Another unfortunate case of a PR rep hearing a bad explanation of a technology and trying their best to regurgitate it to the press.
Skypilot's "last mile" technology is just plain old vanilla 802.11b/g wifi. No magic there. Their backhaul technology incorporates much of what you'd see in the 802.16d spec and a little more. They have a proprietary polling protocol that works much like Karlnet(now WORP), Nstream, etc much of which is a big part of WiMAX. They also utilize "smart" antenna technology much like the Ruckus which has the effect of increasing performance much like MIMO. But it all boils down to physics and if you don't deploy them in useful places, it won't perform well as we all know. Tyler Booth // President ph. 503.548.2000 | fx. 503.548.2002 921 SW Washington St, Suite 224 Portland OR 97205 On May 28, 2009, at 11:08 PM, Michael Weinberg wrote: > > This has been reported by a few people, including Mike Rogoway at the > Oregonian, but I'm particularly intrigued by a quote in CNET's article > (http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10250943-54.html): > > "SkyPilots Wi-Fi mesh networking gear has the range of WiMax but is > cheaper, said Brian Jenkins, director of marketing for the company. > "We take standard chips and make system look like a WiMax in terms of > range and capacity," he said." > > Does anyone actually believe that? If that were the case, I'd expect > that the Portland MetroFi deployment would have worked much better. Of > course, if that's even half true, then I really would like the City of > Portland to take down the gear and put it in the hands of the > community to do something with. > > One possibility is that Jenkins is (somewhat disingenuously) referring > to unlicensed, 5GHz WiMax, rather than the expensive licensed stuff > ala Clearwire, and happily accepting the public's confusion over WiMax > flavors. > > -- > Michael Weinberg > President > Personal Telco Project, Inc. > A 501(c)(3) Non-Profit > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ The Personal Telco Project - http://www.personaltelco.net/ Donate to PTP: http://www.personaltelco.net/donate Archives: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.wireless.portland.general/ Etiquette: http://www.personaltelco.net/index.cgi/MailingListEtiquette List information: http://lists.personaltelco.net To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
