[wsfii-discuss] Discussions on multi-router interference; Adding Voice

Sun Jan 25 04:49:42 UTC 2009

While, rather sadly, interference between conflicting routers may not be much of an issue for rural deployments as yet, thanks to the habit of city-dwellers to live in multi-storeyed buildings, it is definitely an issue that has spawned discussion among less-techies. 

This article (http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09%2F01%2F17%2F0431239&from=rss) on Slashdot has many interesting PoVs from people who have tried various simple ways of ensuring their routers keep providing connectivity even when the air is inundated with signals from other routers as well as from cordless phones, microwaves and video senders (aside from who knows what other gadgetry spams up the airwaves). 

One very clear gleaning I notice is 'keep your signal as soft as possible, try and persuade others to do the same'. Soft includes using directional or phase-shaped signalling as well as lowering the EIRP. Several links to interesting gadgetry to achieve this. 

One of the topics discussed on the fringes of the AirJaldi WSFII summit a couple of years back was voice. There's been a lot happening since then; some interesting links at http://www.villagetelco.org/; which has several of the wsfii names prominently in action (Stage Whisper: so it is not as thought this is news for everyone, but somehow I think we are not getting very far with keeping wsfii itself in the loop, never mind actually driving stuff as wsfii). 

I mention this because of the fascinating discussion over the last couple of days on this list. There is still a huge disconnect between what is possible and what is actually being done, especially in developing countries (including India), where the disparity between inexpensive and open networks (very few) and closed system large-scale deployments (many) is stark. 

 Vickram
http://communicall.wordpress.com
http://vvcrishna.wordpress.com

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/wsfii-discuss/attachments/20090125/67e95f7c/attachment.html>