ACF, my 802.11b notebook seems to work in metres rather than feet. The access points are about 100 metres apart but connection up to 200 metres seems okay. It certainly isn't kilometres.
The standard 802.11b is hackable, but as with most things, there's more than one way to skin a cat. Good luck trying to hack RoamAD's phragmented photons without NSA-level super-computing. QUALCOMM's CDMA is also hackable. But with the right security technology, you get pretty good privacy [other than from serious attackers].
ACF, being in favour of free markets doesn't mean we are against engineering and thinking. In the free market we trust. Organic network creation sounds a bit too random for my liking.
2.4 GHz is bad enough for propagation, but 5 GHz is going to really have troubles penetrating walls and 'free' space, let alone brains. The higher the frequency, the higher the energy and the worse the penetration. 800MHz is pretty good.
As it happens, low frequencies do a good job in the less populated rural and surburban settings, where spectrum is uncrowded and few base-stations can handle a wide area. The high frequencies require many more access points because, as you say, they have limited range with the 802.11b constraints, apart from their penetrating ability.
Since spectrum has limited capacity, the more crowded an area is with users, the more access points are needed anyway, to fit in the data which people will want. So it works out okay, luckily, with the 802.11b constraints in heavily populated areas.
At 2.4 GHz, the balance between access points needed for range and frequency reuse and population density works out just nicely. Vodafone, which has 900MHz, has put base stations all over the place, packed tightly every 100m or so. In the Royal and Sun Alliance building, there's a Vodafone access point on every floor [so I hear anyway]. They have little antennae at each intersection.
They are as close-packed as RoamAD's antennae - more so perhaps, because they want very robust coverage, whereas cyberspace isn't connection-critical. With always-on cyberspace, it doesn't matter if connection is not available in any particular place because dropped links aren't as bad as dropped calls, which are a real curse.
Cyberspace coverage doesn't need to be as robust as cellphone coverage to maintain customer satisfaction [for a few years anyway until people get really used to high speed, always on, cyberspace anywhere they are.
With cheap 802.11b consumer equipment [ready-installed in notebooks, cyberphones etc] and for access points, with no civil engineering, resource consents, radiation limit worries and all the rest, the infrastructure costs suit densely packed build-out.
As equipment costs for access points comes down more, even more densely-packed access points will be economic, which will increase capacity in the spectrum even more.
5.7GHz and 15 kilometres is not going to be how people access cyberspace on the hoof.
Mqurice |
