At 10:22 PM 12/3/99 +0100, Christian Vandendorpe wrote:
>With the SH888 you first enable IR port on the phone, then on the Palm
>with OS3.3:
>
>- open the Connection Preference panel, make a new connection, give it a
>name, connection method set to "IrCOMM to Modem", dialing is TouchTone
>
>- open the Network Preference panel, select as connection the new
>connection you just made, enter your ISP details (phone number, username,
>password).
>
>- Click connect. The Palm dials the phone and starts a PPP connection to
>your ISP. Then use any net aware Palm application (telnet, email, VNC,
>icq, new, StockManger, etc)
>
>30 seconds
I'm not so sure about the GSM world, but in the CDMA world there's two
options. One can get you connected in about 5 seconds rather than 30.
The short of it is that some CDMA carriers (e.g., Sprint, AirTouch) will be
your ISP and route your packets so no other ISP is needed and hence no
dialing or analog modems and no delay.
The long of it is that the wireless carriers have been in the telephone
world so long they generally only relate to completing "calls" for the
customer, not routing packets for them. For years the data service model
for wireless (cellular) carriers has been to get you access to an outbound
modem pool and then charge you just like you're placing a voice call.
That's what their business guys have thought about, their billing systems
handle, their customer care representatives know and their salesmen sell. I
believe this is true in both the GSM and CDMA worlds.
The problems with the "async" model are:
1) Waiting for analog modems to chirp at each other takes way way too long
2) Carriers will eventually realize that plugging in a T3 and a router is
cheaper and easier than running an outbound modem pool
3) Users will prefer avoiding the dialing because it may save them long
distance charges if the modem bank is a long distance call from the ISP
4) You get away from the speed limitations of modems and/or the hassle of
matching modem technologies
The alternative is for the carrier to be your ISP and some carriers are
starting to do this now.. All modern wireless voice services are digital
already so transferring data becomes a matter of replacing the voice coder
with a PPP/IP/TCP layer. They don't need to put up new antennas or change
base stations or such. In this case the wireless carrier runs the PPP
server that the PPP on your Palm talks to. In general it takes only a few
seconds to set up a data call on a wireless network (it has to, you
wouldn't wait 30 seconds for a voice call...) so these calls come up quickly.
The one downside to these sort of data services is that you come up with an
IP address outside the firewall and thus have trouble with access to the
Intranet. This however can be solved with some VPN technology like IPsec or
SSH.
LL
