, I don't cover broadcasting use), but I do try to cover major developments in Internet access via satellite. In between those lines, there are a multitude of technologies, companies, and neat stories, and I try to write about them as well and as often as I can, including: Free Space Optical (FSO) Ultrawideband Point-to-point microwave Point-to-multipoint Broadband Wireless Internet Access systems 60 GHz and other millimeter-wave technologies etc. Updates: All kinds of gotchas with this. There's mention of a WYSIWYG editing capability, but I can't see anything resembling a WYSIWYG editor. A glance at the Help revealed that the WYSIWYG editor only works when using Internet Explorer. Argh! I'm mostly converted to using Opera as my primary browser. OK, I've figured out that I can use HTML commands, so at least posts will have bold headings, even italics. (With the newly discovered WYSIWYG capability, now I can be considerably more expressive in type. No spelling checker... how quaint. 3:26:31 PM

© Copyright 2002 Steve Stroh.