more on Imax vs. WiFi: WiFi is the inheritor to Ethernet's Manifest Destiny

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

editors editing error -- sorry djf

Begin forwarded message:

From: Nathan Solomon <Nathan.Solomon () ebgames com>
Date: November 23, 2004 6:00:15 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: RE: [IP] more on Imax vs. WiFi: WiFi is the inheritor to 
Ethernet's Manifest Destiny

That subject line sounded so interesting until I read the message and 
realized it was a typo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imax

IMAX (for Image Maximum) is a film projection system which has the 
capacity to display images of far greater size and resolution than 
conventional film display systems. A standard IMAX screen is 22 m wide 
and 16 m high, but can be larger. IMAX is the most successful 
large-format special-venue film presentation system.

A variation of IMax, IMax Dome (originally called OmniMax), is designed 
for projection on tilted planetarium domes.

-------------------------------
Nathan Solomon
Director of Business Development
EB Games/EB Games Online
http://www.EBgames.com
Phone: 610.430.8100 x7819
Fax: 610.430.0383


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-ip () v2 listbox com
> [mailto:owner-ip () v2 listbox com] On Behalf Of David Farber
> Sent: Tuesday, November 23, 2004 5:22 PM
> To: Ip
> Subject: [IP] more on Imax vs. WiFi: WiFi is the inheritor to
> Ethernet's Manifest Destiny
>
>
>
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger () ibd com>
> Date: November 23, 2004 11:53:26 AM EST
> To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
> Cc: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Subject: Re: [IP] Imax vs. WiFi: WiFi is the inheritor to Ethernet's
> Manifest Destiny
>
> I have been involved in these realms for the last 4+ years
> both in the hardware manufacturer and service provider
> realms. Here is my opinionated, but educated perspective on
> the WiMax vs Wi-Fi debate:
>
> At this point in time, WiMax/802.16 is another Zero Billion
> Dollar industry. There are no WiMax Products today. There
> will be some WiMax products within the next 3 - 6 months, but
> they will be first generation and far from the promises that
> the WiMax forum has been promising. Wi-Fi/802.11 chipsets are
> already up the learning curve by several generations. Wi-Fi
> chipsets are already shipping in the high 10's of millions / year.
>
> IMHO, 802.11 is recapitulating the evolution of Ethernet into
> the Wireless realms.
>
> Ethernet was originally considered a "toy" technology by many
> of the industry leaders of the time. The manly technologies
> at that time were first Token Ring, then 802.12 AnyLAN VG, then ATM.
>
> Wi-Fi is currently considered useful only for the home and
> some enterprise applications and a "toy" for outdoor
> Municipal Networks.
>
> But Ethernet out evolved and kept delivering just enough
> functionality, at much lower cost than the too sophisticated
> QoS laden and expensive "heavyweights".
>
> Wi-Fi/802.11 has taken on the mantle of Ethernet's Manifest
> Destiny (it uses almost exactly the same packet frame as
> Ethernet) and brings it into the wireless realms. There are
> many more companies, universities and hackers pushing the
> boundaries of what 802.11 can do and the volume is growing at
> an accelerating pace.
>
> Today 802.11 is at a similar phase of evolution as early
> Ethernet was when there were only a shared contention medium
> via hubs and bridges. Ethernet really took off when switches
> became available and allowed the contention realm to be
> broken up to support parallel data flows. And that is what we
> can expect in the next stage of 802.11 evolution. This is
> what is needed to make Mesh wireless networks viable with
> 802.11. There are already several companies developing mesh
> (though only a few are doing it in a way that will scale).
> There is also an 802.11s working group developing a standard
> for wireless mesh. And mesh is what will allow 802.11 to
> eventually cover municipal areas.
>
> WiMax hype is extremely misleading. You hear that a WiMax
> basestation can create coverage of 35 - 70 miles, deliver 50
> Mbps, will work in Unlicensed, Licensed frequencies can
> deliver Non Line Of Sight (NLOS) through trees and buildings,
> will support mobility and CPE built into Laptops.
>
> But this hype is misleading because they mush together all
> the claims for all the different frequencies from 2 GHz to 10
> GHz, licensed and unlicensed, and projections of their
> roadmap for the next 8 years.
>
> If you compare WiMax using the same 5.8Ghz Unlicensed
> frequencies that 802.11a would use, there may be only 3 or 4
> db link budget advantage of WiMax over 802.11a (i.e. The link
> budget is the total of Receiver sensitivity and transmitter
> power, less losses between the two end points, thus it
> represents the distance that can be covered and/or
> penetration thru obstructions. So WiMax can deliver a link
> budget that is at most twice as good as 802.11a, and in the
> scope of things this is not very much compared to the total
> link budgets used in outdoor links).
>
> If you say, ok, lets use licensed spectrum, then you can get
> long distances OR NLOS. If you really want to deliver multi
> MBps and be able to use laptops inside buildings as CPE,
> you'll still need microcell sites on the scale of 1 or 2 mile
> radius of coverage and use multiple WATTS of power. WiMax
> uses sophisticated base stations and relatively dump CPE. So
> each micro-cell basestation would be relatively expensive
> (compared to 802.11, but definitely cheaper than cellphone
> basestations).
>
> AND you would have to buy the spectrum to create the
> coverage. At this point in time, in the US, the only spectrum
> that has half decent propagation characteristics and is
> available for this application in big enough chunks to be
> useful is the 2.5Ghz MMDS frequencies. These are already
> owned by primarily 3 corporations, plus a bunch of
> educational institutions (the later still holding on to it
> for "educational" distance learning TV).
>
> So there is a customer base of maybe a handful of companies
> to buy and buildout licensed networks. Two of the license
> owners failed already in building out an MMDS network, the
> third is a "new" company, Clearwire, who bought spectrum from
> Worldcom. This does not represent a robust marketplace needed
> to drive a rapidly evolving technology. Its more like a
> legacy Telco marketplace that will have to compete against
> DSL and Cable Modem in the urban/suburban markets that
> represent the bulk of the potential end user marketplace. It
> will not be subsidized by a parallel home / enterprise
> networking marketplace as will 802.11.
>
> Finally, the WiMax industry has (in terms of active, as
> opposed to paper members) one giant company, Intel, and
> scores of small, mostly barely surviving wireless equipment
> companies that had already spent most of their efforts on
> proprietary LMDS or MMDS technology and then threw their hats
> into WiMax as a way to try to keep going. Most of these
> companies plan to offer proprietary enhancements to their
> WiMax products to "differentiate" from the competitors.  So
> there are already way too many companies involved in WiMax
> than there will be demand for their products. So we can
> expect that when the hype dies down most of the companies will fail.
>
> Sometime in the near future, I would expect that Intel will
> drop out of most activity with WiMax. They will realize that
> they need to get back to their "knitting" as AMD is
> challenging their core business and that there is never going
> to be the kind of volume in WiMax chipsets that is needed to
> keep Intel's interest.
>
> There are a few WiMax companies, that will do very well for
> themselves. Companies such as Alvarian, who are already a
> leader in the outdoor, wide area wireless network equipment
> even before WiMax, who understand the market and have the
> distribution channel / customer base. This niche will grow
> with the lower costs for this style of rural and Multiple
> Business Unit (MDU) type network buildouts that can afford
> the price points that WiMax will end up with. But it will not
> be a mass market.
>
> In conclusion, Wi-Fi will out evolve and deliver connectivity
> at costs dramatically lower than WiMax. WiMax / 802.16 is
> just starting on its path to evolution, has a much smaller
> base of innovators and chipset growth volume. Wi-Fi is
> already far along on its core learning curve, has an easy
> order of magnitude larger base of innovators / investors and
> chipset growth volume. WiMax hype will sputter out to reality
> of a niche backhaul and rural marketplace, Wi-Fi/802.11 will
> evolve and grow into many more realms and dominate the Local
> Area Network
> (LAN) / Neighborhood Area Network (NAN) / Metro Area Network (MAN).
>
> On 11/23/04 4:04 AM, "David Farber" <dave () farber net> wrote:
> > From: "Robert C. Atkinson" <rca53 () columbia edu>
> > Date: November 23, 2004 6:24:47 AM EST
> > To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
> > Subject: WiMAX vs. Wi-Fi
> >
> >   Dave:
> >
> >   From the recent IP posting on the legislation to block municipal
> > Wi-Fi
> > in Philadelphia:
> >
> > "why, exactly, is Philly planning on spending huge piles on
> Wi-Fi when
> > WiMAX could do it cheaper in around the same time frame it'll take
> > them to actually deploy?"
> >
> > Is this true?  Why will WiMAX be cheaper in an urban setting?  When
> > will WiMAX really be available?  I think there are some
> WiMAX skeptics
> > that would disagree.  Perhaps a discussion on IP would be
> > illuminating.
> >
> >   Bob
> > --
>
>
>
> Robert J. Berger - Internet Bandwidth Development, LLC.
> Voice: 408-882-4755 eFax: +1-408-490-2868
> http://www.ibd.com
>
>
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