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April 24, 2006

Snap, Crack & Drop (or Look at Me, I Can Be Centerfield)

In New York this week on vacation. Matt's column on BER http://blogs.cisco.com/wireless/2006/04/bring_on_the_ber.html reminded me of an earlier period in my career, about 15 years ago when I was working on a project for NYNEX Cellular. We developed a competitive cell site financial model to justify a huge NY City-wide build of micro-cells to improve coverage and roaming capabillities in Manhattan. Prior to the build-out plan that was aggressively matched by then McCaw Cellular (which got acquired by ATT, which got acquired by SBC, which got folded into Cingular), the average cellular experience for a Gotham City denizen was snap, crackle and drop.

At that time, the carriers had a hard time justifying the business case for pervasive, intra-urbran dense deployment of microcells. As late of 1990, many of the large consulting firms had completed analysis that there would only be a million cellular subscribers across the nation. Killer Applications? What Killer Ap? Then we were marketing "safety" as the key reason to own a cellphone (don't let your loved ones leave home without out it!).

Sound familiar? Yesterday, despite the rain, I saw the "Big Unit" http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/team/player.jsp?player_id=116615 nail the Baltimore Orioles (helped along by Jason Giambi's "big swatter"), and it reminded me about the whole city-wide Wi-Fi debate, which reminded me of the prophetic words of an earlier Yankee, Yogi Berra "It's Deja-Vu, al over again." (also a album/song title by another "old Fogerty")

Let's face it sports fans, pervasive city-wide Wi-Fi is as inevitable, as a Starbucks on every corner.

Roll the soundtrack:

Well, beat the drum and hold the phone - the sun came out today!
We're born again, there's new grass on the field.
A-roundin' third, and headed for home, it's a brown-eyed handsome man;
Anyone can understand the way I feel.

Oh, put me in, Coach - I'm ready to play today;
Put me in, Coach - I'm ready to play today;
Look at me, I can be Centerfield.

Well, I spent some time in the Mudville Nine, watchin' it from the bench;
You know I took some lumps when the Mighty Casey struck out.
So Say Hey Willie, tell Ty Cobb and Joe DiMaggio;
Don't say "it ain't so", you know the time is now.

Oh, put me in, Coach - I'm ready to play today;
Put me in, Coach - I'm ready to play today;
Look at me, I can be Centerfield.

Yeah! I got it, I got it!
Got a beat-up glove, a homemade bat, and brand-new pair of shoes;
You know I think it's time to give this game a ride.
Just to hit the ball and touch 'em all - a moment in the sun;
(pop) It's gone and you can tell that one goodbye!

Oh, put me in, Coach - I'm ready to play today;
Put me in, Coach - I'm ready to play today;
Look at me, I can be Centerfield.

Posted by Alan Cohen at 04:45 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 23, 2006

Bring on the BER

What the heck is a BER?

A long time ago I was in a group interview for a candidate ASIC engineer. Generally these are *really* interesting interviews since there is often logic questions asked, design questions, plus normal interview questions. The candidate was an absolute powerhouse - he nailed every question without breaking a sweat.

Out of the blue a guy that I worked with asked a question about how do you compensate for photons affecting bits as they go through the ASIC.

For the first time in the interview the guy paused and said, “I don’t know, but I do know that the likelihood of this happening to any packet would be something like 10-400th power.”

For those of you reading from the cheap seats… That is a very low bit error rate.

The Bit error rate for a standard Ethernet cable is considerably higher, something like 10-23rd or something like that.

We who dwell in the wireless world would salivate for such performane… and I mean salivate. That’s cause the air, by its very nature, is a medium that’s prone environmental variables that ultimately impact the throughput and performance of the wireless network.

Obi-one Kenobi, er, Bob Friday, has said that the Bit Error Rate for wireless is about 10-6th. That means that you are going to have a lot more packets with errors in it, and this is one of the reasons why your performance in wireless doesn’t equal your wireline network.

Beyond the inherent unreliable air, you are also competing with other devices that operate in the same spectrum. That doesn’t help either.

There are new technologies that will help compensate, a prime example is MIMO, which uses multiple antennas - just because a signal was weak, or blocked, from one antenna doesn’t mean that the other antenna had the same problem.

What does a high BER mean for you?

Well if you are surfing to ESPN.com to check on the player personnal activities of the Raiders - who they are picking up to compensate for the bad year that they had last year. Chances are that the BER isn’t going to be a problem… That’s the beauty of TCPIP, and the 802.11 MAC. If you are at the edge of a cell, you may see your client connect and disconnect, but that is more because of signal strength.

Hopefully the Raiders won’t have a high BER when making their decisions.

However, if you are make a voice call, and you have an abnormally high BER, then it may sound like your ear is next to a bowl of Rice Krispies… You know.. Snap, Krackle and Pop.

There are no retransmissions for UDP based applications.

We can improve technology, and believe me we afre working on it, but we will never be able to overcome physics.

Posted by at 10:45 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

April 18, 2006

Songs about WIFI (at least in my head)

One of the things that I love about being product manager is when I think about my product, and then adapt it to the world around me. On a recent trip to Canada I had a planetary alignment situation where I was changing every song that I heard to be about WIFI.

Following are some bad examples of some of the songs. Note that there is a slight slant to Canada. You can also probably figure out that I was a teenager in the 80s.

Official road warrior wireless songs from my most recent trip to Canada
(as interpreted by Matt Glenn)

(sung to Ray Charles’ ‘Hit the road Jack’):
Hit the road matt
And don’t you come back
No more no more no more no more
Hit the road matt
And don’t you come back no more
….

(Sung to Dire Straights ‘I want my MTV’)
I want my
I want my
I want my hotspots free

….

(Sung to The Knack’s “My Sharona”)
Oh a little war drivin
Some war drivin
Or do I have to take out
My Airsnorter

(Sung to Loverboy’s “Working for the Weekend” )
Everybody’s surfing up this weekend
Everybody goes to a Starbucks
Oooh yaaaaa yaaaaaa
Everybody’s client needs some tweeking
Here come Centrino’s second chance
Yaaaaaaahhhhh

You wanna borrow my lap-top?
You better get me a coffee cup
You want to work for Cisco?
Then you’ll work with Intel’s Centrino!

…
(Sung to Allanis Morrisette’s ‘Thank-you’ )
Thank you LWAPP
Thank you Calhoun
Thank you Air-o-net
Thank you Chambers
Thank you Bloggers
Thank you WEP Client
YEEEAHAHHHH

…
(Sung to the Corey Hart’s ‘Sunglasses at Night’)
I surf with wireless at night
So I can
So I can
Connect while I’m in my garage

I surf with wireless at night
So I can
So I can
Trade stocks in my garage

You know wires
Deceive me
11i is secure for me
Wires deiceive me
They trip me and I say

Don’t pull wires
In my house no more!
Don’t pull wires
In my house no more!

…
(Sung to the Rush's ‘Red Barchetta')
My neighbor has an access point, that no one knows about
He says it sounds an alarm, when rogue monitors walk about
And on mondays I elude the ’eyes’ and a new WEP key waits
Far outside the wire, where my wireless client waits.

Boot the laptop
And authenticate to cross the borderline
Surf like the wind,
As wireless waves shiver up and down my spine

Down in his cube
My neighbor preserved for me, an old client ---
For 10 odd years
To keep it as new has been his dearest dream

I strip away dusty film, that hides a new AP
A brilliant red antenna, from a defunct vendor awaits
I plug it in and press the button, the LEDs light up
RF spitting wavelengths, I commit my weekly crime...

static in hair ---
Surfing and Sipping---
Internet Music---
AP scurge ---

Suddenly, ahead of me, across the Cube landslide
A security guard comes towards me, WCS open wide
I spin around with shrieking chair, to run the deadly race
Screaming through the cube alley as another joins the chase

Run like the wind
Straining the limits of wireless and man
Laughing out loud
With fear and hope, I’ve got a desperate plan

At the fire door
I leave the security stranded
Door side
Race back to the cube
Where a security guard waits

Posted by at 03:14 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

April 16, 2006

The ROI for outdoor WiFi access

Wireless cellular networks have been driven by large capital expenditures on infrastructure and then clients are subsidized to get users on to the network with a well known return on investment (ROI). The emergence of WiFi technology has shifted this paradigm just that we now have a wave of unsubsidized unlicensed WiFi clients driving the demand for infrastructure with an unclear ROI. When we founded Airespace, the ROI for wireless networking in the enterprise was not clear either cut but the waves of clients from the consumer space were demanding the same mobility they had found so convenient in their homes to be in their work space, forcing enterprise IT managers to effectively become wireless ISPs. Once established in the work space, the productivity of wireless mobility became clear and measurable. As we watch WiFi technology emerge from the laptop in to other platforms such as cell phones, PDAs and your kid’s portable play stations we will see this growing wave of WiFi clients demanding WiFi access in the outdoor space. And while people are searching for the return on investment (ROI) and business model to justify these outdoor WiFi mesh networks, we will see the same productivity increases that wireless mobility brought to the indoor enterprise space in combination with the increasing wave of WiFi clients across new platforms make outdoor WiFi access an increasing a more common place and the ROI more obvious.

Posted by Bob Friday at 10:24 PM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

April 14, 2006

Big Footsteps

Everyone is celebrating a birthday or anniversary, (present company excluded of course, we get wiser not older). Apple just turned 30 and recently Network World did a spread in celebration of the launch of their magazine 20 years ago. One of the more interesting pieces in that edition was a reader survey on their perspective of the industry, both past present and future. Predictably the PC and the Internet were ranked as the most important innovation of the last 20 years. Looking forward, however, readers identified wireless broadband as the next big technology for the next 20 years. Wow! As big as the PC? The Internet? Those are big footsteps to follow. I am bullish, are you?

Posted by Kathy Small at 10:44 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 13, 2006

SPLOG

Have you noticed that people can overblog? I think I have a new term for folks that overblog: SPLOG

It is when you SPAM your BLOGs

Mobile Vision Contributors: let's watch out for SPLOG (especially me!)

Posted by Alan Cohen at 02:19 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sparkling New Wi-Fi Campus in Singapore

In general, everytime I get to Singapore, I am amazed how clean and efficient everything is. But I always see something new on each visit.

This time, I had the pleasure of visiting the Republic Polytechnic, a BRAND NEW UNIVERSITY that is still under construction (when is the last time you saw a NEW university). AND ITs (drumroll please) all wireless. Rows and rows of APs everywhere, like the mad rush of ships in Singapore harbor, beckoning prosperity and connection with the rest of the world. Students everywhere with tablets, with laptops, all communicating.

More remarkable?

I met with the charismatic IT director, Samuel Liu in his new office. Looking around, I could not find a phone. NO deskphone? The all use Cisco softphones connected to our call managers IP PBX. "Where is your handset?" I asked. He pointed to a stringy headset on his desk. Wow, this guy can show many of us some real world experience about mobility. He went on to tell me about his reliance on MSN Messenger and Cisco IP Communicator. He wants all his mobility services federated and he will get there, probably before most. Reminded me of the Mark Twain quote from Puddin' Head Wilson

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.

Mobility pioneers. Some of the least know innovators?

Posted by Alan Cohen at 01:58 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dual Mode for Hong Kong

Hong Kong never sleeps and its seems EVERYONE is always on their phone. Here phones are fashion and not just functional. Yet 3G services, the promise of cellular broadband, is slow to take off. Definitely a conudrum for a society where many people carry two phones, one tethered to a necklace, dangling like a proud locket, megapixel camera and the ready.

Perhaps allowing these phones to connect corporate networks, to services such as directories and databases could drive faster adoption of 3G and Wi-Fi.

Remember the Chinese proverb: "Distant water won't quench your immediate thirst."

Posted by Alan Cohen at 02:15 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 10, 2006

Korean BBQ, Wi-Fi DMZ

Touched down last night in Seoul as the orange cloud of nightfall blanketed the Korean pennisula before drifting down to the sea in Inchon. Waiting for friends to come out of customs, an SP network (with a weird, downloadable application), but, them, ah, deus ex machina, an open Linksys AP for a fast upload/download fun. 12 hours jammed in a metal can, a few feverish hours working through my battery life, and the the Centrino springs to life for a brief final burst of frenzied activity, like my 74 Opel Manta's last ride down Newfane Hill (Vermont) in 1983 before throwing a rod and its ultimate, less-than-noble tow to the wrecking yard.

Walked from the hotel next to the Cisco office to a Korean BBQ place (which if you have not been, is a communal cook-out on a tableside grill). 3 blocks and my hand-held wifi-seeker saw 7 networks.

Just a little distance off is the most militaritzed border in the world. Wonder if they are sharing an access point, playing a multi-party game? A guild master to connect the North and South....

Posted by Alan Cohen at 03:05 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

WiMAX or WIFI

WiMAx and WIFI what's all the hubbub? People often ask me about the two technologies. Here is my reader's digest answer....

One of the most common questions that I receive about our products from our enterprise customers is:

“Please explain your WiMAX plans?”

I generally answer the question with another simple question: “Do you own any spectrum?”

“No.”

“Then why do you want WiMAX?” I’ll ask.

“Because I can have greater coverage areas,” is the answer.

Well everyone I’m going on the record as saying the following:

A wave form, is a wave form, is a wave form (If the blogging system allowed me to write that as a wave it would be cool, but it doesn’t… then again maybe you can imagine written as a wave?).

What does that mean? It means that WiFi, Bluetooth, and WiMAX, when they operate in an unlicensed spectrum have to obey the local regulations for that spectrum. This means that there are very tightly regulated power output and antenna requirements in each band.

That’s not to say that WiMAX does not have its place. It does. Specifically in *private* spectrum, backhauling traffic out of cell sites. The WiMAX MAC already has stringent QoS built into it. That means that your local network operator can backhaul traffic out of a cell tower without paying their local phone company. This is a good thing because it will hopefully get my cell phone bill a bit smaller.

Whoa! Matt… what about WiMAX to the desktop?

I’ll go back to my previous statement, do you own your own spectrum? I suspect that the WiMAX war to the desktop is not really a WIFI vs. WiMAX war , it is 3G vs. WiMAX war. If a private network operator was daring then they could try to ‘change the game’ by developing the first all WiMAX network. The economics might be difficult because someone would have to develop pervasive WiMAX end points (think cell phones and laptops). I think that an established GSM or CDMA operator would have a difficult time explaining to shareholders why the billions of dollars that they have sunk into 3G infrastructures was all for not and they are going to change their cell sites.

Posted by at 10:09 AM Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

April 06, 2006

Wi-Fi at 36,000 feet

It seems my colleagues Matt and Alan have been getting some recent air time. I too had the pleasure of boarding a plane lately. Once onboard, I usually tune out the flight attendant’s emergency pitch; partly out of fear, but mostly in an attempt to catch a brief cat nap.

To form, the flight attendant requested that all laptops and cell phones be turned off. Yet, what caught my attention was her insistence that anything using Wi-Fi technology be left in the off position for the duration of the flight.

It occurred to me at this point that Wi-Fi has truly become a household term. Just as iPod and broadband are words repeated in homes across America, so too has Wi-Fi secured its place amongst the lexicon of the average individual. That’s great news!

Of course, the bad news is that not everyone really understands Wi-Fi. Yes, I know this may come as a shock to those of us that wake up searching for a hotspot and go to bed clutching our wireless cards. But, how else can we explain the flight attendant’s desire to ban onboard Wi-Fi. I’m sure that Connexion by Boeing (http://www.connexionbyboeing.com/) would have a word or two to say about that.

Nonetheless, as the plane touched down I was comforted to know that all of our work in bringing Wi-Fi to the masses is starting to pay dividends. Now if only I could have checked the current Cisco stock price from 36,000 feet!

Posted by Chris Kozup at 12:32 PM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Wireless - the convergence protocol

I’m sitting on a plane and like any good product manager I’m thinking about my product line - the size, scope and future of it, and I had a thought...

Without a doubt the world as converged on IP as the protocol of choice. In 1991 we had multi-protocol routers, but IP was already eeking out increasing market share because of the good old Internet. Finally web browsers began being bundled with PCs and voila! Everyone had to get IP connected.

Flash forward fifteen years later and we now run voice over IP, data over IP and video over IP (The IP triple play).

Plus there are a myriad of applications that were non-existent before the world coalesced around this protocol. It has transformed the way we communicate in business and at home.

So now, at 36,000 feet, I’m wondering if wireless has the same potential as IP. A very quotable person once said, “wireless is the natural state of communications.”

I think he was right.

The pieces are in place for the world to converge on WIFI. In much the same way that the web browser made everyone have to be connected to the Internet, Centrino has made it so that every laptop that ships is wirelessly enabled.

Let’s go down the triple play checklist:

Data over WIFI
Well chances are when I post this blog I’ll be sending it over a wireless link in my hotel tonight, or perhaps at a T-mobile hotspot, or perhaps I’ll steal some RF from somewhere - either way. I can do it.

Data over WIFI: CHECK!

Voice over WIFI
I routinely use my IP Communicator over my WiFi link from home - it saves Cisco all kinds of money. I can secure the connection using a VPN client. I’ve done it all over the world and it works really well. For those of you that don’t use IP Communicator, I recommend that you use a freeware program like Skype, Yahoo, or Google talk. They all work.

As you’ll quickly see, the challenge is not the single call on an access point, it is multiple calls on an access point. I often use this example in an EBC….

Imagine that everyone in the room whips out their phone to call their significant other at the exact same time, the way that 802.11 works, all of the client devices would run to the bright light (i.e. the AP with the strongest signal in a room). 802.11 by its nature is a socialist protocol, so we would all be granted access to the medium and the voice quality for all of our calls might suffer.

Its for this reason that we introduced Call Admission Control technology, which when coupled with CCX makes for highly reliable, high quality, scalable voice.

Voice over WIFI: CHECK!

Video over WIFI
Can I watch streaming clips of UCLA losing to Florida in the NCAAs? Yes (I’m a UCLA fan if you are wondering). Can I flip channels and have the same reliable, fast channel changing that I get on my TV? No.

This is clearly an area where there is work to be done. Here are some high level thoughts on what it will take:

• More bandwidth
• Better client capacity management
• Continued decrease in cell sizes (coverage area per AP)
• 802.11e clients

Video over WIFI: Uh.. no! But we’ll get there.

There are a multitude of applications that are growing out of the wireless medium, Wifi presence applications, asset tracking, security applications, monitoring applications, and many more. So from an application enablement perspective I think that wireless actually has an advantage over wireline protocols.

But after meandering through this blog, here is what I’ve concluded.

At Layer 3 IP is the convergence protocol of choice.
At Layer 2 WIFI will be the convergence protocol of choice.
At Layer 1 Wireless is already a dominant medium (think cellular), but it will eventually be the same in the enterprise.

Posted by at 09:47 AM Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (1)

April 04, 2006

I want my boarding card...and the clicks for free

I was sitting in SFO yesterday waiting for a flight to Chicago, enjoying the TMobile Hotspot (you know, as a serious aside, I have been a customer for over 5 years. There should be a frequent downloader program or something for WISPs). It would have been great if I could have downloaded a boarding pass and either had a way to print it or store it to my PDA. Although bar-codes do not come off well today on LCDs, someone is going to fix this problem.

Robert Frost once said: "If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom."

As more of us develop mobile lifestyles, we are going to push business and government to morph around the changing work/play scenarios enabled by wireless networking. Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits please don't be mad:

"I want my boarding card.
Public W-iFi for nothing,
And the clicks for free."

Alan

Posted by Alan Cohen at 05:32 AM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

April 03, 2006

Wired/Wireless -- when things will REALLY take off

I think we're getting to the point where wireless will really take off in large businesses. To be sure, a lot of businesses have deployed wireless LANs to some degree, but I think things in this market get really interesting when the WLAN architectures merge with the wired network infrastructure.

Here's a great example:
http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/wireless/2006/0327wireless2.html

Unifying wireless LAN controllers into ethernet switching platforms, in this case the Catalyst 6500, really helps drive down the incremental operational costs required to operate wireless networks. We heard several large customer say just this recently. Here's to more pervasive wireless!

Posted by Ben Gibson at 01:47 PM Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)