There is an article written by Charles that I published on the WISPNotes web
site. I think it is pretty good. Linked to from the home page:
http://www.wispnotes.com
There has also been some good discussion on this subject on the wisp-list.
I think the biggest thing is polling combined with "packet caching". 802.11
was designed for an indoor network where satellites were assumed to hear
each other. That is almost never the case in outdoor networks like we are
building. Polling takes care of that problem. Packet caching or
super-packets take smallish packets that pile up waiting for a clear to send
from the AP and sends them as one biggish packet rather than being polled
the number of packets that are waiting for sending.
Other stuff that I found very nice is remote control and monitoring of all
your customers. You can remotely check signal strength, errors, control
bandwidth, etc.
It supports authentication through radius, which is huge.
It runs on inexpensive hardware such as the Agere AP-1000 which has 2 ports
and can be had for $399 (no radios). It can run on RG-1000's which is a
$139 box with radio. It can run on Teletronics CPE's. It can run on a
computer with plug-in radios.
Lastly, I'll say that EVERY business customer that I have talked to so far
has insisted on seeing fairly detailed information on how to ensure
security. Karlnet blows them away. Turbocell can not be sniffed with
programs like Netstumbler. It isn't 802.11, so to hack in you have to have
a copy of Turbocell. You have to know a pass phrase. If you have WEP
enabled, you have to know the key. On top of all that, you can also do
software encryption. Of course, all this stuff also adds to the learning
curve when you first get going. :)
Bill
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