Forum Archive Index - March 2000

[NZ.Herald.Online]

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Message: An interesting article on wireless/lines

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28/03/00 - No wires attached to this speedy internet service By CHRIS BARTON

Wireless internet at 1Mbps with no Telecom phone lines or mobile phones 
involved. That is the technology that increasing numbers of businesses are 
shifting to - especially because there are big savings.

The Business Herald decided to test the claims and Walker Wireless, which with 
Radionet and Safetynet offers wireless networks using general licence radio 
frequencies, obliged.

Within a few hours a technician had installed a parabolic antenna on the side 
of the building pointing up to the Sky Tower. Shortly after, another installer 
connected the cable from the antenna to an Aironet "bridge" - the wireless 
equivalent of a modem - and a networking card in our PC.

The installer offered a range of connections from 64Kbps (kilobits per second) 
to 1Mbps (megabits per second) and we opted for the latter.

The connection to the internet, provided through eSurf Wireless, costs $2060 a 
month, including unlimited access.

But when it comes to fast net access, the speed you buy and the speed you get 
are very different.

With 1Mbps, I expected my web surfing to be faster than a speeding bullet. It 
wasn't. Web pages arrived on screen faster than when using a 56Kbps dial-up 
modem, but not that much faster.

An easy way to tell just how fast is to download some software.

>From www.tucows.co.nz, I downloaded Adobe's 5.4Mb Acrobat Reader in just over 
>four minutes. During the download speeds varied from 12Kbps to 21Kbps.

Trying the same thing on other sites, both locally and offshore, the fastest 
speed I got was 30Kbps. That is 10 times faster than I get using a dial-up 
modem, but it does not seem super fast.

I asked Business Herald web columnist Peter Sinclair to do the same download 
using his wireline ADSL connection. It did the same job in two minutes, 
averaging about 30Kbps and going as high as 64Kbps.

I asked eSurf Wireless chief executive Michael Spencer to explain the 
difference. It is a question he sometimes gets from the more than 350 
businesses now using wireless connections through eSurf, which opened its doors 
in December.

He says speed depends on a list of factors, including: the speed and setup of 
your computer; the bandwidth "commitment" of the internet service provider, 
both locally and internationally; the speed of the server hosting the website 
you are connecting to; and whether servers or the internet are clogged with 
traffic at the time.

The wireless pipe - in this case from the Herald to the Sky Tower - provides 
what is known as the "last mile" connection to the internet.

>From the Sky Tower to eSurf the signals follow a maze of paths, mostly 
>wireline, that make up the net. Which is apparently why my connection was 
>sometimes fast and sometimes slow. My 1Mbps pipe was also not just for me, but 
>is shared by a number of wireless users.

But mostly a 1Mbps connection is overkill. Mr Spencer says businesses usually 
opt for 128Kbps ($360 a month) to 256Kbps ($580 a month) connections, with some 
taking the minimum 64Kbps ($250 a month), which includes ulimited internet 
access.

There is normally an installation charge of about $400. But because the 
wireless connection is permanently on, using what is known as a "static IP 
(internet protocol) address," the link is a prime target for hackers.

That means users should look to include "firewall" protection, which adds about 
$3000 to the installation. The two-way, permanently open wireless connection is 
ideal for business wanting to host their own website or mail services.

Mr Spencer says $360 a month for the 128Kbps compares favourably with the 
Telecom landline equivalent (ISDN), which is typically $650 to $1200 a month, 
not including net access.

On the same basis, wireless stacks up reasonably well against Telecom's 
Jetstream fast ADSL service, which costs $369 a month with 3000Mb of downloads.

So just how fast can one expect on wireless? The rule of thumb is that in New 
Zealand a 64Kbps connection will deliver download speeds around 7.5Kbps. A 
"dedicated" 256Kbps connection should deliver about 50Kbps.

You can make the pipe bigger, which may not be a bad thing if you have lots of 
users sharing the connection, but you will not get faster speeds. Because of 
some inherent bandwidth limitations of the internet in New Zealand, the fastest 
speed you can expect, probably late at night, is 180Kbps. On average, "fast" 
access probably means about 60Kbps.

My experience was the 15Kbps to 30Kbps range. Watching streaming video suddenly 
became a viable option and software downloads took minutes rather than hours.

Best of all was using the connection to watch the America's Cup over the net 
using Virtual Spectator. On my dial-up connection I had to turn off all the 
added animation features such as yacht shadows, water, sky and coastline 
textures. With the wireless link there was enough bandwidth to turn them on, 
making the experience much more realistic. 
 
                

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To view more stories please visit the NZ Herald Online at 
http://www.nzherald.co.nz





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