Hi Bob, technically attractive, but the "charge per radio head" and :virtualize the AP" are show stoppers for me... I like my ISP, but I have a clear understanding that my ISPs goals and my goals are not perfectly aligned so I would never give them control of my in house network and even less if they start moving things into the clown^W cloud. That means running important functions on some one else's computers, giving that some one else effectively too much power.
Regards Sebastian P.S.: The technical side you propose will also work just as well with me in control, even though that lacks a business to make it attractive for ISPs ;) > On Mar 14, 2023, at 18:06, Robert McMahon via Bloat > <bloat@lists.bufferbloat.net> wrote: > > The ISP could charge per radio head and manage the system from a FiWi head > end which they own. Virtualize the APs. Get rid of SoC complexity and costly > O&M via simplicity. Eliminate all the incremental engineering that has gone > astray, e.g. bloat and over powered APs. > > Bob > On Mar 14, 2023, at 9:49 AM, Robert McMahon <rjmcma...@rjmcmahon.com> wrote: > Hi Mike, > > I'm thinking more of fiber to the room. The last few meters are wifi > everything else is fiber.. Those radios would be a max of 20' from the > associated STA. Then at phy rates of 2.8Gb/s per spatial stream. The common > MIMO is 2x2 so each radio head or wifi transceiver supports 5.6G, no queueing > delay. Wholesale is $5 and retail $19.95 per pluggable transceiver. Sold at > Home Depot next to the irrigation aisle. 10 per house is $199 and each room > gets a dedicated 5.8G phy rate. Need more devices in a space? Pick an RRH > with more cmos radios. Also, the antennas would be patch antenna and fill the > room properly. Then plug in an optional sensor for fire alerting. > > > A digression. A lot of signal processing engineers have been working on TX > beam forming. The best beam is fiber. Just do that. It even can turn corners > and goes exactly to where it's needed at very low energies. This is similar > to pvc pipes in irrigation systems. They're designed to take water to spray > heads. > > The cost is the cable plant. That's labor more than materials. Similar for > irrigation, pvc is inexpensive and lasts decades. A return labor means use > future proof materials, e.g. fiber. > > Bob > On Mar 14, 2023, at 4:10 AM, Mike Puchol via Rpm <r...@lists.bufferbloat.net> > wrote: > Hi Bob, > > You hit on a set of very valid points, which I'll complement with my views on > where the industry (the bit of it that affects WISPs) is heading, and what I > saw at the MWC in Barcelona. Love the FiWi term :-) > > I have seen the vendors that supply WISPs, such as Ubiquiti, Cambium, and > Mimosa, but also newer entrants such as Tarana, increase the performance and > on-paper specs of their equipment. My examples below are centered on the > African market, if you operate in Europe or the US, where you can charge > customers a higher install fee, or even charge them a break-up fee if they > don't return equipment, the economics work. > > Where currently a ~$500 sector radio could serve ~60 endpoints, at a cost of > ~$50 per endpoint (I use this term in place of ODU/CPE, the antenna that you > mount on the roof), and supply ~2.5 Mbps CIR per endpoint, the evolution is > now a ~$2,000+ sector radio, a $200 endpoint, capability for ~150 endpoints > per sector, and ~25 Mbps CIR per endpoint. > > If every customer a WISP installs represents, say, $100 CAPEX at install time > ($50 for the antenna + cabling, router, etc), and you charge a $30 install > fee, you have $70 to recover, and you recover from the monthly contribution > the customer makes. If the contribution after OPEX is, say, $10, it takes you > 7 months to recover the full install cost. Not bad, doable even in low-income > markets. > > Fast-forward to the next-generation version. Now, the CAPEX at install is > $250, you need to recover $220, and it will take you 22 months, which is > above the usual 18 months that investors look for. > > The focus, thereby, has to be the lever that has the largest effect on the > unit economics - which is the per-customer cost. I have drawn what my ideal > FiWi network would look like: > > > > Taking you through this - we start with a 1-port, low-cost EPON OLT (or you > could go for 2, 4, 8 ports as you add capacity). This OLT has capacity for 64 > ONUs on its single port. Instead of connecting the typical fiber > infrastructure with kilometers of cables which break, require maintenance, > etc. we insert an EPON to Ethernet converter (I added "magic" because these > don't exist AFAIK). > > This converter allows us to connect our $2k sector radio, and serve the $200 > endpoints (ODUs) over wireless point-to-multipoint up to 10km away. Each ODU > then has a reverse converter, which gives us EPON again. > > Once we are back on EPON, we can insert splitters, for example, > pre-connectorized outdoor 1:16 boxes. Every customer install now involves a > 100 meter roll of pre-connectorized 2-core drop cable, and a $20 EPON ONU. > > Using this deployment method, we could connect up to 16 customers to a single > $200 endpoint, so the enpoint CAPEX per customer is now $12.5. Add the ONU, > cable, etc. and we have a per-install CAPEX of $82.5 (assuming the same $50 > of extras we had before), and an even shorter break-even. In addition, as the > endpoints support higher capacity, we can provision at least the same, if not > more, capacity per customer. > > Other advantages: the $200 ODU is no longer customer equipment and CAPEX, but > network equipment, and as such, can operate under a longer break-even > timeline, and be financed by infrastructure PE funds, for example. As a > result, churn has a much lower financial impact on the operator. > > The main reason why this wouldn't work today is that EPON, as we know, is > synchronous, and requires the OLT to orchestrate the amount of time each ONU > can transmit, and when. Having wireless hops and media conversions will > introduce latencies which can break down the communications (e.g. one ONU may > transmit, get delayed on the radio link, and end up overlapping another ONU > that transmitted on the next slot). Thus, either the "magic" box needs to > account for this, or an new hybrid EPON-wireless protocol developed. > > My main point here: the industry is moving away from the unconnected. All the > claims I heard and saw at MWC about "connecting the unconnected" had zero > resonance with the financial drivers that the unconnected really operate > under, on top of IT literacy, digital skills, devices, power... > > Best, > > Mike > On Mar 14, 2023 at 05:27 +0100, rjmcmahon via Starlink > <starl...@lists.bufferbloat.net>, wrote: >> To change the topic - curious to thoughts on FiWi. >> >> Imagine a world with no copper cable called FiWi (Fiber,VCSEL/CMOS >> Radios, Antennas) and which is point to point inside a building >> connected to virtualized APs fiber hops away. Each remote radio head >> (RRH) would consume 5W or less and only when active. No need for things >> like zigbee, or meshes, or threads as each radio has a fiber connection >> via Corning's actifi or equivalent. Eliminate the AP/Client power >> imbalance. Plastics also can house smoke or other sensors. >> >> Some reminders from Paul Baran in 1994 (and from David Reed) >> >> o) Shorter range rf transceivers connected to fiber could produce a >> significant improvement - - tremendous improvement, really. >> o) a mixture of terrestrial links plus shorter range radio links has the >> effect of increasing by orders and orders of magnitude the amount of >> frequency spectrum that can be made available. >> o) By authorizing high power to support a few users to reach slightly >> longer distances we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to serve the >> many. >> o) Communications systems can be built with 10dB ratio >> o) Digital transmission when properly done allows a small signal to >> noise ratio to be used successfully to retrieve an error free signal. >> o) And, never forget, any transmission capacity not used is wasted >> forever, like water over the dam. Not using such techniques represent >> lost opportunity. >> >> And on waveguides: >> >> o) "Fiber transmission loss is ~0.5dB/km for single mode fiber, >> independent of modulation" >> o) “Copper cables and PCB traces are very frequency dependent. At >> 100Gb/s, the loss is in dB/inch." >> o) "Free space: the power density of the radio waves decreases with the >> square of distance from the transmitting antenna due to spreading of the >> electromagnetic energy in space according to the inverse square law" >> >> The sunk costs & long-lived parts of FiWi are the fiber and the CPE >> plastics & antennas, as CMOS radios+ & fiber/laser, e.g. VCSEL could be >> pluggable, allowing for field upgrades. Just like swapping out SFP in a >> data center. >> >> This approach basically drives out WiFi latency by eliminating shared >> queues and increases capacity by orders of magnitude by leveraging 10dB >> in the spatial dimension, all of which is achieved by a physical design. >> Just place enough RRHs as needed (similar to a pop up sprinkler in an >> irrigation system.) >> >> Start and build this for an MDU and the value of the building improves. >> Sadly, there seems no way to capture that value other than over long >> term use. It doesn't matter whether the leader of the HOA tries to >> capture the value or if a last mile provider tries. The value remains >> sunk or hidden with nothing on the asset side of the balance sheet. >> We've got a CAPEX spend that has to be made up via "OPEX returns" over >> years. >> >> But the asset is there. >> >> How do we do this? >> >> Bob >> _______________________________________________ >> Starlink mailing list >> starl...@lists.bufferbloat.net >> https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink > _______________________________________________ > Bloat mailing list > Bloat@lists.bufferbloat.net > https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/bloat _______________________________________________ Bloat mailing list Bloat@lists.bufferbloat.net https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/bloat