David Sifry (of the 802.11b tech company Sputnix) analyzes this weekend's NYT report of a new hacked 802.11b technology that yeilds increased security, range and throughput.
The company claims all sorts of neat stuff, including security, QoS, and other features. This can be performed in the CPE, probably not at the radio layer. The CPE can also be built very cheaply, and sold at about a $100 price point. A number of questions remain – are they using FHSS (old-fashioned 802.11 signals maxed out at 2Mbps and were FHSS) or DSSS? How do the CPEs react to multipath loss, reflections, and loss of line-of-sight to the brodcast tower? How well does the technology scale? Can it be used in a mesh configuration or is it point-to-multipoint? They claim that their low-cost CPE can be deployed without the need for an installer, which means it must be robust indeed.
