Re: [WISPA] Well, it was time to stir the pot for the new year...
Yeah, what he said. Al to often people tend to fall into the trap that their way is the only way. And in THEIR back yard, it's probably very true. But we don't all live in the same yard. One of the great things about this business is it's flexibility! DSL works basically one way. Cable, very narrow. Wireless has more options than anything else I've ever seen. The hard thing, sometimes, is remembering that all options work in the right case. laters, marlon - Original Message - From: Matt Larsen - Lists [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Friday, January 05, 2007 11:01 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] Well, it was time to stir the pot for the new year... Well, lets really spice it up thenI'm going to stir the pot in this direction for this post Alvarion has done a great job of producing a product that does an excellent job delivering value to their customers and has several unique features that will keep it on a different level above what the open source/standard hardware crew will ever be capable of. They maintain strict control over the hardware components and feel it is important to keep continuity with their already existing products. There are some valid technical reasons for doing things that way, and some equally valid business reasons for having equipment that is non-standard. Alvarion is in business TO MAKE MONEY - and they have done an excellent job retaining value and delivering a consistently usable product to the WISP industry while making money. This is not a hobby for them. Mark, you unfortunately fall into the hardware trap of humping your radios and spending a heck of a lot of time worrying about having the neatest gadget for your wisp. You are in a rural area and don't have to worry about issues of scale. If you continue to spend all that time putting together each radio and trying to micromanage each customer connection you will not scale beyond a couple hundred customers. Alvarion has put together products that have a steeper initial learning curve but are very flexible, very manageable and will scale. I know of one Alvarion operator that is at 18,000 customers - you don't reach that level putting your own CPEs together and requiring the high level of installation skill to put a StarOS or MT based CPE into service. You might think that Alvarion and others are Late to the Party but you have Missed the Boat when it comes to building your core business around a scalable, manageable product. I am personally really glad to see Alvarion taking a more involved interest in the WISP market. I think they have recognized that they can learn a lot from some of the cowboys out there. Just remember that we can learn a lot from them as well. Matt Larsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mark Koskenmaki wrote: - Original Message - From: Patrick Leary [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Friday, December 29, 2006 12:52 AM Subject: RE: [WISPA] StarOS or Microtik with TRCPQ clients... When a market knows it must contend with fraudulent product AND that a good percentage of that market will support the fraud, what's the decision you think vendors will make when it comes to prioritizing investments in this business? Licensed or unlicensed? WISPs or a market segment that buys only legal product? For Pete's sake people, you think your actions don't have actual consequences just because you are staying within the legal power limits? Some of you make guys make the jobs of guys like me who seriously give a rip real, real hard. Aw, give it a rest, Patrick. Valemount's product runs rings around many in terms of features.So, how many MILLIONS would it take for Alvarion to produce a box that does what WISP's need it to do? Not even as much as you spend producing stuff that costs too much for some to use. So, exactly WHO is to blame when software vendor X produces what we REALLY need, hardware vendor Y produces what we REALLY need, and the people who want to have the secret black boxes with unknown guts under the hood won't listen and learn? The fact is, that the little guy... the Joe Blow Schmuck is 5 X more capable of figuring out what it is he wants than a whole team of highly paid product developers who won't listen. While you may get engineers to figure out every last possible means of adjusting the 802.11 MAC and doing really cool stuff with it, who's to blame for thinking we should BRIDGE our networks together?If Schmuck A can figure out how to build a workable board in China, Schmuck B can find some great working little mini-pci radios with INDUSTRY STANDARD connectors on both the cpu board and the card and Schmuck C can figure out how to put a FREE OS together and then develop some drivers to do the cool RF stuff, and all the rest of us dullard schmucks are still bright enough to figure out how to PUT THEM ALL TOGETHER and use them
Re: [WISPA] Well, it was time to stir the pot for the new year...
- Original Message - From: Matt Larsen - Lists [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Friday, January 05, 2007 11:01 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] Well, it was time to stir the pot for the new year... Well, lets really spice it up thenI'm going to stir the pot in this direction for this post Alvarion has done a great job of producing a product that does an excellent job delivering value to their customers and has several unique features that will keep it on a different level above what the open source/standard hardware crew will ever be capable of. They maintain strict control over the hardware components and feel it is important to keep continuity with their already existing products. There are some valid technical reasons for doing things that way, and some equally valid business reasons for having equipment that is non-standard. Alvarion is in business TO MAKE MONEY - and they have done an excellent job retaining value and delivering a consistently usable product to the WISP industry while making money. This is not a hobby for them. Nobody here is saying it is.I just think they're a fish out of water when it comes to how fast the evolution of WISP and technology has become. BRIDGING a residential network? What the??? Mark, you unfortunately fall into the hardware trap of humping your radios and spending a heck of a lot of time worrying about having the neatest gadget for your wisp. I do? When? I spent a lot of time... A while back, picking what I'd go with for a while. I spend a lot more time sitting down and doing what ifs and comparing my roadmap to what appears to be the market and t he consumer. Far more than I fiddle with goodies. You are in a rural area and don't have to worry about issues of scale. If you continue to spend all that time putting together each radio and trying to micromanage each customer connection you will not scale beyond a couple hundred customers. Yah know, I'm going to spending longer doing paperwork tracking these things than I will putting them together. Fire it up, click, upload config file, save, set the AP for the c lient cpe and vice versa (funny, you gotta do this with everything ya buy) go hang it. I've gone from bare parts to full CPE in 15 minutes. That's configured for client's speed, put in the enclosure, and all the settings done. I wonder how long it takes to configure a VL product for use?Probably not much less. Again, I'm going to have more time in doing paperwork tracking serial numbers and parts and inventory than I will in fiddling around. But then, there WILL be customer support issues just like I have now... When the dog chews the wire off the side of the house (who'd have thought the dog would get on top of the AC unit and chew a wire stapled under the lower edge of the siding ridge???) , or the customer unplugs everyting and plugs the wrong stuff into the wrong thing (more than once now).And don't tell me that dirty power has no effect on Trango or VL or whatever. Of c ourse it does. Or that the customer has blown his switch... (again) due to power surges and doesn't realize why he's offline.These will happen with any product. They're just part of the human equation.Yes, I have had lightning losses. Yes, I did have a customer than turned her CPE on and off several times a day (no kidding!) because she thought that it was dangerous to leave it on and no amount of explaining wouild change her mind.And then... one day, it didn't come back on. Alvarion has put together products that have a steeper initial learning curve but are very flexible, very manageable and will scale. I know of one Alvarion operator that is at 18,000 customers - you don't reach that level putting your own CPEs together and requiring the high level of installation skill to put a StarOS or MT based CPE into service. What high level of skill is that? I'd say it takes precisely EQUAL skill. It doesn't matter if you're putting up the equivalent of a space shuttle or kite on a string, it takes about the same amount of time. The fiddlybits have always been related to physical issues at the customer site, not cpe.The time involved in installs has been a vast majority of OTHER things, never problems with the cpe that weren't my own failure to do something really simple (like bring the box... duhh). You might think that Alvarion and others are Late to the Party but you have Missed the Boat when it comes to building your core business around a scalable, manageable product. Really? How the bloody heck do you maintain even a modicum of QC on your network if you have residential customers putting in thier own router?Or do I pretend to be Qwest and say if we didn't install it we don't support it? I'm not even going to pretend I can have the c ustomer touch his router. For the few who did install thier own, they've been more troublesome than
Re: [WISPA] Well, it was time to stir the pot for the new year...
Patrick, I hope you understand something... I have no animosity towards anyone... But I really do want to light a fire under people. Too many companies (even me at times) gets too stuck in the box and we forget to look beyond. From our past conversations, you should realize what a large step it is for me to say I strongly consider your VL product under the Comnet program. But you have to understand that to do so has certain operational downsides for me as well. I'm not a mathmatician, but the way I see it, if my network backbone is 99% reliable, and my cpe is 99% reliable, I'm only 98% reliable. I have found that physical site issues have had far more to do with downtime and difficult installs, and customer issues, than the network at all. Generally, the network hums along wtihout intervention or attention. Customers do not. They forget passwords, they unplug stuff, they install home routers and put them on the same channel I'm on, they DO THESE THINGS. My issues have, in my unscientific estimation been: 1. Customer self-inflicted - perhaps about 20% of all things 2. Errors on my part (yeah, misconfiguring a router or other such bonehead goofs) - 15% 3. Downtime due to hardware failures: 10% - this includes power supplies, UPS, burned out batteries, etc sudden radio or networking equipment death that's really unexplained. 4. Physical failure of customer end equipment: 10%. Lightning and power issues. 5. acts of Nature: 5%. The rest is just... stuff happens. breaker burns out and takes a circuit offline and I have no power to a remote site. Bugs got into a pc case and somehow or other managed to short out the ram. Power supply burned out or otherwise just croaked. ( 3 times in months ) Wire near the storage batteries somehow got exposed to acid and just parted at a random moment. Some uknown person fired up an extremely strong signal and took down the 5 ghz backhauls, and each time I moved to clear air, so did he. Then, the interference stopped mysteriously a couple months ago. My competitor and I have been unable to locate this interference, we communicated considerably on the topic, decided it seemed deliberate, but we never found the source. BTW, it took down his Trango stuff. Competitor pulled the CPE apart and managed to mangle putting it back together, taking the customer offline. So... If you have suggestions on how to cut down on the stuff happens, that would do the most. Certainly, improved attention my part would elimenate 2, and some of 3 and possibly 4, I take my gambles, it's worked out. But if you're going to say that dramatically increased CPE quality or lifespan would transform my network's reliability... It won't. Improve? Of course. But no real big issue at the moment.yeah, I want better QOS for VOIP applications... but will my customers pay $15 more a month so I can buy them a router and higher end stuff? Probably not. So where do you thread the needle? If you had all the neato RF goodies and enhancements to the MAC, but also included routing and dynamic routing and DHCP and NAT and so on... Man, that would be one heck of a hard thing to resist. There would be no compromise other than dollars, and it's far eaiser, in my book, to compromise a small amount of dollars than it is certain fundamental network characteristics.Heck, at the lowest price you quote, there's no dollar issue to me, just a large hurdle for those smaller POP's (ap cost and some issues revolving around power consumption - my God, havn't you guys learned how to use lower power consumption stuff yet ). Heck, Trango and Motorola haven't even been considered, due to mostly the same thing. Someone asked me what I wanted that nearly 3 years ago when I was getting ready to put my first stuff up and I made a list. Someone filled the stuff on that list before you did. Now down the road with experience under my belt the only thing I really wish for that I don't have is better QOS capability for voip and a little better price. Would it really kill Alvarion to stop reinventing the wheel and base something on mass production in the outside world and apply thier skills to a full blown SOLUTION for residential use? Of course not.Are they even considering something with the capabilities of a WAR board cpe? I have my doubts.Are they stuck in the box? +++ neofast.net - fast internet for North East Oregon and South East Washington email me at mark at neofast dot net 541-969-8200 Direct commercial inquiries to purchasing at neofast dot net - Original Message - From: Patrick Leary [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Friday, January 05, 2007 11:59 PM Subject: RE: [WISPA] Well, it was time to stir the pot for the new year... Well that was worth staying up to read! Man, thanks Matt. ...and Mark, you might be surprised that I am harder and more pushy on our PMs about features WISPs
Re: [WISPA] Well, it was time to stir the pot for the new year...
And now to stir it in the other direction If Alvarion is serious about making the VL platform their new standard bearer for residential, there is a little bit of work to be done. While I understand the need for non-standard items at times, things like the special ethernet cable, non-standard management interface (snmp, not telnet or web based) and lack of simple routing capability are pretty big problems. I am seriously considering VL for some future deployments, but I will have to invest a fair amount of time retraining my techs and installers on how to properly deal with it. The main Alvarion competitors (Motorola, Trango, Tranzeo) do a pretty good job of having simple installation processes with standard procedures for cabling, web interfaces to change settings in the field and some simple routing capabilities. If there is a scalability issue with VL, it is in these installation limitations. Ok, now.RANT MODE ON I have a really hard time having a lot of respect for the legal and enforcement framework surrounding not just the broadband wireless industry but the ISP business in general. The Telecom Act of '96 has been completely gutted by lawyers, lobbyists and the current administration into a toothless tiger. Unlicensed wireless gear for broadband only exists because of a loophole - when the bands were created it was not thought to be feasible to deliver any kind of reliable connection in noisy, interference prone spectrum. Cell phone company valuations are based in large part on the value of their spectrum holdings, and the government is dependent on spectrum auctions to help fund other activities, so the idea of unlicensed spectrum is kryptonite for big businesses and many in government that shudder at the thought of not having complete control over all things telecom related. Simply put, we aren't supposed to exist, and the system is heavily stacked against us. So when I hear people saying things like the only thing that can take out Canopy is other Canopy and that it hurts the entire industry to use gear that may or may not be entirely legal (even if it fulfills the technical requirements of legality but hasn't passed the paperwork test) - I laugh quietly and to myself. Here's why... Thinking that one kind of unlicensed is going to be the Darwinian survivor of the unlicensed spectrum wars is also folly. If it is unlicensed, it can be taken out - and it can be taken out legally. Yes, Canopy too. It takes special resources to build a nuclear bomb, but it doesn't take much to build the unlicensed spectrum equivalent of a nuclear bomb. So you Motorola guys can get off your high horse, when the bomb goes off you are just as cooked as the guy using wifi based gear. Licensed guys aren't exactly immune either. WiMax isn't designed to handle interference well, so I would imagine that those neat self-install WiMax CPE radios have a lovely time when the neighbor kid turns on his hacked Linksys router running in 2.5ghz and the noise floor goes through the roof. There are lots of folks using products that aren't legal and they are going to get away with it because the law is unenforcable. Yes, there are examples of people who will get fined, and probably a few high-profile cases to scare the rest. But there are millions of software definable chipsets out there that can be modified to do all kinds of crazy things in both unlicensed AND licensed spectrum. The cat is out of the bag, and our current legislative structure has no hope of getting it back in. Running an omni at 40db in 2.4ghz is about as serious an infraction as downloading unlicensed music from Bit Torrent, and both have an equal probability of being prosecuted. DISCLAIMER: All of the systems that I have deployed now have certs for the radio/amp/antenna combinations and run at or below the allowed power for the band. Just because I don't like the system doesn't mean that I'm going to start the revolution and flaunt the rules. The saddest thing to me is seeing the faces at ISPCON and thinking about how many more used to be around a few years ago. I look at guys like Travis Johnson, John Scrivner or Rick Harnish and wonder about the other ten guys that used to be there. They are probably insurance salesmen or working in a used car lot somewhere after their ISP either folded up or was gobbled up by a big operator when it was clear that things were not sustainable. When I think about how close I was to that same fate, I start to wonder what good did the legal framework do for the independent ISP? UNE and reciprocal comp are gone - wholesale rates for DSL are higher than the retail rates that the ILEC charge and now the modem pool providers are starting to feel the heat. We've got unlicensed wireless, and it was so worthless that it is called the junk band. The real tragedy is the death of so many ISPs, and the loss of innovation with it.
Re: [WISPA] Well, it was time to stir the pot for the new year...
Matt and Mark (and others), This is a general rant about posts from the last few weeks. When I read the posts about who is better and what is missing, it reminds me of a kid's christmas wish list. There is no perfect CPE. Everyone has their favorite. And much like politics and religion you aren't going to persuade someone to change. You have to ask yourself: Is Good Enough, good enough to base your business on? If it won't scale or has a limit, is that limit good enough for your market? Chances are it is because more than two-thirds the ISPs I have dealt with have less than 300 BB clients. Less than 300. So their network is Good Enough. (Why 300 is a whole other rant -- sales, marketing, humping the boxes instead of the prospects). There is often talk of valuations - and like Mark said - the customer is the asset. That being said: No one is buying your network or your Potential. They are paying for your customer list and contracts. Your fortunes will probably not be made on just connectivity. You need to start moving up the layer stack and get closer to Layer 7 - the application. With the Mega-Mergers now complete, your customer base is now the target. The price point is $10 - and they are coming. You need find a way to capture your customers like banks do with Bill Pay. I often speak with cable operators who are getting their lunch eaten by DBS, because to upgrade their current network is millions - even for 6000 homes passed. So the shift is coming. The big are eating the small in ever segment on the market. People will want/need bigger pipes - and probably won't care where it comes from. But security, data protection, pc support, help, and knowledge is yours to sell. Sorry for the rambling. - Peter -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
RE: [WISPA] Well, it was time to stir the pot for the new year...
Matt, VL CPE ship with the cable, pre-terminated. As for management, you can use telnet or SNMP with both standard and proprietary MIBs. We do not permit Web-based for security reasons and you can restrict management access to specific IP addresses and/or directions (from the Ethernet side or the wireless side). You can also auto configure using an FTP or TFTP file (for batch, network wide, or specific units). As for the router feature thing, I believe most of that arises from people's experience with 802.11b and the belief that since we don't have routing than everyone must be able to see everyone on an Alvarion network. That is not the case for a number of reasons. One such reason is our support of Ethernet Broadcast Filtering: The Ethernet Broadcast Filtering menu enables defining the layer 2 (Ethernet) broadcast and multicast filtering capabilities for the selected SU. Filtering the Ethernet broadcasts enhances the security of the system and saves bandwidth on the wireless medium by blocking protocols that are typically used in the customer's LAN but are not relevant for other customers, such as NetBios, which is used by the Microsoft Network Neighborhood. Enabling this feature blocks Ethernet broadcasts and multicasts by setting the I/G bit at the destination address to 1. This feature should not be enabled when there is a router behind the SU. The Ethernet Broadcast Filtering menu includes the following parameters: Filter Options DHCP Broadcast Override Filter PPPoE Broadcast Override Filter ARP Broadcast Override Filter Patrick Leary AVP WISP Markets Alvarion, Inc. o: 650.314.2628 c: 760.580.0080 Vonage: 650.641.1243 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matt Larsen - Lists Sent: Saturday, January 06, 2007 2:06 AM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] Well, it was time to stir the pot for the new year... And now to stir it in the other direction If Alvarion is serious about making the VL platform their new standard bearer for residential, there is a little bit of work to be done. While I understand the need for non-standard items at times, things like the special ethernet cable, non-standard management interface (snmp, not telnet or web based) and lack of simple routing capability are pretty big problems. I am seriously considering VL for some future deployments, but I will have to invest a fair amount of time retraining my techs and installers on how to properly deal with it. The main Alvarion competitors (Motorola, Trango, Tranzeo) do a pretty good job of having simple installation processes with standard procedures for cabling, web interfaces to change settings in the field and some simple routing capabilities. If there is a scalability issue with VL, it is in these installation limitations. Ok, now.RANT MODE ON I have a really hard time having a lot of respect for the legal and enforcement framework surrounding not just the broadband wireless industry but the ISP business in general. The Telecom Act of '96 has been completely gutted by lawyers, lobbyists and the current administration into a toothless tiger. Unlicensed wireless gear for broadband only exists because of a loophole - when the bands were created it was not thought to be feasible to deliver any kind of reliable connection in noisy, interference prone spectrum. Cell phone company valuations are based in large part on the value of their spectrum holdings, and the government is dependent on spectrum auctions to help fund other activities, so the idea of unlicensed spectrum is kryptonite for big businesses and many in government that shudder at the thought of not having complete control over all things telecom related. Simply put, we aren't supposed to exist, and the system is heavily stacked against us. So when I hear people saying things like the only thing that can take out Canopy is other Canopy and that it hurts the entire industry to use gear that may or may not be entirely legal (even if it fulfills the technical requirements of legality but hasn't passed the paperwork test) - I laugh quietly and to myself. Here's why... Thinking that one kind of unlicensed is going to be the Darwinian survivor of the unlicensed spectrum wars is also folly. If it is unlicensed, it can be taken out - and it can be taken out legally. Yes, Canopy too. It takes special resources to build a nuclear bomb, but it doesn't take much to build the unlicensed spectrum equivalent of a nuclear bomb. So you Motorola guys can get off your high horse, when the bomb goes off you are just as cooked as the guy using wifi based gear. Licensed guys aren't exactly immune either. WiMax isn't designed to handle interference well, so I would imagine that those neat self-install WiMax CPE radios have a lovely time when the neighbor kid turns on his hacked Linksys router running in 2.5ghz and the
Re: [WISPA] Well, it was time to stir the pot for the new year...
If its VL is 56 Volts, I'm wondering if Alvarion will work with all those left over Metrocom/Richochet 56V Power plants? Tom DeReggi RapidDSL Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: Patrick Leary [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Saturday, January 06, 2007 11:47 AM Subject: RE: [WISPA] Well, it was time to stir the pot for the new year... Matt, VL CPE ship with the cable, pre-terminated. As for management, you can use telnet or SNMP with both standard and proprietary MIBs. We do not permit Web-based for security reasons and you can restrict management access to specific IP addresses and/or directions (from the Ethernet side or the wireless side). You can also auto configure using an FTP or TFTP file (for batch, network wide, or specific units). As for the router feature thing, I believe most of that arises from people's experience with 802.11b and the belief that since we don't have routing than everyone must be able to see everyone on an Alvarion network. That is not the case for a number of reasons. One such reason is our support of Ethernet Broadcast Filtering: The Ethernet Broadcast Filtering menu enables defining the layer 2 (Ethernet) broadcast and multicast filtering capabilities for the selected SU. Filtering the Ethernet broadcasts enhances the security of the system and saves bandwidth on the wireless medium by blocking protocols that are typically used in the customer's LAN but are not relevant for other customers, such as NetBios, which is used by the Microsoft Network Neighborhood. Enabling this feature blocks Ethernet broadcasts and multicasts by setting the I/G bit at the destination address to 1. This feature should not be enabled when there is a router behind the SU. The Ethernet Broadcast Filtering menu includes the following parameters: Filter Options DHCP Broadcast Override Filter PPPoE Broadcast Override Filter ARP Broadcast Override Filter Patrick Leary AVP WISP Markets Alvarion, Inc. o: 650.314.2628 c: 760.580.0080 Vonage: 650.641.1243 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matt Larsen - Lists Sent: Saturday, January 06, 2007 2:06 AM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] Well, it was time to stir the pot for the new year... And now to stir it in the other direction If Alvarion is serious about making the VL platform their new standard bearer for residential, there is a little bit of work to be done. While I understand the need for non-standard items at times, things like the special ethernet cable, non-standard management interface (snmp, not telnet or web based) and lack of simple routing capability are pretty big problems. I am seriously considering VL for some future deployments, but I will have to invest a fair amount of time retraining my techs and installers on how to properly deal with it. The main Alvarion competitors (Motorola, Trango, Tranzeo) do a pretty good job of having simple installation processes with standard procedures for cabling, web interfaces to change settings in the field and some simple routing capabilities. If there is a scalability issue with VL, it is in these installation limitations. Ok, now.RANT MODE ON I have a really hard time having a lot of respect for the legal and enforcement framework surrounding not just the broadband wireless industry but the ISP business in general. The Telecom Act of '96 has been completely gutted by lawyers, lobbyists and the current administration into a toothless tiger. Unlicensed wireless gear for broadband only exists because of a loophole - when the bands were created it was not thought to be feasible to deliver any kind of reliable connection in noisy, interference prone spectrum. Cell phone company valuations are based in large part on the value of their spectrum holdings, and the government is dependent on spectrum auctions to help fund other activities, so the idea of unlicensed spectrum is kryptonite for big businesses and many in government that shudder at the thought of not having complete control over all things telecom related. Simply put, we aren't supposed to exist, and the system is heavily stacked against us. So when I hear people saying things like the only thing that can take out Canopy is other Canopy and that it hurts the entire industry to use gear that may or may not be entirely legal (even if it fulfills the technical requirements of legality but hasn't passed the paperwork test) - I laugh quietly and to myself. Here's why... Thinking that one kind of unlicensed is going to be the Darwinian survivor of the unlicensed spectrum wars is also folly. If it is unlicensed, it can be taken out - and it can be taken out legally. Yes, Canopy too. It takes special resources to build a nuclear bomb, but it doesn't take much to build the unlicensed spectrum equivalent of a nuclear bomb. So
Re: [WISPA] Well, it was time to stir the pot for the new year...
Well, lets really spice it up thenI'm going to stir the pot in this direction for this post Alvarion has done a great job of producing a product that does an excellent job delivering value to their customers and has several unique features that will keep it on a different level above what the open source/standard hardware crew will ever be capable of. They maintain strict control over the hardware components and feel it is important to keep continuity with their already existing products. There are some valid technical reasons for doing things that way, and some equally valid business reasons for having equipment that is non-standard. Alvarion is in business TO MAKE MONEY - and they have done an excellent job retaining value and delivering a consistently usable product to the WISP industry while making money. This is not a hobby for them. Mark, you unfortunately fall into the hardware trap of humping your radios and spending a heck of a lot of time worrying about having the neatest gadget for your wisp. You are in a rural area and don't have to worry about issues of scale. If you continue to spend all that time putting together each radio and trying to micromanage each customer connection you will not scale beyond a couple hundred customers. Alvarion has put together products that have a steeper initial learning curve but are very flexible, very manageable and will scale. I know of one Alvarion operator that is at 18,000 customers - you don't reach that level putting your own CPEs together and requiring the high level of installation skill to put a StarOS or MT based CPE into service. You might think that Alvarion and others are Late to the Party but you have Missed the Boat when it comes to building your core business around a scalable, manageable product. I am personally really glad to see Alvarion taking a more involved interest in the WISP market. I think they have recognized that they can learn a lot from some of the cowboys out there. Just remember that we can learn a lot from them as well. Matt Larsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mark Koskenmaki wrote: - Original Message - From: Patrick Leary [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Friday, December 29, 2006 12:52 AM Subject: RE: [WISPA] StarOS or Microtik with TRCPQ clients... When a market knows it must contend with fraudulent product AND that a good percentage of that market will support the fraud, what's the decision you think vendors will make when it comes to prioritizing investments in this business? Licensed or unlicensed? WISPs or a market segment that buys only legal product? For Pete's sake people, you think your actions don't have actual consequences just because you are staying within the legal power limits? Some of you make guys make the jobs of guys like me who seriously give a rip real, real hard. Aw, give it a rest, Patrick. Valemount's product runs rings around many in terms of features.So, how many MILLIONS would it take for Alvarion to produce a box that does what WISP's need it to do? Not even as much as you spend producing stuff that costs too much for some to use. So, exactly WHO is to blame when software vendor X produces what we REALLY need, hardware vendor Y produces what we REALLY need, and the people who want to have the secret black boxes with unknown guts under the hood won't listen and learn? The fact is, that the little guy... the Joe Blow Schmuck is 5 X more capable of figuring out what it is he wants than a whole team of highly paid product developers who won't listen. While you may get engineers to figure out every last possible means of adjusting the 802.11 MAC and doing really cool stuff with it, who's to blame for thinking we should BRIDGE our networks together?If Schmuck A can figure out how to build a workable board in China, Schmuck B can find some great working little mini-pci radios with INDUSTRY STANDARD connectors on both the cpu board and the card and Schmuck C can figure out how to put a FREE OS together and then develop some drivers to do the cool RF stuff, and all the rest of us dullard schmucks are still bright enough to figure out how to PUT THEM ALL TOGETHER and use them to dramatic advantage over what the engineers and developers keep trying to foist on us... Exactly WHO is to blame? Maybe we're collectivley to blame because we didn't pony 200 bucks up each and get some lab to FCC certify the assembly?I dunno. Exactly WHOSE fault is that?I dunno. I don't know that it's even our fault at all. Maybe the laws need to be updated to reflect the reality of the industry and the state of our technology. So then while I congratulate Lonnie's innovation, he needs to come clean and go legal. Lonnie's not doing a dang thing illegal.Well, I hope he's not. Maybe he secretly runs stop signs on some back road in a fit of legal defiance... but certainly neither you nor I
RE: [WISPA] Well, it was time to stir the pot for the new year...
Well that was worth staying up to read! Man, thanks Matt. ...and Mark, you might be surprised that I am harder and more pushy on our PMs about features WISPs like you want than I ever am here on WISPs that do things your way. Pressure achieves the best result when applied to both sides. Patrick -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matt Larsen - Lists Sent: Friday, January 05, 2007 11:02 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] Well, it was time to stir the pot for the new year... Well, lets really spice it up thenI'm going to stir the pot in this direction for this post Alvarion has done a great job of producing a product that does an excellent job delivering value to their customers and has several unique features that will keep it on a different level above what the open source/standard hardware crew will ever be capable of. They maintain strict control over the hardware components and feel it is important to keep continuity with their already existing products. There are some valid technical reasons for doing things that way, and some equally valid business reasons for having equipment that is non-standard. Alvarion is in business TO MAKE MONEY - and they have done an excellent job retaining value and delivering a consistently usable product to the WISP industry while making money. This is not a hobby for them. Mark, you unfortunately fall into the hardware trap of humping your radios and spending a heck of a lot of time worrying about having the neatest gadget for your wisp. You are in a rural area and don't have to worry about issues of scale. If you continue to spend all that time putting together each radio and trying to micromanage each customer connection you will not scale beyond a couple hundred customers. Alvarion has put together products that have a steeper initial learning curve but are very flexible, very manageable and will scale. I know of one Alvarion operator that is at 18,000 customers - you don't reach that level putting your own CPEs together and requiring the high level of installation skill to put a StarOS or MT based CPE into service. You might think that Alvarion and others are Late to the Party but you have Missed the Boat when it comes to building your core business around a scalable, manageable product. I am personally really glad to see Alvarion taking a more involved interest in the WISP market. I think they have recognized that they can learn a lot from some of the cowboys out there. Just remember that we can learn a lot from them as well. Matt Larsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Mark Koskenmaki wrote: - Original Message - From: Patrick Leary [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: WISPA General List wireless@wispa.org Sent: Friday, December 29, 2006 12:52 AM Subject: RE: [WISPA] StarOS or Microtik with TRCPQ clients... When a market knows it must contend with fraudulent product AND that a good percentage of that market will support the fraud, what's the decision you think vendors will make when it comes to prioritizing investments in this business? Licensed or unlicensed? WISPs or a market segment that buys only legal product? For Pete's sake people, you think your actions don't have actual consequences just because you are staying within the legal power limits? Some of you make guys make the jobs of guys like me who seriously give a rip real, real hard. Aw, give it a rest, Patrick. Valemount's product runs rings around many in terms of features. So, how many MILLIONS would it take for Alvarion to produce a box that does what WISP's need it to do? Not even as much as you spend producing stuff that costs too much for some to use. So, exactly WHO is to blame when software vendor X produces what we REALLY need, hardware vendor Y produces what we REALLY need, and the people who want to have the secret black boxes with unknown guts under the hood won't listen and learn? The fact is, that the little guy... the Joe Blow Schmuck is 5 X more capable of figuring out what it is he wants than a whole team of highly paid product developers who won't listen. While you may get engineers to figure out every last possible means of adjusting the 802.11 MAC and doing really cool stuff with it, who's to blame for thinking we should BRIDGE our networks together?If Schmuck A can figure out how to build a workable board in China, Schmuck B can find some great working little mini-pci radios with INDUSTRY STANDARD connectors on both the cpu board and the card and Schmuck C can figure out how to put a FREE OS together and then develop some drivers to do the cool RF stuff, and all the rest of us dullard schmucks are still bright enough to figure out how to PUT THEM ALL TOGETHER and use them to dramatic advantage over what the engineers and developers keep trying to foist on us... Exactly WHO is to blame? Maybe we're collectivley to blame
