DSL Provider of Choice

[Travis Roy]

>  Another promising, if somewhat immature (in terms of 
> infrastructure), technology is fixed wireless [5].  ISP puts 
> a tower on a hill.  

> You hang a wok on your wall.  

Been there, done that.. Wok's don't work well for antennas because
they're to deep
http://scootz.net/~travis/MikeStuff/woktenna/

> You now 
> have high-speed, reliable Internet, without involving the 
> local telco at all.  (Anyone who has had to deal with the 
> local telco knows that's priceless.)  We've got a few 
> customers using a local wireless ISP with good success.  The 
> real problem, as I said, appears to be infrastructure; it is 
> strictly line-of-sight, and there *always* seems to be a tree 
> in the way.

Wireless (802.11b/a/g) isn't very good for a primary internet connection
based on 3 things

1. Security.. WEP is okay for short term stuff, but I would never use
the same WEP key for more then a week.. They're to easy to crack now
adays.. Changing them is a pain in the ass if you have a lot of users.
You could set up an IPSec tunnel or something but then from an ISP
standpoint it becomes a huge support burden

2. Speed.. In the case of 802.11* you get the bandwidth shared.. For
example, you have 102.11b, it's 11mb/sec if you have a good enough
connection with the base station.. Somebody else jumps on it's now 5.5,
another person 3.6.. You get the point. Sure it's still fast but lots of
people don't understand this.

3. Reliability.. Wireless is flakey at best. 2.4ghz stuff is flooded
with cordless phones, micorwaves, ham radio and god knows what else..
Just add an antenna? Well a whole "system" is suppose to be certified by
the FCC.. So while your D-Link card might have an FCC cert, and your
12db antenna might have one too, if you plug them together then the
whole thing needs to be re-certified to be "legal". 2.4ghz also bounces
like an SOB.. You better have line of sight and the new stuff that
5.somethingGhz is even worse.. Sometimes this can be good to get around
corners but it's usually a problem. Heavy rain and snow also cause
issues.