On Wed, 20 Aug 2003 17:10:00 GMT, (Simon
Avery) wrote:

Dave Plowman wrote:

Hello Dave

Indeed, and with wireless everything now so cheap, it's
getting harder to justify wiring, imo. Just need a rx/tx
widget in each room and everything in it talks to that.

DP| No it's not - a wired link will always be better.

I said "imo", and it is. yo is obviously different, neither is set in
stone. We're theorising what might happen in ten years' time - it's
better to be a bit vague I think, rather than state what's true now
and ignore any chance for it to change.

Tell you what, ask me again in ten years and I might agree with you.


Wireless networking is good and useful technology, no question, even
with the incompetence of the security surrounding it - that's another
story.

However at the lower cost end of the market, with 802.11b (11Mbit
gross, 3-5Mbit net if you are lucky), the speed may well not be good
enough for some applications such as video or high speed visualisation
which may well become consumerised in the next few years. Even the
newer 802.11g stuff which is purported to be 5x faster may not be that
adequate.

Also, all of these technologies at present are shared medium - you are
creating what amounts to be a hub. If all you want to do or foresee
doing is sharing a "broadband" connection at today's speeds and
perhaps a printer, and you want to do it at home or small office, then
this will be OK. If you are doing file sharing or other server
based things, then probably not. I think that the home server is
likely to be an increasingly popular concept over the next few years,
and with some of the suggested functionality, low speed networks may
become a problem.

If you view that the sub £100 prices per node are OK and that you will
upgrade by replacement, then it's a reasonable position to take, but
wireless technology is changing pretty fast in comparison to wired
systems.

Radio spectrum space at usable frequency ranges for the application
may become the limiting factor.



..andy

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